Read Me and Orson Welles Online

Authors: Robert Kaplow

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BOOK: Me and Orson Welles
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Pounce,
I thought.
“It's a wonderfully generous offer,” she said, “but I've got a date with Richard.”
She touched me lightly on the arm, smiled, and headed toward the stage.
The two gentlemen turned to me in stunned disbelief.
“She's kidding! She's kidding!” I said.
“Oh, Fertilizer, you better turn in your seed bag,” said Lloyd. “This kid's heading for some seafoodmomma.”
“Last exit before quadruple-space,” said Cotten.
“Before what?” I asked.
He explained: “You know—when you read a novel, and the main characters are finally about to
shtup
? Well, they can't
describe
anything or they couldn't print the book. They just go, ‘He hugged her hard, and they fell into bed.' Period.
Quadruple space.
Next paragraph the sun is rising and the milkman is knocking the bottles together. All the good stuff happened in the
quadruple space.”
“Fertilizer's hoping to make his next thirty years one long quadruple space,” said Lloyd.
“Have you ever . . . with . . . ?” I asked.
“Goddamnit, I tried,” said Cotten. “Dinner, dancing . . . I must have spent thirty dollars on that broad.”
“Still no quadruple-space?” I asked.
“I still haven't heard the milkman knocking the bottles together.”
“A bet,” said Lloyd. “Two bucks to the first guy who gets into Sonja's pants.”
“That is unspeakably crude,” said Cotten.
“It's cheap and demeaning,” I added.
We sat for a moment in silence.
“O.K . . . .
five
bucks,” said Lloyd.
Eight
A
t eight that night we ran through the first real dress rehearsal of
Caesar
—music, lights, military uniforms.
I stood on a mattress under the upstage trap, in the basement really, waiting for my cue. Behind me stood Grover Burgess, dressed as Ligarius, in a torn scarf and oil-stained raincoat.
Up above me the conspirators were whispering. The entire rehearsal so far had been a disaster, and Welles kept breaking character to scream about everyone's incompetence.
“ ‘Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,' ” said Welles “ ‘to cut the head off and then,'
Jesus Christ,
Jeannie, I told you to turn off everything but the goddamn work light.
How many times—”
I stood there with one foot resting on the stepladder. The smell of the paint was still heavy. Someone's step creaked on the platform overhead. My leg was shaking uncontrollably.
“ ‘But it is doubtful yet whether Caesar will come forth today . . . .' ”
“ ‘Never fear that.' ”
“ ‘By the eight hour. Is that the—' ”
My cue.
“Break a leg,” said Burgess.
“With this ladder, I probably will.” As I headed up toward the conspirators, I imagined what my rising head must look like to an audience. I could hear Burgess ascending right behind me.
The platform creaked under my step.
One line, that's all this is—
I said aloud: “ ‘Here is a sick man that would speak to you.' ”
“Louder!” said Welles.
“ ‘Here is a sick man that would speak to you.' ”
“Good. Now exit left.”
I walked into the wings where the four-man orchestra sat watching.
“How'd I do?” I asked.
The drummer looked up from his men's magazine. “What?”
 
Caesar
had no intermission, and I silently moved to the back of the house to watch some of the big scenes—Coulouris on the black velvet-covered pulpit screaming for silence:
Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your ears!
Below him the thirteen lights cut into the stage floor shot directly upwards. It looked like the
Life
magazine pictures of the Nürnberg rallies.
Sonja sat near me at the back of the house. She tucked her blue-jeaned leg under her. Even in work clothes there was something a little provocative in her presence—her chestnut hair smelled like black licorice. She sneezed, and she whispered, “I've got the Mercury cold. Don't get too close to me. Read this.”
She handed me a typewritten piece of paper.
 
Selznick International
230 Park Avenue
New York City
 
Sonja Jones: John Houseman speaks in glowing terms of your talents and tells me you've got some first-rate ideas for our “Civil War picture.” We'd love to hear them. DOS in town this week. Please give us a call as soon as it's convenient.
Sincerely,
Katharine Brown, Story Editor
“Wow.”
“This is one of those letters that change your life, Richard. Four sentences and everything in your future is altered.”
For a moment she watched the scene being rehearsed onstage. “I hate actors; I really do. They've got that invisible camera following them around everywhere they go.
Hey, folks, did you see the way I walked up that ramp? Did you see the way I tilted my hat?
They make me ill. They really do.”
“If you hate actors, why are you hanging around with me?”
“You're not an actor. You just haven't figured it out yet.”
“Is that an insult?”
“It's the opposite of an insult.”
“Well, you don't like actors. What kind of guys
do
you like?” I asked and I thought, Here we go again, Richard. The buddy. The best friend. Sonja was talking, and I was remembering last summer. Stefan's girlfriend, Kate Rouilliard, had called me up at midnight—crying. I'd met her in the bleachers across from the high school.
“I can't understand why he
turns
on me,” she said wiping her eyes. “It would be different if I hurt him or something, but I haven't done anything. He just turns so
cold
on me. I don't understand guys, Richard. I really don't.”
I sat there holding her hand, trying to console her, trying to disguise my sideways erection. Her face was wet and perfumed, and I stared at her bare ankle in the moonlight.
“Richard, I don't know what I'd do without you. You're the best friend I've got. I'm sorry to always be
drowning
you in this emotional crap.” She got up from the bleachers. “I wish there was something I could do for you.”
Just unbutton your shirt, Kate. Just leave it unbuttoned for thirty seconds.
“I always thought being a beautiful woman would be terrifically interesting,” I said to Sonja. I was trying to widen the scope of the conversation, and I thought the
beautiful
might get her attention. It was code for: I'm in love with you like everybody else, but I'm much too suave to say it. “To watch the world sort of fall at your feet whenever you show up. To know what that feels like. Does this mean I'm a homosexual?”
“Yes. Mostly I despise the way I look. My neck is too long. My eyelids have too much skin on them.”
“Your eyelids! Sonja, you're nuts.”
“Really, I'm one huge catalogue of faults.”
“Name me one fault.”
She thought a second.
“My left breast is smaller than my right.”
“Have you got a ruler?”
 
Onstage, Marc Antony had finished shouting about the generosity of Caesar's will (“To every man—seventy-five drachmas!”) and the mob had dispersed, their thick-soled shoes drumming the platforms.
Lloyd, as Cinna the poet, entered right. He was looking rumpled and bewildered. Some citizens entered left.
“ ‘I dreamt tonight,' ” he began, “ ‘that I did feast with Caesar . . . I have no will to wander forth of doors. Yet something leads me forth.' ”
The citizens began questioning him:
“ ‘What is your name?' ”
“ ‘Whither are you going?' ”
“Stop!”
yelled Welles. “Stop! This is
worse
than terrible. You're lucky there's no intermission in this play, Lloyd; they'd come back with rotten fruit. People, let's come back to this scene later. We're pushing the river.”
“The scene's not working because you never let us
rehearse
it,” said Lloyd.
“I'm thinking out loud,” said Welles, now standing in the orchestra. “If we cut this scene and moved directly to the tent scene . . . you know, make it a blackout and a musical interlude—just time passing—we might get away with—”
“This scene is more than about time passing, Orson,” insisted Lloyd from the stage. “It's about what happens in a mob.”
“Why don't we give Cinna a monocle,” said Welles. “You're playing him too working class.”
“He
is
working class.”
“I see a monocle, a long coat. Maybe a top hat. This could be a laugh scene.”
“Orson, the correct reading for this scene is the one I'm giving it.”
“Then convince me,” said Welles, lighting a cigar. “Because right now it's dead.” He folded his arms in front of him. “Go on, Mr. Lloyd.
Astonish me.”
 
The entire company (except Welles, Houseman, and Sonja) headed toward a cafeteria on Broadway. In our olive-green uniforms, we looked like some disreputable unit of Army deserters.
Up ahead, leading the pack, were Joe Holland and George Coulouris, both loudly maligning Martin Gabel. Next were the two ladies: Muriel and Evelyn. Muriel checked her reflection in every shop window we passed. Evelyn carried her book.
At ten P.M. on a Sunday night the cafeteria was jumping. A spilled tray of coffee cups crashed to the floor; the theatre crowd applauded.
Outside, the headlights streamed down Broadway.
Inside, we were loud and obnoxious and generally in love with ourselves.
“What show are you people with?” asked a guy at the table next to ours.
“The
Jewish Julius Caesar,”
said Lloyd. “Oy, Caesar, you shouldn't
know
from I saw in the sky tonight. Comets, thunder—oy, such a
headache
I got.”
“Who are you?” asked Cotten.
“I'm Cinna! Cinna the
farkaktah
poet!”
“From this, Cinna, you make a living?”
“Give'm a glass tea.”
“Tyranny is dead! And I get
such
a pain when I bend.”
 
We ran through the second half of the play more quickly. The lighting cues were more effective now—swift, shadowy, fluid as a film.
“ ‘Lucius!' ”
Gabel was exiting the upstage ramp as I stepped out from the wings.
“ ‘Lucius!' ”
“ ‘Here my good lord.' ”
“ ‘What, thou speak'st drowsily? Poor knave, I blame thee not. Thou art o'er-watched. Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so.' ”
Welles had wandered down to the apron of the thrust stage—only a few feet from the audience. I followed him there. The lights were dimming slightly. Welles, in his military coat and leather gloves, sat on the small step that led to the main playing area. He pretended to read his small book.
He gestured that I also sit—and I did, next to him.
I was sitting on the empty stage of a Broadway house. We were too cheap to run the heat with no audience, and the place was freezing. I could smell the fresh gray paint of the platforms. There was no one under those lights but me and Orson Welles—and floating between us were words written four hundred years earlier. I was trying to keep the nervousness out of my voice.
Don't lose your place, Richard. What are the chords to the song? You should have practiced it more.
Welles said, “ ‘Canst thou hold up thy heavy eyes a whiles and touch thy instrument a strain or two?' ”
“ ‘Ay, my lord, an't please you.' ”
“Slower,” said Welles.
I nodded and thought:
Please, God, just let me remember the goddamn song.
“ ‘I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing,' ” said Welles tenderly.
“ ‘It is my duty, sir.' ”
What was the second chorus?
“ ‘I should not urge thy duty past thy might. I know young bloods look for a time of rest.' ”
“ ‘I have slept, my lord, already.' ”
B-flat to what? C or F?
“ ‘It was well done, and thou shalt sleep again. I will not hold thee long.' ”
Thursday every theatre critic in New York would be sitting there—every seat in the second balcony filled.
My right hand strummed an F, but since the musicians had retuned the ukulele it sounded too high.
I sang in a reedy, nervous tenor:
Orpheus with his lute
Made trees and the mountaintops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing . . .
The lights were dimming completely now—nightfall, moonlight. Fade the damn lights already. The horns and drums picked up the melody.
In the dark Welles gave my shoulder a light touch. “Needs work, Junior.”
Monday, November 8 Nine
M
y alarm clock went off at 6:55. I turned up the thermostat downstairs and added more water to the boiler.
I did my exercises on the bedroom floor: sit-ups and push-ups. “Every day in every way I'm getting better and better—
one!”
That morning the radio was playing “I Can't Get Started with You.”
“ ‘I'm a glum one,' ” I sang along with the verse. “ ‘It's explainable . . . .' ”
BOOK: Me and Orson Welles
10.24Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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