Welles and Houseman: an unbeatable quartet?

[Tony]

I believe that Welles' career disaster came not after Ambersons but before Ambersons; Welles was a great dramatic talent and director; John Housman was a great producer and Screenplay/script/playscript writer; both of them fulfilled these dual roles perfectly and symbiotically. Virtually everything they did together was at the least an artistic success, and often what they did together was a financial success;Houseman first saw Welles as Tybalt in Catherine Cornell's company's "Romeo and Juliet" in Dec. of 1934; about three weeks later they met and first worked together on "Panic". Over the next seven years they ran the Mercury theatre and produced plays, radio programs,record albums and films. Houseman claims (in his book "Run-Through") that he and Welles chose all the material together, and that he (Houseman) wrote ALL the scripts. (If any of you have read Welles' script for "Big Brass Ring", you know how important Housman was for him). And of course, Houseman was a very polite and patient man, who always did the business dealings, and we know how Welles was at those! Their list of accomplishments, for such a short time, is great: Panic, Heartbreak House, Horse Eats Hat, Caesar, Too Much Johnson, Dr. Faustus, the "Voodoo" Macbeth, Danton's Death, The Cradle Will Rock, Five Kings ( an early version of Chimes at Midnight), Native Son and others. To the end of his life, Welles always said that the Macbeth opening night was the most exciting night of his artistic life. And of course, the Mercury Theatre on the Air, with the famous "First Person Singular" series. And then Citizen Kane... a famous argument, and the end. The Ambersons was the first project that Houseman didn't write the script for, and it shows in the script and business confusion surrounding that project. Houseman wrote the script for Jane Eyre, but it was coincidental, as they were both just hired for the project (perhaps Housman was also the producer?) and the Mercury Theatre was in essence dead.

They didn't talk for years,but were finally reunited in the 1970's on the Merv Griffin show, where they waltzed with eachother, and fogave eachother.

Johm Houseman's memoirs Volume one "Run-Through 1902/1941" is an invaluable piece of Wellesiana, and (if you can find it) the Voyager cassette box that Richard Wilson put together shotly before his death entitled "Theatre of the Imagination" features a forty minute tape with Mercury members including Housman, Wilson, William Alland, Peggy Webber and others discussing Welles, and it's clear that, for all, the break-up of Welles and Housman was the major reason for Welles not fulfilling his potential as an artist, and for having (causing?) so many problems with producers for the rest of his life.

Of course, Housman went on to produce for Selznick and many others, got into acting and finally won an academy award for "The Paper Chase" (which must have driven Welles up the wall!).

This, for me, is the key.

[Jeff Wilson]

I don't think it was necessarily the absence of Houseman that hastened Welles' Hollywood fiascoes as much as it was the lack of any strong, competent hand to guide the business side of Welles' affairs, an area where he was critically in need of help.

Let's assume that Ambersons would have been a box office bomb regardless of whose cut made it to theaters. Given the wartime atmosphere and the heavy quality of Ambersons, I don't think it's a stretch. RKO likely still would have gotten rid of Welles, but it would have been forced to do so under different terms.

Why? The answer lies in failures by Welles' business handlers, Jack Moss and Lloyd Wright, to keep Welles adequately covered during the critical time making Ambersons. In a letter from Welles New York attorney, Arnold Weissburger, to Welles in September 1942, he outlines what he felt were huge mistakes made by Moss and Wright in their handling of Welles. To start with, there is the matter of the contract with RKO. As Weissburger states, the contract stipulated that Welles was to deliver two pictures after Kane in a specified time. In case this were not to happen, an agreement needed to be signed extending the timeframe. Weissburger negotiated four of these extensions, but the "fourth one, which I was negotiating when I left California, Wright refused to sign, although it was presented to him by RKO. The result was that when the time expired...you were in default. RKO could, by waiving your default, hold you to the contract, but you could not hold RKO to the contract." In essence, had RKO wanted to get rid of Welles, they would have had to buy him out, had an extension been signed.

Second, there are the differences between the contracts for Kane and Ambersons. In the latter, RKO received the right of final cut, as we all know, in addition to several other clauses in their favor. Weissburger notes "The deal that I worked out with Schaeffer...provided that you were to get everything that the Kane contract gave you and in addition an autonomy to an extent of your not having to find your work impeded by RKO red tape...This picture was entirely up-set as Schaeffer himself has told me, when Moss' injection into the scene antagonized him and made him wary about granting you the terms which he had theretofore been willing to grant."

Moss also neglected Welles' tax affairs (mainly a $30,000 deficiency), ignoring numerous letters from Weissburger on the subject. Weissburger writes "In the five years that I had complete charge of your affairs, there was never a slip-up, even though I sometimes had my hands full in pinning you down."

So in the end, was it John Houseman or just poor choices by Welles as to who would manage his affairs? The quotes are from a letter of 16 September, 1942, from Weissburger to Welles. It's among the items in the Weissburger mss at the Lilly Library. It makes for fascinating reading, and certainly provides a new light on the crumbling of Ambersons, given what we've heard about Oedipus complexes, partying in Rio, and so on. A little legal safety work, and maybe we'd have the film Welles wanted us to see.

[Tony]

Dear Jeff:
Thanks for accurately and adroitly correcting my reductionism; what you have revealed has neatly undermined 30 years of silly writing on Welles; Hey, am I engaging in reductionism again? Maybe not: the loss of final cut seems crucial. Still, even if Houseman could have been replaced business-wise, wasn't his script/screenplay skill crucial to Welles' looss of power as an artist? Compare Kane and BBR in this regard.

[jaime marzol]

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that audio-mentatry on THEATER OF THE IMAGINATION is excellent. after hearing that, and reading houseman's A RUN THROUGH, i walked away with the impression, that had houseman not been so sensitive, and had been willing to take it now and then when welles needed to throw a cheeseburger in his face, and was willing to get verbally abused in public places by welles, the duo of welles and houseman could have been an incredible force.

it seems the less that welles was around, and in contact with the money people, the further projects got. from what i've read, i've never gotten the impression of houseman in an artistic capacity, just the buffer that kept the conservative end of the business (the money people) away from the impossible genius, and as a punching bag for the genius.

houseman was too sensitive. he said welles threw 2 flaming dishwarmers at his face. welles said, "that is not true; i threw the dish warmers in his direction, not at his face."



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[Obssessed_with_Orson]

I believe that Welles' career disaster came not after Ambersons but before Ambersons

how true that is...but i think the disaster even started before citizen kane.

with the radio program of WOTW. people hadn't quite forgotten, or forgiven, that. today, some STILL haven't. some people just don't forget when they've been made a fool of. but those that were stupid enough to believe that anyway, and not pay closer attention to what was being said, just didn't know damn good acting when it was being performed.

and, by the fact that you guys have been putting, he didn't handle money very well.

bye now!

[Tony]

Jaime:
I always lol at your posts! But I read just the other night (of course I can't locate the page tonight!) in Run-Through that Houseman wrote all the scripts, though Orson often changed parts, sometimes for the better, sometimes (in Housman's opinion) capriciously and for the worse. And of course, Houseman did co-write Kane with Mank. The point I'm trying to make is Housman was not merely the business organizer/fixer, but also the script organizer/fixer, and it's possible (and pretty easy) to construct an argument that Welles' problems with films (esp. the unfinished ones) were twofold: bad business dealings and weak/unfinished scripts; hence my conclusion (with which I think you agree, and your post should be preserved!) that Housman was not only indispenible, but irreplacable, and that this was the tragedy for Welles, much more than any other single factor.

[Jeff Wilson]

While Houseman worked on the scripts for the Mercury Theater on the Air radio series, Welles certainly made revisions, and this was the case throughout Welles' radio career, regardless of the writer. Looking at the scripts in the Welles collection at the Lilly, many have revisions written all over them. As for films, most of them belong solely to Welles, aside from cases like Kane and The Stranger (notably, his weakest film). How much did Houseman contribute to Kane? I tend to think his main function was keeping Mank off the sauce. Did he suggest things? No doubt. But the screenplay is largely a product of Welles and Mankiewicz.

I'm not sure what you mean by "weak/unfinished" scripts; Welles was always trying to get a project going, and numerous projects came and went. Welles' finished films usually feature quality writing, and some, like Arkadin, can't be judged due to the changes forced upon the film. Heart of Darkness is an amazing script, written by Welles alone, yet it didn't get made. Way to Santiago is a weak script, and it didn't get made. More than just the scripts themselves decided whether they were made or not.

Houseman's book shouldn't be taken as gospel on his time with Welles; he makes mistakes (willful or not); for example, discussing the Mercury radio production of "The Man Who Was Thursday," which he claims ended so early that he had to run and fetch books for Welles to read from on the air as coming attractions of sorts to kill time. In reality, that show ran nearly 90 minutes in rehearsal, and came off fine on the air. But it makes a great story for Houseman to make Welles look like the wreckless genius type.

I think it's far too easy to say that Houseman's departure from the Mercury was THE death blow to Welles' success. Welles was plainly a non-commercial filmmaker from the word go. Regardless of who he had working with him on the business side, he was unlikely to churn out box office friendly product. While Houseman produced a handful of good films after leaving the Mercury, none of them surpass what Welles made. Houseman was a dab hand at getting slick, classy Hollywood product made, and there's nothing wrong with that. In the end, they'd both be known to many for commercials, rather than their collective and separate achievements.

[jaime marzol]

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from what i have read, these are the opinions i've formed:

welles was king shit at the radio show. the first few days of every week he did 'other things'. while he was doing other things, houseman, paul stewart, howard kotch, and a few others, did all the work, with houseman supervising, and over seeing. then welles came in 3 days before the broadcast and mercylessly tore into their work.

by houseman's own words, "he took their work and expanded on, and streched it into a creation of his own.

so he plowed over houseman's creative output as well as all the others. creativelly houseman was as replacable as the others.

no different than welles sitting at a restaurant table with a pot of glue, scissors, and 2 copies of a dracula book to come up with the radio play.

i don't think creatively he needed houseman in any way or form, but houseman was the best buffer welles ever had.

completely agree that welles would have had a better carreer had houseman been better at putting up with his behavior.

from what i've read from many sources, welles was no day at the beach.

want to read a bit of odd, flawed behavior? peter viertel tells in his book, DANGEROUS FRIENDS, about being in a restaurant with welles. welles booms so loud that he would commandeer all the attention at the restaurant. every table watching his.
the entire restaurant is over run with him. like he can't be in a room without being the center of attention.

after reading that i wonder about that account that welles mentions in STORIES FROM A LIFE IN FILMS, where it was claimed in a magazine that he got up from his table and recited his directing credits to a group of lunchers.

rosenbaum said that when he met welles, welles seemed to him a man accutely aware that he was very self absorbed, and tried to work around it (or something to that effect).

houseman could have been what colonel parker was to elvis. only elvis was politer, and easier to manage.

imagine what it must have been like being in any type of partnership with welles. outrageous behavior, living at a frenetic, irrational pace, pissing all his money away.

[mteal]

Jaime,
Yes, I remember reading that Rosenbaum article, and I wish I could remember the quote exactly. Rosenbaum said something to the effect that, the one time when he interviewed him, Welles struck him as abnormally self-absorbed, and yet seemed to be aware of that fact and tried to compensate for it with extreme politeness. In defense of Welles, I suppose great artists have to dig so deeply inside themselves that self-absorption is almost a prerequisite.

In his 1987 interview for Bravo's South Bank Show, Houseman had some nice things to say about Welles, such as the fact that Welles worked harder then any man he'd ever known, and that he was the only person Houseman ever worked with of whom he never had the slightest doubt was a genius, and would work miracles. But he also said that all of Welles' great triumphs were based on strong scripts, implying that carelessly prepared scripts were indeed part of Welles' downfall. As Jeff pointed out, this is highly debatable. However, there's little question that of all Welles' 12-13 feature films, CITIZEN KANE had the most meticulously prepared script, and was by far his most collaborative work as well as being the most daringly in tune with the times.

In Raising Kane Pauline Kael says that, after the breakup of the Mercury Theatre, Welles spent the rest of his career trying to be ORSON WELLES, even tho "Orson Welles" had always stood for the activities of a group. Which is not to say that Welles didn't do great things when he was a "One Man Band" on his own. Few film buffs today would question the greatness of AMBERSONS, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT and TOUCH OF EVIL, or fail to admire Welles' heroic effort to complete OTHELLO, in large part out of his own pocket. But as Kael puts it, all these considerable acheivements seem rather puny compared to what Welles' destiny was supposed to be.

[jaime marzol]

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mteal, you are closer to the quote than i am. i have that article here somewhere. it's a good article. rosenbaum blasts all the same welles books i don't think do the subject justice. i can scan it and send it to you. i also have 40 or 50 more welles articles that nat the obssessed e-mailed me, that i need to print out. when i do that i'll send you some of these. she sent me lots of stuff on OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

[Cole]

Here’s the quote from the Rosenbaum article:

“My own impression, the only time I ever met him, was that he was abnormally self-absorbed, yet so alert to this fact that he sought to compensate for it by being downright solicitous to whomever he was with - a disarming trait, but far from being a smokescreen.”

It’s from a great article entitled “The battle over Orson Welles” which was published in the magazine Cineaste in June of 1993. In the article Rosenbaum examined the two competing viewpoints regarding Welles: the one that viewed his life with a sense of sympathy and which respected his life-long fight to express his individuality, and the other that saw his life as a failure in that he failed to live up to his “promise.”

I won’t comment on Kael’s remark about Welles’s legacy as being “puny” after Kane . It makes me turn livid, and I’d just be preaching to the choir anyway. But there’s one thing I’ve always been curious about. What did Kael think of Ambersons ? Did she think the “failure” of Ambersons was due to Welles not collaborating with Mankiewicz, Toland and company, or did she admit that it was caused by a bunch of hack, money-hungry, no-brain philistines in Hollywood?

[Tony]

"Revisions" is the key word: if an experienced writer (or writers) prepared a good script, Welles could revise, but he couldn't originate a good script (see BBR!); this architectural foundation problem seems to be a key factor contributing to Welles' inability to release a feature for the last 20 years of his life, along with the fact that he had a horrible reputation as a profligate spender and as someone whose pictures always lost money. Ask yourself this question: if you were an exec in the 70s or 80s, and you knew Welles' track record, and if you were to produce a film with him which lost money you would lose your job, would you seriously consider giving him 10 million dollars for a picture? I know I wouldn't. Actually, it's amazing that Welles made as many pictures as he did, considering that he had established his bad reputation as early as 1942!

Jeff: you say that Welles' movies always featured quality writing; is this so? Lets have a look:

Heart of Darkness: Based on a novella of genius. Welles took this and edited, my guess is with Housman.

Kane: a Mank/Housman script of high quality, which Welles took and revised and made his own and turned into a film of genius.

Ambersons: A great book, which Welles nicely edited for film. (Welles generally did a good job if his source material was strong.) Unfortunately, Ambersons has a weak "fortune teller" ending, and Welles was forced to write his own. Whether or not he was successful we will probably never know, but his source material was strong (Pulitzer Prize material!)

Stranger: not too bad a story: Eric Ambler novel, wasn't it? And revised By Houston? At any rate, other people originated the story, which is strong, but not a personal picture of Welles'.

Shanghai: Did Welles ever read "If I Die..." by Anderson? At any rate, a Welles script which is completely confused and disorganized, as was the picture. Imagine a picture looking this good, but with a great script!

Macbeth: Source material of the highest quality!! (Ditto for Othello and Chimes, all three masterful jobs of editing for film.)

Othello: see Macbeth

Arkadin: A disaster from beginning to end, all based on a terrible story and script by Welles, with many lines worthy of an Ed Wood picture. (Have you ever shown this to a non-Welles fan? They think you're crazy.)

Evil: Probably Welles' greatest script, but based on an earlier Universal script which itself was based on a novel. Welles turned these into genius, but again the structure, the foundation, was already there: he REVISED it.

Quixote: Based on an episodic work of genius, Welles seems to have never figured out in which order to present the scenes, and how to end the picture; these problems surfaced after shooting the picture, when of course they should have been resolved BEFORE the picture was shot, in something called a "shooting script".

Trial: Based on a work of genius, and edited for film by Welles.

Chimes: see Macbeth

Immortal: Based on a short story of brilliance, and nicely adapted by Welles.

Wind: Never seemed to have a script, and Welles seemed to improvise much of it on the set; probably why it was a six year shoot that could never be edited into a film; as "Billy" says in the screening room:" He's making it up as he goes along- he's done it before."

The Dreamers: We haven’t seen the script, but this probably would have been similar to Immortal, as they are both by Dinesen.

Big Brass Ring: An original by Welles: read it and weep with embarrassment; it's amazing he got anybody interested in this. Lines so bad, you can't imagine any actor wanting to say them; it needed a good professional scriptwriter to rewrite it.

Cradle: The anomaly of Welles' output: An original of high quality: Ring Lardner Jr. wrote the first draft, and Welles substantially revised it. It's no surprise that Welles got some offers to make this, even with his reputation and his ill health.

As for Kael's comment, I think there's some truth to it, as Welles never again had the support team that he had when he made Kane: the Mercury theatre, RKO, and Houseman and Mank.

I'm reminded of Kubrick (the other American director of genius): His pictures ALWAYS made money, and he ALWAYS used a professional scriptwriter to help fashion the story. Of course, he only made 12 pictures too, and it's up to posterity to determine as to who made the better pictures. Certainly Kubrick had more time to prepare pictures and spent less time getting money to make them.

[jaime marzol]

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MY TWO CENTS:
THE STRANGER was not written by huston, it was written by welles, and huston, and i have the screenplay that credits welles first, huston second.

welles didn't need a great screenplay to make a great film. TOUCH OF EVIL is a so-so screenplay. pedestrian at best. but look at the film. nothing that we admire in TOUCH OF EVIL comes from the screenplay. it comes from a great director. nothing that we admire in KANE appears anywhere in the screenplay. everything that is admired in every welles picture is cinematic, not narrative. only KANE has a good narrative, and it's better in the film than it is in the screenplay. the AMBERSONS narrative as welles intended is better than KANE's, and welles wrote AMBERSONS by himself.

though BIG BRASS RING has some excellent writing, it has some off the wall stuff in it. and i've never been a fan of the articles welles wrote.

but this is only my opinion.

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[Tony]

Jaime, you've made an interesting point, as I agree that Welles was a very visual director. But perhaps you've gone too far when you say that NOTHING that we admire in Kane or in Evil comes frome the scripts; I happen to believe a good script is crucial, but not sufficient, to make a good movie. It's one of the main factors requisite, along with good acting, direction, and cinematography (and financing!). I have a copy of the Evil script, and it reads very well (as does Cradle). I can't imagine Evil existing without it- it's the foundation! My point is- you can't make a good movie without a good script, and this was Welles' Achilles heel ( along with the "money problem"); when he didn't have a good script or source material (i.e. Shakespeare) to revise, he got himself into hot water (i.e. Ambersons, Shanghai, Arkadin, Quixote, Wind and Brass Ring). I'm not doubting that he was the greatest director of genius in movies, but ultimately, Welles was a great adapter , but not a great originator, of stories.

But this is only my opinion, too!

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

ok here are my cents, if any, too.

tony, i don't doubt that the screenplay of TOE, among the others, is as good as you say it is. but what jaime posted earlier, i'll quote it later, he's right.

there was a screenplay written for every movie, but by other resources i've read, he was constantly changing them as he went along. so what was the need for the screenplay? in mr. welles' case anyway. i believe he read the books, and went from there.

bye now!