Here’s a letter Orson Welles wrote to his good friend Joseph Cotten asking him to consider appearing in his forthcoming production of The Immortal Story, that Welles was scheduled to start shooing in September of 1966. Cotten, was at the time, apparently staying near Welles’s house outside of Madrid while filming his role in Sergio Corbucci’s western, The Hellbenders.
It appears that Welles wanted Cotten to play Mr. Clay’s head clerk, Elishama Levinsky, a part that eventually went to actor Roger Coggio. As Welles notes, he would have enjoyed working with Cotten again, and casting Cotten as Mr. Clay’s clerk would have given the film more star power, as well as better balancing the film between its four principal actors.
Sadly, after reading this letter, one also realizes just how frustrated Welles was in simply trying to cast his movies, since even when he actually had the backing to make a film, he still had to essentially ask his friends to work for nothing and then hope whoever he wanted to use might actually agree.
Presumably, after Welles gave Joseph Cotten a copy of the script, Cotten didn’t especially take a liking to the screenplay or to his part – so in this letter Welles tries to convince “Jo” that while the film is obviously not “commercial” the role is still worth doing. Of course, Cotten did not do the role, and instead he went back to America to be directed by another old friend (Norman Foster), in Brighty of Grand Canyon – a sort of variation on the story of a boy and his burrow that was perhaps inspired by Foster’s and Welles’s My Friend Bonita episode of It’s All True.
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10th August, 1966
Dearest Jo,
That remark of yours about a “radio show” has brought me down with a mild case of alarm and despondency. I know there’s a staggering amount of talk in that script I sent you, but I did think there was enough story to keep it moving (admittedly at it’s own rather curious and crab-like gait). Not a film for the drive-ins, certainly — but, I’d fondly hoped, worth making all the same. If you should be tempted to comfort me by agreeing to this, you should realize that you’d be trapping yourself into ten day’s hard work for almost no money. So, I’m writing this by way of fair warning.
The suspicion will have surely crossed your mind that there’s nothing even vaguely commercial about this little caper. Well, you deserve to know how right you are. Before you tell me what you really think of the script, you must be told how shamelessly little I have to offer.
French TV, of all things, is offering me just enough money for the physical production — a real ‘A’ production that is, in color, unhustled and carefully made. Jeanne Moreau and I (who hope to be your co-stars) are contributing our services on spec’ — with a hopeful eye to America. Financially, I needn’t tell you, this can’t be brilliant: “art houses” if it’s distributed as a film (or as part of one), and nothing like “prime time” if the sale is to American television. But it turns out that there are lots of TV markets in the world, none of them big, but big enough in the aggregate, and I’ve already been approached for theatrical distribution in the European and Latin American markets. This means there’s bound to be some kind of money for our efforts. (In the meantime I can just manage a thousand dollars weekly living expenses for each of your two week’s work).
But, obviously there’s no point to this at all unless it’s something you’d really like to do. Now that you know the worst you can make up your mind about that.
I think it’s an exciting project, and might even be — in its own peculiar way — quite an event. But then, I’m prejudiced. What I’m sure of, is that you’d be marvelous in what I hope is a fairly juicy role, and that for us to be working together again would be, for me, the greatest pleasure imaginable.
Would you like to have a very early dinner at our house tomorrow night? You could come straight from the location to the pool, and by the time you’re dried off, your steak would be ready. We’d pick up Pat separately. Let us know…
(And please — if you can accept, don’t mention to Paola the hour you stopped by on Sunday! I was the one who was supposed to have taken down that sign after we got back from the vets, and the truth is, that I went into the house to do something and forgot about it for quite awhile. This may mean that we needn’t have missed you, and since Paola, who is very fond of Pat, is already cross about it, I beg you not to stoke the flames).
Much love,
Orson
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In the sixties of the last century there lived in Canton an immensely rich tea-trader, whose name was Mr. Clay. He was a tall, dry and close old man. He had a magnificent house and a splendid equipage, and he sat in the midst of both, erect, silent and alone.
Amongst the other Europeans of Canton Mr. Clay had the name of an iron-hard man and a miser. People kept away from him. His looks, voice and manner, more than anything actually known against him, had made him this reputation. All the same two or three stories about him, many times repeated, seemed to bear out the general opinion of the man. One of the stories ran as follows:
Fifteen years ago a French merchant, who at one time had been Mr. Clay’s partner but later, after a quarrel between them, had started on his own, was ruined by unlucky speculations. As a last chance he tried to get a consignment of tea on board the clipper Thermopylae, which lay in the harbor ready to go under way. But he owed Mr. Clay the sum of three hundred guineas, and his creditor laid hands on the tea, got his own shipment of tea off with the Thermopylae, and by this move finally ruined his rival. The Frenchman lost all, his house was sold, and he was thrown upon the streets with his family. When he saw no way out of his misfortune he committed suicide.
—Isak Dinesen, The Immortal Story