Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

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The Columbia Workshop presents

William Shakespeare's HAMLET  

Starring ORSON WELLES as the Prince of Denmark

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Note: This was originally published on the site in December 2004, but in part of an ongoing effort to streamline the site, it is being republished through the News page in order to make it easier to find. Other "classic" Wellesnet items will be posted this way in the coming days and weeks.
-Jeff W

When the downfall of Orson Welles in Hollywood is discussed, we focus, for obvious reasons, on two projects, The Magnificent Ambersons, and It's All True. The two are inextricably linked; had Welles not gone to South America to make IAT, there is perhaps the slightest chance that Ambersons may have had a different fate, with the director there to actually edit and fight for it in person. Instead, Welles was forced to communicate with editor Robert Wise and company via phone and telegram, with plainly catastrophic results. The wreckage then spread to It's All True, as Welles had his funding cut and eventually was dismissed from RKO in the aftermath. He had a butchered film and an unfinished film, and no prospects for any further film work, at least on his own terms. Welles ended up spending most of the remainder of the war doing radio work. (more...)

Here are some musical gems: Nine rare tracks from the Mercury Jazz Combo available for listening from the Louisiana Digital Library - see the link below.

1. Orson Welles: Introduction to the Mercury Jazz Combo
2. High Society
3. Orson Welles on ‘real’ Jazz/Carolina in the Morning
4. Orson Welles elegy to Jimmie Noone/Jimmie’s Blues
5. Orson Welles on Jazz Funerals /Just a Little While
6. Panama Rag
7. Savoy Blues
8. That’s A Plenty
9. Tiger Rag

Last Monday night I was joined by a San Francisco contingent of Wellenetters, including Glenn Anders and Todd Baesen for an evening of local jazz at Rasselas, located in the historic Fillmore jazz district. To our great surprise, a guest saxophone and trumpet player showed up to join the regular quintet at around 11:00 pm and nearly blew the roof off the place. Unfortunately, there were only six people in the audience!  We later found out the two guest jazz players were visiting San Francisco with the touring Broadway show Jersey Boys, about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
 
I bring this up merely to point out that nothing much has changed since Orson Welles began championing jazz players on The Orson Welles Almanac radio show back in 1944, noting that “jazz is art for art's sake if ever there was such a thing—it’s music musicians play for themselves, for their own satisfaction, the way they like it.” 
 
Anyway, in searching out some jazz players like Kid Ory, I came across Macresarf1’s review of the Louis Armstrong movie, New Orleans which goes into some detail about Orson Welles own planned jazz segments for It’s All True. It also details some of Welles work with jazz players on the Orson Welles Almanac radio show, as follows:
 
“Among Orson Welles several radio activities during World War II, he hosted The Orson Welles Show, which became The Orson Welles Almanac in 1944. These were variety shows, 26 to a season, emceed by Welles, formed around short dramatic Mercury Players adaptations with weekly guest stars. Broadcast in what we would now call prime time (9:30 – 10 pm, Wednesday nights), they featured, in addition to the King Cole Trio and Ethel Waters as returning guests, "The Mercury All Star Jazz Combination," consisting of Kid Ory (trombone), Mutt Carey (trumpet), Jimmie Noone (clarinet), Buster Wilson (piano), Bud Scott (guitar), Ed Garland (bass) and Zutty Singleton (drums). These gigs are credited in reviving Kid Ory's career, eventually leading to the post-war return to favor of Dixieland Jazz, and giving Ory's group parts in several movies, including NEW ORLEANS, plus a long career at the Club Hangover (with Muggsy Spanier) and other venues in San Francisco's Fillmore Jazz District.” 

(Macresarf1’s entire piece on New Orleans and It’s All True can be accessed here:

http://www.epinions.com/content_91456573060 )

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As noted on the message board, Simon Callow's adaptation of Micheal MacLiammoir's memoir Put Money In Thy Purse is being given a re-broadcast this Saturday on BBC5 radio. The play will be available for listening for the week following, so you have plenty of time to catch it.

On a site note: does anyone know CSS? I am having a hell of a time trying to do a couple things on this news page that require CSS, and I am new to it. Email me if you can help, I'd appreciate it. I don't think it is anything difficult.

...Which of course begs the question, "Why bother?" But Mind City Productions decided that an animated version of Welles' Mercury Summer Theater broadcast of Lucille Fletcher's radio classic "The Hitch Hiker" was needed, and so we're here to provide a look at it. First off, the disc appears to be a DVD-R, and two of the three DVD players in my house wouldn't even recognize it as a disc. Not a good start.

This release was discussed on the Wellesnet message board, and as I mentioned above, the main question was why would someone do this? Radio exists as a valid dramatic medium in and of itself; those too lazy or mentally impoverished to actually imagine the story being told don't necessarily deserve to have it animated for them. Mind City have provided a literal animation of the events as told by Welles, narrating as Ronald Adams. The animation itself is mediocre at best; if you've seen video game cut scenes on the Playstation 2, that's about what this looks like, just not quite as smooth. At times, you can see where a character's programmed movements reset to their starting point, which is rather jarring, needless to say. The characters too often move like they're underwater, destroying any sense of realism, and the facial movement of Adams rarely changes; you'd think he was on heavy sedation if you didn't have the soundtrack to go by. The color scheme of purple and grey is attractive enough, but that's about all I can say for the visual look of the piece. In the end, I felt it didn't do much more than dilute the power of the original story; after all, Welles' potent narration is certainly good enough to carry the story without literal visual interpretation.

But wait, there's more! Begging the question of legality (as if the DVD-R wasn't enough), there are some bonus features. The "Mercury Theater Remembered" feature from the "Theater of the Imagination" release is stuck on here, as is the Suspense broadcast of "The Hitch Hiker." Finally, the infamous Welles outtake from the fish sticks commercial gone bad is here, animated as if it were Welles working on it, but looking like the animated Ronald Adams. Huh? It's not improved by adding animation, and let's leave it at that.

I guess this project was made with the intention of doing something unique, but it's all rather pointless. Add to that some basic errors (Lucille Fletcher's name misspelled on the cover, the company's web site describing the show as from the 1930s, when even basic research would show the broadcast date as being in 1946), and it's hard to find much to like here. Perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that it's relatively cheap.