Louis Hayward in Ambersons

[Roger Ryan]

What makes little sense regarding Louis Hayward's participation in AMBERSONS is that he was a top-billed actor for years prior to the production of Welles' second film and, if he did appear, it certainly was not in a "pivotal" role as the on-line biographies suggest. As a "ballroom dancer" extra, Hayward would have only appeared as a brief star cameo much like Zsa Zsa Gabor in TOUCH OF EVIL or perhaps that unbilled, almost unrecognizable appearance of Errol Flynn in LADY FROM SHANGHAI. Since both were working at RKO at the time, Welles may have cajoled Hayward into putting on a tuxedo to waltz around for a day as a background extra, but I would doubt he had any kind of speaking part. Virtually all of the speaking roles in the long cut of AMBERSONS are accounted for and most of these appear in the released version.

Among the small roles that are unaccounted for would be the identity of the actor who plays the man that George bumps into at the beginning of the now-lost 4 minute single take that culimated in the "yachtsman" line (preserved in the released version). It's possible this part could have been played by Hayward (there's one line attributed to this character), but I think this role would have gone to an older man than the 32-year-old actor since the character references George's youth.

Could Hayward have played one of George's clubhouse mates? Only three of these actors are identified in Carringer's book, but check out the production still on page 458 of "This Is Orson Welles" (page 68 in Carringer); the actor to the left of Tim Holt does look a bit like Hayward...but the problem is...this extra would appear in the clubhouse scene, the last ball and, later, in the dream sequence George has sitting on his front porch; would Hayward have agreed to spend multiple days on the set to play such an insignificant part?

[Alan Brody]

I don't think 32 would be too old to consider Georgie an obnoxious brat. I'd say that's more likely then Hayward as one George's FOTA buddies, although yes, there is a bit of a resemblance in the picture you cited.

Errol Flynn is in Lady From Shanghai?! Where?

[Roger Ryan]

I don't think 32 would be too old to consider Georgie an obnoxious brat. I'd say that's more likely then Hayward as one George's FOTA buddies.

Errol Flynn is in Lady From Shanghai?! Where?

The indignant man's line was "Look at that! Look at that boy! Sorry, your highness"

I can picture the kind of character actor Welles would choose to deliver that line and the youthful Hayward doesn't quite fit the bill, but who knows? I guess I'll have something to search out when I go through the archives next time. The main point being is that there was no "pivotal" role that Hayward would have played that ended up on the cutting room floor; only a potential cameo. I tend to think that the story ended up being embellished once the significant cuts AMBERSONS suffered became well-known.

As to Mr. Flynn: reportedly, he's in the background of the Acapulco scene after Welles punches Ted de Corsia. Flynn loaned Welles the use of his yacht for the filming and travelled with him to Mexico. NOTE: After checking the DVD, I should have noted that Flynn is unrecognizable since I couldn't actually make him out.

HOWEVER, I did stumble upon something else of interest! Is that Joseph Cotten making the briefest of cameos as the man leading the donkey and who tips his hat to Rita Hayworth as she rushes past? Only freeze-framing the DVD reveals the visage which looks an awful lot like Welles' pal.

[Alan Brody]

) Welles the theater genius was not Welles the cinema genius yet so there would be no prestige to gain.

I would disagree with that. Welles's reputation as a genius, even in Hollywood, was already immense, especially after Kane. It's one of the reasons so many people were out to get him. And Welles, being an anglophile, would have attracted a Brit like Hayward.

Too bad Welles didn't make more use of Flynn in LFS. It would've been a logical thing to do since he was right there the whole time. I'll have to look for Cotten.

[nextren]

"Too bad Welles didn't make more use of Flynn in LFS. It would've been a logical thing to do since he was right there the whole time."

Well, that would have rather upset the film, wouldn't it? Audiences might get confused thinking the movie is turning into a Flynn movie. "There's Flynn!...What's he doin'? Ain't he the star? What's goin' on?" Since Harry Cohn was dictator of the movie and this wasn't TOE (Dietrich), such thinking would probably have prevailed. Maybe Flynn was cut after the rough cut screening.

Personally, I would have been thrilled by a whole parade of superstar cameos in this Welles film. Can you imagine Chaplin showing up with a few lines, for example?

[Roger Ryan]

Sorry "keats" - I was mistaken in saying that Hayward was working at RKO in '41; it appears that he last worked for the studio in '38 when he made THE SAINT IN NEW YORK (reportedly being called a "poor man's Orson Welles" by one critic!). The only consolation I can find is that he doesn't appear to have had a contract with just one studio; he worked at Warner Brothers, Universal, RKO and Columbia all within the period of a couple of years. Given this, it probably wouldn't have been a problem for him to drop in for a cameo at RKO's Culver City lot.

I'm wondering if Hayward was suggested for one of the main AMBERSONS roles such as George or Eugene at one point and his not getting the part was twisted by history into Hayward's footage ending up on the cutting room floor?

Interestingly, there is a good part for Hayward in Tarkington's novel: Fred Kinney's father, who chats at length with old friend Eugene during the last ball and later returns in the story to tell Eugene about George taking a job in the dynamite factory. Alas, Welles eliminated the character during the scripting stage and gave most of his "last ball" lines to Uncle Jack (a wise choice as it makes Jack's character more of a realist and, therefore, more sympathetic). The only speaking roles I'm aware of that were cut from the film completely were Fred Kinney, Charlie Johnston (clubhouse buddies), the man who bumps into George at the last ball, potentially one of two of the partiers who comment on the olives (a couple of these folks can be spied in the released version approaching the buffet table as George and Lucy exit), Eugene's driver and the boarding house's landlady. There's some evidence that Welles might have shot a scene where a youth out driving his motor car laughingly calls George "Grand Duke Cuthbert" as George walks home to the mansion for the last time, but this scene was gone before the initial 131 min. edit was put together. This would have been another unlikely cameo for Hayward since the youth should logically appear much younger than the 26-year-old George (it would also be unlikely that Welles would so quickly eliminate a star cameo in this fashion).

By the way, the quote regarding Hayward having a "pivotal" role on imdb appears verbatim from at least two other on-line biographies, so I believe all of them come from the same (mistaken?) source.

As to a bit actor having the same name as a star: even if he wasn't prevented from keeping the name, wouldn't it be logical that the actor would not want to be confused with someone else?

[Glenn Anders]

Peter: I would always defer to our resident expert on THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, Roger Ryan, as to whether or not Louis Hayward appeared as an extra in the picture, although I do have some speculative tips WHY HE MIGHT HAVE WANTED TO:

First of all, I would disagree with two of your early premises: 1) All sorts of actors would have wanted to do Orson Welles favors in order to be directed by him, or at least observe him at work, even those who hated his guts. In the decade from 1935 onward, Welles was a luminary on Broadway, in Radio, and in Hollywood, not to mention theatrically across America and in American politics. What's more, despite CITIZEN KANE's lack of great box office (not quite so damning under the Studio System back then), all kinds of actors, some of whom had known, or known of, Welles in New York and in Radio, were awed by his talents, theater background, accomplishments, techniques, his charm, his bon vivant status in night club life, his way with ladies, and his independence. 2) CITIZEN KANE had been an earthquake which changed American Movies forever, and even way back then, everyone from the front offices to the starlets knew it.

In all those areas is where Louis Hayward may come in. Hayward had arrived in Great Britain from South Africa in the late 1920's to claim his Cornwall estate, an act which was almost a template for The Count of Monte Cristo, or several other romantic tales dear to Welles. After settling and selling the estate, Hayward opened a night club, which attracted the attention of Noel Coward, the counterpart of Welles in Great Britain. Coward helped Hayward enter English films, including a one or two directed by Michael Powell, and to roles on the London Stage, doing versions of Broadway plays, and a couple by Coward himself. In fact, Hayward went to New York in 1935, at the moment Welles was making his first theatrical history by staging his Black Macbeth, to star in Coward's Broadway production of Point Valaine. On the strength of that introduction, Hayward traveled to Hollywood, where he appears to have secured modest versions of Welles' famous contract. Indeed, through pull or shrewdness, he evidently made agreements with several studios which let him pick parts and approve editing, before he achieved A-picture stardom in 1939's THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, the kind of dual role that Welles' matinee idol side might have both feared and relished. But Hayward, like Welles, maintained his independence and worked to form a more businesslike Mercury Theater-type production company in Hollywood, which he realized upon his return from the War. [Something of a mystery there, but Hayward allied himself with producers and directors of the kind Welles was attracted to, people like Joan Bennett's husband, Producer Walter Wanger, or his own wife and leading lady, Ida Lupino -- often those who had theatrical histories. Sadly, more often than Welles, he allowed himself to indulge in commercial costume pictures, and Harry Lime-like enterprises such as The Saint or The Lone Wolf.]

The keys to my other speculations about links with Welles would be focused in Hayward's leading ladies of the late 1930's and early 1940's: Lucille Ball, Joan Bennett, Madeleine Carroll, Joan Fontaine, and Ida Lupino -- all also favorites, sometimes co-stars of Welles in Radio or Movies. And then, of course, I would look Charles Vidor, at one of two unsung, below the radar later influences on Welles, the director of two Hayward successes late in that period, MY SON, MY SON and LADIES IN RETIREMENT -- Charles Vidor, who would soon lead Rita Hayworth through several career-building pictures, which attracted Orson Welles. I shall be writing of the other director later --

But wait, Peter -- no more speculation about the real subject at hand. I have uncovered an apparently reliable source, a primary source, who can assure you that Louis Hayward was not in any extensive sequence of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS:

http://www.coffeecoffeeandmorecoffee.co ... haywa.html

If you will follow that URL, you will find it leads to an extended exchange between a fan of Louis Hayward and a fellow named Barry Lane, who relates how he was Louis Hayward's business associate and friend from 1963 until his death in 1985. He gives authoritative testimony about many aspects of Hayward's life and career, debunking much of the misinformation which has confused you. The pair promise to form a MySpace page to gather together an accurate online biography of Louis Hayward, the man they so admire.

I have not searched out that MySpace page, should it exist, reluctant to spoil your fun as a scholar.

Who knows what you might find? Hayward's longtime friendship with Patricia Medina? The possibility that, though Hayward was on his way to Marine Boot Camp in Quantico, Virginia, when THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS was being shot, he might have been in talks with the Mercury Theater before December 7, 1941, with a view to appearing in the film? Who knows?

Tell Richard Carringer (but not our Roger Ryan) to move over, Peter!

Glenn Anders

[Roger Ryan]

Just to clarify the timeline, the last ball sequence in AMBERSONS was among the first scenes to be shot for the film which started principal photography on Oct. 28th, 1941. I feel fairly certain that this sequence was completed long before Hayward became a U.S. citizen and joined the marines.

[Roger Ryan]

Of course, I mentioned the timeline only because of this quote from Hayward's manager Barry Lane:

"He did not appear, nor was he scheduled to appear in The Magnificent Ambersons. Not only did he not have a contract with RKO at that time, but was headed to Quantico, Virginia and military service."

In fact, the "last ball" sequence (which he erroneously was claimed to have participated in) would have been completed prior to Hayward becoming a U.S. citizen and joining the military. Yes, "40 days" is not a long time, but it would have been enough for him to have filmed the sequence in question.

[Glenn Anders]

Before we leave this discussion, let me add a couple of points.

I have not the slightest doubt that Louis Hayward was, among his many other talents, a ballroom dancer.

Why do I say this?

Hayward was introduced to London musical theater and cabaret (night club) audiences by Noel Coward, perhaps the most powerful, richest, prolific producer, musical theatrical playwright, composer, and star of his day in England. Musical plays in Coward's early career meant writing many waltzy ballads and parts for those who danced and sang them. [He created, according to The Noel Coward Society index, an astonishing 564 musical theater and cabaret-style compositions during his career.] South African Hayward had been educated as an actor by his widowed mother in England and Brittany, learning all the theatrical graces and skills, including singing and dancing, required in England and France at the time. He "toured the provinces" at the end of the 1920's before settling down in London to manage a night club. There he met Noel Coward, who persuaded him to take part in a staging of Dracula (ding-ding-ding for Wellsians), which Coward was producing. After that, Coward put him in several of his plays, and if we can trust the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, he became part of a string of "inconstant love affairs" involving Coward, whicht included Hayward and Alan Webb (evidently Hayward's replacement, much later "Shallow" in Welles' CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT).

Original cast recordings of contemporary plays were very rare in the early 1930's, due to difficulties in technology and expensive time limits imposed by record size, but we do have records of some pieces from Conversation Piece -- written, produced and starring Noel Coward and Yvonne Printemps (forgotten now, but in the 1920's and 1930's, a reigning musical diva). The play, a gathering of love triangles, was notable for casting Hayward and young George Sanders, who would soon also go to Hollywood, where early on, he played The Falcon, a kind of Saint, Lone Wolf, (syndicated radio) Harry Lime ambiguous hero which Hayward and Welles were to essay.

The "second big waltz" in Coversation Piece was sung by Heroine Mme. Printemps as a consolation for losing lover Hayward (to Coward, of course, who was also noted for incorporating autobiographical psychodrama into his work), and Hayward presumably twirls her around during the number in a farewell dance. The scene is described as "a 32 bar slow waltz," and though the recording of the time does not have room for the vamps (dance orchestration), they were no doubt there, and here is the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdLkwTWy ... 92&index=7

Conversation Piece was a hit when it opened at London's Haymarket Theater in 1934.

The next year, Coward went to America to write and stage Point Valaine for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Set as a melodrama in a "steamy" tropical hotel (of a kind that might have appealed to young Orson Welles), Coward intended the play as a departure from his light musical, comic or noble-pretending earlier works. He used Somerset Maugham as his plot model, but figured that he would attract American audiences with lots of brutal acts and profanity. He imported Louis Hayward to play a handsome young aviator who has an affair with Miss Fontanne. The climactic moment in Act 3 comes when Alfred Lunt spits directly in the face of Fontanne. "What's a little spit between actors? " Lawrence Olivier famously said in answer to complaints by Merle Oberon about his careless behavior during the shooting of WUTHERING HEIGHTS. However, Point Valain lasted fewer than six weeks on Broadway, the only real flop during the Lunts' long career. Hayward received the sole good reviews, and shortly, he was off to Hollywood, a new star in the making (which, nevertheless, took him nearly five years before hitting it big with THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK).

But looking back on what I've presented to you, Peter, can you doubt that Hayword was capable on film of a simple waltz, one of the social mainstays of the previous fifty years?

Just to confound our discussion further, according to Stars in the Corps By James E. Wise and Anne Collier Rehill: "On 8 June 1942, [Louis Hayward] quietly enlisted in the U.S Marine Corps." [p. 28] if so, whatever he may have told Barry Lane, or how the Studio or his press agent handled it, no matter how fleetingly, Hayward could indeed have been in that maddening ballroom sequence from THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.

Time for more research, gang!

Glenn

[Glenn Anders]

Peter: Probably, no one living, with the possible exception of Barry Lane (if he's for real, and he sounded for real to me) could present definitive evidence whether or not Louis Hayward was in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, or more likely, that he entered into some kind of scuppered arrangement to appear in the picture, but for undetermined reasons, had to withdraw or was cut.

As for your theory that there were TWO Louis Haywards -- Shades of Wellesnet! I know Mr. French and Baesen don't care for the IMDb (no more than you do for Wikipedia), but it is a good place to start (or in our case, to finish out). Go to Louis Hayward under "Names" there, and you will see about thirty possible people Louis Hayward MIGHT be confused with, but they are all far off the mark. There is Producer Louis M. HEyward, and a transportation coordinator, Calvin Hayward (aka, Louis Calvin Hayward or Louis Calvin Haywood) and lots of Louise Haywards or Louis Haywoods, but it doesn't matter because they all date in the Industry from the late 1970's, at the earliest.

In regard to the REAL Louis Hayward, you neglect two further factors. [How many is that now?] Hayward, as many have said, including Mr. Lane, was greatly changed by World War II. You don't have to crouch on a sand atoll photographing well over two thousand of your buddies, the finest shock troops the Marines could produce, being slaughtered in order for war to change you, but it helps. And so, no doubt Hayward, the "light" British actor who came to America and Hollywood in 1935, was a much different man by 1945. [BTW, a day or two ago, I watched "With the Marines at Tarawa," and cut in half, presented in a matter of fact, "by the book" fashion, the film is still a harrowing one to watch. It would make a fine subject for restoration on a DVD braced with a similarly restored cut of John Huston's "The Battle of San Pietro," if the footage still exists.] The second factor is that Hayward obviously craved independence. For better than five years, he had been under the absolute thumb of one of the most charmingly ruthless theatrical geniuses of the 20th Century, not Orson Welles but Noel Coward. Lots of internal evidence suggest to me that Orson Welles was the kind of leader a pre-War Louis Hayward would have been looking for, a director/creator as brilliant as Coward who appeared to support his Mercury Theater Company and give the members of that Company the freedom and encouragement to advance their own careers.

As Raymond the Butler (Paul Stewart, a man who was practically Welles' artistic butler in real life) said so memorably, no doubt about Welles as much as of Charlie Kane: "Yes, he did crazy things sometimes. . . Well, as I tell you, the old man acted kind of funny sometimes . . . like that time his wife left him . . . I heard him say it that other time, too. He just said, "Rosebud," then, he dropped the glass ball and it broke on the floor. He didn't say anything after that, and I knew he was dead. He said all kinds of things that didn't mean anything."

But maybe Louis Hayward didn't know that about Orson Welles yet. He only knew that Welles had allied himself with the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, which meant at the time United Artists, Charlie Chaplin, Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Walt Disney, the Cagneys, Howard Hughes, Alexander Korda, Walter Wanger and his eager wife Joan Bennett, and Hayward's hopeful wife Ida Lupino, and on and on. There were a great many of these ambitious artists chaffing under the Studio System, who wanted to change the way pictures were made, then, and certainly after the War, when many of the players they were, or had employed, formed their own production companies, as did Hayward.

[You seem to think that Louis Hayward was a great star in 1940, but by that time, he had starred in only one reasonable A-Picture hit, THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (1939). Most of his work had been in small films, some almost C-Quickies like the Saint pictures or THE DUKE OF WEST POINT (1938) though he would show himself a damn fine actor, opposite his wife Ida, for a good picture, LADIES IN RETIREMENT, in 1941, a performance Welles would have been drawn to when, a few months later, he was casting for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. Still, the Year 1940, as Welles was struggling to put together the monumental CITIZEN KANE, had found Hayward -- the nominal male star of DANCE, GIRL, DANCE, the picture you discovered -- playing an almost complete chucklehead. Hayward might very well have thought after that experience that he had nowhere to go but UP. And Orson Welles was UP!]

You might consider, too, that DANCE, GIRL, DANCE starred Maureen O'Hara, John Ford's recently imported red Irish peach, and another redhead, Lucille Ball, who Welles was featuring on his radio shows, and unsuccessfully, was urging RKO to hire for "The Second Mrs. Kane"; Lucille Ball, who less than fifteen years later, when she became a producer, would would buy a big chunk of RKO Studios. These were bright, intelligent young women, links to the directors he admired most, Wellsian touchstones for "The Girl," as his friend, Preston Sturges, called them in his scripts. [Welles would finally find his version of "The Girl" in Oja Kodar.]

A young Kane, a young Welles, is the kind of guy that Louis Hayward would have liked to have associatd with professionally, after ten years in the shadow of Noel Coward.

I like your discovery of Robert Wise being the editor of DANCE, GIRL, DANCE. Some critics say that Wise also shot part of the film (an echo of . . . AMBERSONS to come?) because Dorothy Arzner was having trouble with RKO about her desire to turn DANCE, GIRL, DANCE into a feminist tract. [You might mention that the cinematographers were Russell Metty and Joe August, cameramen Welles would have liked to work with.] As released, DANCE, GIRL, DANCE is about two dancers, Judy O'Brien (Miss O'Hara) and Bubbles White (Miss Ball). They find themselves stranded in Akron, Ohio (my country, a few miles from where I went to school). Louis Hayward plays Jaes "Jimmy" Harris, Jr., the spoiled playboy scion of an Akron tire company family (not to stretch a comparison too much, a sort of industrial version of the Ambersons, with Hayward as George), who frequents the shows and clubs where the dancers hang out. His wife (Virginia Field) leaves him, asks for a divorce, when he follows them to New York, where Judy tries to follow her dream of being a ballerina (Emily Norton, to mix my metaphor), and Bubbles becomes "Tiger Lily White," the unrepentant Susan Alexander of Burlesque. Judy finally has to give up her dream and become a line stripper in support of Bubbles/Tiger Lily White. Jimmy continues to be a fan, takes them wining and dancing amidst the New York night life. He falls in love with Judy, but gets drunk and marries the wrong girl, Bubbles. It all works out though with the help of a tragic Russian Aunt Fanny-like dance coach (Maria Ospenskaya) and a good man, Steve Adams (Eugene? Ralph Bellamy). Robert Wise may have had something to do with the soaping up of DANCE, GIRL, DANCE toward the end, a development most fans of the picture don't care for. Yet Bellamy's performance is mentioned far more often by them than is Hayward's.

But you need to be a little more aggressive in your research, Peter: If you want to know whether or not Louis Hayward engaged in ballroom dancing during any of the early movies he was in, take a close look at the original lobby card for DANCE, GIRL, DANCE displayed in the IMDb, and you will see Hayward dancing up a storm with Maureen O'Hara!

Gotta go, but keep searching, Peter. The Truth is out there, somebody once said about conspiracies.

Glenn

[tonyw]

I have a feeling that Hayward did not appear in this sequence. At the time, he was a majaor star and certainly not into the "walk-on" mode. This would happen in TOUCH OF EVIL and other later Welles films. However, one film omitted from this discussion is SON OF MONTE CRISTO (1940) that has a really sympathetic performance from George Sanders as the villain who sincerely loves the heroine and is not afraid to engage in a fistfght with an antagonist in the opening scene.

Somebody referred to actors affected by wartime service and it is interesting here to compare Edmond 0'Brien's appearance in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939), where I barely recognized him, to how his appearance altered in the post-war era. Hayward returned to Hollywood in TEN LITTLE INDIANS (1945) looking more mature but not radically changed as 0'Brien was.