My Lunches with Orson (26 page)

HJ:
Is it just the nostalgia that makes the Roosevelt years seem so glorious?

OW:
No. They were glorious. Because you had a president who had made a hundred mistakes and never pretended he didn't, and who was ready to try anything. And you had a fascinating cabinet, great personalities—everybody around him. And it was a happy time, even with all the misery. People were starving, but he pulled the country together. That's when the labor movement really became a wonderful thing in America. We never crossed a picket line. Now the unions have no power. They're nothing. Reactionary, even, corrupt and weak. But then they were a wonderful thing.

You know Kissinger also believed that America was on the brink of civil war during the Vietnam years. Who was gonna make a civil war? How can an educated man permit himself to put that down on paper?

HJ:
You think he really believed it? He's too smart to be so stupid.

OW:
I hate Kissinger even more than I hate Nixon, because I just can't get over the feeling that he knows better, somehow. He must have talked himself into it. But he's a selfish, self-serving shit.

HJ:
They've all forgotten Cambodia. They've forgotten the whole thing. It's really amazing.

OW:
And the fact that Kissinger got free of Watergate, walked away without a scratch! Without a scratch! No wonder he worships Mitterand.

HJ:
Metternich.

OW:
Metternich.

 

18. Charles “Laughton couldn't bear the fact he was a homosexual.”

In which Orson fondly remembers his friend, who lived in terror that he would be outed. He recalls that on London's West End, actors had to be gay or pretend to be gay to get parts. Orson would have liked to have made his own version of
The Dresser
.

*   *   *

H
ENRY
J
AGLOM
:
Tell me more about Charles Laughton.

O
RSON
W
ELLES
:
During the war, there was a great bond rally in Texarkana, Texas, with every known star in Hollywood. Charlie was going to do his well-known Gettysburg Address, which he made famous in
Ruggles of Red Gap
on the radio. I was the producer and director of that show. So I said to Buster—that's what I called him—“Is there anything special that you would like?” He said, “I want a divan.” I said, “What?” He said, “Don't be ignorant. You know what I want, a chaise lounge.”

HJ:
That's great. He was so gay.

OW:
I said, “Buster, you can't mean that. You're not going to lie down on a couch like Madame Recamier and do the Gettysburg Address in front of all these people. Do you know where you are?” He said, “Yes. But that's the way I feel.” So out of vengeance, I said, “All right, I'll give it to you.” So he came out, lay down, delivered the address, “Fawr scawr … fawr scawr and seven years ago our fathers brought forth unto this continent a new nation based on the proposition that all men are created equal…” and he killed it. When he was great, he was so great.

I was very fond of him. He was a sweet man. It was absolutely terrible what Larry did to him. Larry was sharing a season with him at Stratford. Larry was doing—what's that little-known Shakespearean play that Peter Brook directed with Larry and made a big success? Not
Timon of Athens
 …
Pericles
maybe, and Laughton was doing
King Lear
and Bottom in
Midsummer Night's Dream
. And everyone said he was very interesting in both parts. But in front of the entire company in Stratford, Larry said, “Charles, you are an amateur actor and you have never been anything else in your life. Don't ask us to take you seriously.” And Laughton went away and cried, wept like a child.

I told you what Larry did to Miles Malleson, the old character actor, in
Rhinoceros
. Larry put his arm around his shoulder and walked him up and down in front of the lights. And I heard him saying, “Miles … Miles, old boy, you know, you've had it. You're washed up.” This defenseless old man. All so that Larry could take control and tell him how his part should be played.

HJ:
This was his way of tearing them down, or something stupid like that?

OW:
It was heartbreaking for him. Laughton never got over it. He was like a little fourteen-year-old boy, totally immature. Laughton couldn't bear the fact he was a homosexual, you know. He was so afraid the world would discover it. He believed in art, and all of that, always searching for something that went beyond what acting can be, or writing, or anything. Really, he was really looking for the bluebird.

HJ:
He found it a few times.

OW:
You bet he did. When he made that speech in
I, Claudius
.

HJ:
For me, he was also wonderful in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
.

OW:
I can't judge that, because I am such a partisan of the Lon Chaney performance, I just can't buy anybody else doing it. I think Chaney was one of the great movie actors. Everything he did I adore. To me, Charlie in
Hunchback
was the village idiot, the fellow where you say, “That's the unfortunate Perkins boy.” You don't want to look at him.

HJ:
Oh, no, he was much more than that. I felt he put all his feeling of not belonging into that role … And don't forget Laughton's Rembrandt.

OW:
Laughton's Rembrandt has him pose as King David. He puts on this robe and he puts on a crown and he transforms himself. I still don't understand how he did it. Who played the beggar in that? I can't remember his name now. He was even better than Laughton and that's something.

HJ:
Oh, my God! That's my favorite actor.

OW:
He was a dear friend. He only died about four years ago. He was the leading man in a movie directed by Gregory Ratoff with Myrna Loy,
Intermezzo
.

HJ:
I'm still trying to think of the man's name.

OW:
He was a wild left-winger rabblerouser. He was on the barricades for forty years. So of course he only played degenerate aristocrats, and dressed like an awful-looking don at a small university with torn patches. When he arrived in Rome, Ratoff, in his Russian accent, says, “He can't play Myrna Loy's leading man looking like a bum. Take him to your tailor.” So I take him to the tailor to the King of Italy. By this time, I'm speaking Italian. I say, “This is a distinguished actor from England and he is—”

HJ:
Roger Livesey!

OW:
Right. Mr. Roger Livesey. And I say, “He's going to play the leading role in this picture, and he has to be dressed like an English gentleman. Money is no object.” The tailor looks at him like he is an insect, and he says—I'm loosely translating—“This establishment doesn't live for money. What can we do with these schmattas?” I say, “Not what he's wearing—if you are an artist, you can make him look like a prince.” So he begins to measure him. But then the tailor throws down the tape measure and says, “No I can do.” So I say, “Look, you cannot put me in a position like this. I've brought you this distinguished man, and I've told you that no matter what he looks like, he's playing a principal role opposite Myrna Loy.” He says, “Opposite Loy, what he play?” I say, “Her husband.” And he says, “Do she betray him?” I say, “Sure, she betrays him.” “She make horns on him?” “Yes,
cornuto
. He's a schmuck.” And he says, “All right. I dress him!”

HJ:
He's in the single most romantic movie I've ever seen. Which has the unromantic title,
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
. [Michael] Powell and [Emeric] Pressburger used him in everything.
Stairway to Heaven
,
A Matter of Life and Death.

OW:
Hated those guys. Not my cup of tea. To me, they never made a good film.

HJ:
Did you know Pressburger?

OW:
I know Powell better. I think Pressburger's the more talented of the two. But I don't share your admiration for either one of them.

HJ:
The Red Shoes
is kitsch to you?

OW:
Yeah, total dreck. Total dreck. I even saw part of it again and switched it off.

HJ:
Stairway to Heaven
?
A Matter of Life and Death
?

OW:
Awful.

HJ:
One of Our Aircraft is Missing
? Do you remember that? No?

OW:
Yes, with Ralph [Richardson], who was very good in it, but the picture was abominable.

HJ:
I'm in love with Powell. I saw all of the Powell-Pressburger films when I was a teenager.

OW:
If you see them at the right age, you see them differently. You see the real value of them, what they really are.

HJ:
It's true: how you feel about a film has to do with how old you are when you see it.

OW:
In the theater, I can pretend that it's all happening right there in front of me. But I see movies through such a mist of years, I am incapable of feeling the thrill of them, even the greatest ones, because I cannot erase those years of experience. I'm jaded. I know I don't see movies as purely as I ought to see them. Before I started making movies, I'd get into them, lose myself. I can't do that now. That's why I don't think my opinions about movies are as good as somebody's who doesn't have to look through all those filters. I think all films are better than we think they are.

HJ:
Maybe that's why Spencer Tracy is so fantastic to me, and Humphrey Bogart, too.

OW:
Of course. Your age. I still see Lon Chaney as I saw him when I was eight years old. But I have had some disillusionment since I left movies, I must say.

When are you leaving for Paris?

HJ:
Tomorrow night.

OW:
I will give you two or three scripts. And you can drop them off where they need to go.

HJ:
All right. Now, I want to be sure that I understand the sequence of—

OW:
Still
Lear
first. If
Lear
collapses,
Dreamers
is always good. It doesn't date.

HJ:
Is there anybody in particular you want me to see?

OW:
There's a man who's head of TNF, French television. It's like the BBC. He said he would raise the three and a half million for
Lear
by selling it all over the place. But I don't know. He's no Henry Jaglom.

HJ:
So this is three times the other French offer. And it has nothing to do with Lang, or the government, or anything at all?

OW:
Nothing. He thinks this will be the jewel in his crown. But I still don't want to shoot in Paris. And they don't have anyplace except Victorine, although I've heard that it's been remodeled. It's now owned by Americans and is OK.

HJ:
Despite the airplanes.

OW:
Yes, because I now know when the air traffic is light. I would shoot from four in the afternoon until eleven at night, you see—something like that.

HJ:
I can certainly find out what kind of reputation he has, what other people there think—

OW:
He doesn't have a reputation. He's just got a position. I'm afraid he's never gonna sell
Lear
to anyone. Besides, he's demanding that French television must be the center of everything. And asking me to wait three months while you try to raise the money. And if he doesn't, you see, I've wasted three months. It's a real gamble. Also, I have to know that he's not going to make me cut the picture in France. And we need to negotiate how the profits are going to be dealt with. Instead of taking a salary out of the budget and taking some money after everything is paid off, I'd like to have two or three territories. In fact, I would even like to have my company or a company associated with me be a minor co-producer. He may not like it, but I don't like to have a monolithic boss.

HJ:
Absolutely not. Because he could end up owning your picture and—

OW:
I won't do it. And I think I can break him now, because he has nothing else. He's so hot for it that I think he'll give in.

HJ:
What about England?

OW:
You're big in England. I was never big in England. I'm dreaming of when I will be.

HJ:
Every time I mention
Lear
to them, they say, “Oh, wouldn't that be nice.” I was worried that Olivier's
Lear
would hurt us. It was on TV. But I think it helped. They don't like Olivier in England.

OW:
No, they don't. They've never gone to his Shakespearean movies. 'Cause they never go to any Shakespearean movies. They want to see Shakespeare on the stage, not in a movie theater … You know, everybody may be interested. But are we really going to carry the movie around by bus from country to country so we can make it a national event in every country?

HJ:
Do you know who Victoria Tennant is?

OW:
Who?

HJ:
Victoria Tennant.

OW:
A member of the Tennant family?

HJ:
She is a daughter of the Tennant family. Quite a beauty. Her most famous role here was in the miniseries
The
Winds of War
. She played opposite [Robert] Mitchum. Anyway, she lives with Steve Martin. He's not your favorite, I know. She begged me at a party Saturday night to tell you that she believes that there's no one who could do Cordelia as well as she.