Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

To celebrate the 93rd birthday of ORSON WELLES – May 6, 1915 – here are some fond memories from members of the cast and crew of CITIZEN KANE.

I’m sure they all would be wishing Orson a very happy birthday today…

PAUL STEWART – Raymond, the butler

The telephone rang and I heard the unmistakable voice of Orson Welles, speaking from California.

“I want you to come out and do a part for me in my picture,” he said. “Have you got an agent?”
“Yes,” I said. “But what’s the part?”
“Never mind. Just come out.”

Well, when Orson said he had a part for you, you went. So I left New York to play my first role in a picture at $500 a week, three weeks guarantee. I was on CITIZEN KANE 11 weeks. For the first three or four weeks, I didn’t work at all.

Naturally I stood around the set, watching. And I was amazed at the way Orson worked. In those days we had an 8 o’clock call on set – Orson had to report at 5 a.m. when he was wearing the old-man make up.

The first hour on the set, nothing happened. Orson gave Gregg Toland the setup, then everyone became anecdotal. We just sat around telling stories about radio, the theater, etc. After awhile Orson began to rehearse. He had a man who walked through his scenes for him, and we rehearsed with this fellow while Orson directed. Then he stepped in and shot the scene with himself in it. Sometimes we didn’t get a shot until 3 in the afternoon. Of course lighting was very difficult because of the depth of focus. Eastman Kodak had developed its fastest film for Gregg, but it was still not what we have today.

It wasn’t uncommon for Orson to shoot 84, 93, 55 takes of one scene. During the Senate hearing with George Coulouris, Orson did more than a hundred takes. One day he shot a hundred takes and exposed 10,000 feet–without a single print!

I’ll never forget the day Orson shot the burning of the sled. One of the stages at the Selznick studio had been made into the warehouse with a working furnace. The scene had to be just right because the audience had to see the sled go in and the word “Rosebud” consumed in flames.

When the ninth take had been shot, the doors of the stage flew open and in marched the Culver City Fire Department in full fire-fighting regalia. The furnace had grown so hot that the flue had caught fire. Orson was delighted with the commotion.

After the fire had been extinguished, one of the firemen asked me, “What’s going on here?”
“Mr. Welles is making a picture here,” I said.

Orson’s WAR OF THE WORLD’S scare was still a vivid memory, and the fireman nodded and murmured, “It figures.”

My first shot was a close-up in which Orson wanted a special smoke effect from my cigarette. I was rigged with tube that went under my clothes and down my finger to the cigarette, but somehow the contraption wouldn’t exude smoke.

“I want long cigarettes–the Russian kind!” Orson ordered. Everyone waited while the prop man fetched some Russian cigarettes.

Just before the scene, Orson Welles warned me: “Your head is going to fill the screen at the Radio City Music Hall”– at that time CITIZEN KANE was booked for the Music Hall. Then he said in his gruff manner, “Turn ‘em.” But just before I started, he added quietly in his warm voice, “Good luck.”

I blew the first take. It was 30-40 takes before I completed a shot that Orson liked–and I had only one line. That was almost 30 years ago, but even today I have people repeat it to me, including young students. The line was: “Rosebud… I’ll tell you about rosebud…”

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Fred Camper, who writes on movies for The Chicago Reader, has posted a fascinating article by Erich von Stroheim on Citizen Kane at his website.  Although it appeared in an obsure magazine called “Decision, a review of free culture” it seems amazing to me it has apparently never been reprinted or, as far as I know, even been mentioned in all the avalanche of material that has been written about Citizen Kane, since it premiered in 1941.  

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CITIZEN KANE 

By Erich von Stroheim

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This is perhaps the first criticism of a film ever written by a film-maker who coincidentally also in his time — like Orson Welles — played the “Holy Trinity.” In our case “Trinity” means that the functions of the Writer, Director, and Star are combined in one person. The man executing these three functions in any case has a gigantic job on his hands which can only be fully appreciated by someone who actually has attempted the same. In fact, Orson Welles went me one better as he was also the Producer. And the Producer Welles permitted without grumbling the Director Welles to execute what the Writer Welles had planned to do. And Director Welles allowed the Actor Welles to do as he pleased.

As the man who plays the “Super Trinity” earns the applause practically alone — provided the finished product is a worthy one — so must he solely take the blame should one or more of his endeavors not have functioned properly.

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Read the whole article here:  

http://www.fredcamper.com/M/VonStroheim.html 

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The article goes well with the links Tony has posted on the messageboard to Greenbriar pictureshows, a great blog where you can see some very rare photos, posters and studio trade ads for Citizen Kane.

http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html 

In revisiting Frank Brady’s excellent biography, CITIZEN WELLES,  I came across this statement that Welles issued to the press in January, 1941, to basically counter the growing impression that Citizen Kane was based on a certain well known newspaper publisher.  Given Welles own reluctance to talk about Citizen Kane in any great detail in his later years, it seems like an incredibly important piece of information coming, as it does, from the creator of the “greatest movie ever made.”   

In the piece, Welles goes into great detail about why he choose to make his fictional newspaper publisher do certain things, and spells out many of the psychological reasons for them. It may be dime-store Freud, but 60 years later, it still seems very convincing and is also  quite fascinating to read.   

It’s also notable that somehow this important piece, that clearly indicates Welles had a major role in writing the screenplay, was never uncovered by those early (and highly incompetent) writers on Citizen Kane,  Charles Higham and Pauline Kael.    

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January 15, 1941

Press statement issued by Orson Welles regarding his forthcoming motion picture entitled, Citizen Kane, which will be released by RKO-Radio Pictures:

ORSON WELLES:  I wished to make a motion picture which was not a narrative of action so much as an examination of character. For this, I desired a man of many sides and many aspects. It was my idea to show that six or more people could have as many widely divergent opinions concerning the nature of a single personality. Clearly such a notion could not be worked out if it would apply to an ordinary American citizen.

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I’ve known only one great cameraman: Gregg Toland, who photographed Citizen Kane.

—Orson Welles, 1967  

Photographing Citizen Kane was indeed the most exciting professional adventure of my career.

—Gregg Toland  

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Given the fact that Citizen Kane has long been considered the greatest film ever made, here is a wonderful piece about the cinematography for Kane, written only a few months after it premiered by Gregg Toland,  for the September, 1941 issue of Theater Arts magazine.  

In this piece, Toland predicts the upcoming fad for 3-D photography (which wouldn’t become wide spread until five years after Toland had died, in 1948).   He also predicts, incorrectly, that color photography would never replace black and white cinematography. However, in retrospect, I wonder if Toland’s thoughts might not have influenced Welles, who only embraced color shooting very late in his career. Welles first finished color film was not until 1968 for The Immortal Story.  And during his lifetime, Welles would only see one other of his films released in color, F For Fake.   Which is yet another reason why The Other Side of The Wind needs to be completed and shown. It’s not only a very rare example of Welles using his mastery of the art of color cinematography, but also the first time he was able to use erotic scenes in a film.  And having just looked at the some of the erotic scenes from The Other Side of the Wind, and  then watched Bertolucci’s The Last Tango in Paris  for the first time since 1975,  I wonder what Pauline Kael would have said about OSOTW?  Would she think it altered the face of an art form?  Probably not, but if The Other Side of the Wind had been released in 1974,  it seems likely that it would have been X-rated and certainly seen as far more inovative today than Last Tango in Paris.     

In his article, Toland also notes that a cameraman is the only one on a set who is never at rest, and also must be very quick about his his duties, a fact that Welles would later lament when he had “the criminally slow Stanley Cortez” as his cameraman on his next RKO picture, The Magnificent Ambersons.

In retrospect, it’s too bad Welles didn’t get Floyd Crosby, who at the time was actually working for him indirectly, under the direction of Norman Foster in Mexico, for It’s All True. If Floyd Crosby had shot Ambersons  it certainly wouldn’t have been delayed by the time-consuming lighting set-ups that Cortez seems to have caused. 

Floyd Crosby was also extremely left-wing, to the point of being blacklisted during the McCarthy era in Hollywood, so there seems to be no doubt that Crosby and Welles would have gotten along famously if they had actually worked together on a movie. 

Floyd Crosby had worked in documentaries under Pare Lorentz and Robert Flaherty, winning an Academy Award for Flaherty and Murnau’s Tabu in 1931.  Crosby was not only very fast,  but extremely good at lighting,  so he ended up becoming Roger Corman’s  chief cameraman from 1955 onwards, when he couldn’t get any work at the major studios.  Crosby came into his own when he had the chance to show his beautifully stylish color cinematography on Corman’s Freudian widescreen Poe movies made in the sixties, starting with The House of Usher in 1960 and ending with The Haunted Palace in 1963.  Amazingly, all of the Crosby, Corman-Poe movies were shot in only three weeks.

Here is what Roger Corman had to say about using Floyd Crosby when he began his career in 1955:

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Floyd Crosby was having trouble getting jobs when you hired him, because he had been a liberal New Deal Democrat, who suddenly became suspect during the McCarthy witch-hunts of the fifties.

ROGER CORMAN: Well, Floyd was certainly not a communist, but during the fifties, some studios did not like him. However, that meant nothing to me. I used him simply because he was a good cameraman. I remember Floyd talking about that, and saying it was somewhat ironic that his patriotism should come under questioning, after he had served in the Army air core command during World War II as a Captain, working with Pare Lorentz on combat documentaries and winning citations for bravery. Floyd was really a great gentlemen and a brilliant cameraman. I went on to use him for my first film as a director, Five Guns West, and he was probably the best cameraman I ever worked with. He was quick, efficient and gave me the kind of quality that you would normally associate with much bigger studio films. We got along very well, and although he was somewhat older than I was, we became very good friends and I had great respect for him and for his work.  It’s not that difficult to get a good cameraman if the cameraman has hours to set up each shot. It’s not difficult to get a cameraman who works quickly. He just sets up a few lights, and says he’s ready to shoot. But to get somebody to work quickly and does fine work is very unusual.

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People always tell me how difficult Orson Welles is. The only people I’ve ever met worth working for were difficult people—because they’re interested in achieving something. Just spare me the charmers. Welles in every other way might be difficult, but when it comes to making artistic decisions he’s like the Rock of Gibraltar. 

                                                          —Bernard Herrmann

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Since Citizen Kane is once again making headlines as “the greatest American film,” here are some  excerpts of a lecture and Q & A session with Bernard Herrmann from his appearance at The George Eastman House Museum, in Rochester, New York in October of 1973.  

One very interesting point that Herrmann makes here, is that Citizen Kane originally opened without any titles or studio logos. Since this has now become so commonplace, it’s yet another inovation where Welles was many years ahead of his time. Of course,  in 1973 Herrmann had no idea that his work would one day become available in high quality versions on DVD (and most of his Fox films in the fifties were recorded in stereo),  so the next time you watch Citizen Kane on DVD,  try skipping over the RKO logo and main title, to see how the film plays beginning with the pan up to the ‘No Tresspassing’ sign.       

Also, be sure to check out the beautiful radio scores Herrmann did for Welles,  courtesy of Store Hadji, on the Wellesnet Forum’s Radio page. Especially notable are The Moat Farm Murders which predates Herrman’s work on the psycho-thrillers he later became known for.  Also, there is what may possibly be one of Herrmann’s finest radio scores for Welles, the beautifully lyrical  D-Day broadcast of June 7, 1944:   

 http://www.box.net/shared/v0jh0yleu4 

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