My Lunches with Orson (35 page)

 

25. “You either admire my work or not.”

In which Orson encounters Mrs. Vincente Minnelli. He tells stories about John Barrymore, and gets a nibble on
The Dreamers
, but his prospects for financing any of his projects are growing steadily dimmer.

*   *   *

H
ENRY
J
AGLOM
:
I am just reading this book on RKO which you are prominently featured in. It's the one that Jesse Lasky's daughter wrote,
The Biggest Little Major of Them All
.

O
RSON
W
ELLES
:
I've heard about it.

HJ:
There's a picture on the back of you and your lady of the time, and Schaefer, I guess who was head of RKO when you made
Kane
.

OW:
Dolores del Rio.

HJ:
Dolores—at the premiere of
Kane
.

OW:
That was actually in Chicago, the one with Schaefer. The real opening was in New York. That was in the days when the crowd were still screaming, “Here comes Norma Shearer!” The days when there was that kind of opening. Jack Barrymore made the famous joke. A radio reporter announced, “And here come Mr. John Barrymore, and Orson Welles, who made this picture! What have you got to say, Mr. Barrymore?” And he said, “Now it can be revealed. Orson is, in fact, the bastard son of Ethel [Barrymore] and the Pope!” On the air, across the nation. Cold sober. Just sheer mischief.

You know, Jack was quite mad. His father died at forty-five, in an insane asylum. Jack would get drunk in order to be the drunk Barrymore, instead of the insane Barrymore. He would suddenly realize at the table that he didn't know where he was or how he got there. A tragic situation.

One day I got a call: “Jack is in Chicago, dying. Get on a train and go there.” So I got on a train, went to Chicago. Went to the Ambassador East, where Jack was staying, but he wasn't there. But Ethel was there and Lionel was there. Ethel and Lionel and I went around Chicago looking for Jack. We finally located him in a whorehouse on the South Side. He wasn't dying, but God knows, we could see he was going to. And then all of us were stuck in his hotel for the weekend. I just sat there and listened to them talk, because they hadn't been together, the three of them, in forty years. Or very seldom. They began reminiscing about their childhoods, and so on, these three extraordinary people with their gargoyle laugh, like creatures on the front of a cathedral. It was unbelievable.

Did I ever tell you the story of the love affair between Jack and Katharine Hepburn? Now I've checked this story with both Jack and Katie, and it's true. Her first picture,
A Bill of Divorcement
. He was still a top-of-the-bill star. He hadn't yet descended to, you know, “Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye.” After a day's shooting, he said, in that Barrymore voice, “Miss Hepburn, would you like to come to my dressing room for lunch?” She said, “Well, I, I, I…” So she did. She arrived at the door and is met by Jack in a dressing gown. He opens the door, and she comes in and she looks around, and there's a couch, and nothing else. And she says, “Well, I, I think, you know … there must be a mistake.” Jack, all very proper, said, “Oh, yes, I made a mistake.” He went to the door, opened it, bowed, and she went out. That's the whole affair!

HJ:
A real gentleman.

OW:
Not gonna fumble around. He went on making those terrible movies, in order to pay his creditors. If he'd gone into bankruptcy, he wouldn't have had to make them. I saw
Grand Hotel
again the other day. They had it on the cable. It was almost the last picture he made, where he was still highly considered, was still “John Barrymore.” You know what Garbo did the first day of shooting? When he came to work in the morning, she was waiting outside the stage. To say good morning to him, to escort him to the set. It is the only nice thing I know about her.

(Lee Minnelli enters.)

L
EE
M
INNELLI
:
Orson, you're one of my favorite people in the whole world. Such a beautiful voice.

OW:
Aren't you nice? Here's Mr. Jaglom …

HJ:
How do you do. Please sit down.

LM:
You know Vincente is home now.

OW:
Yes, I'm so glad he's out of the hospital. Well, send him my very best wishes.

LM:
The doctor said in a few weeks, he could have some friends visiting … If you were free?

OW:
Oh, I'd be delighted … if I'm still in the country. We're leaving in a couple weeks …

LM:
May I give you our address and number?

OW:
Would you please? Yes. Absolutely.

LM:
Because it would mean so much to him. It would be good if he could see his friends. I don't want him to think he's forgotten.

OW:
Of course not.

LM:
It's a right turn at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

OW:
Yes.

LM:
But please call me. I would be flattered. We have tea about four thirty. When will I call you?

OW:
Well, I can give you my number. If that doesn't answer, I have left for Italy. Lovely to see you.

LM:
Well, thank you very much. It would mean a lot to Vincente.

OW:
All my best.

LM:
Goodbye.

(Lee Minnelli exits.)

OW:
The difficulty with this sitcom is that I've never met Vincente. Never once. Even in the golden days, even at a party, I have never met him. Maybe we may have met back in the—but no, I remember very well the people I have never met before.

By the way, some people have appeared saying that they love
The Dreamers
. First time I've ever heard that from anybody aside from you and me. Two girls and two guys. The gentlemen are 100 percent. The American girl is 100 percent, but the French girl is a bitch.

HJ:
I know. I know. I don't know if it's worth it even if they come up with the money. She's the one who was looking at Oja and said, “Yes, but can she be cold?” I replied, “I didn't know
you
were casting this. Are you questioning that Orson Welles can get the performance he wants out of this person? Are you assuming the right to tell him who's right for—” I was furious at that.

OW:
Now that having been settled, my dear Henry, back they came and said, “We're worried about the other parts.” And I said, “We really have our choice of the best English actors of that age group, but only if they're free at the time we shoot.” I'm in no position now to give those people contracts and deliver them in a package.

HJ:
I told them Rupert Everett … Jeremy Irons … Michael York …

OW:
They said, “We would like an option.” And I said, “My dear friends, you pay for an option. An option means you have exclusive rights to something. Nobody in the world gets an option without any recompense.” I added, “What I could do for you, if I decided it was the right thing to do—
if
—would be to write a letter of intent. I'll only do that when you give me the feeling that you're close to the money. And you are not giving me the feeling that you are close to the money, only that you would like to get close to the money. In which case, a letter of intent ties my hands.

HJ:
Because you don't know that next week somebody is not going to—

OW:
Drop out of the sky. Now, in fact, another group loving
The Dreamers
has shown up. And one of them is a horse's ass who lives in Hollywood.

HJ:
Which horse's ass?

OW:
How to distinguish? If they turn around and show their heads, I can tell better! But well meaning. And the other is an investment consultant, who has intimate contact with big money, but does not pretend to have it himself. But believes that he can raise it in short order. And they sat here and this is what the conversation was like: The horse's ass said, “I hear all these different stories.” I said, “Do you expect me to sit at this table and prove to you that I'm … you know …

HJ:
Stable?

OW:
I said, “The biggest madman in the world could be very convincing. You either admire my work or not.” And after an hour and a half, it emerged, he doesn't believe he can raise the money, pretty much because the rich guys won't like
The Dreamers
. Then the horse's ass said, “You must do
Lear
; that's the thing,” so on and so on. “And have you anything else?” And I said, “Are we in a souk? I'm going to put out all my things on a rug and then you'll decide what you want to buy?”

 

26. “I'm in
terrible
financial trouble.”

In which Orson vainly pitches a project, complains about friends who disparage him, reviews several books about his life, and bemoans the fact that he can't make a living while his bête noire Houseman, thrives.

*   *   *

(Susan Smith, from HBO, joins them.)

O
RSON
W
ELLES
:
I've been working on a book, and I've only got it in outline form, with some scenes blocked in. And as I was getting excited about it, my friend Henry here told me about you and your interest in miniseries. I have two ways I can go with what I have. One is to do it as a novel, and then sell it, and let the network development system do its thing—

S
USAN
S
MITH
:
You mean, do an injustice to the mat—

OW:
Without me having anything to do with it. Because I could not stand to work under that committee system. I'd just take the money and run. But when I heard about you, I thought even though it might be economically suicidal for me, maybe I should do it directly for HBO.

SS:
Tell me what you have in mind.

OW:
In one sentence, it's a miniseries set in Majorca or San Tropez, where the richest people in the world go. Or better, a dictatorship in a Central American country that is overthrown by a coup d'état, and there is a revolution. Much of it offstage, but some of it is in the story as a background for all the things that happen to people in a kind of Acapulco-type place. There are two cities on the island. One is the port, and the other is the resort. The resort is on the Atlantic side, and the story is basically the life of a resort. The kind of people who are there range from [Robert] Vesco to a presidential candidate. Everybody who is anybody.

SS:
I'm very interested in doing something about the Dominican Republic. Because I think that it's kind of an interesting—

OW:
I wouldn't be remotely interested.

SS:
Why?

OW:
Because I have my own story, in my own Dominican Republic. I've
invented
my Dominican Republic. I'm not interested in real history, because I know Latin American politics to an unbelievable degree. I'm an expert on it. And you cannot tell that story using any individual country. You must combine them to do it properly, and it must be fictional.

SS:
Oh, I only said Dominican Republic more than Acapulco, 'cause—

OW:
I don't understand why you don't understand it, frankly.

H
ENRY
J
AGLOM
:
There's a resort like Acapulco in the Dominican Republic.

OW:
We're not getting anywhere.

HJ:
No, no. Wait, wait, wait—wait! We're just trying to understand—

OW:
I'm not gonna go on. 'Cause if a resort doesn't immediately interest her, it won't, even if I go on for an hour.

HJ:
Wait a minute, I don't agree. I don't agree.

OW:
She doesn't like rich people! Doesn't want a story about rich people. That's what doesn't get anywhere with her, is that it?

SS:
I think you should go on. I want to hear it.

OW:
I can't sell it. I'm a bad seller.

HJ:
No, it's not a question of selling.

OW:
I quit.

HJ:
Tell it, rather than selling it.

OW:
No, I can't.

HJ:
Okay. Well, then maybe if she could read something …

OW:
I haven't got anything. It'll take me six months. It just didn't ring a bell with her, so no use talking about it.

SS:
Well, it does interest me very much. I think you're wrong.

OW:
You're
wrong. You're really wrong! Boy, are you wrong.

HJ:
You're not being fair. You're not being fair.

OW:
Her eyes went dead when she heard
resort
.

HJ:
Her eyes didn't go dead.

OW:
Sure they did.

HJ:
You're being too sensitive about that.

OW:
I am, yes. I can't sell a thing. Forget it. We'll think of something else. You don't see what a resort— You didn't like
Grand Hotel
?

SS:
I loved
Grand Hotel
.

OW:
Well, then, that's it.