Wellesnet: The Orson Welles Web Resource

CHRIS WELLES FEDER: My father thought Chimes at Midnight was his masterpiece, and I think that, as well. Falstaff was a role that was really made for him and I think his playing of that part is probably his greatest moment on the screen as an actor. When Prince Hal says, “I know thee not old man,” it’s an extraordinary moment. I wish the film could be seen more in this country, but it’s almost never shown here. I believe it is still tied up in all kinds of legal red tape.

_________

So, wouldn't it be fitting if Cambridge could show CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, as Welles first brought it to Boston on the stage way back in 1938?

In any event, Boston and Cambridge, Mass. are obviously very important to the cinematic legacy of Orson Welles, as not only did FIVE KINGS open there, but so did AROUND THE WORLD, eight years later.

In fact, it is really due to the Welles fans at Universities across the county and in Europe that Orson Welles legacy is so vibrant. The Lilly Library at the Univ. of Indiana, The Univ. of Michigan, Yale, UCLA, USC, NYU, and of course the famous Univ. of Bridgeport. CT were Warren Bass and Michael Kerbel taught. These are just a few of the many colleges and universities, without whose work the legacy of Orson Welles would not be anywhere as rich as it is today.

Sadly the ORSON WELLES CINEMA in Cambridge, no longer exists. It was made especially famous in FILMING OTHELLO, thanks to Larry Jackson, who invited Welles to Cambridge on January 7, 1977, for the Boston premiere of F FOR FAKE. Welles came, and along with his cameraman, Gary Graver, they shot a long Q & A session with the audience that was used in FILMING OTHELLO. If Welles did the same thing today, we could see the video on YouTube within minutes after he had spoke.

So, on June 6, 2010 I imagine there will be a lot more documentation of Chris Welles visit to Cambridge than was ever possible than when Orson Welles visited in 1977!

______________

Chris Welles Feder will be in Cambridge, Mass. at the Brattle Theatre on June 6 to introduce a 1:15 pm screening of THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI and will answer questions and sign copies of her marvelous book about ORSON WELLES, In My Father's Shadow.

Following the screening, Chris will answer questions from the audience and autograph copies of her book, before the screening of TOUCH OF EVIL.

The Brattle Theatre is located at 40 Brattle Street, near Harvard Square. For full details, check out their web site: www.brattlefilm.org

On September 7, 1943, the 28-year old Orson Welles secretly whisked Rita Hayworth, 25, away from the Columbia studio lot after the day's shooting on the Columbia musical, Cover Girl. At Santa Monica City Hall, Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth were married in the presence of best man, Joseph Cotten.

The marriage between Welles and Hayworth would last less than four years, but it certainly burned brightly while it lasted, as the love letters Welles wrote to his new bride attest. A cache of the love letters and drawings Welles wrote to Hayworth were discovered in a secret compartment of Rita's make-up case, so she obviously treasured them long after her marriage to Welles had ended in divorce. They were sold on September 20, 2001 at a Christie's auction in Los Angeles, where they fetched $25,850 and are now part of the Welles collection at the Lilly Library in Indiana.

Here is the description taken from the Christie's auction catalogue, including excerpts from the letters Welles wrote:

RITA HAYWORTH LOVE LETTERS FROM HUSBAND ORSON WELLES

Rita Hayworth's traveling makeup case, custom made by John Frederics, brown suede over board construction, with upper and lower tiers. The top tier features two side panels which lifts horizontally, and a center mirrored panel which elevates vertically. Inside are five monogrammed makeup containers and a hair brush and comb, strapped into place. The case has a brass plaque with the star's name on the top, with a suede overcase which secures with snaps. A second set of latches secures a large lower cloth-lined compartment in which were stashed a cache of beautiful love letters and sketches from Rita Hayworth’s husband Orson Welles. This archive comprises 8 autograph letters signed to a total of 23 pages, quarto, octavo and one 12mo, most New York, various dates in 1943, with 8 autograph envelopes addressed to Mrs. Orson Welles, most additionally signed "Orson Welles" on the verso, with three watercolor sketches depicting a miserable young husband separated from his wife by work. There are also two autograph cards which accompanied flowers, and a color portrait captioned "Another self-portrait of self-pity. ...We're way over budget."

EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS BY ORSON WELLES TO RITA HAYWORTH:

Dearest Angel Girl:

...I suppose most of us are lonely in this big world, but we must fall tremendously in love to find it out. The cure is the discovery of our need for company -- I mean company in the very special sense we've come to understand since we happened to each other -- you and I. The pleasures of human experience are emptied away without that companionship -- now that I've known it; without it joy is just an unendurable as sorrow. You are my life -- my very life. Never imagine your hope approximates what you are to me. Beautiful, precious little baby -- hurry up the sun! -- make the days shorter till we meet. I love you, that's all there is to it.

Your boy,

Orson

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

Dearest Baby:

I knew it would be lonely -- but this is even lonelier that I let myself fear ...I'm too blue for anything but the sonorous repetition of my love for you – Oh how much there is of it ...I worked 'till midnight ...and what happened to me ...Ms. Parsons (NY gossip columnist) sat at a table by the door so I made Lennie (Leonard Lyons – columnist for The N.Y. Post) write an avadavat to my innocence – in case she prints I'm out on the town without you.

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

The avadavat by Leonard Lyons is written in pencil on the verso of a Stork Club chit.

It states:

I Leonard Lyons, being duly sworn, declare and say:

1. That I am a MALE.

2. That I phoned Orson Welles at 12:30 (a.m.) and asked him to meet me at the Stork Club.

3. That I have known him for 9 years, was his press agent without fear, and he cannot in all decency refuse me.

4. That we are sitting here alone, just we two, drinking COFFEE.

5. That Orson has refused to meet me in any more public places until the arrival of you, his wife.

Sworn before me this 25th day of October, 1943

Leonard Lyons

The avadavat is countersigned by columnist Walter Winchell as a witness. Earlier that same night, Orson Welles addressed a Free World dinner at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York City.

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

Welles has written on the back of the letter:

This is going to be my last saloon 'till you get here.

3:30 (a.m.) (coffee kicking in) The late traffic yawns in the echoing streets below –

The wind whistles – the rain drips

Look I can't even write!

Sweet one – I can't live without – you!

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

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.

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

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.

(more...)

Wellesnet is co-sponsoring Chris Welles Feder's first appearance for her intimate new book about Orson Welles, In My Father's Shadow at the Rafael Theatre, in San Rafael on Monday November 2.

Ms. Welles-Feder has long been a supporter of Wellesnet and we do return those duties back to her as are right fit...

The book is getting sensational reviews, and below you can read just a small sampling of them.

But best of all, Wellesnet will have an exclusive interview with Chris Welles Feder about her book after we talk to her on Monday afternoon...

######

The first memoir on Orson Welles by a member of his family, Chris Welles Feder’s beautifully written book offers a fresh and insightful look at her loving but maddeningly elusive father, revealing the great filmmaker as we’ve never seen him before. Along with its compassionate, clear-eyed, and often surprising portrait of Welles in his most vulnerable moments, the book offers us a poignant self-portrait of a bright, lively girl struggling to find hers inner self as the neglected daughter of a famous man. Her triumphant journey to independence and her posthumous reconciliation with her father’s memory is the missing chapter in the story of Orson Welles, one only his first-born daughter can tell with such authority, grace, and wisdom.

--JOSEPH McBRIDE

You can read Mr. McBride's entire insightful review of Chris Welles book at BRIGHT LIGHTS Film JournalHERE.

*

Chris Welles Feder has come out of her father’s shadow to write an intimate, candid, yet very loving, very personal portrait of the loving, complicated, contradictory, mercurial and surprisingly brilliant man as she knew him. This is an Orson Welles we have never seen before–a warm, touching, occasionally bewildering side a multi-sided genius. That he was certainly not an ideal parent or husband in no way minimizes the good he gave to his child or how enriched she was by his precious time with him. Chris has shared all of this with us in a beautifully written and moving memoir which should have a most special place in the extraordinary world of Orson Welles.

--PETER BOGDANOVICH

*

Chris Welles Feder paints a beautifully personal memoir/biography that stars herself as much as her father. In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles (Algonquin. $24.95) is a portrait of the cigar-smoking, work-obsessed, well-intentioned but absent father as well as an exploration of a young girl's admiration and understanding (or misunderstanding) of family dynamics and love. Feder's narrative is one no detached biographer could fashion, and her perspective feels essential.

—ANNA KATTERJOHN, Library Journal.

*

Feder, the daughter of Orson Welles and his first wife, Virginia, tells the story of her search for a relationship with her famous father as well as creating an independent identity through a childhood and adolescence influenced by a list of affectionate guardians and brilliant but dysfunctional grownups. The latter category included her own parents: the author was still a child when they separated and her father married Rita Hayworth; her mother, meanwhile, went on to her own second and third marriages. Feder found affection at times, but it was her years in Illinois with her father's former headmaster and the headmaster's wife that provided her first experience of domestic stability. Her peripatetic life resumed, however, while her father arrived irregularly for extended one-on-one visits that shaped his daughter's budding intellect, but left her hungry for a deeper, more permanent connection. Her story conveys a powerful, intimate sense of Welles's creative struggles and her own part in preserving his artistic legacy.

--Publisher’s Weekly

*

Excerpt from Orson Welles final unfilmed script for KING LEAR:

CORDELIA: You have begot me, bred me, loved me.
I return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honor you.

Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty.

*****

When you have a great figure of myth like Don Quixote, like Falstaff, it is a silhouette against the sky of all time…

—Orson Welles to Juan Cobos.

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

A beautifully written and moving memoir which should have a most special place in the extraordinary world of Orson Welles.

--Peter Bogdanovich

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

Orson Welles's eldest daughter, Chris Welles Feder has written an intimate memoir about Orson Welles that is due out on November 3rd. In her book, she describes the Orson Welles she knew from her earliest childhood, until the day he died.

Chris Welles Feder has long been a friend and supporter of Wellesnet, and in 2006 she allowed Wellesnet to sell the last 12 copies of her privately printed book of poems, The Movie Director.

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

Here is the complete itinerary for Chris Welles Feder's tour supporting the release of IN MY FATHER'S SHADOW:

*
November 2, 2009 -- 7:00 PM
San Rafael Film Center
1118 Fourth St.
San Rafael, CA 94901
415-454-1222

There will be a screening of Orson Welles's film noir masterpiece co-starring Rita Hayworth, The Lady From Shanghai, shot in San Francisco and Marin County, which Chris Welles will introduce. After the screening, Chris will participate in a Q & A with the audience and a book signing.

*

November 3, 2009 - 7:00 PM
Book Soup
8818 Sunset Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90069
310-659-3110

Chris Welles will participate in a talk and reading event.

*

November 5, 2009 -- 7:00 PM
Barnes & Noble
2289 Broadway (at 82nd Street)
New York NY 10021
212-632-2285

Chris Welles will participate in a talk and reading event.

*

November 14, 2009 -- 1:00 PM
Clinton Bookshop
33 Main Street
Clinton, NJ 08809
908-735-8811

*

November 15, 2009 -- 5:30 PM
Darien Public Library
1441 Post Road
Darien, CT 06820
203-655-1234

Chris Welles will participate in a talk and reading event. A wine and cheese reception will follow the presentation.

*

December 2, 2009 -- 7:30 PM
Cinema Arts Center
423 Park Avenue
Huntington, Long Island, NY 11743
631-423-7611

Chris Welles will introduce a film screening of The Lady From Shanghai. After the screening, there will be a discussion with Chris, followed by an on-site reception and book signing.

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

(more...)

A very early draft of Orson Welles screenplay for The Lady From Shanghai is now available online.

Thanks to Wellesnet member Alan for posting the link at the Wellesnet messageboard so everyone can enjoy it, and to Kevan at the Blake Snyder screenwriting messageboard for finding it (along with several other other Orson Welles scripts), in the first place!

This early script is dated August 17, 1946, when the film was still titled Take This Woman. At that point, Welles was still basing all the action for the film in New York City and on nearby Long Island, which were the same settings used in the novel by Sherwood King, entitled If I Die Before I Wake.

That makes it clear this is a very early draft that Welles had submitted "for estimating purposes" to Columbia, long before the many subsequent changes were made to the story and the settings, which ended up being shot on locations in San Francisco and Acapulco.

According to film writer Bret Wood, in his fine article on The Lady From Shanghai in Video Watchdog #23, all the cut sequences quoted in his article came from a later draft at the Lilly Library, dated December 20, 1946. That means this script is quite a find, since it predates the Lilly Library version by five months!

It also seems obvious that in this early 164-page version of the script, Welles realized he would eventually have to cut whatever he shot down to a running time of under two hours. The early rough-cut Welles showed to Harry Cohn reportedly ran 155 minutes, and included a great deal of characterization and dialogue scenes that Cohn found easy to lose since they didn't really advance the plot. On the other hand, many of the inconsistencies and loose ends that cause "bewilderment" in the release version are made clear in the script.

For anyone who knows the work of Orson Welles, this first draft also includes many wonderful references, such as this passage that begins on page 15, where Michael O' Hara and the "notorious" Mrs.Bannister discuss Don Quixote, which naturally, was completely cut out of the film when it was finally released (at 87 minutes), by Columbia in 1948:

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

CLOSE TWO SHOT - MICHAEL AND THE GIRL

THE GIRL
There's a police car --

MICHAEL
We're just comin' out of the park, the horse and cart'll make it too simple for the cops to be findin' us --

He pulls up to a lamp-post.

MEDIUM SHOT - THE CARRIAGE
Michael gets out of the carriage and hitches the horse to the lamp.

THE GIRL
You don't care for them very much, do you, Michael?

MICHAEL
The cops?
(somberly)
Faith, they can struggle along without our doin' their work for 'em.

He helps the girl down out of the carriage, then bows to the horse.

MICHAEL
(continuing)
Farewell, Rosinante.

THE GIRL
That sounds like my name.
(smiles)

He takes her arm.

TRUCKING SHOT -- MICHAEL AND THE GIRL
They start walking.

MICHAEL
Sure, Rosinante's a horse in a book. You're Rosaleen.

THE GIRL
Who's she?

MICHAEL
A girl in a book.

THE GIRL
I remember -- Rosinante was the old nag Don Quixote rode when he went out after those windmills. I think you're a lot like Don Quixote, yourself Michael. You haven't heard about the age of chivalry. It's out of business.

MICHAEL
The tough boys that went after you in the park -- they didn't look like windmills to me --

THE GIRL
They weren't. I'm sorry, Michael, I guess you're really what you think you are.

MICHAEL
Whatever's that now?

THE GIRL
A knight errant -- a real live knight errant. When you were a boy, you read all about them, didn't you, Michael? And you never got over it.

MICHAEL
(with a quizzical grin)
You mean I never grew up? And what, can you tell me, does a knight errant do for his livelihood?

THE GIRL
Oh, he doesn't bother much about earning a living. He spends most of this time rescuing maidens in distress. He always slays the dragon and saves the princess, and he makes the prettiest speeches. But you'd better be careful. Things have changed, Sir Knight. Nowadays it's usually the dragon that lives happily ever after.

MICHAEL
Don't the princess and the knight ever make it?

THE GIRL
Sometimes she gives him a kiss.

Michael just looks at her, terribly embarrassed. A funny little spark comes into her eye.

THE GIRL
(continuing)
Michael... You know what's wrong with being a knight errant?

MICHAEL
No.

THE GIRL
He's brave and bold because his heart is pure. But he's an awful fool -- He doesn't know anything about women.

She takes his hand and leads him to the street corner.

THE GIRL
(continuing)
If I hadn't seen the way you can fight, I'd say you spend all your time reading.

MICHAEL
A sailor has nothin' but time, Faith. So must a girl ridin' all by herself in a carriage in the lonesome dark. You must have time, and to spare.

THE GIRL
(quietly)
No, I haven't much time...
(after a minute -- she's been thinking)
You don't like the police, Michael. Is there some reason why they don't like you?

MICHAEL
(darkly)
They've never put me in jail -- in American.

By now they have stopped at the street corner.

THE GIRL
My car's a block down that way...

MICHAEL
The nicest jails are in Australia. The worst are in Spain.

THE GIRL
You must be a naughty boy, Michael.

MICHAEL
I'm careless.

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

The novel that became the basis for the Orson Welles movie, The Lady From Shanghai was written by Sherwood King in 1938.

Welles claimed he saw it in a drug store in Boston in 1946, and that he called Harry Cohn before the opening of AROUND THE WORLD and asked Cohn to send him $40,000. and also to buy the book, so he could make it into a movie for Columbia.

While this is a great story, as every Welles Scholar knows, it is also one that it totally FAKE.

The book by Sherwood King had already been brought to Columbia by William Castle years before. But in any case, the novel provided Welles with the one and only chance he had to work with his wife at the time, Rita Hayworth.

See shots of Rita and Orson at the Wellesnet Facebook page HERE.

Here is the first page of the Sherwood King book:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
IF I DIE BEFORE I WAKE

By Sherwood King

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

"Sure," I said, "I would commit murder. If I had to, of course, or if it was worth my while," I said this as though I meant it too. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it at all.

"The way I figure it," I said, "a man's got to die some time. All murder does is hurry it up. What more is there to it?" You know—talk. What any young fellow might say, just to show he's not afraid of anything.

There had been a murder out our way. On Long Island. Some society woman had shot her husband. He hadn't been doing anything, just raiding the icebox for a midnight snack. But (she said) she'd thought he was a burglar… five bullets worth. The police were holding her- some insurance angle.

Anyway, that's what started Grisby talking about murder. I'd been driving him down to the railroad station every other day or so, whenever he'd come out to see my boss, Bannister, the lawyer. They were partners, only Bannister didn't get down to the office much. He had a twisted leg—something he'd got in the War. It made him walk funny… you could hardly get him outside, except to appear in court, and then only when he had to. But it didn't matter. He could work just as well at home, provided Grisby kept him in touch and came out often, and he did.

So this time driving down to the station we were talking about murder and Grisby asked me what I thought and I told him. Afterwards I remembered he'd been building up to it from the very first. Nothing definite. Just letting me know one way and another that he thought I was too good to stay chauffeur to a man like Bannister for long. That he thought I was too smart not to have my eye on the main chance.

And there I was, taking it all in, trying to talk and act up to the role he'd given me and all the time not meaning a word of it, not a word.

In Orson Welles January 25th Almanac column he heaps praise on William Castle's Monogram quickie, When Strangers Marry. So before posting that column, here is William Castle's own entertaining version of how those glowing comments from Welles led to their collaboration on The Lady From Shanghai at Columbia Pictures, as taken from Castle's autobiography, Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare the Pants Off America.

Of course, Castle's version of the story is completely at odds with the famous canard Welles liked to tell about finding a paperback copy of If I Die Before I Wake outside the theatre in Boston where he was about to open in Around The World. Welles supposedly called Harry Cohn in Hollywood and asked him to buy the book and said he'd direct it, and in the meanwhile Cohn was to send him an advance payment so he could get the costumes he needed to put on his stage show. As Castle relates it and the record confirms, Castle had already found and optioned If I Die Before I Wake for Columbia. Strangely enough, later on Castle's early option on another book, led to his best-known horror movie, Rosemary's Baby.

__________________

WILLIAM CASTLE: At the opening of When Strangers Marry, the picture I had done for the King brothers, the Brooklyn Strand Theatre was packed, and the New York reviews were fabulous. The critics had done a 360-degree angle, each one personally singling me out, and praising my direction.

Orson Welles had a column in the New York Graphic (sic), called "Orson Welles' Almanac," in which he wrote:

Plant things that grow above the ground today, and go immediately to the Strand Theatre in Brooklyn and see a "B" minus picture called When Strangers Marry. It's A plus entertainment but because it's a quickie without any names on it, When Strangers Marry hasn't had much of a play. Making allowances for its bargain-price budget, I think you'll agree with me that it's one of the most gripping and effective pictures of the year. It isn't as slick as Double Indemnity or as glossy as Laura, but it's better acted and better directed by William Castle than either.

(more...)