Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

May 6, 1943: Orson Welles leaves his U.S. Army physical after being rejected for military service and given a 4-F draft status. (Los Angeles Times photo)

By RAY KELLY

Throughout World War II, Orson Welles unreservedly supported U.S. involvement overseas, both on the airwaves and printed page. His work with the Mercury Wonder Show in entertaining servicemen is also well-documented.

What has been forgotten with the passage of time is the intense heat Welles took for not serving in the military. His foes at the Hearst newspapers and critics at the American Legion openly questioned Welles' patriotism over a two-year period.

The pressure placed on Welles and how it impacted his cinematic work – notably his decision to shoot the ill-fated "It's All True" – is well-documented in Joseph McBride's book "Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?"

Pressure began in 1941 with Hearst columnist Louella Parsons making calls to the local draft board demanding to know why Welles had not been called into service. Similarly, the American Legion publicly questioned Welles' military status in light of his left wing political views. (The former was angered by "Citizen Kane" and the latter by the radio production of "His Honor the Mayor.")

Welles initially received 1-B status, meaning he was unfit for active duty but available for limited duty. That status was altered to 1-A (available for unrestricted military service) in February 1943.

Welles was targeted for enjoying the Hollywood life, while other men his age were fighting the Axis powers on the battlefields of Europe or the Pacific. (more...)

An opposition Iranian satellite channel based in London aired “Genocide,” the acclaimed Academy Award-winning documentary on the Holocaust produced by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. It was broadcast with Farsi subtitles on January 25.

The Wiesenthal Center coordinated the showing to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.

Welles, along with Elizabeth Taylor, narrated the film, which won the Oscar for best documentary feature in 1982.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has maintained the Holocaust – and the extermination of 6 million Jews at the hands of Nazis – never happened.

“It’s a payback for the Iranian regime,” center founder and dean Rabbi Marvin Hier told Fox News of the broadcast. “They want to lock society. They want to deny the Holocaust, and now their whole population can see the truth and there’s nothing the Ayatollahs or Ahmadinejad can do about it.”
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By LAWRENCE FRENCH

In the fall of 1944, Orson Welles wrote an article for FREE WORLD which supported his hero FDR, even though Welles must have been highly distraught at FDR letting Henry Wallace being dumped as his Vice-President from the ticket.  Harry Truman became Henry Wallace's replacement, and of course we have no way of knowing what would have happened if Henry Wallace had stayed on the ticket and become President after President Roosevelt died, but I think it's rather safe to say we wouldn't have had one of the most shameful era's in American history, starting with the Communist witch hunts, that had been ongoing but only gained traction while Harry Truman was President.  The most significant Truman decision was of course using Nuclear weapons against Japan. (more...)

By LAWRENCE FRENCH

During the month before this year's Presidential election, Wellesnet will be presenting  some of the political writings of Orson Welles, as first published in FREE WORLD magazine starting in 1943, and continuing through the election of 1944 when Welles was a huge supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Welles' views were well in advance of the political thinking of the time and I daresay, they are also far in advance of the rather regressive and backward political thinking of this year's Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, who has said 47 per cent of America's poorer citizens think of themselves as "victims."

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"MORAL INDEBTEDNESS" by Orson Welles
Free World, October, 1943

To be born free is to be born in debt: to live in freedom without fighting slavery is to profiteer. (more...)

American law forbids a man the right to take away another's right. It must be law that groups of men can't use the machinery of our Republic to limit the rights of other groups—that the vote, for instance, can't be used to take away the vote.

RACE HATE MUST BE OUTLAWED by Orson Welles
Free World, July, 1944

In the years between Versailles and Munich, there was an argument common among the Englishmen, Frenchmen and Americans as to who won the war. Nobody won that argument for the sufficient reason that nobody won that war. This time there won't be any argument; whose advance is greatest toward Democracy, (more...)

VOICE OF FREEDOM – recorded in June, 1947

The people is everybody. This grand, mind-staggering "we"—yes, it is all of us—all and every one of us. A government dedicated to the sanctity of the unpopular, a reputation thoughtfully attuned to the unimportant vote, which guards as national treasures the minorities.

We the people, where are we headed now?

Backwards.

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I interrupt Orson Welles to offer my own thoughts of what Mr. Welles wrote over 50 years ago:

"Jesus, the days I have seen..."

And how true Orson Welles words were -- way back in 1947!

Or William Shakespeare's against the Puritans in England, in 1598 when he wrote HENRY IV.

Just witness the recent rally in Washington, D.C.  held by Glenn Beck.

Now, I must ask how anyone who has actually read the American Constitution, (except for Glenn Beck) can possibly believe it condones in any way, shape or form what he said in his recent rally in our Nations Capitol?

Mr. Beck is nothing less than this era's Joesph McCarthy and Beck's so-called hero, Orson Welles would be the first person to call him the George Wallace of this era.

Likewise, the the founding fathers of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin (who Welles played) and all the others would certainly be happy to denounce the idiotic ideas of Mr. Beck and his notion of America as a "Christian Nation."

Maybe I'm wrong, but my own reading of the Constitution makes me feel that I can safely be of any any religion, or none at all, as I choose, in America.  But perhaps I'm wrong about this... Maybe Glenn Beck and I can fight it out in the Supreme Court.  But, seriously, everyone in there right mind knows America was a nation founded on the concept of religious freedom.  To call this country a "Christian Nation" makes me feel Mr. Beck is nothing less than what I think Orson Welles would call him: A FASCIST!  His thoughts go against everything that the founders  of the Constitution were against. Many of Mr. Beck's followers have suggested that to find God in the Constitution, all one has to do is read it and see how often the framers used the words "God," or "Creator," or "Jesus," or "Lord."

Well, go ahead. Give the Constitution a look. Orson Welles clearly knew what it contained when he recited it for a recording in the dark Watergate era of President Richard Nixon. Except for ONE notable instance, no "Christian" words ever appear in the U.S. Constitution.  In fact, the original Constitution bars any religious test to hold any federal office in the United States. Which means a Jew, a Catholic, a Buddist or a Muslim can serve as the President of the United States of America. So even if President Obama is a Muslim (which clearly, he is not), he could still serve as President.

Now,  I return you to the words of wisdom written by the great Orson Welles:

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We have become the pilots of suicide. Fearful, perversely fearful of our scheduled but rejected greatness: when the ideal dies so dies the civilization, which was supported by it. It may be that this ideal of ours is only hibernating. But there are no signs of a spring. The Roosevelt Democratic Party was not a political party—it was a way of life for most of us who work for a living—the good cheer for most Americans born into darkness.

...That way has become a conspiracy: we stand accused of every black brand of disloyalty. We are no longer spokesmen because we cannot speak. Not one of us is small or casual enough to escape attention.

Ours was an argument, which carried its own eloquence. They kicked us off the air, the old, old interests of aggregated wealth. It is radio and this strange new medium of radio silence that is the subject. The Truman doctrine was not handed down by some tablets of the law. FDR won his campaigns—all of them—on the air. Freedom of assembly: airtime was our meeting hall and we are now denied its use; a killing censorship or else collaborate (or else.) It was all very pleasant and urbane.

Free speech has been politely and unobtrusively murdered—we had nothing to lose but our microphones. Your obedient servant as a result of his efforts as a radio commentator has been successfully muffled now even in his old profession of radio actor. Not that he hasn't had some offers. The radio you know is always available if you'll promise never to use the radio to say anything. A big, big manufacturer of breakfast food, for instance, sent out a feeler lately. Five broadcasts a week at big, big money might be mine if I would undertake to deal exclusively with (what I must take to be unconscious irony) the 'human interest side' of the news. There was an even longer string than that attached to it. The proposed contract covered not only airtime, but also all my waking time. Every public utterance was to be checked for content with a special board of advertising agency ideologists. In a word, they were putting up a heap of dough to buy outright a man's long-term opinion!  …It’s more than possible that radio is happier without me, but I can speak for my fellow spokesmen and I do. They were most necessary debaters. The debate was most necessary. Now the debate is closed. It must be opened. And now thank you and until the next time—until our American radio is free again…

I remain as always — obediently yours,

ORSON WELLES

Chris Welles Feder's wonderful new book about her life and times with Orson Welles, In My Father's Shadow has just been released by Agonquin Books. Chris Welles began her book tour in San Francisco with a showing of The Lady From Shanghai at the Rafael Theatre on November 2, and earlier that day Alex Fraser and I met with Chris in the lobby of the Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco, at the corner of Grant and Bush Streets, only a few blocks from where her father had shot key scenes from The Lady From Shanghai (at Grant and Pine street) in 1946. Part one of our talk appears below and will soon be followed by part two.

You can see pictures of Chris with her father and Rita Hayworth taken by Life Magazine photographer Peter Stackpole HERE.

You can also read Alex Fraser's review of In My Father's Shadow at Epinions Here.

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LAWRENCE FRENCH: What prompted you to start writing In My Father’s Shadow?

CHRIS WELLES FEDER: There are many books that have been written on my father, biographies and critical studies and so on, but none of them have captured the Orson Welles that I knew. Also many of the people who wrote about my father either never met him, or they didn’t meet him until the last 15 years of his life. So I felt I had a story to tell from the unique perspective of being his daughter. I think I’m probably one of the few people still alive who knew him when he was in his vigorous youth and he was at the top of his game. So I really wanted to recapture the young Orson Welles before he was beaten down by disappointments, betrayals and not getting the money he needed to make his movies. I wanted that vision to be out there as part of the record. In addition, besides showing a much fuller picture of my father, as I knew him, there were other people in his life who were important but have been given scant attention in the vast Wellesian bibliography, beginning with my mother, Virginia Nicolson Welles. She is always described as a Chicago socialite, which in fact, she wasn’t. But almost nothing is known about my mother, who after all was the first Mrs. Orson Welles.

Then there were other people who were very important in his life that I knew personally. Roger and Hortense Hill, who were like his parents, because he was orphaned when he was quite young. They were probably the closest thing that he had to a family and I wanted the world to know who they were. Also, Oja Kodar who spent the last 20 years of his life with him and was probably the woman that he loved more than any other. I didn’t feel she had been given her due in the other books, so those were just some of the reasons why I wanted to write the book.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: What kind of work process did you follow in writing the book?

CHRIS WELLES FEDER: It took me about six years to write the book. I had two or three false starts where I wrote an enormous amount of material, but I realized I was going in the wrong direction and I had to throw it all out. So it took me awhile to find the right direction for the book. The most difficult thing was deciding what I should leave out. Finally, what became my organizing principle was to use only those parts of my life that were directly involved with my father. I could have gone on for pages and pages about living in South Korea or in other places, but what helped me to hone the book, was to keep it just focused on my father, our times together and our relationship. That became my organizing principle.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: How much direction did you get from your editor at Algonquin Books, Chuck Adams?

CHRIS WELLES FEDER: Chuck was a very sensitive editor. He respected everything that I had written and hardly made any changes to the manuscript, but he did make some very good cuts. Although what I really liked was he would write questions in the margins that would really get me thinking, such as “what did your mother think about that?” That alerted me to the fact that maybe I needed to cover something a little bit more in-depth. I was truly blessed to have him as an editor. He told me he feels very proud of this book. My whole experience with Algonquin has been just wonderful.

LAWRENCE FRENCH: You told me early on when you were looking for a publisher several editors wanted you to write more of a Mommie Dearest kind of a memoir.

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Richard France, who Wellesnet readers will know as the author of two excellent books on Welles, The Theater of Orson Welles and Orson Welles on Shakespeare (that contains the text for Welles's playscripts of Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Five Kings), has sent along this letter he recently wrote in response to the Time Magazine cover story about Glenn Beck.

Here is the relevant paragraph from the Time Magazine article:

Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?

By David Von Drehle

…Beck describes his performances as "the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment" — and the entertainment comes first. "Like Limbaugh, Glenn Beck is a former Top 40 DJ," radio historian Marc Fisher explains, "first and foremost an entertainer, who happens to have stumbled into a position of political prominence." Unlike Limbaugh, however, Beck is a "radio nostalgic," in love with the storytelling power of a man with a microphone. He started in radio at age 13, inspired by a recording of golden-age broadcasts given to him by his mother — who later committed suicide, leaving the young Beck deeply traumatized. "He loves radio," says his longtime producer and on-air sidekick Stu Burguiere. "The way the mind becomes its own theater and the listener engages in the medium with you, drawing their own pictures in their heads." Beck once lovingly re-created the 1938 Orson Welles classic War of the Worlds for XM Satellite Radio, and he named his production company Mercury Radio Arts in homage to Welles' Mercury Theatre on the Air.

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Now, since it appears that Mr. Beck is a great fan of Orson Welles radio work, I presume he might have visited Wellesnet or The Museum of Orson Welles, which probably has the best audio and video collection of Orson Welles shows on the Internet. If that is the case, Mr. Beck is heartily encouraged to sent us any reply he may care to make to Mr. France's comments, below:

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Orson Welles would be turning over in his grave – his ashes are in a well in Ronda, Spain – to learn that a demagogue like Glenn Beck has co-opted the name of his cherished Mercury Theatre on the Air from which to spew his daily dose of rabble-rousing bigotry and venom (“Mad Man: Is Glenn Beck Bad for America?”, Time cover story, Sept. 17). Beck represents EVERYTHING that Welles despised – the same sort of sanctimonious intolerance that forced him, in November 1947, to board the plane that sent him into a nearly decade-long exile in Europe.

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Interview with JACK MARSHALL
Artistic Director of The American Century Theatre, on their production of Native Son

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By LESLIE WEISMAN

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It's alright to steal from each other, what we must never do is steal from ourselves.

--Jake Hannaford, in The Other Side of the Wind.

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Introduction

By Lawrence French

Francis Ford Coppola received a well-deserved tribute at The San Francisco International Film Festival, on May 1 and spoke in some detail about his long career in the movies. He was also asked about his work writing a film starring Orson Welles (more about that to follow).

Coppola was joined on stage at the historic Castro Theater by many of his director friends and family, including, most notably, George Lucas, but while talking about his new film TETRO, Coppola made these remarks, which I think make a wonderful introduction to Wellesnet contributor Leslie Weisman's interview with Jack Marshall, as they point out that Coppola was originally a theatre student, and when starting out he copied from the best, namely Tennesseee Williams, Kazan and Orson Welles:

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: When I began as a young man, I was a theatre student, from 1957 to 1960 and I saw wonderful films that were coming to America from Europe into what were then the art houses, and I think all of my contemporaries were wide-eyed at the beautiful movies we saw coming from Italy, France, Sweden and Japan.

So we wanted to do that. We all wanted to make 'cinema' and I didn't ever imagine I was going to be a real studio type of director. So when I began, I was writing a more personal type of movie. So while I was a theatre student, my Gods were Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan and when you are young, you always start out sort of copying the people you admire, even though it's really impossible to copy them. But it gets you going, that's the purpose. My father who was a composer, had this wonderful slogan. He said, "steal from the best." So I stole from the best, because I wanted to do this type of personal film.

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As Coppola notes, all artists are influenced to some degree by what they have seen and experienced, which is why I was so intrigued by The American Century Theatre's revival of three plays originally staged by Orson Welles. Jack Marshall may not have seen the original Orson Welles productions, but as Leslie's talk with him indicates, he was certainly influenced by Welles work in the theatre. And he obviously had the terrific idea to re-stage three of Welles's seminal plays at the American Century Theatre. So maybe Welles's early play, BRIGHT LUCIFER, will eventually be staged at TACT sometime in the future.

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LESLIE WEISMAN: This is The American Century Theatre's (and your) third production of a play directed by Orson Welles, the others being Moby Dick Rehearsed in 2005 and The Cradle Will Rock in 1999, that helped establish him in the consciousness of the theatre--going public as a talent to be reckoned with. They also—not always to his advantage—enhanced his reputation as a maverick who not only wasn’t afraid to tackle controversial subjects, but actively sought out and seized the opportunity. What is it about Welles and his work that first attracted you, and still holds you? Have your perceptions about him changed—either because of things you’ve learned about him in the interim, or as a result of staging his plays? Or both?

JACK MARSHALL: Welles was one of the brightest comets shooting across the Broadway skies during what I would refer to as the golden age of theatre — the period beginning around when O’Neill really burst onto the scene in the early to mid twenties, all the way through the thirties and into the mid forties is when the theatre was the most exciting and taking the most risks. And Welles really showed the same kind of innovation and daring in his theatrical productions that he later did in film. And to a great extent, I thing he merged — he really was the perfect meld of artistic sensibilities, content and a sense of showmanship, and how it would appeal to an audience and be commercial. He just had a great sense of that. So in the case of all his shows, they all were shows of substance, and he also was able to strike just the perfect balance — a balance that I don’t really think the theatre has done a very good job of finding ever since: making it exciting, making it visually exciting, making it challenging but also making it commercial. So it was the perfect meld of serious issues, serious intent, with commercial presentation. That’s what struck me about Orson right off the bat.

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When you ask me if there is a movie I want to make, I have to answer in a very general way; I want to make movies

—Orson Welles

From a rare 1979 Yugoslavian TV Interview at The Orson Welles Museum

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The Wellesnet Media audio page has now been transferred to it's own site, The Orson Welles Museum where you can spend hours listening to various audio recordings Welles did for radio and records, as well as several very informative interviews Welles gave throughout his career.

It's quite a fabulous collection of material, and to any uninformed person, such as so many entertainment writers seem to be - especially those who seem to think Welles did nothing but make Citizen Kane and wine commercials - just point them to this site.

In reality, it's rather incredible to realize just how great the depth of Welles's work was in the medium of radio and the spoken word.

To start out, here is a show I think is as relevant today as when Welles recorded it, over 60 year ago:

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It’s perfectly possible, that we are the ancestors of a great race. This is only possible, if the world doesn’t come to an end, which is only possible if we can put an end to war-making and to war.

—Orson Welles June 30, 1946

So said Mr. Welles, four days before the fourth of July, in 1946, when he delivered a sobering talk about America’s first atomic bomb blast at the Bikini Atoll in the south Pacific. Of course, this wake up call, warning us about the dangers of testing and stock piling of Atomic weapons went unheeded.

I found the whole show to be quite a superb piece of political commentary, that also weirdly anticipates several elements in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. There's even a point where Welles says his wife at the time (Rita Hayworth) had her picture pasted on the side of the A-bomb that was to be dropped – shades of Slim Pickens - although Welles notes it was apparently very much against Ms. Hayworth’s own wishes.

Enter the ORSON WELLES museum and give it a listen!

Frankly, I don't think anybody's race is anybody else's business. I'm willing to admit that the policeman has a difficult job, a very
hard job, but it's the essence of our society that the policeman's job should be hard. He's there to protect, protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals, that's an incidental part of his job. The free citizen is always more of a nuisance to the policeman that the criminal. He knows what to do about the criminal. I know it's very nice to look out of the window in our comfortable home and see the policeman there protecting our home, we should be grateful for the policeman, but I think we should be grateful too, for the laws which protect us against the policeman. And there are those laws, you know, and they're quite different from the police regulations.

—ORSON WELLES SKETCHBOOK, 1955

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On this historic day, when Barack Obama has been inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States, it reminded me of how far in advance of his time Orson Welles really was.

Not only cinematically, but also politically. Barack Obama in his speech today, noted that 60 years ago his father might walk into a restaurant somewhere in America and be refused service.

However, 65 years ago, Orson Welles was talking about far worse abuses that could (and did), happen to Afro-Americans. Namely, how they could actually be lynched, killed, or lose their eyesight. This is exactly what happened to a heroic black soldier named Issac Woodard and Welles, famously championed his cause against all odds on his radio show on ABC in the summer of 1946.

Listen to it here

Unfortunately, this ultimately led to the end of Welles's radio career in America, even before his career in the movies in the United States was over.

This was all brought into sharp focus for me last weekend when I watched Episode Three of Orson Welles Sketchbook at the PFA in Berkeley.

Stefan Drossler finally got the chance to bring his rare Welles material to the Bay area, and needless to say the show was a resounding success.

I will have much more to say about it in the coming days, including exciting new details about The Other Side of the Wind, but for now, I'd like to present this prescient transcript of Welles comments from his Orson Welles Sketchbook episode, that was first aired in England on May 7, 1955.

It certainly seems like a very good way to differentiate the end of the terror and torture that ran rampant during the last eight years of Mr. Bush's rule over America. In stark contrast, President Barack Obama, has made it clear he will give us a more forward looking agenda that stresses hope and humanity.

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Transcript with pictures at Wellesnet here

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Given that most of Hollywood today leans distinctly Democratic, I found this 1944 article from Time Magazine to be quite interesting, in terms of getting an idea of where the Hollywood players of the time stood on the political spectrum.

The article also brought forth a letter of response from Orson Welles, which Time published a few weeks later. In his letter, Welles notes that while he and other Hollywood types were ripe targets for satire, the political content of the films Hollywood was making were a serious matter.

Of course, 25 years later, in his own magnum opus, The Other Side of the Wind, Welles combined both satire of Hollywood with the right-wing Hollywood types he had known, as represented by the members of "The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals."
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TIME Feb 14, 1944

Over the room-temperature burgundy and the chopped chicken liver, politics came to Hollywood. As the battle began, the right wing took up prepared positions at the swank Beverly-Wilshire Hotel. The left strung its forces along rows of white-clothed tables at the equally swank palm-studded Beverly Hills Hotel, three miles away. Then the giants fired deadly after-dinner speeches at each other.

The Leftists started it off by announcing a big Free World Association dinner, starring Vice President Henry Wallace. Rightists quickly formed a club of their own, rushed into dinner last week on the eve of Wallace's appearance.

The Hollywood Rightists called themselves "The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals." Purpose: to correct "the growing impression that this industry is made up of and dominated by communists, radicals and crackpots." The Generalissimo is urbane, graying Sam Wood, who diluted For Whom the Bell Tolls so that Spanish Fascists became "nationalists" and Spanish Republicans came out like the American G.O.P. His general staff includes Walt Disney, Rupert Hughes, one writer from Republic Studios, and ten Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer executives, faithful minions of Tycoon Louis B. Mayer. Gary Cooper, Hemingway's Spanish Republican hero, ate dinner with them. Hearst papers gave the affair pages of pleased attention.

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