By RAY KELLY

For decades, Todd Tarbox has assisted Orson Welles biographers and scholars by providing them access to the archive of his late grandfather, Roger “Skipper” Hill, headmaster at the former Todd School for Boys.

In 2013, Tarbox  published Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts, a play recounting the two men’s life-long friendship in a series of candid and often moving conversations, which Hill had tape-recorded.

Now, Tarbox — through Rowman & Littlefield — is publishing the Welles play, Marching Song, which recounts the life of  abolitionist John Brown through multiple, sometimes contradictory recollections — a narrative framing device used nearly a decade later in Citizen Kane. Welles, then 17, wrote Marching Song in 1932 with an assist from Hill.

Brown advocated the use of armed insurrection to end slavery in the United States. He was tried and found guilty of inciting a slave insurrection, treason and the murder of five men. He was hanged in 1859.

The 200-page Marching Song, which includes a foreword by biographer Simon Callow,  is bookended by two illuminating essays by Tarbox.  In his The Gestation of Genius: Orson Welles, Roger Hill, and the Road to Marching Song he recounts Welles’ arrival and experiences at the Todd School, illustrated with rare of photos of Welles there.  The second Tarbox essay, The Social Conscience of Orson Welles,  charts Welles’ progressive political activism — stage productions of “Voodoo” Macbeth  and Native Son, the campaign to seek justice for blinded African-American veteran Isaac Woodard Jr. and more — are recounted in Tarbox’s revealing epilogue 

Tarbox spoke with Wellesnet about Marching Song, which arrives at booksellers on August. 15.

Orson Welles wrote the play after he completed his education at Todd School and had made his professional stage debut at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. What brought Welles back to Todd and your grandfather?

The Hills represented security and approval to young Orson, who came to consider them family. He returned from his Irish peregrinations and successes at the Gate Theatre in Dublin to the Hills for emotional and creative sustenance.

It was all roses for Orson performing on stages in Dublin. His attempts to reprise his theatric successes in London and New York City’s Great White Way proved prickly and feckless. Drawing from Marching Song:

Crestfallen, he boarded a train [in New York] to Chicago to the welcoming embrace of the Hills. “Hortense and I met him at Union Station,” Hill recalls, “and he bounded from the train sporting an over-sized wool coachman’s cloak and a Gatsby Donegal Tweed Cap. As he stepped off the train, an overloaded suitcase sprang open and scattered its contents causing him to stumble into the ballast of Hortense’s arms. As we helped him gather his sketchbooks, makeup kit, books, and rumpled clothes, he effervescently entertained us with his Irish adventures and dreams for the future.”

At Hill’s encouragement, Orson began working as Todd’s drama coach for the remainder of the second semester. The capstone of Orson’s months as Todd’s drama coach was directing with Skipper Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night. The production was entered in the Chicago Drama League competition that included dozens of Chicago area high schools, some of which had enrollments in the thousands. Todd, with a student body of one hundred, won the first-place silver loving cup and later performed at the Chicago World’s Fair, which was celebrating the city’s centennial.

What was it about the Civil War and abolitionist John Brown that appealed to Orson Welles and your grandfather?

As I write in Marching Song, Hill’s forebears were liberal and, in the nineteenth century, outspoken abolitionists. His maternal grandfather, John Almanza Rowley Rogers, was the co-founder of Berea College. Berea, in Berea, Kentucky, was the first school in the South to admit African Americans, a decade before the Civil War. Hill’s cousin Edwin Embree, the grandson of Berea’s other co-founder, John G. Fee, was the president of the Julius Rosenwald Fund from 1928 until the fund came to an end in 1948. Julius Rosenwald, head of Sears Roebuck Company, established the fund to promote “the well-being of mankind,” with the foremost focus on improving the lives of African Americans, particularly those living in the segregated South. The fund expended tens of millions of dollars building and staffing more than five thousand schools for black children in the Southern states from the 1920s through the late 1940s, generously endowing black colleges, and offering hundreds of scholarships to black artists and academics to further their education.

Not surprisingly, since childhood, Roger Hill was fascinated with the fervent, contentious abolitionist John Brown and, like his ancestor, abhorred the zealot’s methods but championed his cause. When teaching American history, Skipper spent significant time considering the causes and effects of America’s Civil War. His mesmerizing lectures on the personalities engaged on both sides of the Mason–Dixon line held his students in thrall. One of the most indelible characters on the Civil War stage that Hill brought to life was John Brown. None of Hill’s students became more fascinated by the sinning saint than twelve-year-old Orson.

Why do you think they were unable to find a producer for Marching Song?

Their timing was less than ideal. When Orson and my grandparents drove from Woodstock, Illinois to New York in the fall of 1933, the Great Depression was in its third year. Broadway theaters were closing in record numbers. Two hundred and thirty-three stage productions were produced in New York during the 1929-30 season; three years later, less than half that number of plays were mounted.

Additionally, the underpinning of Marching Song is an appraisal of roiling race relations in America a mere three-quarters of a century in the country’s past. In 1933, our country was more than two decades away from ushering in the Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps the content of Marching Song was too controversial and incendiary for producers Welles and Hill approached. Another handicap both encountered was a lack of name recognition: the New York theatre world knew little of teenage Orson Welles and his mentor, Roger Hill. Staging the work of unknown playwrights, particularly during these hardscrabble years placed the co-dramatists at a distinct disadvantage.

The subject of racial equality comes up in Welles’ stage, radio, and film work. With Marching Song, it appears to date back to his teenage years, yes?

Yes, it could be argued that Marching Song was the first flowering of Welles’s liberal social consciousness — defending the defenseless, the oppressed, the forgotten — that remained in full bloom throughout his life.

What light can you shed on the 1950 production at the Todd School?

In June 1950, my father, Hascy Tarbox, directed the play in Woodstock. The June 2, 1950, edition of the Woodstock Sentinel announced, “The world premiere of Marching Song a play written by Orson Welles and Roger Hill, will be presented in the Woodstock Opera House Wednesday and Thursday, June 7–8 at 8 p.m. by the Todd Troupers of Todd School. The late Lloyd Lewis, drama critic of the Chicago Daily News, and noted civil war historian called Marching Song a ‘great and stirring play.’”

The Hills sent a poster of the production to Orson in Paris, where he was starring in his play The Blessed and the Damned at the Théâtre Édouard VII, which prompted Welles to respond warmly and whimsically:

Théâtre Édouard VII

Paris, France

July 29, 1950

Dearest Hortense,

This is just a short note and will be followed by an informative and affectionate

letter. I have been meaning to write you for many weeks. . .

It was a big thrill getting the posters for Marching Song, and I wish that you or

Skipper would write me a little more about the production and its reception on

the occasion of its world premiere. Also, inform the producer that, as far as my

royalties are concerned, he is at liberty to invest them for me. I suggest something

safe like Government Bonds — or a chocolate malted at Allen’s Drug Store.

All my love always,

Orson

What was your role as editor of the piece? Were any significant changes made to the text?

Marching Song required a minimum of editing and no rewriting on my part, only redundancies removed and a smattering of dialogue and stage directions clarified.

Unlike Orson, who felt comfortable freely “collaborating” with authors from Shakespeare to Melville, my comfort level didn’t permit such “collaboration” with Orson and my grandfather.

My contribution to Marching Song beyond its vetting was providing prefatory and concluding reflections on the authors and their drama.

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Marching Song: A Play can be ordered online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Rowman & Littlefield.