My Lunches with Orson (25 page)

OW:
I thought you said, “That means my neck.” You know, despite all of the telegrams from France, I would be happier with the Germans in the driver's seat than the French. I just don't trust that whole Lang situation.

HJ:
You think the French offer is gonna disappear?

OW:
I think the government is gonna keep on cutting Lang's funds for the arts. Not the way Reagan is—

HJ:
You mean for ideological reasons …

OW:
But out of economic necessity. In other words, we're gonna find ourselves enmeshed in French politics, in situations we can't resolve. Whereas, Italy has somehow pulled itself out of near bankruptcy, and now they're in great shape again, making movies like mad! I would be much happier if this could be done without the French.

HJ:
Really? Because I would love France to be involved. The film would get a real boost from opening in Paris as a French co-production.

OW:
It'll still get that. I'm just scared. Because you don't make arrangements with the French. But the Italians, you can always make an arrangement with them. In other words, if I went in with dollars into Cinecittà—oh, boy. On the other hand, I must tell you an interesting thing about Italy. It's a country that has never had an old star. Never a Wallace Beery. Never. The Italians don't support anybody over forty years old. They're like America. Everything must be about young people. So they may change their minds about a movie about an old man.
Lear
is about old age. And France is actually the only country in the world where old, ugly actors are stars. Everywhere else, they have to become supporting players.

HJ:
Raimu.

OW:
Yeah, Raimu. And that awful actor that they all love. Michel Simon. Jean Gabin, even when he was too feeble to move. He was wonderful doing nothing. There's another one, earlier than him. Baur—Harry Baur.

HJ:
Was Harry Baur any good?

OW:
He had four eyebrows over each eye, and he could work each of them separately.

HJ:
He was killed by the Nazis, right? In a concentration camp?

OW:
He came to some bad end, yeah—because he always talked about how he was Jewish—so, of course, they grabbed him quick. The French police did it all. The Germans didn't have to lift a finger. Horrifying, when you realize that. The French made a lot of movies during the war. The Germans, too. And a lot of French actors who would rather not be reminded of it went to Berlin.

When I visited France and Italy right after the war, I was full of that righteous antifascist feeling that we all had in the safety of America. I didn't want to meet the people who had, if not exactly collaborated, certainly had not fought the Nazis. I was too prissy. And then, as I began to learn more about Europe under the occupation, and what it was like, and to compare it to us, I became less prissy about it. Because the people who were defending their children and their lives were in a different situation from the people who were defending their swimming pools and their contracts at Metro. They weren't brave enough to be partisans, but they hadn't sent any Jews to Auschwitz, either. I wasn't gonna be the one from America to tell them they were wrong. Of course, I never forgave the people who sent Jews to the camps. But I did get so I could forgive the people who entertained the German troops. What else were they gonna do—not entertain them? Not entertain, and go where? If you had no group, if you were a group of one, what could you do? I can make a case for all the points of view.

HJ:
[Maurice] Chevalier entertained the German troops …

OW:
That was mild. He was really very little tainted compared to the people who made propaganda movies. I don't think what he did was noble, I don't like him for it, but I wouldn't say, “I won't talk to Chevalier because he—” That changed in me. And then I found myself getting to know well so many famous villains from my earlier time. You know, I spent a long, four-day weekend at a country house in England, and realized only at the end of the weekend that this man I'd become so fond of and interested in was Oswald Mosley.

HJ:
Did you know he used to be a leftist, a Fabian? Then he went all the way over to the right and founded the British Union of Fascists.

OW:
A complicated thing. Louis Aragon was also at that house party.

HJ:
He didn't mind being there with Mosley? He fought in the Resistance and was a staunch Communist his whole life.

OW:
No. He just said Mosley was a damn fool.

HJ:
A lot of the French fled, but some stayed and fought.

OW:
Very few, very few.

HJ:
There were two Frances, though. There was Vichy, and there was the group of French who were fighting.

OW:
Not in Paris. They were all in the Southwest. An old radical stronghold.

HJ:
Except that, if it's true, in all of Europe—aside from Denmark—proportionately, only one-quarter—“only” is a tragic number—of French Jews died. So the other three-quarters survived because of individual Frenchmen who performed great acts of courage.

OW:
There were such acts in Belgium and Holland as well. And Italy—enormous quantities. You really can't give the French credit for that, any more than the other European countries.

HJ:
I always have thought of it as two Frances, somehow, occupied and unoccupied.

OW:
There's one France—and in a certain mood, collaboration happens.

HJ:
What about the underground and the Resistance? There was Jean Moulin, as well as—

OW:
I used to write them a newsletter every two weeks during the war. To the Free French, and to the underground. So I really know a lot about them. Very few of the French resisted. We didn't hear a moment of courage from the Communists until the invasion of Russia. And then they were as harmful to the underground as they were helpful. Because they were divisive. When the Freemasons and the Catholics were fighting side by side, the Communists wouldn't stand for it, and turned them against each other. It was only by the end of 1941, when Hitler was bogged down in Russia, and it was clear to the entire world that he hadn't a chance in hell. It was then that you saw these brave movements. Not just in France; I'm talking all over the place. What was surprising was the large number of aristocrats in the Resistance. More than the bourgeois. They weren't thinking Nazi, fascist. It wasn't political for them. They were thinking, “Here come the goddamn
Boche
again,” you know, the Germans again.

HJ:
Foreigners.

OW:
Not foreigners—Germans in particular. From all the old wars with the Germans.

HJ:
They're very nationalistic.

OW:
No, aristocrats are never nationalistic. Because they're all related to one another. They never have a sense of nation. That's a typically bourgeois attitude.

HJ:
But it's nationalism. The Germans,
Boche
or not, are foreigners.

OW:
As I was saying, generally, the French were particularly bad. They had the worst history of resistance. And think about the last fifty years of French history? Leon Blum being neutral towards Spain? That was inexcusable. From a Socialist, from the Popular Front? So shameful, really. [Pierre] Mendès France was the exception, and he lasted all of nine months. I told you what de Gaulle said about Mendès France, who was his greatest enemy. De Gaulle said he was the other great man of France—besides himself. De Gaulle was very hard to like. God, how Roosevelt hated him. Roosevelt spoke fluent French, but with an American accent, you see. Roosevelt said to him,
“Je suis très heureux d'être avec vous, mon Général,”
you know. And de Gaulle said,
“Comment?”
Constantly. He was so snobbish it was, “If you don't speak perfectly, don't attempt it at all.” So they had to translate what Roosevelt said. And this was when de Gaulle was hanging by a thread! He was always a pain in the ass, and he ended very badly. He had plans to run to Germany—to
Germany!
with his paratroopers—during the so-called revolution in '68, which he took very seriously, too seriously. After all, the kids were just throwing stones, and all that.

HJ:
He was going to go to Germany? How do you know that?

OW:
It was in the papers. He was gonna go with paras, and two or three planes, escape the country. And this is the man who was known for being fearless. When they liberated Paris, he walked the whole length of the Champs-Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe to the cathedral of Notre Dame. With everybody on the roofs with guns. And he never ducked when they were shooting, and he was eight feet higher than anybody else in Paris. And yet, he was ready to flee to Germany. It just shows how easily you get disoriented once you are in power if the people seem to be turning against you.

Of course, Nixon also thought that the kids were gonna come and throw him out. I saw a little tribute to him on CBS the other night, saying he's coming back, becoming a great commentator and elder statesman. I wish they'd stop interviewing him on great world topics. Because Nixon is a sort of semicomic Dickensian villain. But he's become the only man who's making sense! It drives me
crazy
! Of course, it's easy to sound sane if you've got Ronnie to criticize.

All Nixon and Reagan do is make me revise my judgment of the Eisenhower years. The economy was great. Eisenhower made the right decision on Suez. And Korea. Got us out. And at the end said, “Beware of the military-industrial complex.” And he turned over the country, at peace, in 1960. Despite that, we were all groaning, “Get us rid of this terrible president!” We've just got to admit that was a great eight years, you know?

HJ:
There were all the jokes about Eisenhower going off to play golf.

OW:
We underrated Eisenhower. We've got a president now who works much less hard than he did. Who doesn't even know what's going on. Unless it's written on a card.

HJ:
I remember being shocked at the U-2 incident, Gary Powers, the pilot, remember? When Eisenhower said it wasn't a spy plane. I didn't think he would lie to the American people.

OW:
Every president lies. The spy plane didn't bother me so much, because it seemed so obvious that we had spy planes. And it's not like shooting somebody. What I couldn't believe was the CIA stuff, the plot against Castro. In my innocence, I didn't think that America, as a nation, was capable of planning murder as an instrument of policy. I didn't think that was in our character!

HJ:
Well, now we know. We've lost some serious innocence. Is it true you considered running for office?

OW:
I have all the equipment to be a politician. Total shamelessness. But it's lucky I never ran. In the years from [Joseph] McCarthy to now, I would have either been destroyed or reduced. I was lucky that Alan Cranston discouraged me from running for the Senate.

HJ:
Cranston discouraged you? I didn't know that.

OW:
Yes. He was my man, given to me by Washington, to be sure that I could get the nomination in California. The year of McCarthy.

HJ:
'52.

OW:
And it was Cranston who told me, “Not a chance. You'll carry northern California, but never the Hollywood community.” Then I found out he had ambitions himself. That's why, when I saw him run for senator, I always thought, “That's my seat!”

HJ:
Now he's busily running for president. Who do you think the Democratic candidate will be?

OW:
I would vote for John Glenn just because I think he'd win, and I believe in voting for who I think will win.

I've just read Caro's new biography of [Lyndon] Johnson, which will destroy him because it tells everything. It's exhaustive to the point of—you know, when he put on his left shoe on Thursday, the twelfth of May, 1946. But there isn't one good word about him in the book. He comes out of it a total monster. There's gonna be three more volumes. This one only takes him up to getting into Congress, and he's already a prick. He has very few defenders. There's me and somebody out in Kansas, who I don't know. But I think LBJ was a great tragic figure. That's what interests me. A very tragic figure, with his monstrosity, and his energy, and his desire to be a president who counted. He gets almost no credit for the things he did domestically, because of his gross behavior. After the Kennedys, everybody in Washington was so used to Casals scratching on the cello that Johnson's act didn't go over. And he was haunted by Jack. And then Bobby coming up. But what could he do, other than be president? It was the
only
thing for him.

HJ:
I'm convinced Johnson would have made a great president had he run and won … Not like Roosevelt, but—

OW:
I don't believe there could have been a great president in those years, only a good one. I think the presidential situation now is such that until there's a hopeless crisis, and you have a semidictatorship, like Roosevelt's, then we won't see what we call a great president.

HJ:
Glenn is very Eisenhower-esque. But I don't think he's committed to very much. I mean, he's just moderate—he's just really moderate on everything.

OW:
That's why I'm for him. I hate to think of myself as fighting for a moderate, but a moderate is what is desperately needed for this next period. We need antipolarization, you know. After Bonny Prince Ronnie.