My Lunches with Orson (21 page)

HJ:
Why did she stop acting? Was it just because of the bad reviews?

OW:
Of
Two-Faced Woman
. No business.

HJ:
You mean she was that unprepared for a flop? She must have, somewhere along the line, figured that, eventually, one of her pictures wouldn't work.

OW:
No, I think she was getting older, and I think she hated to act. And I think she was waiting for the flop.

HJ:
To go out with.

OW:
I think so. I was always a wild Garbo fan. But when I saw her in
Grand Hotel
, at first I thought it was somebody else making fun of her, like somebody taking off on Garbo. She was totally miscast as a ballerina. She's a big-boned cow. She did everything that you would do if you were a drag queen doing an imitation of Garbo, you know.

Did I ever tell you about the time I introduced Marlene to Garbo? Marlene was my house guest, and for some unaccountable reason had never met Garbo, and she was her hero. I arranged for Clifton Webb to give a party for Garbo so I could bring Marlene. I was living with Rita at the time, and she didn't want to go. That was very much like her. She never wanted to go anywhere, just stay home. So Marlene and I went without her. Garbo was sitting on a raised platform in the middle of the living room, so that everybody had to stand and look up at her. I introduced them. I said, “Greta, it's unbelievable that you two have never met—Greta, Marlene. Marlene, Greta.” Marlene started to gush, which was not like her at all. Looking up at Garbo, she said, “You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, it's such a pleasure to meet you, I'm humble in your presence,” and on and on. Garbo said, “Thank you very much. Next?” And turned away to somebody else. Marlene was crushed.

 

14. “Art Buchwald drove it up Ronnie's ass and broke it off.”

In which Orson ridicules Ronald Reagan, explains why he lost his respect for Elia “Gadge” Kazan, and argues that old people, especially macho men like Norman Mailer, come to look like their Jewish mothers.

*   *   *

O
RSON
W
ELLES
:
Did you see the tribute to the five distinguished people at the Kennedy Center the other night?

H
ENRY
J
AGLOM
:
No. I missed it.

OW:
I saw it. It was a riot. Art Buchwald came on, and for seven minutes drove it up Ronnie's ass and broke it off. He didn't have one joke that Ronnie could even laugh at. He said, “And Mr. Reagan…” you know, with that voice of his, “We have to be careful. We ought not to treat the arts the way you treat Central America.” And he said, “Because, if the Kennedy Center goes Communist, the next thing is the Hollywood Bowl!” You could see the audience wondering whether they'd be photographed by the FBI on their way out if they laughed too hard.

HJ:
Did they cut to Reagan at all?

OW:
At the very beginning, doing a kind of wince, and then never again. The whole dressed-up audience had these frozen smiles. Art was the licensed jester. They couldn't cut. I wanted to see how Old Blue Eyes was taking it. But we didn't even get to see that.

HJ:
Who else was there?

OW:
It was a great group. Besides Sinatra—Kazan, Katherine Dunham, Jimmy Stewart, and Virgil Thompson. First we had a speech by Reagan, from the White House, instead of his speaking from his box or coming on the stage. They'd written a very short, gracious speech, which he read with that Reagan skill, which can be very good. Followed by Warren Beatty, who introduced Kazan, calling him “our greatest living film director.” A very bad speech. And badly delivered. He looked terrible. Any thought that he's gonna be president was written off last night. Katherine Dunham is a fake dancer if ever there was one. And Virgil Thomson, introduced by John Houseman. I didn't stay for that. They roomed together—they were lovers. Why shouldn't he introduce him?

HJ:
Yeah, yeah. They were lovers, really?

OW:
Oh, yes.

HJ:
Is he that old?

OW:
Houseman is eighty-one. Something that gives me comfort every night. Every night when I get a twinge of rheumatism. He's holding up awfully well, though.

HJ:
More extraordinary, that Warren would choose to introduce Kazan!

OW:
Kazan gave Warren his first job,
Splendor in the Grass
. Why couldn't he have pretended that he wasn't in town, or something? When I saw Gadge it made me sick. I still can't forgive him. The people I got most mad at were people from my side who gave names. And he was one of the biggest sellers of people up the river in the whole bunch. I am not a vengeful person, but Kazan is one of the people that I feel really badly about. I was—in fact, in a terrible way, I'm still fond of him—I like Gadge. But I think he behaved so badly that it's just inexcusable. I cannot honor him. Or sit with him.

HJ:
You won't give anything to
On the Waterfront
?

OW:
Nothing. Because it's so immoral.

HJ:
Forgetting the politics for a moment …

OW:
I wish I could. But that was made at a time when I was very sensitive on those subjects, and it was an excuse for all those people who gave names. All those collabos with McCarthy, of which Kazan was one. And this film was to show that the hero is the man who tells.

HJ:
And Budd Schulberg, who wrote it, was another.

OW:
That's right—all that. So I'm bigoted. Then we had Zorba the Greek. Straight from Broadway. Tony Quinn came out and neither danced nor sang. But kind of stood there, as though we're all supposed to think that this is the biggest set of balls that's ever been seen in New York. And then he told us that he loved Kazan more than any man alive. Zorba the Testicle, to Gadge.

HJ:
I'm trying to think when they even worked together.

OW:
In
Viva Zapata!
He played Zapata's brother. He was quite good.

HJ:
I love that movie.

OW:
Above all, not a good movie. Zapata is so important to me, and I have such a clear picture of what the story is, that I was profoundly offended by the movie. On the grounds of its—

HJ:
I just took it as a progressive fairy tale.

OW:
I was not free to appreciate it on those terms. And it wasn't progressive. Zapata—here's a true story. Did I ever tell you what happened when he heard about the trouble Lenin was in? Because at one point Lenin had said, “If we can hold out another sixty days, the revolution is won. If we don't, it's lost.” And word of this got to Mexico, where Zapata was fighting. So Zapata says, “Where is he? We will ride over and help him.” He thought Moscow was somewhere over the hill.

HJ:
I guess
Viva Zapata!
was another anti-left film, if you think about it. Because the revolution is betrayed by the arch revolutionary, the Lenin figure. And better to have had no revolution at all. Do you think
Streetcar Named Desire
is a good film?

OW:
No. I think Gadge did it better in the theater. I don't think he's a very good filmmaker compared to his work in the theater.

HJ:
You don't make allowances for people with talent, like Kazan?

OW:
Let me tell you the story of Emil Jannings.

HJ:
I know who he is. He played opposite Marlene in
The Blue Angel
. He won a Best Actor Oscar for something or other, I think the first one ever awarded. Not only did he collaborate with the Nazis, Joseph Goebbels named him “Artist of the State.”

OW:
When the allies got to Berlin in the last days of the war, he fled to his hometown. As the American troops entered the town with their tanks looking for collaborators, he stood in front of his little house waving his Oscar over his head, yelling, “Artiste, artiste!”

You know, Gadge has begun to look like a minor figure in a Dostoevsky novel. His face has become long, like a junior inquisitor. And he was standing on that stage like some terrible bird. The face he deserves, with a beak, a beak—it's a beak. A face that turns into a beak.

HJ:
My mother once said, “All old people look Jewish.”

OW:
True. You either look Jewish or you look Irish—you have your choice. It has nothing to do with the nose. It's an expression that happens to people when they get past sixty—they usually look like their Jewish or Irish mother. Like Mailer, who looks exactly like his Jewish mother. He never looked Jewish before at all! He looked like an Irishman, if anything. If you met him and his name had been Reilly, you would have said, “Sure—that's Reilly.” And Lenny Bernstein is getting to look like his mother, too, you know.

HJ:
I just saw him in New York. He conducted—

OW:
They don't look like their fathers, they look like their mothers! Lenny's really—I mean, he's developed this flourish with the baton, that he started a couple years ago.

HJ:
His pinkie is up?

OW:
Way up all the time. And he can't jump as high anymore. It's as if he's announcing to the world that he can still jump, but he doesn't really leave the floor! He used to leave the floor!

HJ:
He did the most extraordinary thing. I went to a concert at Carnegie Hall and it started with Bernstein playing some Chopin. And he started crying in the middle of playing. I never saw him do that before—he just wept.

OW:
Yes, he's very emotional—genuinely.

HJ:
It was incredibly touching. It made the music stronger, in some way. He's so theatrical. Does he know? He must know.

OW:
Of course he knew he was going to choke back the tears. He's a ham. I've known him since he started.

HJ:
He's still a wonderful-looking man.

OW:
Less so now. More and more like his mother. The last couple of years have been very cruel to him. Have really made him look like the old lady, you know. And, brashly, he's cut his hair shorter, hoping to look less like her.

HJ:
And it doesn't work.

OW:
No, now Lenny looks more like Gertrude Stein. It's a terrible fate that comes to men—and, particularly, very masculine men. And that's the cruelty, you see? You could see him in a dress, without any trouble at all, you know?… Oh, Kiki.

HJ:
What's the matter?

OW:
It's Kiki. She's forgotten herself.

HJ:
She's farting?

OW:
Oh, yes. Ooh, yes—oooh! Isn't that terrible?

W
AITER
:
Shall we show you desserts?

HJ:
(To waiter)
It's not us—it's the dog. We just want you to know.

OW:
Don't bring us a dessert for the next two minutes.

HJ:
Oooh! That one came clear across the table.

OW:
This is a real … like atomic warfare. Mmm, boy—that was one.

HJ:
It's great to have a dog around in case one ever does it oneself.

OW:
Well, in the eighteenth century, they always did.

HJ:
For that reason?

OW:
Yes. Do you know the
Arabian Nights
story?

HJ:
No.

OW:
A young man goes to a wedding feast, the most important wedding feast in the village. Everyone is on their best behavior. And just when the mullah is about to pronounce his blessing, and everything is quiet, he lets rip the loudest fart that's ever been heard. He is so embarrassed that he turns and flees. He steals a camel, and rides away from the village, out of the kingdom, and goes to the farthest reaches of the known world. And there, over the years, he prospers. Finally, as a rich old man, he comes back to the village with a great caravan. As he approaches it, a couple of women are working in the fields. They look up and say, “Look, there's the man who farted at the wedding.”

HJ:
Oh, God!

 

P
ART
T
WO

1984–1985

Welles and Jaglom in
Someone to Love
, Welles's final screen appearance.

 

“I always acted as if everything was going to go great for him. I needed to act that way to feel that way, so that I could make him feel that way, and hopefully make someone else, or some combination of many someone elses, give him the money to work, to live. I was hustling me and him, and hopefully them, into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I told him deals were done, all that was needed was for so and so to fly in and confirm them, when it wasn't true. I didn't make it up out of whole cloth, but where things were iffy, I made them sound much less iffy.”