Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

By MIKE TEAL

Over the course of their 24 years together on television, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert became the best-known movie critics in the nation, if not the world. They began as fierce rivals for competing newspapers in Chicago, but rose to fame together, reviewing the latest theatrical films on public television starting in 1975. Their influence grew as they made their way onto network television in the early 80s, thus gaining bigger distribution and audiences.

Their avuncular charm and often spirited sparring over films they disagreed with caused millions to tune in weekly, and their “thumbs up/thumbs down verdict” format often meant the difference between a film succeeding or failing at the box-office. Furthermore, because they had started out on public television, and only gradually worked their way onto network TV, (more...)

By RAY KELLY

Welles scholars now have access to the exciting additions to the Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan.

The first collection, “The Orson Welles – Chris Welles Feder Collection,” is a gift from Welles’ eldest daughter, Chris Welles Feder. It includes photographs of the family and letters from Welles to his first wife, Virginia Nicolson Welles. Among the letters is a series written by Welles when he made the transition from New York to Hollywood in the summer of 1939, which documents his activities and thoughts during his introduction to movie making.

The second collection, “The Alessandro Tasca di Cutò – Orson Welles Collection,” is from the personal papers of Alessandro Tasca and was purchased at auction in London. (more...)

IT’S ALL TRUE

You can now Download 12 selections from the many songs Orson Welles was considering using for the original soundtrack to The Story of Samba episode of It's All True.

Thanks to João Perdigão / Canhotagem for providing this valuable link and compiling these vintage songs from the Brazilian artists Orson Welles was planning to use in his movie. Astonishingly enough, Welles was once again clearly ahead of his time.  It's All True would never see the light of day in either Brazil or the US,  but  several of the  singers and songwriters he chose for the film all went on to have substantial careers in Brazil. Four of the most prominent are:

Grande Othelo, Linda Batista, Herivelto Martins (Trio de Ouro)  and Pery Ribeiro. Interesting clips of their work after appearing in It's All True can easily be found on YouTube. You can also read more about Brazilian singers and Praca Onze in Popular Song at Daniella Thompson's excellent website on the subject.

For the song titles below I have attempted rough English translations, but obviously these may be incorrect, so anyone who can help with better translation of the song titles or lyrics in English, please let me know.

Citizen Samba / by Canhotagem

1) Linda Batista – Batuque no Morro (3:05)
(Drumming on the Hill)

2) Anjos do Inferno – Nós Os Carecas (2:27)
(Hell's Angeles – We the Bald)

3) Pixinguinha – Carinhoso (2:57)
(Affectionately)

4) Trio de Ouro – Ave Maria do Morro (2:59)
(Gold Trio w/Herivelto Martins – Hail Mary of the Hill)

5) Dom Um Romão – Escravos de Jó (4:04) 2001
(The Slaves of Jó)

6) Época de Ouro – Um a Zero (2:12)
(Time of Gold – One for Zero)

7) Vadico – Se Alguém Disse (2:12) 1959
(If  Somebody Said)

8 - Anjos do Inferno – Nega do Cabelo Duro (2:59)
(Hell's Angeles  – He Denies them Hard Hair)

9) Orlando Silva – Lero-Lero (3:21)

10) Trio de Ouro – Lamento Negro (2:52)
(Gold Trio – Black Lament)

11) Ataulfo Alves – Ai, Que Saudades da Amélia (2:43)
(The Lament for Amélia)

12) Trio de Ouro with Castro Babosa – Praça Onze (3:08)
(Plaza Eleven)

*****

EXCERPT FROM A TIMELINE ON THE  MAKING OF IT'S ALL TRUE:

*****

THE OCIAA BOARD REJECTS COMPLETION FUNDS FOR "IT'S ALL TRUE"
May 25, 1943

In May Welles tried to get the new head of RKO, Peter Rathvon to allow him to finish IT’S ALL TRUE for a reduced budget of $100,000 but was once again rebuffed. 20th Century-Fox was now out of the running as a possible backer, but Samuel Goldwyn had showed a glimmer of interest in the project, which quickly faded after the OCIAA was now officially withdrawing it’s offer of $300,000 to complete the picture.

Thus, the OCIAA essentially orphaned a project they had lobbied Welles to undertake in the first place! Despite this setback Welles’ continues to write several proposals for the film. In these excerpts from later treatments, Welles adopted the style of his later essay films, F FOR FAKE and AROUND THE WORLD WITH ORSON WELLES where he would inject himself into the story by becoming both host and commentator on the events we are being shown on-screen.

In this treatment, Welles would arrive in Mexico, where he would be told (and tell) the tale of Bonita the Bull. From there it would be on to Brazil for the Carnival in Rio, which would be followed by the story of the Jangadeiros, when they arrive at Rio’s Harbor.

ORSON WELLES TREATMENTS (excerpts)
September 2, 1943

This is a picture divided into several parts. It is not, however, an arbitrary selection of short subjects, nor is it vaudeville. This is a new sort of picture. It is neither a play, nor a novel in movie form–it is a magazine.

(I am) ready to leave elaborate historical pageants to other movie-makers. The way (I) look at it, people are interested in people, and I’m going to use the camera to show American people to each other. Since the focus of the main part of our picture is on simple people, the incidental characters in the linking sequence are, wherever possible, presented as cultivated and well-to-do. The purposes of this tactic are I am sure, self-evident.

For FOUR MEN ON A RAFT, Welles would have read passages from Jacare’s own diary:

JACARE: We are part of another land. We belong to a great nation - Brazil. There is a President in a capital city. He is just. If he knew of these things, he would never permit them. We will go to him and he will help us …since the producer’s relations with the President of Brazil were of the very warmest, no possible official objection need be expected.

Here are some of Welles’ different approaches to the CARNIVAL footage:

We watch the people pouring into the city, dressed in as many different costumes as there are individuals. We see them swarming on the trolleys, like flies on a piece of sugar; we stop to watch the magnificent parade of floats; we listen for a moment as a lovely sambista stops the show at a swanky Rio night club...

In one treatment, Welles would turn over his hosting chores to a young boy:

Pery, this tiny, captivating child has lost his mother somewhere in the milling crowds... Making his way through seas of dancing feet with unperturbed good cheer, Pery becomes our guide... takes us places and shows us sights a stranger might easily miss during this first night of the Carnival.

Then, in the hills above Rio, Welles would meet Grande Otelo, and introduces him to us:

His name is Otelo. Remember that name. It belongs to the performer himself and this isn’t the last time you’ll encounter it. This is only his first American picture, and he’s a big hit in it, for sure. Otelo likes to be compared to Mickey Rooney, but he’s closer to a young Chaplin.

…From here we will come upon (Otelo) often as a type among carnival celebrants, a personalization of many popular aspects of the institution. This we think has been managed in the completed film in terms of truly uproarious entertainment.

Welles explained his plan to cross-cut between singers Grande Otelo and Linda Batista performing the song Batuque no Morro (Drumming on the Hill), noting the contrast between Otelo on the street and Batista at the Orca Casino.

…The contrast is one not only of voices, but of directions: The Carnaval of traditions is a celebration of the streets alone. But recent years have seen a trend indoors to the Baile and the Casino. The contrast, as it’s illustrated by this song, isn’t extreme—but the raucous raggle-taggle jamboree of the streets and the more professional, if equally enthusiastic atmosphere of the nightclub, is interesting in juxtaposition.

For the grand finale, Welles stresses the reason he was sent to Rio in the first place:

…when it seems that everything has been shown, the star enters to top everything. In our case, the star is the Americas. Rio’s carnival becomes Pan-America's carnival... the Americas, all Americas together, are joined in fact as well as in idea, today rather than in the future.

…we see Rio awakening in the dawn of the morning after.

Richard Wilson’s shooting log of June 7, 1942 describes this ending for the CARNIVAL episode:

…This scene showed the lost child who had been featured throughout, now alone and asleep against the lamppost, surrounded by mounds of confetti and the debris of revelry in empty streets stretching for blocks. Dawn is breaking. As distant figures of street sweepers appear with their brooms, a policeman tenderly picks up the sleeping boy, asks his name and where he lives. The boy's answer is a sleepy murmur of his favorite Samba, featured throughout. Their walk away is inter-cut with Grande Otelo saying farewell to Plaza Eleven as that song, also featured, plays like an echo. The lamp above the street sign goes out.  Silence.

From this fade out, we’d go back and see Welles on the roof of a building overlooking the Praca Onze, which would soon be demolished to make way for the more modern Avenida Vargas. With Welles is Dona Maria, a representative of President Vargas' government.

WELLES: Rio is one of the only beautiful old towns where new things are even more beautiful than the old ones.

DONA MARIA: …the hills up there, for instance, where the poor people live, where the school of the samba comes from, you were up there photographing one of them Senor Orson, do you know we’ve got new housing projects for all those places – model homes. They’re going up right now.

*****

No doubt President Vargas liked Dona Maria's report on the progress of the new housing projects that were supposedly replacing the slums in the hills above Rio, but Welles was clearly shooting footage that would have made Rio look more like the trash-filled Mexican border town that displeased another Senor Vargas in TOUCH OF EVIL. Welles recalled shooting in the slums in a later interview:

ORSON WELLES: I remember the night we tried to photograph one of the tenement districts in the favelas, in the hills above Rio when thugs surrounded us and after a siege of beer bottles, empties of course, stones, bricks, and I hate to think what else, we retreated to a more photogenic district clutching our Technicolor cameras as we went...

Welles would have ended the film, just as the original Time magazine story did, by observing a Beechcraft airplane flying the four Jangadeiros over Rio harbor to their home in the north:

TIME – December 8, 1941: …Swept away by the spirit of the occasion the directors of Navegacio Acrea Brasileira offered the fishermen a Beechcraft to fly them home. Air time from Rio to Fortaleza: Nine hours.

ORSON WELLES: The flight back really happened. This picture is all true. Bonito was pardoned; carnival was just as you’ve seen it; the four men from the North really sailed all those long miles to Rio in five logs of wood with only the stars to guide them, so they could talk to the President of their country. Naturally our cameras weren’t always on the spot. Some of the action we had to reconstruct. Here, for instance — before we’d finished with our work, Jacare, the leader of the jangadeiros, had died in the sea. But this is still the end our picture, because this is the best place we know to stop. Also, it’s true. Jacare did go back to Ceara, and, of course, he’s still there — alive in the love of his fellows; still with us, like the Dragon of the Sea who told the slave traders he’d carry no more slaves. For Jacare lives now in American history. This picture is his; a humble, solid declaration. To Jacare, then! To his sixty days on the open sea, and the eight hours it took a plane to fly him back through the air, over fields and mountains and jungles to his family on Ipacema Beach; to the hours less it’s going to take to fly there tomorrow; to all brave flights and voyages; to his dream of the future.

******

FARWELL, PRACA ONZE

They’re going to raze Praca Onze
They’ll be no more samba schools
The tamborin is weeping
The entire hill is weeping…
Favela, Salgueiro
Favela, Salgueiro

Put away your tambourines,
Because the samba schools won’t be parading today
God bye my Praca Onze
Good bye

Already we know that you will disappear
Yet we have our memories
You will be forever in our hearts
Some new day we’ll have a new square
And sing of your past

******

Vão acabar
Com a Praça Onze
Não vai haver mais
Escola de samba, não vai
Chora o tamborim
Chora o morro inteiro
Favela, Salgueiro,
Favela, Salgueiro,
Mangueira Estação Primeira
Guardai os vossos pandeiros, guardai
Porque a escola de samba não sai!
Adeus, minha Praça Onze, adeus

Já sabemos que vais desaparecer
Leva contigo a nossa recordação
Mas ficarás eternamente em nosso coração
E algum dia nova praça nós teremos
E o teu passado cantaremos
Favela, Salgueiro,
Favela, Salgueiro,
Mangueira Estação Primeira
Guardai os vossos pandeiros, guardai
Porque a escola de samba não sai!
Adeus, minha Praça Onze, adeus

******

(more...)

Catherine L. Benamou, the curator of the Univ. of Michigan Welles collection recently wrote to tell Wellesnet that the Richard Wilson--Orson Welles papers are now open for viewing and research by Welles scholars and all other interested parties.

You can access the online site to see an overview of the 62 boxes of material on Orson Welles career HERE.

Catherine is also back working on the preservation of It's All True, to add to the 6 or so reels of unseen material from the film that have already been restored.

It appears that special emphasis will be given to restoring footage from both the My Friend Bonito episode and the gorgeous Technicolor footage from the Carnaval episode.

To celebrate, I've posted some images from the Univ of Michigan collection on It's All True at the Wellesnet Facebook page HERE.

In the meantime, The Orson Welles–Oja Kodar collection of papers the Univ. of Michigan acquired is still being processed, but is also open for research, as long as specific requests are directed to the Special Collections archives manager, Kathleen Dow.

The Wilson--Welles collection spans Orson Welles entire creative life, starting with his early stage productions at the Todd School, until the memorial tribute Richard Wilson arranged after Orson Welles death in 1985.

Here are just two samples from the first to the last files in the Wilson--Welles collection:

Winter of Discontent (1930)

Script, undated. Photocopy of an annotated text, in folder marked by Richard Wilson as "Todd School, Five Kings"

*************

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

*************

Orson Welles Memorial Tribute

Held November 2, 1985 at the Directors Guild Theater in Hollywood.

Includes correspondence, messages to be read at the tribute, planning notes, and obituaries (2 folders).

While it may seem unfair to single out Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg for such a plea, I think that given the fact they both supposedly loved Orson Welles and his work, and that their new film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is being made for Paramount Pictures, who control all the rights to It’s All True, it's actually rather appropriate. And don't forget, that in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy's adventure begins in South America, and ends with the famous warehouse homage to Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

Ironically, Frank Marshall, the producer of all the Indiana Jones movies, got his start working as the production manager on Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind. So you might think that between these three very wealthy men, they would have the clout to, at the very least, ask the head of Paramount Pictures to come up with the meager funds (about $150,000) that are needed to preserve the 100,000 feet of negative footage Orson Welles shot for It’s All True that has never even been printed!

I find it especially ironic that Mr. Spielberg would spent about half of what is needed to preserve It’s All True, ($60,000), on a little sled called “Rosebud.” Wouldn’t or shouldn't Mr. Spielberg be more interested in seeing what the director of Citizen Kane shot in South America only a year later, and what has never been seen by anyone else, including Mr. Welles? My God, if I were Steven Spielberg, I'd go to Paramount and say, "Print this material or I'll never make a film for you again!"

Well, maybe if the new Indiana Jones movie grosses over $200 million, Lucas and Spielberg might consider donating the small pittance of $60,000. each to the restoration of Orson Welles It’s All True. Or better yet, insist that Paramount fund the restoration of all of the footage they have deposited with the UCLA film archive. In any case, It’s All True needs a wealthy patron, because there is about 100,000 feet of nitrate footage shot or supervised by Orson Welles in Brazil, that has never even been seen! Now, to be quite clear, this is mostly documentary footage, and may not startle the average viewer or even be terribly exciting footage. But on April 13, Joe McBride showed a reel of silent rushes I’d never seen from It’s All True at the Pacific Film Archive, in Berkeley. It was mostly shot by Harry J. Wild, in high contrast black and white, showing couples dancing at the Urca Casino in Rio. Joe read the audience Catherine Benamou's description of the footage:

(more...)

Producer Greg Boozell has sent along this link for Wellesnet viewers to preview a very informative interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum condcted by Mara Tapp, which concentrates on four of Orson Welles lesser viewed films:  MR. ARKADIN, DON QUIXOTE, FALSTAFF and F FOR FAKE.   

It also goes into some detail about Welles pioneering work with Afro-Americans and Afro-Brazilians, which really seems to be the smoking gun that nobody talks about in terms of Welles career problems.

However, it now seems clear it was one of the major reasons Welles RKO contract was terminated, and was also the reason Welles career on the airwaves ended,  since it was after Welles demanded that the white policeman who blinded the black WWII veteran, Issac Woodard be brought to justice, that Welles radio days came to an abrupt end.     

Rosebaum also points out that Welles use of mostly black entertainers, like  Grande Otelo in IT'S ALL TRUE,  had to have been considered incredibly radical back in 1942, epecially to the incoming regime at RKO, so that certainly has to be taken into consideration on why that film was never completed by the studio -- even after they invested over $500,000. in making the picture! 

But as Welles noted, "they thought I was just shooting a bunch of Jigaboo's in the streets of Rio."       

In fact, of all the numerous books on Welles, it seems most of them barely touch on how radical Welles was on the race issue back in the days when that could easily end the career of politicians and entertainers. Welles was challenging the status quo of the time, by featuring black entertainers in  what was supposed to be a mainstream movie documentary on "goodwill" between the Americas.  Unfortunately, that goodwill didn't extend to the many racist politicians and studio exectutives who obviously didn't share Welles enlightened views in the dark days of WWII.   

To imagine what kind of opposition Welles faced back then, one only has to look at what is happening in America today, and magnify it many times.   

Needless to say, the Rosenbaum interview is fascinating viewing for all Welles aficionados and will be airing locally in Chicago this Friday, October 26.  However, it can be previewed right now, at the links below.  Thanks to Greg and host Mara Tapp for putting together this wonderful piece, which includes many long clips, including the sequence from DON QUIXOTE, with Patty McCormack sitting with Don Quixote in a cinema, when the dumbfounded Don attacks the movie screen.   

___________

Unseen Orson Welles

Friday, October 26
at 10:00 a.m. on CAN TV19

Film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum discusses the important, lesser-known works of filmmaker, Orson Welles with host, Mara Tapp.

___________ 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8395370399941473528  http://www.cantv.org/highlights.htm

In conjunction with the arrival of Catherine Benamou's long awaited and fascinating new book on Orson Welles' It's All True, I thought I'd post a series of memos and press articles I've been compiling related to the making of Welles unfinished masterpiece.

While I was reviewing Ms. Benamou's book and re-reading these memos, some thoughts about this doomed project occurred to me.  Firstly, how correct Welles was in saying "It's All True would be "a new medium of entertainment when it's completed." Of course the key word here is "completed,"  since Welles was never allowed to finish the movie. Yet it's quite clear, looking at the script excerpts, notes and memos, that Welles would have created a film that was radically new and different in 1943. In fact, it might have easily become a forerunner of Neo-realism, beating Rossellini and DeSica's movies out of the gate by over a year.  Welles, was of course, a great fan of DeSica's Shoeshine and the emphasis he placed on documenting the lives of Brazil's poorer people and finding glory in their everyday existence, was straight out of Cesare Zavattini's playbook.
Oddly enough, it seems likely that It's All True could have also provided a glimpse towards Welles much later experiments in the Essay Film which he ended his career with. But even more tantalizing, is the fact that script excerpts for The Carnival segment (coming in part two of this post) offer us a glimpse of the style he would ultimately use in The Fountain of Youth, with his brilliant mixing of stills, film and himself as the on-screen narrator.
Further innovations for the time include making a film featuring mostly black entertainers. In 1942 this would be highly unusual, to say the least.  It fact, if the film had come out in 1942, it would have even pre-dated such all black musical films as Stormy Weather and Cabin in the Sky.  It was also a major reason RKO's new regime wanted to get rid of the film, as can be seen in many of the memos.

Finally, there is the rather radical notion (again, for the time), of filming on location in several different foreign counties, in Technicolor.  All of which makes it rather unbelievable that even though this precious footage - that was once thought to be lost and then was found - is now in danger of being lost again, but this time forever.

*****************************

COMPILED AND WITH NOTES

BY  LAWRENCE FRENCH

*****************************

I'm not trying to make a documentary film, nor am I interested in making a travelogue. I want to tell some of the stories of South America in an interesting manner and bring certain phases of Latin entertainment to the movie-going world. The picture will have music, color, romance, and will be of the land, the sea and the cities. It's going to be a new medium of entertainment when it's completed.

—Orson Welles
Mr. Welles is aware that he is facing tremendous difficulties. It's a safe bet that out of Welles's South American trek will come a new and novel production. It will be a great production if he gets an even break with fate.

—Tom Pettey, Unit Publicist on It's All True
 

********************************** (more...)

I�ve just received a copy of Catherine Benamou�s labor of love book about the making of�Orson Welles� own unfinished labor of love, It�s All True. Although I�ve only had a chance to scan through it briefly,�I can safely attest it�s a must have volume for any serious Welles aficionado. Firstly, it contains almost 40 rare photos, none of which I�ve ever seen in print�before. And to highlight only one choice bit of information that� captivated my attention, there is an interview Ms. Benamou conducted with the children of Jacare (the star of Welles planned episode about the Jangadeiro�s). �All of Jacare�s children seem to believe that his death was not an accident, but rather a �planned� event.
�
Now, knowing today what government�s and their secret spy agencies are capable of (and let�s not forget that this was in 1942 when Hitler was in control of half of Europe), and given the fact that Jacare was a highly vocal critic of Brazil�s then president, Getulio Vargas, it�s not very hard to believe that this may have indeed been a �planned accident.�� It�s something that certainly deserves a closer examination and investigation. I always found it quite difficult to swallow the story that an accomplished fisherman and excellent swimmer could have died by simply falling off of his raft into Rio harbor.

Of couse, if�we accept the reported �facts� in Charles Higham�s book, there�s little doubt that Jacare had no chance, since according to Higham, a shark that was battling an Octopus swallowed Jacare up. �At the time, both�The N.Y. Times and Time reported this apocryphal story in their pages, although it was a tall tale that was later completely discredited. It now seems likely that the real monsters that claimed Jacare�s life were not a shark and an octopus, but perhaps the powers in�Brazil's fisherman's elite, who didn't want�Jacare�s voice of dissent heard.�
�
Here are the two original reports that appeared in The New York Times and�Time magazine. Both of these accounts contain numerous factual errors about what actually happened on that fateful day, ridiculously implying that Orson Welles was directing a battle between a shark and an Octopus. Not even Welles was that good of a director.

However, it seems that by combining the fact and fiction behind�It's All True, �Hollywood might have the makings for yet another movie about Orson Welles. Vincent D' Onofrio could play Welles for a third time, showing us just how he managed to film that Shark and Octopus battle... all in the picturesque setting of Rio's harbor with Sugarloaf mountain looming in the background.� ��
�
Leading Brazil Raftman Dies Starring for Movie
�
May 20, 1942 � The New York Times
�
Rio De Janeiro, Brazil May 19�Mandel Olimpio Meira, Brazil�s most noted fisherman, was drowned today off Rio de Janeiro while starring for Orson Welles film of Brazilian Life.
�
Mr. Meira, who sailed 2,000 miles on his raft last year to Rio de Janeiro to get President Getulio Vargas�s permission to form a fishermen�s union, was tipped from his raft today during the filming of a battle between a shark and an octopus.
�
The fisherman swam away from the fighting monsters into a whirlpool, where he was drowned. Two companions were rescued.
�
_______________________
�

(more...)

Reading Simon Callow's excellent chapters on the making of It's All True in� Hello Americans�served to remind me just how far Welles scholarship has advanced since one of the very first books on Welles appeared in 1970:�Charles Higham's disgracefully researched The Films of Orson Welles.�While Callow's work is a balanced, well researched account of the many complex problems that were occurring in Brazil during the chaotic production of It's All True,�Higham's work, in stark contrast--and especially�in retrospect--is�a completely�laughable work which has long since been throughly discredited.�But it's amazing to think that this piece actually appeared in Sight and Sound and Higham later wrote several pieces about The Other Side of the Wind for The New York Times (see the Sept 2nd�Wellesnet entry for Higham's error-ridden piece on OSOTW).

Higham's book caused Welles great pain, and�more to the point, the loss of several initial backers for his just launched new film, The Other Side of the Wind.�Welles wrote a long letter to Peter Bogdanovich to set the record about�It's All True straight, which Bogdanovich did by writing�a long�article for The New York Times. �

Here are both Welles letter to Peter Bogdanovich, and the subsequent article Bogdanovich wrote that appeared in The N.Y. Times on August 30, 1970 -- the same day Welles began shooting in Hollywood on The Other Side of the Wind. �

**************

(more...)

What promises to be the definitive book on Orson Welles IT'S ALL TRUE will be arriving in March, 2007 from the UC California Press. Here are some advance details:

++++++++++

It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey
�

By Catherine L. Benamou
�

U.C. Berkeley Press - 416 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 39 b/w photographs, 2 maps.

Publication Date:�March, 2007

Described as a work of genius, a pretentious wreck, a crucially important film, a victim of its director's ego, and much more, It's All True, shot in Mexico and Brazil between 1941 and 1942, is the legendary movie that Orson Welles never got to finish. In this book, the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of It's All True available, Catherine Benamou synthesizes a wealth of new and little-known source material gathered on two continents, including interviews with key participants, to present a compelling original view of the film and its historical significance. Breaking with the auteur-destroyed-by-Hollywood clich�, Benamou locates the premature termination of this cross-cultural project in the complex mix of American foreign policy, Brazilian and Mexican national interests, Welles' own desire for ethnographic authenticity, a Hollywood system looking for a conventional picture, and the political stakes of a host of players. Definitively debunking many of the myths surrounding It's All True, this groundbreaking book will challenge much received wisdom about Orson Welles, one of the most important figures in the history of cinema, and illuminate the unique place he occupies in American culture, broadly defined.

Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Introduction: Locating Orson Welles's It's All TrueChapter 1: In Production, 1941-1942
Chapter 2: Toward the Text of It's All True, Based on the Work in Progress
Chapter 3: Postproduction: The Trajectory of the Film Object,
and That of Critical Discourse
Chapter 4: Almofala: A Wellesian Text
Chapter 5: Labirinto: The Politics and Poetics of a Text-in-the-Making
Chapter 6: Zoom, Pan, and Rack Focus: The Film's Suspension Examined
Chapter 7: The Legacy of a Phantom Film, 1945-2003
Conclusion: It's All True, Orson Welles, and Hemispheric History
Appendix 1: Pages from a Research Scrapbook: Jacar�'s Family Remembers
Appendix 2: Fact Sheets for Filmed Episodes of It's All True, 1941-1942
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Joseph McBride's new book on Orson Welles features two chapters on the saga of� the making, and unmaking of�THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. It's the most comprehensive coverage of this unfinished Welles masterpiece that has yet been seen.��

In the book Mr. McBride also goes into some detail about the early problems Welles encountered when he went to Brazil to film IT'S ALL TRUE. Among the astounding revelations are a "smoking gun" phone call between RKO vice-president Reginald Amour and Phil Reisman, where it's plainly clear that Welles had not gone over budget on IT'S ALL TRUE, but was actually about $500,000. under�the 1.2 million budget that RKO had allotted for the film.�

Here are some of the factual memos from the RKO files that speak for themselves:
�
�
George Schaefer was under intense pressure from RKO�s board in New York to cut the studio's mounting losses, so he wrote a heartfelt letter to Welles, noting how he had stood by him during the Hearst and industry efforts to suppress CITIZEN KANE. Now, with his own job on the line, George Schaefer asks Welles for a bit of cooperation and gratitude. To deliver his letter, he personally sent RKO executive Phil Reisman to Rio, who also had instructions to bring IT'S ALL TRUE to a quick conclusion, even if it meant shutting the production down. A few days before Reisman left for Rio, RKO Vice-President Reginald Armour called him in New York to discuss the situation.
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REGINALD ARMOUR & PHIL REISMAN�(Transcript of phone call):

April 27, 1942

REGINALD ARMOUR: You�re elected for Rio, brother.
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PHIL REISMAN: ...I want to find out from the legal department about Welles�s contract�what rights he has... Do you have the breakdown of the actual cost to date�what the Mexican part of the picture (My Friend Bonito) has cost to date? Has there been any budget set?�
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REGINALD ARMOUR: No�it will be about $1.2 million altogether�but we don�t want to talk to him about that�we don�t want him to know.
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PHIL REISMAN: Someone must have told him�because when I was down there he was telling everyone the picture would cost a million dollars. It�s going to be a documentary film�and we�ll never get it back. George is sending me down there with the right to shut the God damn thing off if I want to�and bring him home and take the loss right now.

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(more...)

�In 2002, Catherine Benamou wrote the following for the Brazilian documentary film festival called "It's All True":

�"Besides some excerpts, which can be cherished in a copy that this Festival will screen, there is a larger text and story to be rescued from the cans stacked up in the UCLA collection and yet labeled "It's All True." They are 68,145 feet corresponding to "My Friend Bonito"; 32,000 feet in black-and- white, and 3,000 feet in Technicolor corresponding to "Carnival," and 48,500 feet in black-and-white of "Jangadeiros." This material still needs to be preserved."

Here's a more recent writing, referring to last year's Locarno Festival:

Orson Welles�s It�s All True: Paths of Retrieval / Os Caminhos do Resgate
Catherine L. Benamou

�Last summer at the UCLA Film and Television Archive (where Welles's footage is stored), we were able to preserve two reels of the nitrate footage for exhibition at the Locarno International Film Festival in August. One of these reels was of the cow "tientas" in Central Mexico performed by reknowned Mexican bullfighters Chucho Solorzano and Fermin "Armillita" Espinosa (this was shot in 1941); this reel was combined with already preserved footage not used in the 1993 documentary reconstruction of the "Branding of Bonito" (preserved by Richard Wilson in 1989).

�The second reel was something I found in 2000:� a rough assemblage of black and white footage of the entrance of the jangadeiros to Guanabara Bay during the filming of IT'S ALL TRUE. It reveals the "montage elements" that Welles was planning on working with for that climactic scene towards the end of the episode "Jangadeiros".
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�This summer, I will be working with UCLA preservationists and editors to produce at least one more reel, preferrably of *hand held* footage Welles shot with an Eyemo of the Carnaval festivities in February 1942.

�And, as previously mentioned, at The UCLA Festival of Preservation�on August 10th at 7:30,�Prof. Benamou will give an update on the on-going preservation of It's All True, which she has been involved with since she was an associate producer on the "It's All True" reconstruction�released in 1993.

(UCLA Festival of Preservation info: (310) 296-FILM)�

Tony