WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

just pretend you were going for a phonics style
:wink:

I would like to add my condolences to those of Larry French and Joe McBride on the passing of Jillian Kesner Graver, wife of Gary Graver. I only met her once, through Larry French, at a program given in San Francisco's Castro Theater. She struck me as a gracious and beautiful woman, but I had no idea, until I read Joe McBride's words on the current Main Page, of how active she was in helping Gary Graver promote the works of Orson Welles.

I hope that her death does not add another blow to the completion and distribution of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

Glenn

About three years ago, the marginalized film director Curtis Harrington [whom I had interviewed for several publications] suggested that I write a feature story for Filmfax Magazine on workaholic cinematographer Gary Graver (Orson Welles’ cameraman in the Great One’s terrible final years… Graver also directed many pornographic films under the pseudonym Robert McCallum).

Curtis hoped to use Graver on his next no-budget film based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story THE MAN OF THE CROWD. So I interviewed Graver over a period of several months and obtained laudatory comments about Graver from Curtis Harrington. My last conversation with Graver was abruptly terminated when he had a terrible coughing fit. A few days later, I read Graver's obit – dead at 68 of throat cancer. Curtis followed Graver to the grave in May 2007. In failing health and mourning the loss of his dear friend and the cameraman he relied on, Curtis worked determinedly on the Poe project, but was too debilitated by a stroke to carry on.

I contacted Graver’s widow Jillian Kesner, told her how sorry I was about Gary’s death, and hinted that when she felt up to it, perhaps we could complete the tribute to her late husband. Jillian was very friendly and seemed willing to pursue this, but there were obstacles.

The last time I spoke to Jillian, she was quite despondent. Legal hassles involving her late husband’s estate were partly to blame. I had no idea she was battling leukemia. Jillian sounded so down that I offered to be a sympathetic ear, even though I hardly knew her. I asked Jillian to call me anytime if she felt the need. Of course, she never did, but I really should have given her a shout, just to see how she was doing.

You never know when someone will vanish from this dimension of space and time.

I was horrified when I read the news of Jillian's untimely death on December 5. Jillian – a onetime martial artist with Playmate looks and a superbly toned body – had died of leukemia at age 57.

So the Graver story is kaput. Was it jinxed? I also spoke to Ray Manzarek of The Doors, who used Graver on his movie LOVE HER MADLY (2000), based on a story outline by Jim Morrison. Manzarek was a wonderful raconteur and had nothing but good things to say about Gary Graver and Jillian Kesner. Manzarek and I had a delightful 30-minute conversation.

But will the curse of the Gary Graver story continue? Will Manzarek be the next one to go?

Or will Death claim me?

The late, great Roy Scheider appeared with Welles in IN OUR HANDS, a 1984 documentary about an anti-nuclear protest in New York's Central Park. I've never seen IN OUR HANDS, but somehow doubt that Scheider and Welles shared any screen time. Still, I was surprised to discover they actually co-starred in a film together – albeit an obscure documentary.
One of Scheider's final roles was as a bargaining serial killer on Death Row in ENDGAME, last year's remarkable season finale of LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT. As the manipulative Mark Ford Brady, Scheider toys with the increasingly unstable Detective Robert Goren, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, who starred as Welles in ED WOOD (1994) and in the 2005 short FIVE MINUTES, MR. WELLES.

Another Welles-Scheider connection: Roy Scheider was outstanding as RKO Radio Pictures' president George Schaefer in the 1999 TV-movie RKO 281, about the making of CITIZEN KANE. Sean Axmaker notes in Nitrate Online.com – http://www.nitrateonline.com/1999/rrko281.html – "As much an artist as a businessman, Schaefer is an often-neglected hero in the KANE saga but is presented here with dignity and respect and invested with a courageous passion by Scheider."
Sad when one thinks that Welles essentially destroyed Schaefer's career in Hollywood with the back-to-back box office failures of KANE and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.

Another Hollywood icon bites the dust, but we could see this death coming, thanks to those dreadful tabloids that ran photos of a dignified, emaciated Paul Newman on their front pages a few weeks ago, with faux-concern headlines like "97-pound Paul Newman's brave last days." The paparazzi caught Newman in the most private of moments as he contemplated "When Time Ran Out."
Back in 1958, Newman and Orson Welles had some great scenes together in THE LONG, HOT SUMMER.
There was some choice dialogue in that epic southern drama between Newman as rascal barn-burner Ben Quick and super-bloated Welles in old man's makeup as local patriarch Will Varner (who owns every business in the hamlet of Frenchman's Bend, Mississippi). A few samples:
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Ben: If you're scared of me, mister, why don't you just come right out and say so?
Will Varner: Sir, why should I be scared of you?
Ben: 'Cause I got a reputation for being a dangerous man.
Will Varner: You're a young dangerous man. I'm an old one. I guess you don't know who I am. I better introduce myself. I'm the big landowner, chief moneylender in these parts. I'm commissioner of elections, veterinarian, own a store and a cotton gin and a grist mill and a blacksmith shop... and it's considered unlucky for a man to do his trading or gin his cotton or grind his meal or shoe his stock anywhere else. Now that's who I am.
Ben: You talk a lot.
Will Varner: Well, yes I do, sir. I'm done talking to you, except for passing you on this piece of information. I built me a new jail in my courthouse this year, and if during the course of your stay, something, anything at all should just happen to catch fire, I think you ought to know that in my jail, we never heard of the words habeas corpus. You rot.
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Will Varner (to Ben Quick): I've been watching you. I like your push, yes. I like your style. I like your brass. It ain't too dissimilar from the way I operate.
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Will Varner: I get preached to on Sundays
Ben: I know, and you don't listen, and neither did I.
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Will Varner: I got influence. I'll dog you, boy, wherever you go. I'll break you.
Ben: No, you won't. You'll miss me.
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Yes, we will, Mr. Newman. We'll miss you terribly... we decrepit boomers with bad knees and belly fat who caught you back in the sixties when you were in your prime in all those "H" movies: Hud, Harper, Hombre, Hand Luke and Harry Frigg... and countless other great films. Even the so-called duds were good. Lady L and Torn Curtain, for example...

Does anyone know if Paul Newman was one of the A-list actors considered for the lead role in THE BIG BRASS RING?

All the greats are going fast. Who's next? Karl Malden? Kirk Douglas? Herbert Lom? Joan Fontaine? Joseph Wiseman?

Keats, in those chats did you ever get around to the subject of working with Orson Welles? (If not, your Wellesnet card may be in jeopardy!)

["All the greats are going fast. Who's next? Karl Malden? Kirk Douglas? Herbert Lom? Joan Fontaine? Joseph Wiseman?" Your list, Harvey, is rare, great, and distinguished. It's possible some of us here don't know who one or two of them are.]

And that's a most touching anecdote, keats, which fits with stories told about how Paul Newman lived his private life in Westport, Connecticut. One resident said that he often came to the local [a rustic Ha-Ra Club?], in jeans, an old t-shirt, and tennis shoes, to drink a beer and eat a hamburger while listening to chit-chat from the regulars.

Over thirty years ago now, my wife and I attended a "site-specific" production of William Saroyan's Time of Your Life, at Spec's, a famous old bar in North Beach of San Francisco. The audience sat with their drinks, and the play's action erupted and crackled all around us. We were at the bar, where certain stools were marked with X's, reserving them for players.

Our places happened to be in an open block of three.

The bartender waved off several people who tried to sit on the stool next to mine, but just as the play was about to begin, an attractive, petite, woman in casual dress hurried in, nodded to the bartender, and sat on that empty stool next to me.

As Saroyan's wild 1930's goings-on wrapt us, I half turned to watch the action, more or less, forcing me to study the woman's features, as like a bird, she keenly followed each new "entrance", catching every impression. Shortly, I had the overwhelming intuition that she was Joanne Woodward, then at the top of her fame.

She turned her head toward me only once, seeming to sense my passing scrutiny. As our eyes met, it was the kind of moment that performers used to describe on late night TV of the time. She instantly appeared to know that I knew that she knew that I knew.

The play was the thing, however, and we went back to our parts as spectators. When the show was over, and the bar was "open" once more, I turned to whisper my surmise to my wife, but when I turned back, the woman was gone, as if she had never existed.

Later that week, I read in the Chronicle that Joanne Woodward had been in town for a charity event, and was spending time with her husband, Paul Newman, then making THE TOWERING INFERNO in Frisco.

That's pretty much the story, nothing as grand or intimate as yours, keats. Nothing so frustrating either as a similar "near meeting" with Orson Welles in the Lobby Bar of the St. Francis, a couple of years earlier, but there you are.

I doubt Paul Newman, aside from professional respect, would have gotten along with Orson Welles. They were of two different worlds, two different styles. You may remember, keats, in your meticulous scholarship, the Gore Vidal memoir in which he recounts how Welles, on several occasions, pled with him in regard to producing THE BIG BRASS RING: "You know Paul Newman. Can you put in a word with him? Because if I don't have one of the Six Bankable Boys, there's no financing."

It never happened. Doesn't sound as if there was much of a close bond there.

Yet, each was admirable in his own way.

Glenn

Moira Finnie has written an excellent piece about Agnes Moorehead for the Movie Morlocks site (TCM's Movie Blog edited by Richard Harland Smith). Finnie also interviews Charles Tranberg, author of "I Love the Illusion", a biography of Moorehead.
Story is online at http://moviemorlocks.com/2008/12/10/5687/

That was a nice interview about Agnes Moorehead. I grew up with her on Bewitched, as I'm sure many did. It was nice to find out later of her work with Welles. It was very similar to how I discovered Groucho Marx had a couple of funny brothers. I saw him on TV on the quiz show and went from there.

Wellesnetters may wish to note the passing in LA of Patrick McGoohan, best known as Number Six in THE PRISONER, the Internationally popular Television series of the 1960's, and before that as DANGER MAN in another successful TV venue. But further back still, McGoohan, New York-born but reared in England and Ireland, had starred as Starbuck in Orson Welles' legendary 1955 production of Moby Dick Rehearsed.

As a teenager, McGoohan had gone into repertory theater in the big English steeltown of Shefield, and subsequently acted for a number of provincial theaters, eventually migrating to London's West End. When McGoohan starred in Serious Charge, a (then) controversial drama about a vicar accused of homosexual advances toward a teenager, Orson Welles signed him for Moby Dick Rehearsed. According to McGoohan's obituary in the London Telegraph, "Welles was to call him 'one of the big actors of his generation, tremendous, with all the required attributes, looks, intensity, unquestionable acting ability and a twinkle in his eye'"

At the risk of infuriating Todd Baesen and keats, by indulging in a "you had to be there" moment, I must testify to the truth of that evaluation, as I have in a memoir here on Wellesnet, and more recently in a slightly revised version which you may find on my Author Page (under another alias) at The Red Room:

http://www.redroom.com/author/alex-fraser

It was a memorable evening, and I followed Patrick McGoohan's career from that time on, though I never thought that he did anything to equal his Starbuck after the movie version of Brendan Behan's THE QUARE FELLOW.

Glenn

A thoughtful obituary, Glenn, as always.

If I might add to your comments, McGoohan was also the Ibsen BRAND of his generation in a play directed by Michael Elliot and shown on BBC TV. I don't know if this broadcast still survives since it does not appear in the Ibsen DVD collection although Ingrid Bergman as Hedda Gabler does.

Fate prevented me seeing McGoohan play Ahab in the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre Company's production of MOBY DICK which Elliot also directed. He was signed to appear but backed out at the last moment to Elliot's annoyance as a sign outside the theatre made no bones about. The one and only real Dr. Lector Brian Cox took over the role.

In certain ways, McGoohan's career paralleled Welles. Both began in the theatre and were associated with successes that dominated their later careers. For McGoohan it was DANGER MAN and THE PRISONER. Although, he attempted to diversify in different roles in the COLOMBO series, he also was trapped by the past. However, his role as Red in Cy Endfield's British noir HELL DRIVERS is another different type of role.

Again, you were lucky to be present at this time.

B-movie guru Towers dies at 88
B-movie producer made more than 100 films
By PAT SAPERSTEIN, Variety

Prolific B-movie producer and writer Harry Alan Towers, who made more than 100 films working with cult stalwarts such as Christopher Lee and director Jess Franco, died of heart failure in Toronto on Aug. 2. He was 89.
While Towers generally worked on low-budget fare, he favored literary adaptations by such writers as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Alan Poe, Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace.

During the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote and produced dozens of films, sometimes credited as Peter Welbeck. Among the actors he worked with were Orson Welles, Michael York, Michael Caine, Richard Harris, James Earl Jones and Tony Curtis.

Towers often shot in locations such as South Africa, Ireland and Bulgaria on films such as “The Face of Fu Manchu,” Iran-filmed “Ten Little Indians,” South African classic adaptation “Cry the Beloved Country” and “Klondike Fever.”

His association with auteur Franco produced films which have become underground classics including “Venus in Furs,” “Eugenie,” “Marquis de Sade: Justine” and “Night of the Blood Monster.”

Capitalizing on the industry’s need for video titles during the 1980s and early 1990s, Towers provided a steady pipeline of films such as Robert Englund starrers “Phantom of the Opera” and “Danse Macabre,” “Warrior Queen” and “Delta Force 3.”

Towers started as a child actor in Britain and during WWII, he became a radio writer while serving in the Royal Air Force. He and his mother started a company called Towers of London after the war to sell syndicated radio shows around the world, and he went on to produce numerous programs for British television including “The Scarlet Pimpernel” and “Tales from Dickens.”

His literary agent, Albert T. Longden, said he was working on an autobiography. Recently he had been working on an adaptation of “Moll Flanders,” which was at one time set to be directed by Ken Russell.

He is survived by his wife, actress Maria Rohm.

We had just been talking about him recently.

Ah, yes . . . he was either a KISS OF DEATH or a LIFEBOAT for those figures mentioned in the article, including Orson Welles -- mostly the former.

But no one can say that he was not industrious and prolific.

Glenn

Well, that's a drag. I guess no more Fu Manchu, and I was really looking forward to that Moll Flanders adaptation, as I would like to see Ken Russell at full throttle at least one more time before he passes on. For good or for ill, we won't see the likes of Harry Alan Towers again; those rogue producers really are a dying breed. I watched an old Amicus production, Asylum, on DVD last night, and really enjoyed the interview with producer Max J. Rosenberg, who died a couple of years ago. Sam Sherman, God bless him, is still around, producing another Living Dead movie with NOLD writer John Russo; are there any more? (note: cinematographer for Sherman's indispensible Dracula vs. Frankenstein was, of course, Gary Graver.) I always admired the fact that Welles felt no shame in doing business with those fly-by-night reprobates. Thanks for that post, Harvey.