Orson Welles: Hello Americans (89 page)
Read Orson Welles: Hello Americans Online
Authors: Simon Callow
Stander, Lionel 410
State of the Union
(theatre) 311
Steichen, Edward 35
Stettinius, Edward 239
Stevenson, Robert 13, 161, 164, 166, 168, 188
Stevenson, Robert
Louis,
The Master of Ballantrae
344–5, 387
Steward, Paul 194
Stewart, Donald Ogden 218
Stewart, James (actor) 47
Stewart, James (sound editor) 34, 38
Stokowski, Leopold 208
Straight, Beatrice 183, 184, 201, 223
Straight, Michael 184, 185
Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, The
(film) 258
Stranger, The
(film) xiii, 267–79, 280, 281, 313, 348–9, 357, 383, 402, 427
Strauss, Theodore 140
Struss,
Karl 17, 49, 270
Sturges, Preston 149
Sunderland, Nan 21
Suskin, 306
Sutherland, Eddie 198, 200
Swanson, Gloria 148
Sylvester, Robert 314
Tabu
(film) 33
Take This Woman see Lady from Shanghai, The
(film)
Tales from Manhattan
267
Talmadge, Eugene 327
Tamburlaine the Great
(Marlowe) 265
Tamiroff, Akim 415
Tarkington, Booth 355;
The Magnificent Ambersons
12, 18, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29,
40, 90, 112;
Seventeen
18
Tarkovsky, Andrei 427
Tarzan
(film) 340
Taylor, Davidson 172
Taylor, Elizabeth 168
Tchelitchew, Pavel 288
Teheran Conference 227
Tempest, The
(Shakespeare) 233
Tennent, H.M. 403
Texarkana 208, 210, 211
Thackrey, Ted 225, 226, 236, 248–9, 250, 260, 348
Theatre Arts
348
Theatre Guild 265, 300
Theatre Incorporated 312
Théâtre National Populaire 379
Third Man,
The
(film) 75, 167, 440
This Is the Army
(film) 288
This Is My Best
(radio series) 242–3, 345
This Stuff’ll Killya
(film) 25
Thomas Committee 412
Thomas, François 389, 397, 399
Thomas, Parnell 413
Three Cheers for the Boys see Follow the Boys
(film)
Thrill of Brazil, The
(film) 355
Thurston, Howard 192
Time
magazine 97, 124, 138, 139, 211, 227
The Times
440
Tiss, Wayne 243
Tito, Marshal
185
To Be or Not To Be
(film) 190
To Have and Have Not
(film) 382
Toch, Ernst 417
Todd, Mike 281, 284, 287, 290, 315, 316–18
Todd School (Woodstock, Illinois) 13, 160, 277
Toland, Gregg 12, 28, 34, 36, 37, 39, 139, 166, 183
Tolstoy, Leo,
War and Peace
189
Tom Brown’s Schooldays
(film) 13, 162
Tomorrow Is Forever
(film) 224–5, 268, 276, 337
Tone, Franchot 349, 406
Too Much Johnson
312
Toscanini, Arturo 245, 423
Touch of Evil
(film) 270
Towers, Harry Alan 406
Trade Union Press
177
Trauner, Alexandre 418
Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The
(film) 25
Tree, Beerbohm 388
Trivas, Victor 267
Truman, Harry S. 214, 221, 241, 259, 278, 279, 334, 408
Tunan, Kenneth 427
Tuttles of Tahiti, The
(film) 105
Twentieth Century Fox 162, 163, 165
Tynan, Kathleen 32, 133, 178, 179, 224,
241
Tynan, Kenneth xvii
U-Namit-I-Find-It
192
Ubico, Colonel Jorge 229–30
United Artists 4
United Automobile Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers 176
United Nations Organisation 224, 238, 239, 255
United Press
124
Universal Studios 35, 267, 269
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) 30
University of Utah 389
Unsuspected, The
(film) 403
Valentin, Karl 202
Valley of the
Sun
(film) 77, 149
Vampyr
(film) 360
Van Nest Polglase 268
Vanity Fair
magazine 150
Vargas, Getúlio 72, 73, 98, 112, 113, 155
Variety
168, 288, 304, 311, 390, 391
Vasquez, Jesús 32, 46
Veiller, Anthony 267
Velez, Lupe 138
Venezuela 136
Venice 421, 425, 440
Verne, Jules 287;
Around the World in Eighty Days
280
Vertel, Saskia 282
Vidor, King 29
Villa, Pancho 230
Villa-Lobos, Heitor
146
Viva Cisco Kid
(film) 13
Vogue
23
Voice of Freedom
(radio) 406
Wald, Jerry 400
Waldteufel, Emile 56
Walk on the Wilde Side
(film) 382
Walker, Vern 56
Wallace, Henry 187
Wallace, Henry A. 44, 45, 99, 175, 177, 180–3, 213–15, 229, 408, 412; Common Man speech 181–2
Wanger, Walter 218
War and Peace
(film) 189–91, 200, 212, 267, 345
War of the Worlds
(H.G. Wells), radio adaptation 16,
28, 48, 172, 252, 323
Waring, Judge 341
Warner Brothers 51, 400
Warner, Jack 233
Warrick, Richard 385
Warrick, Ruth 17, 49, 51
Washington 123, 256, 258, 324
Washington Evening Star
184
Way to Santiago, The
(aka
Mexican Melodrama
) (film) 14–15, 30
We Will Never Die
(concert) 253
Webb, Roy 110, 417
Webber, Peggy 397
Webster, Margaret 233, 391
The Week
236
Weeks, Odell 333, 334
Weissberger,
Arnold 41, 119
Welles, Beatrice (mother) 10, 22
Welles, Christopher (daughter) 54, 222, 348, 397, 433
Welles, Orson, approach to film-making 67–9; birth of daughter Rebecca 221, 222; breakup with RKO 6, 149–50;
Bright Lucifer
384, 385; character and personality 133–4, 137; as civilian during 2nd World War 188–9; as comedian 170–2; compendium movie project 8–12; contribution to War effort 191,
194–200, 208–10; and death of Roosevelt 240–2; dynamism of 6–8; and the Edenic paradise 22, 83; European sojourn 402, 415, 443–4; fascination with being American 18; film ideas and projects 188–91, 345, 427; financial affairs 347–8, 405–6; hedonistic and sexual lifestyle 60–1, 63, 92, 255–7; humility of 77; ideas for film projects 7–14; as independent film-maker 155; interest in Brazilian cinema
75–6; interest in popular culture and music 71–4; as a journalist 169, 187–8, 225–42, 244–8, 249–51; lectures given on Brazil 98; love for collaborators 105–6; marriage to Rita Hayworth 198, 222–5, 256–7, 285, 443–4; ‘My Father Wore Spats’ 23; passion for illusion and magic 191–200; political interests 9–10, 43–4, 141, 174–9, 183, 185–8, 213–21, 237–40, 252–5, 278–9, 285–6, 408–13; as public speaker
172–9, 254–5; and racism 172–3, 179, 323–42; radio broadcasts 155–60, 201–11, 241–2, 242–4, 290, 323–43, 406–8; reasons for leaving America 402–3; recordings for Decca 265; relationship to his audience 248–9; and Roosevelt’s election campaign 213–21; skill as an actor 21, 24; and the supernatural 384; throws furniture out of the window in Rio 130; travels across Brazil 82–4; under pressure from
RKO and Bernstein 115–20, 123; and vaudeville 191
Welles, Rebecca (daughter) 221, 222, 223, 348
Welles, Richard Head, Senior (father) 10, 22, 23
Welles, Sumner 58
Welles, Virginia (1st wife) 222, 348
Wells, H.G. 48
Whaley, Wade 206
When Strangers Marry
(film) 233–4, 349
White, Les 379
White, Walter 323, 326, 327
Whiteman, Paul 307
Whitman, Walt 48
Whitney, John Hay 45, 71, 76, 97
Wiesenthal, Simon 276
Wild, Harry 53, 67, 101, 143, 144
Wilde, Oscar 48, 55, 314,
see also
named plays
Wilder, Billy 412
Wilder, Thornton 55, 225
Wilkie, Wendell 214, 216
William Morris Agency 207, 243
Willingham, John 338
Wilson, Catherine 106
Wilson, Richard ‘Dick’ 31, 33, 47, 57, 67, 85, 92, 94, 97, 99, 114, 120, 122, 131, 134, 188, 284, 290, 301, 313, 315–17, 318, 319, 321–2, 340,
348, 355, 357, 358, 359, 360, 364, 366, 383, 392, 393, 395, 411–12, 414, 416, 417, 419, 424, 425, 436, 437, 442
Winchell, Walter 307
Windust, John 400
Winter’s Tale, The
(Shakespeare) 265
Winterset
(theatre play) 26
Wise, Robert 34, 40, 52, 55, 59, 78, 86, 89–90, 108
Wise, Tobert 91
Wison, Richard 424
Wolfe, Thomas,
The Web and the Rock
403
Woll, Matthew 410
Wood, Bret 159–60, 273, 379,
387
Woodard, Sergeant Isaac, Junior 323–42
Woodstock (Illinois) 312
Woollcott, Alexander 55, 225
Woolley, Leonard 49
Workers’ Bookshop Symposium 10
Works Progress Administration 53
World-Telegram
304
Wright, Richard,
Black Boy
234–5
Writers’ Mobilisation 172
Writer’s Yearbook 1946
266
Wyatt, Eustace 17, 49, 107, 163
Wyler, William 36, 412
Yalta Conference 229, 334
Yates, Herbert
J. 382–3, 402, 416, 417, 437
Young, Loretta 269, 277, 348
Youngman, Gordon E. 125
Zaca
(yacht) 358
Zanuck, Darryl F. 189, 378
Ziv, Frederick 406
As with
The Road to Xanadu
, pride of place in the acknowledgements must go the superb Lilly Library and its crack team under Saundra Taylor, as efficient, calm and helpful when I last visited it in 2005 as when I first did, in 1989. It is a real sadness to me that the span of the third and final volume of this biography leaves behind the period covered by the Lilly. Would that
there were a similarly streamlined collection to cover the rest of Welles’s life! Other American university libraries have been extraordinarily helpful: Ned Comstock at the University of Southern California and Ann Caiger at the University of California have both pointed me to unexpected corners of their respective collections.
I have naturally depended on the trail-blazing work of my predecessors,
Roy Alexander Fowler (Welles’s first chronicler), the late Peter Noble, Barbara Leaming, Frank Brady and Charles Higham. Robert Carringer’s studies of
Citizen Kane
and
The Magnificent Ambersons
have been deeply stimulating, as has V S Perkins’s BFI monograph on the latter film. Michael Anderegg’s
Orson Welles: Shakespeare and Popular Culture
is a particularly original approach to Welles. The key
Wellesian study remains, as it has since publication, James Naremore’s
The Magic World of Orson Welles
, unmatched in its sensitivity to the cultural and political resonances of the work. Professor Naremore was one of an informal group of readers who read the present volume in manuscript form and all of whom offered invaluable reactions and positive suggestions: any merit the book may have owes
a great deal to Naremore, to Simon Gray, Sir David Hare, Fiona Maddocks, Ann Mitchell and Angus Mackay. The book was also read avidly, chapter by chapter as I wrote it, by its dedicatee, Paula Laurence, who lived to read the last sentence of the final page. Helen of Troy to Welles’s Dr Faustus, she was one of the first people to whom I spoke about him, and those early conversations were the foundation
stone of an incomparably rich and loving friendship.
Other people – too many of them now gone to the great cutting
room
in the sky – who offered especial illumination on this period of Welles’s life, some of whom also became good friends, were Roddy MacDowall, George Fanto, Rogério Szangerla, Chico Albuquerque, Miles Kreuger, François Thomas, Kent Hägglund, Norman Corwin, Robert Davison, Alvin
Colt. Henry Jaglom and Peter Bogdanovich, staunchly loyal to their friend, were nonetheless extremely cordial to someone with whose views they often strongly disagreed. I must most warmly thank my copy-editor, Chuck Elliott, ever-vigilant on matters grammatical, orthographic and literary, and himself a great source of information about American life in the nineteen-forties; Alex Milner, who collated
and coordinated the sprawling manuscript; Dan Franklin, whose reckless faith in the project sustained us all through the book’s more than elephantine gestation; and, yet again, Maggie Hanbury, my agent, who so often understood what I was trying to do better than I did myself. Two secretaries have cheerfully endured the process, Karen Lichkin for nine years and Jane Tomlinson for one; my forbearing
partner Daniel Kramer has never known a life with me which didn’t have Orson in it too, but he has never once complained.
In the end, of course, the book has depended on its primary material, in this case, as I indicated in the Preface, of almost bewildering richness. Here, I owe a supreme debt to the generosity and assiduousness of Rosemary Wilton, producer of the excellent six-part BBC series,
The RKO Story
, who gave me unlimited access to the fruits of her long and hard researches. My old chum Richard France and my slightly newer one, Robert Fischer-Ettl, superb Welles scholars both, shared with me the magnificent research they did on the Isaac Woodard case for a documentary which it is fervently hoped will shortly be made, while Kent Hägglund guided me from his Swedish base through
the complexities of Welles’s radiophonic output. Conrad Black, at a moment when he was under a certain amount of pressure, took time to clarify some details concerning Welles’s relationship with Roosevelt not referred to in his magisterial biography. By far the largest corpus of material is, of course, the Mercury archive lodged at the Lilly Library. I should like to pay heartfelt tribute to the
man we must thank for its survival, Richard Wilson, who served Orson Welles nobly from his apprenticeship in the thirties through to the late forties when he finally and with a great wrench liberated himself from Welles’s employ, to become a successful producer and director in his own right. Even though technically no longer employed by Welles, he
continued
to protect and foster his reputation:
in my dealings with him I found him deeply sensitive to the memory of a man who did so very little to protect himself or his reputation. It is more than likely that Welles would prefer some of the contents of the Mercury archive to have fallen by the wayside, but if posterity finally appreciates his full complexity and originality, it will be thanks in no small measure to Richard Wilson.
