Orson Welles: Hello Americans (10 page)

From within Mercury came a shrewd and striking assessment of Welles’s work in progress: Herb Drake, the witty and worldly-wise publicist who had so cleverly handled the press over the campaign to get
Citizen
Kane
released, wrote to Welles’s lawyer, Arnold Weissberger: ‘It is extraordinarily dramatic and beautiful to look at,’ adding that it was ‘full of Orson’s personal violence.
³²
As usual with Welles, the cast is perfectly co-ordinated, after all, we can always count on Orson being the puppet master.’ ‘Personal violence’ is a very acute description of the explosive energy of both the man and his
work. If Welles was a puppet master, it was only with those who needed to be manipulated; as we have seen, with a powerful creative personality like Agnes Moorehead, he was as much midwife
as martinet
. ‘Orson is full of beans personally,’ Drake continues, ‘and seems happy with the picture.’

At this point, on the morning of 7 December 1941, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s taskforce launched a first wave
of 184 aeroplanes and then a second of 169 on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing 2,000, wounding 1,700 and sinking eight battleships. The United States government immediately declared war on Japan; Germany declared war on the US on 11 December, and the Second World War commenced.

ON THE AFTERNOON
of 7 December, Welles was writing a letter to Norman Foster on the set of
The Magnificent Ambersons
. ‘First, thanks for your wonderful long letter, and if this reply doesn’t make much sense remember that I’m writing it on the set between takes … forgive me.’ He says that he knows and admires the bullfighter Perez, that they should keep hold
of him in case Chucho (Solorzáno) stumbles again. There is a break, and then the letter continues: ‘My god three days have gone by since I started writing this letter. What did I want to tell you? I can’t really think. War has broken out and I have broken down. I think I’ll phone you. I send this on, as testimony, however feeble, of my good intentions as a correspondent. Also may I remind you
that your heart is god’s little garden. Ever lovingly.’

The pause in the letter signifies a turning point in Welles’s life. He was undoubtedly deeply shaken by the declaration of war. His social-democratic Popular Front allegiances were profoundly antifascist. In common with his fellow-liberals, though he held the warmest regard for Britain and its people in their current plight two years into
their war with Germany, he had little sympathy with the British Empire and its perceived objectives; indeed, as reported by the FBI (which from now on took a lively interest in his activities), he had signed, as late as June of 1941, the call of the Fourth International Congress of the League of American Writers to keep out of the European War, ‘an imperialistic war for world markets and not a war
to serve democracy’.
¹
But he had been convinced for some years, especially after the Spanish Civil War, of the urgent threat to democracy posed by Hitler, and was now increasingly inclined to the belief that the only way to stop him was by means of war. Like all radicals, Welles had been momentarily poleaxed by the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939; like most liberals, he supported Roosevelt
– in theory. As an employee of the Federal
Theatre
Project in the late thirties, he had, of course, been a direct beneficiary of New Deal policies, and he instinctively approved of Roosevelt’s determination to commit America to the war against fascism in the face of powerful resistance from the American Right, a resistance noisily promulgated by, among others, Senator Joseph Kennedy and his friends,
who were prepared to spend large sums of money to leave Germany alone. Welles’s support for Roosevelt was by no means unconditional, however. In accord with the rest of liberal opinion, he was somewhat suspicious of the President, distrusting his political subtlety and seeming indecisiveness; nonetheless, he endorsed Roosevelt’s support for Britain, his extension of Lend-Lease to Russia, his
signing of the Atlantic Charter with Churchill, and the more or less clandestine preparations he had instigated for joining the fight against Hitler.

Welles was by no means passive politically: he had become increasingly fascinated by politics – engaged by its ideas, convinced of the possibility of effecting fundamental change, excited by the notion of appealing directly to large numbers of his
fellow-citizens. If there was a national politician he really admired, it was Roosevelt’s Vice-President, the visionary agricultural reformer, Henry Wallace, by whose uncompromised radicalism and blazing oratory Welles had been deeply stirred. In Wallace’s utterances he glimpsed the vision for the future of mankind that seemed to him lacking in Roosevelt. He took his responsibilities as a prominent
citizen very seriously: even in the midst of filming
Ambersons
, doing
The Lady Esther Show
and co-directing
Bonito
, he had participated in a combined benefit for refugees, the Exiled Writers’ Committee and Spanish Aid; on the very morning of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he had sent telegrams to the President and Secretary of State Cordell Hull in support of three Soviet citizens arrested in Vichy
France, urging action to prevent their being handed over to the Italian or German governments.

The suddenness of the Japanese attack electrified him as it did everyone on the Left. The long-awaited moment demanded commitment of some sort from each individual: in Welles’s case – at twenty-six, apparently an eminently able-bodied male – this would normally have meant the draft. His eligibility
for call-up was the subject of constant press interest: in May 1941, the
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
reported on his draft status – somewhat humiliatingly, his fallen arches and spinal irregularities were noted, without comment. It was not Welles’s destiny to be a foot soldier. Instead he received a telegram – on 10 December, the same day as his
interrupted
letter to Norman Foster was finally
completed – from John Hay Whitney, head of the Motion Picture Division of the Office of Inter-American Affairs, asking him, as a matter of some urgency, if he would go as soon as possible to Brazil to make a film to promote pan-American unity; the subject would be Rio de Janeiro’s famous Carnival.

One of the first objectives of a shocked America as it swung into action after Pearl Harbor was
to secure its relations with South America; several Latin American leaders were energetically pro-fascist, posing a considerable threat to the United States at its own back door. The co-ordinator and prime mover of the Office of Inter-American Affairs (I-AA) was the energetic Nelson Rockefeller, ‘the eager beaver to end all eager beavers’, in Vice-President Wallace’s phrase, who had convinced the
administration to transform the Office’s budget of $3.5m per annum to $140m, a mark not only of his persuasiveness, but of the importance of what came to be known as hemispheric unity.
²
It is more than likely that the suggestion that Welles should direct the proposed film came from him. As a major shareholder in RKO and an early and vigorous supporter of Welles’s original contract with the company,
Rockefeller had reason to know his work, and would certainly have known of the slated projects,
Bonito the Bull
, set in Mexico, and the other South American parts of
It’s All True
, whose outline was still quite vague. Rockefeller may also, as Frank Brady suggests, have been helping RKO out at a difficult moment.
³

It took Welles twenty-four hours to make up his mind about ‘Jock’ Whitney’s offer.
His decision was a popular one. On 11 December, Phil Reismann was writing to Joseph Breen:

They [the Brazilians] feel that the sending of Orson Welles by RKO to cover the Carnival which is so close to them and so near to their hearts, was a most magnificent gesture and it is highly appreciated by the Brazilian people and the Brazilian government … Orson Welles is looked upon by the Brazilian
people as one of the great theatre and picture personalities in the United States, and he has in his make-up exactly what these people like … the compliment that we are paying them by sending the best man in Hollywood to cover this, is greatly appreciated.
⁴

It seemed that the Brazilians did indeed know all about Welles, though his amatory arrangements were of at least equal interest to
his
cinematic
achievements. ‘Here is sensational news which we divulge as a scoop,’ proclaimed the Rio evening paper
A Noite
.
⁵
‘Orson Welles, the revolutionary of the movies, the extraordinary actor and creator of
Citizen Kane
, the most complex and fascinating figure of the American artistic world today, has his trunks packed to come to the city, in company with Dolores del Rio, with whom he will be married
within a few weeks.’ The prospect of his presence in Rio was seen as a huge endorsement and a hope for the future; the native film industry perceived it as a step towards its emergence from obscurity. It is worth recalling that these statements made in Brazilian newspapers appeared a bare six months after the release of
Kane
; it is doubtful whether there has ever been any figure in the history
of cinema who has created such an instant and overwhelming impact with a single film.

It’s All True
, having been part of RKO’s programme, now became an official part of the war effort. The world of Mercury Productions was transformed overnight by Welles’s commitment to the new project. Swift decisions were made.
Journey into Fear
– RKO’s best hope for a commercial success – was given a start
date (6 January 1942) and Norman Foster was nominated as its director, transferred from
Bonito
, which was now summarily closed down.
Bonito
’s twelve-year-old star Jesús Vasquez – ‘Hamlet’ – was to come to America with the crew for an indefinite period, during which the company would assume responsibility for his safe-keeping and his education; his mother would come too.
GIVE ASSURANCES TO ALL
CONCERNED
, wrote Norman Foster to José Noriega,
THAT WHEN WE RETURN TO COMPLETE PRODUCTION WE WILL MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO RETAIN SAME CREW AND PERSONNEL. A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
.
⁶
By this time 80 per cent of the movie had been filmed, and, as indicated in Noriega’s letter above, the production team had in any case been keen on a temporary lay-off during the winter months. There was certainly
no doubt in anyone’s mind that the film would be completed; the footage had been universally admired.

The pressure to complete
The Magnificent Ambersons
, meanwhile, inevitably increased, creating renewed tension between Welles and Cortez, whose leisurely approach now seemed not merely irritating, but actually unpatriotic; Welles would later accuse him of being ‘criminally slow’ and took no trouble
to conceal his impatience, which sometimes became ugly as the pace of his life rapidly accelerated. At the same time as he was shooting the last couple of weeks on
The Magnificent Ambersons
, and preparing
Journey into Fear
(which would soon be shooting alongside it), the radio
shows
for CBS continued, though the
Lady Esther
format had given way to a more straightforward mixture of dramatisations
and readings. The vaudevillian element, no doubt to Welles’s intense disappointment, quietly evaporated. One week it was
The Hitch-Hiker
by Bernard Herrmann’s wife, Louise Fletcher, a huge popular hit; the next
A Farewell to Arms
. He was also involved in one of the first major wartime broadcasts, Norman Corwin’s
The President’s Bill of Rights (We Hold These Truths)
, with, among others, Edward
G. Robinson, Walter Huston, James Stewart and Roosevelt himself; programmes of this nature would henceforward be a significant part of his life, identifying and celebrating the virtues of American democracy, while convincing a nation that had by no means been unanimously eager to go to war of its necessity.

Welles also continued to pursue his educational ideals. His old mentor Roger Hill, who
was never absent from his life for long, ever urging him on in his social mission, had come forward with the notion of Todd Scholarships. Dick Wilson wrote to Hill that Welles was not keen on that particular notion:
Orson Welles
scholarships, on the other hand, he said, were very possible. ‘That is good publicity for the school, for us, for everybody.’
⁷
He then went on to suggest subsidising a
chair, a department, a project. Hill was thrilled with the response:
PLEASE SHUT UP FOR A FEW DAYS
, he wired,
UNTIL I CAN GET THE MISTINESS OUT OF MY EYES AND WRITE COHERENTLY ABOUT THE GENUINE EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE AND NATIONAL IMPORTANCE OF WHAT YOU WILL DO
.
⁸
Just as Dadda Bernstein, another surrogate parental voice that was rarely still, had murmured the word ‘Genius’ in Welles’s ear from
birth, so Roger Hill, encountering the boy in his adolescence, had from the start urged on him the notion of Greatness, by which he meant greatness as a leader, as a prophet, as a teacher. There was huge, almost overwhelming personal emotion involved: praising Welles’s initiative, he says: ‘Everybody talks about it but no one does anything about it. Except you, my love. And except Todd. And we’re
going to do something about it so significant that it will be recognised in every history of education in the next five hundred years as the Turning Point … yours, this side – but not far – idolatry, R.’
⁹
The key word in Hill’s letter was ‘significant’: he wanted Welles to use his influence for the good of mankind, and he thought that he was uniquely placed to do so. Nor was he alone in encouraging
this. In December of 1941, Welles had received a letter typical of many others from a teacher at Long Island University: ‘It is probably difficult for you to realise,’ she said, ‘what weight your word
carries
with the youth of Brooklyn. They have not heard of Jeremiah, Deuteronomy, nor Cardinal Newman, but they become alive with the mention of Orson Welles.’
¹⁰
Not many twenty-six-year-old film-makers
were spoken of, or to, in such a fashion. Despite the frustrations of working with Cortez, Welles ended the year in a state of some exhilaration: on the last day of December,
Citizen Kane
won the New York Critics’ Best Picture Award for 1941; the same day he received a telegram from H. G. Wells, whom he had met the year before when they shared a good chortle over
The War of the Worlds
broadcast,
reporting on the film’s British premiere:
CITIZEN KANE MAGNIFICENT. PRESS HERE EMBARRASSED. RELUCTANT TO RECOGNISE OUR PRESS BARONS. SALUTATIONS.
The footage from both
Bonito
and
The Magnificent Ambersons
had been greeted with delight by the studio. The radio show continued successfully in its new Reader’s Digest format, with readings from the Gospel of St Luke, and Wilde’s
The Happy Prince
and
Walt Whitman; while the
It’s All True
project was being hailed on all sides. George Schaefer had sent Welles a carefully worded letter, which was released to the press: ‘… this goes to you as an expression of our government’s deep appreciation of your patriotic service to the cause of hemisphere solidarity.
¹¹
Your service in this work is fully as important to the national cause as would your service
in any other phase of national endeavour’ – no doubt pointedly phrased to deflect any criticism of his failure to enlist. And finally, as a harbinger of delights to come, on the last
Lady Esther Show
of the year (
There Are Frenchmen and There Are Frenchmen
) he had met the woman who, on the strength of having seen her photograph on the cover of a famous edition of
Life
magazine five months earlier,
he had vowed he would marry: Rita Hayworth. Between Miss Hayworth (née Margaret Cansino) and Miss Del Rio, he was doing his bit for hemispheric solidarity in more arenas than one.