Rare photos of Orson Welles

[Harvey Chartrand]

Check out www.viewimages.com for 81 rare images of Orson Welles, many of which I've never seen before (such as the production stills from TRENT'S LAST CASE, in which Welles in heavy makeup resembles a fat Harry Lime with a nose job). Orson Welles' pages begin at
http://www.viewimages.com/Search.aspx?m ... ner=Google

[Harvey Chartrand]

The URL in previous message links to images of a disfigured Montgomery Clift on the set of RAINTREE COUNTY. No problem. Just type "Orson Welles" in Search box and all shall be revealed.

[RayKelly]

Some wonderful photos there!
Image #71 is a color (or color-tinted) shot of Welles with Tim Holt on the set of The Magnificent Ambersons that I have never seen before.

[Alan Brody]

Yes, some interesting pics there. With picture #12 Welles seems to be giving us a book recommendation with the Whitman biography The Solitary Singer. I also find myself wondering particularly about picture #20 on the 4th page. It looks like a girl about to be encased with Welles in some wierd looking trap. Could it possibly be a picture from Welles's early 50's ballet The Lady in the Ice?

[Harvey Chartrand]

For the first time, I'm seeing photos of Orson Welles directing Joseph Cotten for his cameo in OTHELLO. There are also two images of Welles chatting with an attractive blonde who looks like Joan Fontaine. Cotten and Fontaine were in Italy in 1950 filming SEPTEMBER AFFAIR, a romance about two adulterers thought to have died in a plane crash. Fontaine was also pressed into service to do glorified extra work in OTHELLO.

[alan smithee]

The "colleague" in photo # 27 looks definitely like Joseph Cotten. So seems true that Cotten (and Joan Fontaine) have a (lost) part in Othello!

[ToddBaesen]

Yes, photo 27 seems to show Welles directing Cotten as "a Senator" in Othello. Likewise, Photo 28 seems to show Welles with Joan Fontaine on the set.

So whether you can see Cotten and Fontaine in the actual film or not, it's quite obvious they were certainly filmed in costume for the production.

[Roger Ryan]

Some wonderful photos there!
Image #71 is a color (or color-tinted) shot of Welles with Tim Holt on the set of The Magnificent Ambersons that I have never seen before.

This, and perhaps one or two other color shots taken at the same time, exist in the Welles archives at Lilly Library and at U-M in better quality. They do have that "tinted" look, but I can't imagine why anyone would take the time to tint such a banal image. Incidentally, the Viewimage caption is misleading: Welles is not seated in a "stadium", but on the camera crane used to shoot the scene where George takes Lucy on a ride through town in his carriage.

I agree all of these photos are fantastic; those "Othello" shots are quite remarkable.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Upon closer inspection of Image 29, I see Joan Fontaine at Joseph Cotten's side! All the actors are fully costumed. (Robert Coote and Michael MacLiammoir are also in the photo.) This is proof positive that Fontaine and Cotten both agreed to make cameo appearances in Orson Welles' OTHELLO while they were in Venice shooting their scenes for SEPTEMBER AFFAIR. Now I'll try to find Keenan Wynn in TOUCH OF EVIL.

[Glenn Anders]

They certainly are wonderful photos, and their unique qualities keep up until near the end.

Some us could probably make more comments than others would sit for, and so, I'll just remark"

1) Undoubtedly, that is Joan Fontaine (who evidently had overcome her distaste for Welles, and who recently celebrated a 90th birthdday) and Joseph Cotton. They are, after all, both included in the official cast list of OTHELLO.

2) The glossy color photo of Welles and Tim Holt strikes me as something done by a studio photographer of the time, but I would say that the "tinted" portrait of Welles and Miss Fontaine is more likely the kind of gravure work which appeared on the cover of Sunday paper magazine inserts like the American Weekly during the period when JANE EYRE was filmed.

3) I would strongly suggest that Alan Brody is correct, and that the picture of Welles and the young lady in the peculiar cellophane booth does come from his ballet, "The Lady in the Ice," which he staged with choreography by Roland Petit. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that the lady here might be Eartha Kitt, whom Welles discovered in Katherine Dunham's modern dance troupe, then in Paris, and hired for his roadshow evening of theater, Time Runs. She had made her film debut in CASBAH (1948), a vehicle Welles had shown interest in since the 1930's. He cast her as Helen of Troy in his production of Faustus, but he might also have tried her out at melting ice bergs.

4) I should think that the picture of Welles with Joan Plowright comes from his production of Moby Dick Rehearsed, wherein (under a player-manager -- Welles) she played a Victorian actress who takes on under duress the part of Pip, the black cabin boy.

5) A lot of these photos, especially the earlier ones in the collection, appear to have been drawn from newspapers, British newspapers in particular, which were hugely interested in Welles during the 1940's and 1950's because his enthusiasm and zeal made for good copy, and because he had such rapport with things British. I also like the one where he is talking with Sinatra and Ava Gardner because he seems so relaxed and joyful, qualities rare to be captured in him.

6) Finally, I hope that the photos are more accurate than than the captions because one of the latter has him with "Collette Marchard" in 1952, when it is undoubtedly Collette Marchand, who was appearing for John Huston, his old buddy, in the film, MOULIN ROUGE. (Welles also tried put her on ice in the London production "The Lady in the Ice.")

7) BTW, in the same vein, the labyrinthian photo of an apparently disfigured Montgomery Clift cannot be post injury, from as late as RAINTREE COUNTY (1957), which is a Civil War epic. Nor can it be so early as from THE SEARCH (1948), nor so late as from THE YOUNG LIONS (1958), in both of which he appeared as a U.S. Army private. He must be playing "Sergeant 1st Class Danny McCullough" in George Seaton's Cold War propaganda film, THE BIG LIFT (1950). If so, the lady with him is probably not Cornelia Bursch but the German, Actress Cornell Borchers, who had several stage names, but no "Bursch" so far as I can tell. "The disfigurement" must be just a badly photographed dimple.

Anyway, this collection is a treasure trove.

Many thanks to Harvey Chartrand.

Glenn

[alan smithee]

Upon closer inspection of Image 29, I see Joan Fontaine at Joseph Cotten's side! All the actors are fully costumed. (Robert Coote and Michael MacLiammoir are also in the photo.) This is proof positive that Fontaine and Cotten both agreed to make cameo appearances in Orson Welles' OTHELLO while they were in Venice shooting their scenes for SEPTEMBER AFFAIR.

Yes, photo number 29 is the definitive proof of Cotten as senator and Fontaine as pageboy casting. And the man beside the camera is Oberdan Trojani. According to his autobiography, Cotten at the times was in Venice with Fontaine receiving the "coppa Volpi" prize as best actor in Portrait of Jennie when they incidentally meet Welles at work in Torcello island. So the photo was probably taken in first days of september 1949.

[tonyw]

Thank you, Glenn, for your insights into these photos. I'm familiar with this Web Site since it is copyrighting old photos and charging for reproduction. In terms of associating Plowright with the MOBY DICK production, I remember that Rod Steiger did a radio version on BBC in the 60s with his then-wife Claire Bloom in the role of Pip.

[Glenn Anders]

Indeed, tonyw, from ground others have taken us over, it appears the BBC, and at some point seemingly Welles himself, attempted to make a film record of the June-July London 1955 staging of Moby Dick Rehearsed. Christopher Lee and others speak admiringly of having seen the rushes with Welles, but the film was somehow lost. Later in life, Welles returned singularly to the subject, as we can see on YouTube now.

There is a certain train of ironies created between the 1951 photo of Welles and Robert Helpman admiring Vivien Leigh, clutched by a possessive Laurence Olivier; the 1955 theatrical embrace of Welles and Joan Plowright; then, the subsequent affair and marriage of Olivier and Plowright, culminating for Welles, at least, in the aborted production of Rhinoserouses directed by Welles, starring Olivier and Plowright: the subject of Austin Pendleton's recently discussed play, Orson's Shadow.

And does anyone know the occasion of the photo of Welles with Daughter Christopher, on the same page? The caption dates it from January 1952. It is attributed to the London Evening Standard, and from an inverted "Walls' Ice Cream" ad in the newspaper she is holding, one might infer that they were in London.

In parting, Steiger and Claire Bloom might have made a pretty compelling combination in that Radio version. I wonder if it is available?

Glenn

[Alan Brody]

Pretty good sluething on the London paper and Walls Ice cream, Glenn. Interesting to see Christopher, a few years after playing Macduff's son in Macbeth, growing into a stylish young teenage girl.

I don't think that's Eartha Kitt in the #20 photo, but it might be Colette Marchand. This photo below was indicated in Barbra Leaming's book as being from The Lady in the Ice, so it would seem to confirm that #20 is from it as well:

[Harvey Chartrand]

Glenn,
Take another look. Those are indeed photos of Montgomery Clift in the Civil War epic. His face is in tatters only weeks after the car crash that disfigured and almost killed him. Monty's face is puffy, his lip split, and he is visibly struggling to make it through the filming of RAINTREE COUNTY in Danville, Kentucky. Monty was stoned and drunk and on pain-killers most of the time. Hard to believe that such a gifted man could go to hell like that. There are 38 photos of Montgomery Clift... earlier ones taken pre-crash when he was in his prime during the filming of A PLACE IN THE SUN with Liz Taylor. The drastic alteration of his facial features gives one pause.