Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

By LAWRENCE FRENCH

Orson Welles began his career as a stage actor at the Gate Theatre, in Dublin, Ireland on October 13, 1931.  At the time Herbert Hoover was the President of  The United States of  America.

Orson Welles ended his career as a stage actor at the Gaiety Theate, in Dublin, Ireland in March, 1960. At the time John Kennedy (an Irishman) was President of  The United States of America.
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Since I've always considered Orson Welles Falstaff (the movie) to be his greatest cinematic acheivement, I've often wondered why his ghost staging of Chimes at Midnight in Dublin in 1960 has been so ignored in most Welles biographies.  (more...)

Richard Frances's play Obediently Yours, Orson Welles was published by Oberon Books earlier this year in a volume entitled Hollywood Legends: 'Live' on stage.

Besides the Welles show, it features two additional plays, one on Marlene Dietrich, the other about James Dean, along with an introduction by Simon Callow.  Dr. France has graciously given his permission for Wellesnet to post his preface to the play here.  In addition, Glenn Anders has alerted us to an audio interview with Richard France you can listen to Here.  It includes comments about Richard France's two books on Welles, The Theatre of  Orson Welles (sadly, still out of print) and Orson Welles on Shakespeare.

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INTRODUCTION TO OBEDIENTLY YOURS, ORSON WELLES

By Richard France

Orson Welles was rightfully contemptuous of academics, refusing all the honorary degrees that he was offered and heaping scorn on those of his “learned “bee-ographers” who dared to base our writings about his life and  accomplishments on anything other than the charming fairy-tales that he had so skillfully crafted over the years.

Frankly, it’s hard to fault him on either count. These, after all, were the same fairy-tales that sustained him long after the “pigeons” (as he called potential investors) stopped returning his phone calls. And had he lived long enough to witness the birth of nano-technology, there can be no doubt that he, too, would have recognized it as the only known substance on the face of this earth smaller than the mind of an academic.

I was living on a small farm in southern Maine at the time, annotating the third and final play-script – the enormous crazy-quilt known as “Five Kings”  -- for “Orson Welles on Shakespeare,” when I received an offer from the University of  Southern California to spend a year as visiting associate professor with their (so-called) Theatre Division, now even more pretentiously known as its School of Theatre.  “Stay put,” I was told, especially by the very few academics whom I respected. “That place is known on campus as USC’s own little gulag..”

I’d been eking out a living by doing voice-overs in Boston, a two-hour drive from my home. And while debt-free, there were no wind-falls awaiting me in Maine. So, the opportunity to triple my average income for a year, plus a $2500 stipend to pay for the visuals and to index the “Welles on Shakespeare” book, plus a subsidized apartment above the smog line in Laurel Canyon proved irresistible. I was also able to convince myself that since we’d be  parting company in such short order, even the vilest and most insecure of my colleagues would realize  that I was no threat to them.  Silly me !

Some years earlier, the Asian-American company, East West Players, had produced “Station J,” my epic about the evacuation and internment of our Japanese population during World War Two. So, when I alerted my good friend, Mako that I’d be in Los Angeles, he invited me to return to East West as his dramaturg. In addition, a number of my voice-over clients in Boston apprised me of a recording studio in L.A. where, through a process known as phone-patching, we could continue working together.

Did I say triple my income? Mako introduced me to an L. A. agent, and I was soon recording promos and commercials for clients out there, as well. From the outset, it was agreed to that none of these outside activities were to interfere with my primary responsibility, which was to my students. Even so, I soon found myself in the cross-hairs of a particularly venomous assistant professor.

“I don’t see how Dr. France can continue doing everything he’s doing,” she hissed at one of our faculty meetings, prompting two of the deadest of the department’s dead-wood to bob their hollowed-out heads in agreement.

“Eventually, something has to suffer.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“We hope it won’t be your classes, Richard,” the older, and even dumber, of the two dead-woods chimed in.

My assurances that I would never allow that to happen, and it never did, seemed to put the matter at rest. Or so I imagined. In fact, the poison has only just begun to spread.  When the time came, and my student evaluations far surpassed my “bitch noir,” she merely dismissed these results as “gender distinction,” and intensified her campaign to discredit me.

Early in the second semester, I was in my office, with the door open, when one of my graduate students, an acting major from South Africa, appeared, crying hysterically. “My mother!” she blurted out. “She’s dead!”  All I could think of was trying to comfort her as I guided her to a chair. We sat across from each other, holding hands, as she revealed what happened. Not only was her mother’s death completely unexpected, by the time word of it reached my student it was too late for her to return to South Africa for the funeral.

The following week, I found myself in the provost’s office, charged with sexually harassing the student whom I had simply tried to comfort. Also present was my dean, the very person who had persuaded me to spend that year at USC, looking even more sanctimonious than usual. “What would you have done” I asked him, making no attempt to disguise my anger, “let her fall on the floor?” (He didn’t know it at the time but his days at USC were also numbered.)

Confronting one’s accuser is (supposedly) a corner-stone of American justice. It wasn’t my student, that I was sure of. But when I asked who then (as if I couldn’t guess), I was denied that information on the grounds that I might also get it into my head to harass my accuser. And given my angry reaction to the disgusting charges I was facing, both my dean and the provost considered this a real possibility.

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IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE

Four artists respond to the 1955  stage play written and directed by Orson Welles, that Welles considered his greatest work in the Theatre.

Cartel Gallery
114-116 Amersham Vale (in the courtyard of the Old Police Station)
London SE14

Adam Chodzko / Côme Ciment / Anthea Hamilton / Jacopo Miliani

Curated by Ariella Yedgar and Rosie Cooper

28 May - 16 July 2011

Private View:  27 May 6:30pm -  till late

Wednesday - Saturday 12-4pm.
Late opening Friday 24 June 7-11pm.

Moby Dick inspired a lifelong obsession in Orson Welles.  So much so, that he directed and appeared in at least three different adaptations of the novel: once on stage and twice in film.

Welles's interpretations of Moby Dick included a 1955 play he wrote and directed about a theatre company's rehearsal of the Melville story, which featured newcomers Patrick McGoohan, Joan Plowright and Kenneth Williams, and starred the director himself as Captain Ahab.  It is said that Welles considered the theatre hall to be the belly of the whale, in which the actors are unwittingly trapped - much as, in the novel, the crew are caught on the ship.  Soon after the theatre production finished its run at the Duke of York's Theatre,  Welles shot a film version in two London theatres  that included additional cast members such as Sir Christopher Lee. It has long been presumed lost.  16 years later, Welles made another attempt at his own film version, in which he played all the major parts.  Some of this footage was edited together into a 22-minute short film,  but at this time the film is unavailable for public viewing.

In the Belly of the Whale is a response to Welles's unremitting and ultimately unfinished film project.  It considers the theme of rehearsal and its related notions of incompleteness, version and repetition.  The exhibition features new works by Adam Chodzko, Côme Ciment, Jacopo Miliani, and a recent piece by Anthea Hamilton, along with contextual material.

A rare contact sheet of Brian Brake's photos of  Welle's 1955 London stage production can be seen Here.

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Adam Chodzko has made a film for a damaged projector, set in a theatre, and objects for actors to use in rehearsal.  Côme Ciment has articulated elements from Moby Dick and the exhibition's premise with different gestures that appear throughout the exhibition space.

Anthea Hamilton's airy room divider Untitled (Rope Divider) (2009/2011) is made predominantly of knotted rope - the technique for which was inspired by John Huston's film Moby Dick.  A large metal ring acts as a portal between the real space of the exhibition and a possible space of fiction.

Working with found images of a theatrical origin, Jacopo Miliani imagines a casting for some of the secondary characters in Moby Dick.

In the Belly of the Whale will include  a programme of associated events, to be announced shortly.

Like Welles's play,  this show is itself a rehearsal for a larger event that the curators are developing in parallel.

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About the Artists:

Adam Chodzko
Chodzko works in a variety of media that have included performance, film, drawing and sculpture.  His work is conceptual, and often lyrical and fantastical.  Working directly with the people and places that surround him, Chodzko's art focuses on culture's edges, endings, displacements and disappearances.  He has exhibited extensively, most recently at venues and exhibitions including: Tate St Ives, Cornwall; Museum d'Arte Moderna, Bologna; Athens Foundation, Athens; PS1, New York; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland.  In 2002 he received awards from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, London, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art, New York.

Côme Ciment
Côme Ciment is one of the many identities of artist Olivier Castel, who makes work under a variety of different names, often collaged from those of other artists.  Similarly, his art takes on - and re-imagines - a range of broad cultural references, including literature and art, with a characterisitic lightness of touch and humorous approach.  Previous exhibitions include 'Variety;, London (2011), and 'Ribbons: The Shape of an Exhibition', Auto Italia, London (2010), both solo shows; an intervention entitled 'The Fox is Concentrating, Trying to Make the Exhibition Disappear', for the Zabludowicz Collection, London (2011); 'Tableau Vivnat: A Wandering Retrospective', Prospect New Orleans, (2010); and 'How Large the World is in the Light of the Lamps', Curzon Soho Cinema, London (2008), in collaboration with Kazimierz Jankowski.

Anthea Hamilton
The physicality of bodies and objects are a source of pleasure for Anthea Hamilton.  She combines disparate elements (music, films, images from men's magazines, rope, the silhouette of a woman's leg, a melon, a rubber mask of Bart Simpson, etc.) to uncanny effect in her work, which takes different forms, including installations, mobiles, films and paintings.  Recent solo exhibitions include: 'Anthea Hamilton', IBID Projects, London (2009); 'Spaghetti Hoops', La Salle de bains, Lyon (2009); and Kusntverein Freiburg, Germany (2009).  Recent group exhibitions include: 'Savage Messiah', Rob Tufnell at Sutton Lane, London (2011); 'Newspeak: British Art Now', Saatchi Gallery, London (2010), 'Wunderkammer', me Collectors Room, Berlin (2010); and 'Small Collections', Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2009).

Jacopo Miliani
Through his interdisciplinary practice (installations, videos, collages, performances), Jacopo Miliani challenges the role of representation as a mimesis of reality and its placement in contemporary society.  Using the subjectivity of the viewer in relation to mass culture, Jacopo reflects upon image and audience, often using his personal archive of quotations and found images in ambiguous ways to create a work that can only be 'completed' in the audience's mind.  Recent exhibitions include 'Italian Wave', Artissima, Turin (2010); a screening in relation to the Derek Jarman retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2008).  In 2009, he was granted the Platform Garanti International Residence Programme in Istanbul.  He has also shown work at Villa Romana, Florence; FormContent, London; and has recently contributed to the International Performance Festival at Galeria Vermelho in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

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About The  Cartel Gallery:
Cartel is an independent not-for-profit platform for curators in South East London.  Launched in the summer of 2010, it showcases about six projects a year.  Housed in a black shipping container, Cartel's programme is decided by a flexible consortium of international members.

By LAWRENCE FRENCH

I have recently been talking with Michael Dawson, the producer of the 1992 restored version of Othello, who explained some of the many problems he encountered while working on the restoration of the film. The interview will be published shortly on Wellesnet’s main page, and hopefully may led to a three-DVD reissue of Othello, that would contain three different versions of the film, as has proven so successful with Touch of Evil and Mr. Arkadin.

You can see images from Orson Welles's Othello on our facebook page HERE.

The three versions of Othello that should be be included on the DVD would be these:

First,  Orson Welles’s European cut of the film, which featured spoken titles.

Second, the original 1955 United Artists cut released in America, which replaced the spoken titles by Welles, with printed ones, along with a much re-worked soundtrack, that changed many line readings and added much more of Welles’s own voice over narration.

This was the version that Criterion released to great acclaim on Laserdisc in 1993, and it should be noted that whatever flaws these versions may contain, they were both approved and edited by Orson Welles himself.

Finally,  a newly corrected version of the 1992 “restored” Othello,  that would be most welcome, since the original Academy Entertainment release on both VHS and DVD was seriously flawed, by using the wrong elements for the transfer!

This astounding news became quite apparent to me after I did an  A and B comparison of the little seen VHS tape of Othello that Michael Dawson supplied to me, that was put out by Cinar Video and distributed by the Utah based Feature Films For Families (Shades of Macbeth in Salt Lake City).

Apparently Castle Hill had mistakenly used the “unrestored” elements of the print, which featured white speckles running though out many scenes that is quite common in older films, due to “emulsion chipping and base abrasions.”  What is supremely ironic about this, is that in the restoration documentary on the Othello DVD, it shows how these very blemishes were removed from the film, and then through the incompetence of some unknown person, the “unrestored” elements were included for the actual DVD transfer!

Mr. Dawson attempted to correct this situation, but he was in a position much like Welles was through most of his career, where nobody wanted to listen to him.  The result is that most of the released versions of the "restored " Othello are not restored at all, as they don't represent the expensive digital image correction that was done on the film!  Amazingly, none of the mainstream media critics seemed to noticed this, but that's not so very strange considering how little most of them know about their supposed field of expertise.

This, is no doubt, one reason why the Criterion laserdisc actually looked superior to the botched Academy Entertainment release that was released in 1993 on VHS, and subsequently on DVD.

Thankfully, this can now be corrected with a new DVD release of Othello.  It should also be no problem to include the original 1955 United Artists American release version, because as Mr. Dawson told me, the Welles Estate had no objection (in theory) to the Criterion laserdisc of Othello, except for the fact they had already made an agreement with Image Entertainment that specified they would release the "restored" version of the film on Laserdisc.  Thus, when Criterion opted to release the original American release print of the film, after Jonathan Rosenbaum pointed out some of the  flaws that went uncorrected in the restored version, the Welles Estate was naturally displeased, as they had already spent a lot of time and money on their new version of the film.

Amazingly, the flawed "restored" Othello went on to be hailed by most American critics as a wonderful restoration. Thankfully, Welles experts, such as Mr. Rosenbaum, and Variety’s Todd McCarthy, noted some of the mistakes it contained, which Mr. Dawson was also aware of but was apparently powerless to correct.

Now, however, the Welles Estate is currently planning to reissue Othello, so hopefully they will want to make a truly definitive version by finding a distributor who is willing to have Othello re-issued as a deluxe 3-DVD set, featuring the corrected "restored" version, as Mr.  Dawson intended,  along with the 1955 UA version, and the original European release version.

Needless to say, such a deluxe DVD package would obviously make much more money for the Welles Estate, and there are certainly many extras that could be included, starting with Welles’s own last film,  Filming Othello, and Ciro Giorgini’s Rosabella, a splendid, but little seen documentary that focuses on Welles’s time in Italy, which is where Orson met his third wife, Palo Mori, the mother of Beatrice Welles.

Much of the original Othello promotional material is also available, including the original UA pressbook, the British pressbook, a complete set of 8 11 x 14 lobby cards, and numerous stills and other promotional items.

I find it quite fascinating to compare the legacy of two of America's greatest theatrical and film directors, Orson Welles and Elia Kazan.

Both were famous stage directors who started out in the thirties, and went on to make their best-known work in the movies.  Mr. Kazan, however, became much more famous for his "naming names" in April, 1952 before that ridiculous and shameful side show of Congress known as The House Un-American Activities Committee. As Kazan was later to admit, this was a disgusting act on his part. Yet, like Orson Welles, Kazan was a lifelong liberal, and was (unlike Welles), actually a member of the communist party in 1935, when he was also a member of the Group Theatre, which shared the limelight on Broadway with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre in the thirties.

Of course, there is no doubt that Kazan was a great director of actors. Yet sadly, Kazan would never accept any responsibility for his “naming names.” In his autobiography, A Life, Kazan also goes into some detail to denigrate Orson Welles, for becoming fat and doing television commercials as he got older. Which made me think, “I wonder how I would view Orson Welles if he had appeared before the HUAC and had named names as Kazan did.”  That probably wouldn’t change how I feel about Welles work as an artist, but I certainly would have very little respect for Orson Welles as a moral voice if he had done what Kazan had done.  I think this is something any political artist must consider.  For instance, Jean-Luc Godard essentially turned down his Academy Award this year, which certainly gives him a great moral authority,  given that this same Academy had given Elia Kazan a Oscar for "Life Achievement " in 1999 .  Of  course, one of  Kazan's most famous discoveries,  turned down his Oscar in 1972 for The Godfather.

Welles, essentially did the same thing in 1970, by not showing up for his "honorary Oscar" even thought he was in Los Angeles to start work on The Other Side of the Wind.  In fact Hollywood's hypocrisy is well demonstrated by Welles receiving an "Honorary" Oscar in 1970 and then getting the third AFI life Achievement award in 1975.  It was precisely during those years that no Hollywood studio would come forth to back Welles and his new film.  In a way, who could blame them, as a Welles movie would probably be released to baffled reviews, and certainly not make very much money.  Today, there are still many who feel the The Other Side of the Wind should never even be shown. Yet in the seventies it was the era where everybody created whatever they wanted... and it often made money.  So the studios heads would back any young director, yet  "old man Welles " couldn't get any backing for his experimental movie  which was far more worthy than anything done by Michael Sarne, Barry Shear,  or any of the other young directors of that era!

Interestingly enough, both Kazan and Welles were very  political artists who naturally  made very political films, just as Godard does.  Kazan's last film was based on F. Scott's Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, who also wrote the short story Pat Hobby and Orson Welles, about Welles arrival in Hollywood in 1940.

Given the view Welles showed us about friends who later become traitors in Touch of Evil, Falstaff, and many of his other films,  I don’t imagine Welles would have ever have caved into pressure to testify against anyone he knew, as Mr. Kazan did.  Which is why I found it so strange to read Kazan  complaining about Orson Welles supposedly “selling out” by doing TV commercials in his book!

Meanwhile, for the the record, here are the names of the 11 people Kazan’s testimony helped to ruin when he betrayed them by naming their names before the HUAC in April, 1952:

Clifford Odets
Morris Carnovsky
Phoebe Brand
Tony Kraber
Sid Benson
Art Smith
Ann Howe
Paula Miller (Strasberg)
Lewis Leverett
Robert Reed
J. Edward Bromberg

So here is the young Mr. Kazan writing about Orson Welles direction of the Mercury Theatre in 1938, taken from Kazan on Directing.  I'd say that the young Kazan was envious of  Welles directing talent, and the "style" of his direction for the Mercury Theater.  Of course, at the time Kazan was  a mostly unknown name.  He had acted in several plays with the Group Theatre, and although he had already directed five plays, he was certainly not the big name he would later become, when he staged an acclaimed play by one of Welles'  first sponsors, Thorton Wilder (The Skin of my Teeth), followed by the sensational work he did with playwrights Arthur Miller (All My Sons, Death of a Salesman)  and Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real).

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STYLE IN THE THEATER

By Elia Kazan (1938)

Style in considered an arty term in the theatre. Yet when an agent advises a playwright that the only director for his play is George Abbott (for farce or musical) or Jed Harris (for drama), they are talking about “style,” the style of production. Even safe directors have a style. Any sensible agent would be only too happy to entrust his client’s play to Guthrie McClintic, for McClintic gives his play “tone.” He’s definitely the modern expression of the old school who believes that the theatre had to sell glamorous, mysterious, and legendary beautiful personalities, and surround them with sterling actors, and beautiful décor—featuring flowers and the latest chapeaux. Thus Mr. McClintic takes an energetic, wholesome, intelligent woman with considerable beauty but with about as much mystery as a bar of soap and creates out of her a theatrical personality. (Kazan is referring of course to Katherine Cornell, who Welles appeared with as an actor, in his first major theatrical production of a Shakespeare play, Romeo and Juliet) .

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Citizen Kane has a reputation as being the "best film ever made," but less well known is its reputation for inspiring more people to become filmmakers than perhaps any other movie.   Interestingly enough, Welles career as stage actor never seemed to provide the same kind of inspiration for younger actors as it did to directors, probably because of the great influence Elia Kazan and the Actor's Studio had on the stage shortly after Welles left Broadway in the forties for Hollywood.  However, many incidents in Welles's  own life have provided fertile material for many films and plays.  Among the plays are Richard France’s  Obediently Yours, Orson Welles, Austin Pendleton's Orson's Shadow and Mark Jenkins's  Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles, with Christian McKay.  Now comes the latest play on Orson Welles,  Blake Erickson's Pearls Before Swine, an Evening with Orson Welles, which will open in Sydney, Australia on September 12, 2010. (See pictures at the Wellesnet Facebook page HERE.)

After seeing a promotional clip for the show,  I was intrigued enough to ask Blake Erickson to tell me a bit more about the production and how it all came about:

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LAWRENCE FRENCH: How did you first become interested in Orson Welles and did seeing Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles have any influence on your doing the show?

BLAKE ERICKSON: Me And Orson Welles opening at about the same time as this show was quite a twist of fate. I was well into the process of writing the script before I even knew of the film. Having seen it, clearly Christian McKay is an actor of immense talent and I have huge respect for his portrayal;  similarly I enjoyed Zac Efron's performance, as well.  McKay certainly nailed it.  But his portrayal was set in a specific time and place, whereas mine is set much later, and at a different stage of his career.  The Welles in the film is filled with bravado and potential, and is yet to fully explore the consequences of his talent and ability. The Welles I play has experienced Hollywood, has been beaten around a lot more, and perhaps is a little more philosophical about his art and his own abilities.

You mentioned that you were asked to do the show, but was the idea of doing a one-man show on Orson Welles something you were already interested in before you were asked?

Orson Welles has always loomed large as a figure in my life, and as an actor I felt the reasons why I went into theatre were the same as his.  Not to draw any great similarities, as Welles was a genius, but this desire to create something that can inspire people was definitely common ground. When I first saw Citizen Kane as a teenager it was a revelation. Here was something so ahead of its time, and like Welles himself,  it is,  in word: prodigious.  However the idea that perhaps one day I would play Welles had seemed so incredibly distant.  How can you reproduce what he did?  How can anyone?  It turns out, only with a great deal of research and a certain level of ignorance -- the very things to which Welles credited the success of  Citizen Kane! So the show was an idea that was bubbling inside my head, until finally I was commissioned by the Sydney Fringe Festival to write and perform it.

What is the actual time frame of Welles's career that you cover in the show?

The play is set after the end of war;  he has completed Citizen Kane and has had The Magnificent Ambersons taken away from him, so he's become for a time this tragic character.  He goes out on the lecture circuit to make some money to fund future projects, and in his lecture he reflects on his life.

Are you also directing the play?

No, it's a complicated endeavor, certainly, and directing this would be too difficult for an actor flying solo. I've been extremely fortunate to be able to work with a director like Sarah Blackstone, who is one of those immensely talented people you have the fortune of working with from time to time.  She's a huge admirer of Welles's work, as well, so we've been kindred spirits throughout.

Since Welles's  career has been very well documented was there a particular area you wanted to show in the play that you felt may not have been that well known or written about?

Welles is internationally famous for his work, without question. So when you come to explore his life, that seems a logical starting point.  But I set the piece essentially in his 'lost years', immediately post-war, when he was out of Hollywood, and dabbling in various projects but essentially just trying to find his place in the world. Which is very typical of someone slightly younger, but Welles' childhood and teenage years were so action-packed it had to be pushed to his late-twenties and early-thirties.  Looking at those years, when he was rejected by a great many of his peers, when he found it difficult to work satisfactorily--I thought it would be fascinating to use that as a prism through which to look back on his career.  It is very much 'Welles on Welles', but an almost vulnerable Welles looking back on his fearless youth. That's not to say that I'm one of those people who believe he's a tragic figure, I think he created some extraordinary work in his later life.  But at this stage of his career, when he was 29 going on 30,  it was a difficult time for him.

As a stage actor, was Welles career in the Mercury Theatre inspiring to you?

His 'declaration of principles' for the Mercury Theatre is one of those things that has an almost sacred and emotional resonance!  When I came across what he'd written, it was a summation of everything.  And not just for me as an actor, but for actors everywhere.  We all sometimes have to make huge sacrifices to say what we want to say, and write what we want to write, and do what we want to do. Fortunately the stars can align and you can combine work with a great love, as has happened with this show. His philosophy, perhaps tempered with a slightly more conciliatory and democratic flavor remains in the modern theatre.  He definitely continues to inspire the way theatre works.

If the play is a compilation of Welles's written and spoken words, have you attempted to keep it mostly accurate, rather than trying to make a fictional re-creation of events in Welles’s life, as was the case with much of  Me and Orson Welles?

One of the things that people tend to forget about Orson Welles is how young he was during his most celebrated era. It's striking to watch the press conference he gave immediately after the War of the Worlds broadcast - he looks like he's about 16.  The way that Welles was established in the recent film was obviously older than he really was, and I felt that was a shame.  I find it incredibly engaging that at the time the film is set  he was just 22 years old. He was a kid. As impossible as it is to imagine Orson Welles as a 'kid'.  He was a human being with doubts and flaws, and not just a looming yet brilliant figure.  So with that in mind, I wanted to stick as strictly to the truth as possible. Now, some anecdotes were too delicious to sacrifice for the sake of historical accuracy, so fans of his 'Frozen Peas' tirade in particular will enjoy the imagining of a script editing session at CBS.  Also for the purposes of establishing a cohesive narrative I've written certain sections to act as bridges between his words,  but his own words comprise 85% to 90% of the entire piece.  And I think that's exactly the way he would have wanted it.

And final thoughts you'd care to make about Orson Welles?

I really hope at the end of this, that the public knows Orson Welles a little better as a person and not just a caricature. He was a man who constructed his own myth through hard work and the occasional exaggeration, so it's sometimes difficult to see the woods for the trees. I also hope that those people who know the work and the man may experience what it might be like if we still had him with us. I was born the year of his death, and I'll never have an opportunity to see him live.  As he says in my show, the desire to create art is equivalent to being able to 'touch creation'. I hope I've done him proud.

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The Archive of American Television in partnership with E1 Entertainment has just released Orson Welles 1953 Television debut as King Lear in a deluxe DVD package. It is highly recommended, since although this historic TV show is still mastered from a kinescope copy, it looks far better than the blurry VHS copies that have long been in circulation.

The DVD also comes with over 90-minutes of bonus features, including:

* A 5-minute preview of King Lear, including rehearsal footage of the blinding of Glouster's eyes, along with interviews with director Peter Brook and composer Virgil Thompson. Peter Brook also shows us a series of drawings, (presumably rendered by production designer Henry May), which are much more detailed and elaborate then what eventually ended up in the production itself. See a excerpt on YouTube HERE.

* A discussion on staging Shakespeare by Walter Kerr, including scenes from Hamlet.

* A 43-minute report from the Yale University Shakespeare Festival in 1954 by Omnibus host Alastair Cooke.

* Dr. Frank Baxter on the Globe Theater, with Mr. Baxter explaining William Shakespeare’s famed theatre (10 minutes).

* A nicely designed 16-page booklet with rare photos taken during the performance, and a comprehensive background essay by Simon Callow, along with a short introduction from director Peter Brook, who relates his memories of working with Orson Welles.

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Here is a review of King Lear that appeared in The New York Herald-Tribune:

ORSON WELLES AS KING LEAR ON TV IS IMPRESSIVE

By John Crosby
October 22, 1953 – The New York Herald Tribune

Orson Welles, a great ham of an actor, undertook the role of King Lear, a great ham of a part, on Omnibus last Sunday and was, I thought, enormously impressive. This was the great Orson’s television debut and it was a fortunate inspiration to cast him as Lear. No other part is big enough for Welles who suffers from gigantism of manner and mind.

Welles, whose five year sojourn abroad has added quite a lot of poundage to his face and the rest of him, was every inch a king, a phrase that came from Lear, and his voice, a redoubtable organ, was superb in declaiming some of the most sweeping poetry in all of Shakespeare.

(more...)

The members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have voted on this years nominees, and Christian McKay's performance as Orson Welles has not been nominated.

This is not really too much of a surprise, since there was absolutely no support for the film in terms of trade ads, or given the fact that everyone at Russell Schwartz's Anemic Marketing screwed things up so badly. Pandemic Marketing can now be branded as the Peppercorn-Wormser of this decade. A crew of publicity hacks who know next to nothing about the work of Orson Welles! I'd like to suggest that all independent producers hire them for their next project, especially if you want to have a huge failure!

Meanwhile, getting back to the actual Academy Award nominations, I found the selections to be quite interesting, especially since from my own ten-best list, every one of my choices received one or more nominations, excepting of course, Me and Orson Welles.

However as Christian McKay recently wrote to me, "the work is it's own reward." It certainly should not be based on the baubles and trinkets of getting any kind of award after the fact.

That may be true, but I still hoped Christian McKay would get nominated. I even thought I might bring him some good luck, because I had talked extensively with Martin Landau before he won the Oscar for playing another actor in Tim Burton's Ed Wood. I also spoke to two-time supporting actor Peter Ustinov, when he visited San Francisco during the restoration showing of Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus and he explained in great detail what happened on the night of his first Oscar win in 1960.

In any event, the Academy did nominate the great Canadian actor, Christopher Plummer, after 52 years of being in the wilderness. Ironically, Mr. Plummer's movie debut came in the same year as Welles's Touch of Evil, for playing the early environmental crusader Walt Murdock in Nicholas Ray's Wind Across The Everglades. Of course, neither Touch of Evil or Wind across the Everglades was nominated for a single Oscar in 1958. Gigi, however, won (at the time) a record nine Oscars that year. Which is why nobody I know really takes the Academy Awards very seriously.

Christopher Plummer, it should be noted, was a big fan of Orson Welles, although they never got to work together on a movie. But in 1967, after Welles met Plummer on the set of Oedipus Rex, in Greece, he asked Plummer to play Marc Antony in a proposed film version of Julius Caesar, with Paul Scofield as Brutus and Welles playing Caesar. Of course, that project never happened, but Plummer would have been a ready and willing participant to appear with Welles, even if there was no money to pay his salary!

Naturally, the money never did appear, and a few years later there was a terrible movie version made of Julius Caesar. It featured several actors Welles knew and had directed beforehand, including Charlton Heston, John Gielgud and Christopher Lee. Ironically, both Heston and Gielgud were great fans of Welles work as a director of Shakespeare, so one has to wonder why they didn't try to get Welles to direct this awful film version of Julius Caesar, rather than Stuart Burge!

Since Christopher Plummer was such a great fan of Welles, I find it especially interesting that he should be nominated this year for playing the great genius of letters that was Leo Tolstoy. Here is what Plummer told Susan King at The Los Angeles Times, about playing Tolstoy:

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER: How do you play a genius? It's impossible. And how do you write a script about a genius? Since you can't play a genius, you play absolutely the opposite, and that's what I tried to do with Michael (Hoffman's) encouragement. Playing great people or greatly fascinating historical figures, the way to do it is to play against it.

Now with Leo Tolstoy as a prelude, here is part three of my talk with Christian McKay about playing another genius of the arts...

*****

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Did you use anything you learned from other directors you worked with for creating the role of Orson Welles as a stage director?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: No, because I have never worked with a director who came anywhere near the Old Man. Richard is the closest. He carries the film in his head like Orson, but is very different in personality.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: You've also played a stage director before this in the play Memory, which was seen off-Broadway.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, and perhaps I will be a director of actors someday. I hope my little production company, Atomic80, can put on my revised Orson Welles play, Moby Dick Re-Rehearsed. Norman Lloyd wants me to play in Galileo, by Bertold Brecht, which he produced with Jack Houseman, that was directed by Joseph Losey and starred Charles Laughton. Norman has also suggested a marvelous Chekhov short story as a one-man show for me and I would love to direct Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. There are lots of possibilities, but first things first and this year it is my Goyescas documentary.

(more...)

On Tuesday morning we will find out the five nominees for best supporting actor. Might Christian McKay's portrayal of Orson Welles be among them? We will shall know shortly...

In the meantime, after talking extensively with Christian McKay when he visited San Francisco, I still found I had many unanswered questions left, so Mr. McKay graciously agreed to e-mail me his replies for the readers of Wellesnet. Part II is below and will be followed by Part III on February 2 -- whether Mr. McKay is nominated for an Academy Award, or not.

**********

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Me and Orson Welles began with the novel by Robert Kaplow, who also was responsible for introducing you to Richard Linklater. When did you first meet Robert Kaplow?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Robert’s friend, Marc Lanzoff, patiently waited outside the theatre for me (in New York, where McKay was playing Orson Welles in his one-man play, Rosebud). I often think that he could have left at any time and that would have been that, but Marc waited and set the whole roller coaster going. He insisted that Robert should see the show and make the journey in from New Jersey to Manhattan. I remember meeting Robert after a Saturday matinee and he was a little shaken. We became friends immediately and would send each other confidential reports during the whole financing process.
Robert informed Richard Linklater about my performance. Richard had a sports injury and the doctors insisted that he do no flying. So the story goes, he was intrigued but was following the doctors orders. However, when he got off the phone with Robert The New York Times review was on his desk, and Richard caught the next flight.

I remember assigning the role of Rita Hayworth in the play to the New York Times critic, who I’d been informed was sitting in the middle of the second row and was quite a looker. Also recounted in the play is the wonderful story of the critic Percy Hammond of the Herald Tribune, who gave the Voodoo Macbeth a bad review. The real Voodoo witch doctors in the cast sought permission from a disbelieving Orson to put beri-beri on the hapless critic, who was in the hospital within twenty-four hours and dead within forty-eight. I then asked the audience: “Do we have any critics in tonight?” and the wonderful tag “check out your life insurance”. Never did a critic raise their hand. The New York Times critic hated the play, but saved herself by being very generous about my performance!

I looked at Orson’s entrance in the script Richard had sent to me, just before walking on stage one night. I threw it against the wall because it was so excellent and I wanted to do it! I read Robert's book in one sitting in my apartment on West 70th street.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: If you’ve seen RKO 281 or several of the other movies that have featured Orson Welles as a character, sometimes the actors who have played Welles have sometimes been viciously attacked. Were you at all concerned about that if you didn’t pull off the performance?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: I have watched them all, although I didn’t know they were viciously attacked! It seems a little over the top in reaction to an actors performance! I’m afraid in my cocoon of ignorance I never contemplated not pulling it off. I am very optimistic in my work, more so than in my life.

I have been asked several times, unfairly, what I thought of the other actors portrayals. Actors are naturally proprietary about their roles; if I were playing Richard III or Hamlet, I would view Olivier with suspicion. The question reminded me, mischievously, of a wonderful anecdote between two great Bach interpreters. I think Landowska won the day by saying “You play Bach your way and I’ll play it his.” Of course, I dug myself into a hole telling this story in relation to Welles, as I was immediately required to explain myself!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Richard Linklater flew you to Austin to film a screen test. What was that like for you, having had such little movie experience?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Richard used his own money, like Orson, to fly me to Austin, and put me up at The Driskill (which reminded me irresistibly of the Amberson Mansion – as did Orson’s last home, but more about that later), and we shot the screen-test. I remember doing the Amberson's radio scene in the back of a cab. Rick had hired a 1930s car and actors to play Richard Samuels and Jack Houseman, very fine actors, too. We also did one of the confrontations with Houseman and a George Coulouris moment. Screenwriter Vince Palmo worked on the crew and I also met Holly Palmo, too and we became friends immediately. However, when I saw the screen-test, several months later, I was shocked at how theatrical my acting was. It was a harsh first lesson in screen acting, but Rick told me not to worry and that he would get me there. He’s a truly wonderful teacher. There’s a good story about a Hollywood mogul asking Rick who he had in mind to play Welles. Richard handed him my screen test and said, “I’ve got Orson.”

(more...)

I thought there could be no greater accolade than getting to play Orson Welles in my first film but being Bafta-nominated is very close. I am very grateful.

--Christian McKay, quoted in The Independent

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

To celebrate Christian McKay's BAFTA nomination as "Best Supporting Actor," my longtime video director, Al San Miguel has posted two excerpts from my interview with Christian McKay and director Richard Linklater on YouTube.

Part ONE

Part TWO

In addition, you can now ask Christian McKay questions directly, as he is tweeting from the official Me and Orson Welles Twitter page.

Christian's tweets all end with a "CM."

There is also a recent interview with Christian McKay at The New York Times Award Season Blog HERE, where Mr. McKay reveals that Richard Linklater paid for the one and only "Best Supporting Actor" trade ad for Me and Orson Welles out of his own pocket!

In commenting on the N. Y. Times interview at his BLOG, Jonathan Rosenbaum points out an amusing error that has happened rather frequently in the numerous interviews Mr. McKay has given about Orson Welles. Namely, that very often Mr. McKay's questioners don't seem to know much about Welles's career, which leads to mis-spellings of film titles, such as "Kane" becoming "Caine," or cases of the names of people Welles knew and worked with getting mangled in print. Astonishingly enough, one interviewer apparently didn't even know who Charlie Chaplin was!

One of the most ridiculous questions McKay gets asked appeared recently in Tom O'Neil's interview for The Los Angeles Times.

Mr. O'Neil begins by asking "Do you think Orson Welles was aware of what a monster he was?" and then goes on to proclaim, "Welles was one of the great tragic figures of Hollywood!"

The gracious Mr. McKay winces at those mis-statements, but goes on to try and gently instruct O'Neil in the error of his ways. It's a bravura performance!

The recent BBC Four showing of the first episode from Orson Welles Sketchbook dovetails nicely into something Christian McKay and I recently discussed during dinner when Mr. McKay was in San Francisco to promote Me and Orson Welles.

Namely, how Welles work in television, which has probably remained the least celebrated aspect of his work, is also in many regards, quite as sensational as his work in film, theatre and radio.

What is amazing to me, is that it took my talk with Mr. McKay, along with a article by Ben Walters on Welles television work at Columbia University's website, to make me realize just how much Welles did for the artistry of television.

Ah, but therein lies the rub...

Because for me, at least just the mention of the words "artistry" and "television" makes me blanch. Yet there is no doubt Welles brought his artistic gifts to television, as can be attested by his TV shows such as Fountain of Youth, In The Land of Don Quixote, Orson's Bag, The Immortal Story, and even his many guest appearances on television shows like Dean Martin, Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett.

Christian McKay and I discussed Orson Welles and his work for television in this excerpt from our long talk, below, which is followed by a complete transcript of the first episode of Orson Welles Sketchbook.

I found this missing episode from the Sketchbook series especially entertaining, as it sets the tone and ideas that will be presented in the following five shows, and even if the events Welles talks about are not totally believable, they are certainly quite entertaining. I for one would love to hear Welles expound about the night "The police had to be called out to protect him from the wrath of an Irish audience. But that’s another story. Maybe I’ll tell that some other time..."

What I also found to be especially interesting, is that both Mr. Welles and Mr. McKay talk about the innocence they experienced when working as actors for the first time (albeit in different mediums.)

In Welles case, on the stage in Dublin in 1931, and Mr. McKay, his first major role in a movie shot at the Gaiety Theater, on the Isle of Man, just off the east coast of Ireland, over 75 years later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

LAWRENCE FRENCH: If you should get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Me and Orson Welles, I’m sure you’d want to promote a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Orson Welles work in the theatre.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: But I’ve already seen two of them for Welles.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Yes, but you can get three. Welles doesn’t have a star for theatre yet, and you can get one for television as well. Bob Hope actually has four stars, but I don’t think Welles will ever get a star for his work in American television.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: You don’t think so?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: No, not in this country, anyway.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: What about The Fountain of Youth?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Oh, that’s right!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: That was astonishing!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: You’re absolutely right, and if you consider all the TV shows he did in Europe, he should have four stars. Wouldn’t that be terrific! Bob Hope and Orson Welles would each have four stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame! It's just that I don’t know if they would actually consider Welles for his television work in America.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: What about Around the World with Orson Welles, and Orson Welles Sketchbook?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: They are great, but I’m not sure if they would consider that work, because they were made in England. Here they remember Welles for his appearances on the Dean Martin Roasts and Johnny Carson.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: But what about all the skits he did? Putting on his make-up for Falstaff on The Dean Martin Show. That is absolutely brilliant.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: You're right! He also did a staggering version of Shylock on The Dean Martin Show. It was the best scene of Shylock I’ve ever seen. Stefan Drossler used it in his compilation of scenes from the various versions Welles made for The Merchant of Venice, and the version Welles did on Dean Martin is far and away the best reading of “Hath not a Jew eyes” he ever did.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Orson was absolutely brilliant on those shows! And that was all television work.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: And one of the greatest speeches ever given on an awards show was Welles acceptance speech after he received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1975. That was a television show broadcast on his old station, CBS.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Where he talks about “My own particular contrariety.” That’s the title of my book, you know.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Yes, it's where Welles quotes Samuel Johnson.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: I love that speech and I wrote a book called My Own Particular Contrariety, which is about me playing Orson. I had a publisher in London who wanted to do it, but I suddenly got cold feet. I thought, “No, this is ridiculous this is one the first good roles I’ve ever had, so it’s silly." I wanted to share the experience, but it was brutally honest about other people, as well as myself. My own failings, and it talks at great length about preparing for the role and playing Welles, but I thought it was too early.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Orson Welles' Sketchbook

Episode One - April 24, 1955

On: Stage props, an earthquake in Hollywood and debuting at the Gate Theatre in Dublin

ORSON WELLES: I hope you haven’t gathered from the title of this that you are in for a televised art exhibit. The sketchbook part of it is frankly, just a prop. A prop is a stage term, it’s an abbreviation of the expression, stage property. Anything that you may see up on stage besides an actor and the scenery is likely to be a prop. For example Yorick’s skull is a prop, Romeo’s vial of poison and the telephone in Dial M For Murder, they’re all props. There are also props in real life -- when we are self-conscious we put our hands to our neckties and light a cigarette -- all that sort of thing. In other words a prop is just what it means in the dictionary. It is something to prop us with. It’s a crutch, something to lean on. So the sketchbook is exactly that, it’s a prop, something for me to turn to when I lose the thread of what I’m talking about and it’s something for you to look at besides my face which ought to come as a nice break in the horrid monotony.

I remember the first night I was ever in Hollywood, I would have been very grateful indeed for a prop like the sketchbook, because I did lose the thread. I was speaking after dinner. I had been introduced as a great after dinner speaker, I don’t know quite why, because I’m not, but I had been and this was a great Hollywood dinner with every star I’d ever seen in my life. I was tremendously impressed and there they all were with a lot of other grand people besides: Maharajahs and all kinds of titled folk. I had been called upon and of course, being very frightened and very eager to please I started a funny story which I heard that day. I had gone on for a while when it dawned on me that I had forgotten how it ended. I continued with the story and I hoped that somehow I would find an ending. Somehow find a way to invent one. The people were all looking at me very eagerly, waiting for the finish, because they knew that although the story was very boring, it must be boring for a purpose. Obviously it was boring because the end was going to be so tremendously amusing that they all looked up at me eagerly and I continued and continued and I thought “how in heavens name can I get of this thing? I could pretend to faint or drop dead, or rush out and yell “fire,” or continue to invent comical finishes that elicited no titters whatsoever -- quietly and secretly praying to myself to heaven -- and then my prayer was granted. Ever since then I’ve been a great believer in the efficacy of prayer because just as I’d given up hope, just as I was wondering how I could get out of the situation, the walls started to shake, the chandelier fell down from the ceiling onto the table, people jumped under the table – this was California, remember – it was an earthquake! So I was saved and my Hollywood career was saved by an earthquake. I can’t pretend my drawings are any sort of an earthquake, but they’ll have to stand in for that sort of distraction.

(more...)

In 1994 I had the great pleasure of talking with the veteran film actor Martin Landau for over two hours about his role playing Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's wonderful movie Ed Wood. Mr. Landau went on to win an Academy Award the following year.

I also had the pleasure of talking with the rising young actor, Christian McKay about playing Orson Welles in a film I believe he may well be nominated for as the "Best Supporting Actor" Academy Award. However, I'm afraid the odds are now rising against him, due rather ironically to the publicists of his own movie!

In fact, I must say these mistakes seem to have been made primarily by a former New Line Cinema publicist, Elissa Greer-Arko, who I gather is the lady in charge of the terrible publicity campaign that Freestyle releasing has mounted for Me and Orson Welles.

As Mick LaSalle notes, in his article in The San Francisco Chronicle, Christian McKay is being touted as best actor in the DVD screeners that are being sent out to Academy members.

Yet every award Mr. McKay has so far received has been as "Best supporting actor." So you can see how foolish it is to try and position Mr. McKay as a nominee for "Best Actor."

All I can say, is if I was in charge, and of course, I'm not, I would immediately terminate Ms. Greer-Arko. She clearly knows nothing about Orson Welles or anything about the film she is supposed to be promoting!

Every indication shows that the film tracks well with older viewers, but the so-called Zac Efron fans have not showed up. This can easily be confirmed by market research, but Freestyle has marketed the film as if teenagers will be rushing out to see it.

What I can also say is what a terrible job Elissa did as a New Line Cinema publicist on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.

I can personally attest I actually had to call and implore producer Barrie Osborne to get photos released to me for the over 100 pages of favorable material I wrote on the the three films in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy!

Thankfully, as can be seen in my interview with Cristian McKay, below, he insisted talking with me for more than the scant 15 minutes that were initially "allotted" by Ms. Greer-Arko.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHRISTIAN McKAY: You know I got another nomination today and it surprised the hell out of me. I got a text message from a friend saying congratulations for your nomination from the Independent Spirit Awards. I didn't even know what they were. But how did you like my performance in the movie?

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Oh, I really liked it. In fact, I think you have a very good shot at an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, although Elissa Greer, the woman in charge at Freestyle Releasing told me they will be pushing you in the “Best Actor” category. I must say I think she is making a terrible mistake, because it will only confuse Academy voters and probably split the vote, so you will probably end up not getting nominated in either category!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Well, it seems to me it’s none of my business. They all go off in these little huddles and meetings, and I’m a rookie so I really don’t know. I haven’t read many reviews, but they tell me occasionally about a good review but they don’t tell me about the bad ones. Of course actors are more interested in the bad ones, because all actors are masochists. (laughter.)

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Elissa also refused to allow you to talk to Wellesnet for more than 15 minutes while you were in San Francisco, so I must say I don't think she knows what is best for the movie or any thing about Orson Welles, for that matter!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Well, they started to tell me that today and I said "NO." They said, but you have to have your dinner, and I said, "well, we can have our dinner together." I told them there is no problem as far as I am concerned. The most important person for me to talk to is the Welles scholar! But sometimes they over complicate things and I don't have a a personal publicist and I wouldn't want one, quite frankly.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Do you really prefer to look at the bad reviews?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Only from a safe distance, but sometimes they can be very useful, especially if they are constructive. This is a very honest admission, but we both love the old man so I don’t mind admitting it, but I almost feel guilty when people say they like the performance!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: There really haven’t been many bad notices for the movie, and almost none for your performance, but I did read one I thought was completely absurd because they complained that nothing dramatic happens in the story. Apparently they were expecting to see explosions or car crashes!

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, as if the recreation of the greatest American Shakespeare performance isn’t dramatic enough.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: If you do get nominated for best supporting actor, you will be up against Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds? Did you see that movie?

CHRISTIAN McKAY: Yes, I did and I thought he gave a really marvelous performance!

LAWRENCE FRENCH: Besides Christoph Waltz, there is Christopher Plummer to consider, who did quite a fabulous job as Leo Tolstoy. And Christopher Plummer has never even been nominated! He also recently did King Lear on Broadway, and it was a big critical success.

CHRISTIAN McKAY: I'd love to play King Lear. It's so exhausting, although Laurence Olivier played it when he was only two years older than me, but he was Olivier. Somebody asked me what my ideal Shakespearian role would be and I said Richard III. I'd also rather play King Lear than Hamlet, although I'd still love to play Hamlet.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: That reminds me of something Morris Carnovsky told me. "Everything in Shakespeare is rewarding. You can’t compare one part to the exclusion of another." So if you are a Shakespearian actor, as both Morris and Orson Welles were, you'd like to play in as many of the the great parts Shakespeare wrote as is possible. Then, later on when I talked to Vincent Price he told me the three roles of Shakespeare's he really wanted to do where King Lear, Shylock and Prospero.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHRISTIAN McKAY as Orson Welles

Nomination and Awards tally:

Broadcast Film Critics Association

Best Supporting Actor

Nominated for a British Independent Film Award in 'Most promising Newcomer' category

Variety on Christian McKay's chances as a nominee for "Best Supporting Actor."

"McKay turns in one of the year's most compelling turns as the iconic filmmaker working on the 1937 Broadway production of "Julius Caesar." McKay captures both Welles' brilliance and high-strung temper.

--Stuart Levine.

Christian McKay chances as a BAFTA nominee for "Best Supporting Actor."

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