Did Welles steal LADY from William Castle?

[Le Chiffre]

Here are some excerpts from a recent Google Groups thread on THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI in one of their film forums:

FRIEND OF WILLIAM CASTLE: Castle started to realize that he had to develop his own material. So, he bought the rights to a book, _If I Die Before I Wake_.

WILLIAM CASTLES DAUGHTER: He thought that this was just an amazing property and he took it to his old buddy Orson Wells who now was working with Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures and he said, "Take a look at this I want to direct it." Orson took it to Harry Cohn without him and Harry Cohn said, "Yeah but you're directing it Orson." So Orson Wells directed it. It became Lady From Shanghai_. My father must have been furious. I mean this was a property he found. But I think he realized Orson Wells was a masterful director. He shut up and he became the assistant director on it. But boy it bugged the heck out of him.

*

Here is what Castle himself had to say, in his autobiography,
Step Right Up! I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America:

 At the opening of When Strangers Marry, the picture I had done for the King brothers, the Brooklyn Strand Theatre was packed, and the New York reviews were fabulous. The critics had done a 360-degree angle, each one personally singling me out, and praising my direction.
 
 Orson Welles had a column in the New York Graphic (sic), called “Orson Welles’ Almanac,” in which he wrote:
 
"Plant things that grow above the ground today, and go immediately to the Strand Theatre in Brooklyn and see a “B” minus picture called When Strangers Marry. It’s A plus entertainment but because it’s a quickie without any names on it, When Strangers Marry hasn’t had much of a play. Making allowances for its bargain-price budget, I think you’ll agree with me that it’s one of the most gripping and effective pictures of the year. It isn’t as slick as Double Indemnity or as glossy as Laura, but it’s better acted and better directed by William Castle than either."

 The low-budget B picture in the 1940s, before the advent of television, was a training ground for talented young directors who were forced to use their imagination in lieu of money. Many famous producers and directors graduated from this school (Robert Wise, Charles Vidor, Mark Robson, Val Lewton). Now I felt my schooling was over and I was ready to graduate into bigger and more expensive motion pictures.
 
 I called Welles at his office in Hollywood. Immediately his booming voice came on the line. I wondered if he remembered me. We hadn’t spoken in six years, since the fateful day in his office when I had gotten the Stony Creek Theatre. But the warmth of his greeting closed the gap.

 “Congratulations. By the way, did you read James Agee’s review on When Strangers Marry in Time magazine?” There was a pause as I heard him puff on his perennial cigar. “Let’s do a picture together, Bill. You direct and I’ll produce—or I’ll direct and you produce.”

 I caught my breath and quietly said, “I’d love to, Orson.”

 I told him I was still under contract to Columbia, but Welles assured me he could handle Harry Cohn and told me he would send along some books and scripts that he thought would make great movies. If I had anything, I was to send it to him.
 
 On a pink cloud at Welles’s offer, I now decided to turn Hollywood upside-down. The harsh ring of the telephone jarred me back into reality. The operator announced that Harry Cohn was on the line.

 “When the hell are you coming back to the studio, Castle?” the voice barked over three thousand miles. “You’re going to direct another Whistler in three weeks.”

 The girl was beautiful, married to a cripple who was a famous criminal lawyer. She plans his murder. Choosing a sailor as her lover, she manipulates him into the act of murder. If I Die Before I Wake had the potential of a great motion picture—shocking, provocative, filled with suspense. Although I knew I would have to make it on a low budget, it was a challenge that I felt sure would finally propel me into more expensive A pictures.

 I had written a ten-page treatment (a short screen version) of If I Die Before I Wake but when I called Harry Cohn’s office I found out he was on holiday and wouldn’t return for several weeks. Impatient and wanting to put a screenwriter to work immediately, I made an appointment with the story editor at Columbia.

 At my insistence, he read the treatment immediately. I was stunned by his reaction. He rejected the material and informed me that Harry Cohn would hate it.

 “Why?” I asked.

 “The leading lady is a murderess. Mr. Cohn likes his heroines good, sweet, and pure.”

 “Bullshit!” I yelled and, grabbing my treatment, stalked out of the office and slammed the door.

 My contract with Columbia was exclusive, and any material I owned was their property. The story editor had officially turned it down, and Harry Cohn was out of town.

 Frustrated and angry, I impulsively sent the book and my treatment to Orson Welles, informing him that if he was serious about working with me, I’d like him to consider If I Die Before I Wake. A month later, he wrote:
 

"Dear Bill:
 
About If I Should Die—I love it. It occurs to me that maybe by saying I had ideas for it, you’d think my ideas are creative. Nothing of the sort. What I’m thinking of is a practical use Mercury could find for the property. I have been searching for an idea for a film, but none presented itself until If I Should Die and I could play the lead and Rita Hayworth could play the girl. I won’t present it to anybody without your O.K. The script should be written immediately. Can you start working on it nights?
 
Give Rita a big hug and kiss and say it’s from somebody who loves her very much. The same guy is crazy about you and you won’t ever get away from him.

-Orson Welles"

(Rita Hayworth was the reigning superstar at the time, and Orson married her some months later.)

 I was preparing another low-budget epic, The Crime Doctor’s Warning, starring Warner Baxter, when Bill Graf, Harry Cohn’s new executive secretary, called and said that Mr. Cohn wanted to see me immediately.

 In an unusually expansive mood, Cohn announced he was taking me off The Crime Doctor’s Warning. He told his secretary to hold all calls and, all charm and smiles, called me by my first name. I started to worry.

 Cohn crossed the room and sat down beside me. “I just made a deal with Orson Welles to do a picture for us at Columbia. That boy’s a genius.” He handed me a treatment and asked me to read it immediately.

 Glancing at the cover, I read, If I Die Before I Wake.

 “You know, Bill,” Cohn continued, “It takes a genius like Orson Welles to find material like this. The dame being a murderess is a brilliant and original idea.”

 Shocked, I sat frozen while Cohn informed me that he had given Orson the choice of anybody in Hollywood to be his associate producer and he had picked me. Furious, I reached Orson in New York. He excitedly told me how he had sold If I Die Before I Wake to Harry Cohn for $150,000. It was a package deal—Orson would produce, direct, write and co-star. I had paid $200. and Columbia had turned it down.

 “We’ll be working together, Bill. Isn’t that what we planned? Get to New York as quickly as possible so we can begin preparations.”

 Trying to rationalize that working with Orson in any capacity would be a great learning experience, I tried to push aside my disappointment in not being able to direct. Orson had said that Cohn agreed to let Rita Hayworth play the girl and that If I Die was to be one of the big pictures of the year. If I had directed, it would have been an inexpensive $70,000-budget Whistler. After a sleepless night, I decided to see what would become of If I Die Before I Wake in the talented hands of Orson Welles, the boy genius.

[Roger Ryan]

I tend to think that Welles' fanciful story of seeing the paperback of IF I DIE BEFORE I WAKE at an airport bookstore while on the phone to Harry Cohn was his way of covering over what, in retrospect, he realized was a broken promise to Castle. At the same time, Welles did keep Castle involved with the project which is more than some producers would have done. The initial screenplay (written by Castle?) set the action almost entirely on Long Island; I'm thinking that it was probably Welles who expanded the setting (and budget!) to spread the action down to Mexico and, ultimately, to San Francisco.

[Le Chiffre]

I never bought Welles’s version of the LFS/Cohn story either; you have to take most of his stories with a grain of salt, entertaining as they are. One gets a sense of resigned disappointment rather then bitterness in Castle’s account, although he and Welles never did work together again, as far as I know. Welles said that Hayworth’s involvement turned LFS from a “B” picture into a “A” picture, and I’m sure you’re right that it was Welles’s script rewrite that put a fair amount of the story on Bannister’s yacht (perhaps to take advantage of Welles’s friendship with Errol Flynn, whose yacht was used). Good way to mix business with pleasure. I wonder if that great soliloquy about the sharks eating each other was in the original book. Somehow, I doubt it. Seems like something Welles would have tossed in himself.

[mido505]

Let's remember to keep a little perspective here. Welles could not have stolen LADY FROM SHANGHAI from William Castle, because LADY did not exist before Welles wrote and directed it. I don't know what was in the original source novel, nor do I know what Castle might have made of it (something like The Tingler? 13 Ghosts? Straight Jacket?). I do however, know that had Welles not directed LADY, there would have been no Rita, no Everett Sloan, no Glenn Anders, no Zacca, no Crazy House, no shootout in the Hall of Mirrors, no "taarget practice", no "give my love to the sunrise".

The simple fact is, Castle couldn't close the deal. Welles did, perhaps because he played the Hayworth card. Cohn would never have consented to let his biggest star be directed by a little B picture nobody, which is what Castle was at the time. With bad boy Welles directing his glamour girl wife, publicity value was already built in.

There have been a lot bigger screwings in Hollywood history, and the guy getting screwed didn't normally get the producer gig.

[mido505]

Please note that I used the term "screwing" in the previous post ironically. There was no screwing at all.

Both Clinton Heylin and Simon Callow devote several detailed pages to the genesis of LADY, and neither fault Welles for his behavior. Those interested can consult those two sources; I will merely make a few observations.

Welles and Castle first corresponded in 1944, before Welles and Hayworth were married. At that time Welles was persona non grata in Hollywood, only able to get acting gigs. Welles's kind offer to Castle, “Let’s do a picture together, Bill. You direct and I’ll produce—or I’ll direct and you produce,” was more of a gesture than a promise, and was not related to IF I DIE. Welles suggested that they exchange ideas for a film, and Castle may have sent Welles a copy of IF I DIE at that time, although this is unclear.

Nothing more seems to have come from this talk of collaboration until Castle sent Welles the ten-page treatment he had written for IF I DIE after his unsuccessful attempt to convince Columbia to make the picture. Heylin states that Welles received Castle's treatment in Spring 1946, so this was some time later.

This time Castle contacted Welles at a propitious moment. Things had changed since 1944. Welles was once again bankable as a director after successfully completing THE STRANGER, and could get a project moving. The AROUND THE WORLD fiasco had hurt Welles financially, those desperately needed costumes were stuck in storage, and a well-paying directing gig would solve a lot of problems. Rita, hoping to save her crashing marriage, was anxious to work with her husband. IF I DIE would have stood out to Welles for several reasons: a) it was a great story with meaty roles for both him and Rita; b) Columbia already owned the property, as Castle himself admits; and c) IF I DIE would provide Welles the cover to make his long cherished film version of CARMEN with his wife in the lead role.

In Prosper Merimee's novella, Carmen, the heroine is a murderess who is killed by her lover at the climax. Sound familiar?

Note that Welles states, in his note to Castle that, "I won’t present it to anybody without your O.K.". He didn't. Castle doesn't quote his own correspondence with Welles, but I should think he mentioned to Welles that he tried to get Columbia to greenlight the project but was turned down. Welles merely went directly to Harry Cohn, who owned the project, as Castle has admitted, and got him to approve it.

Welles then did exactly as he said he would do, and insisted on Castle as producer.

That was a big deal. In Old Hollywood, power was with the producers. Being listed as Associate Producer on a Welles/Hayworth A picture at Columbia was a big step up for the director of THE WHISTLER.

Only problem was, LADY flopped. Badly. And that, I think, is the rub, why Castle was bitter. One could not parlay a producer credit on another budget-busting Welles debacle into any kind of career advance. Castle went back to the B-picture grind, and would not get another producer credit for ten years.

Had LADY been a huge commercial success, Castle's memories might have been vastly different.

[Jeff Wilson]

On a side note, King's original novel was republished in the UK a couple or so years ago, and it can be easily obtained on Amazon. Nice Rita cover as well.

[ToddBaesen]

As Mido points out, Welles did not "steal" If I die, but simply elevated it from a B picture to an A picture. Clearly Welles did not have the rights to the novel, and his story about seeing it on a bookstand is hogwash, but from reading Castle's book, I don't think he was bitter at all, merely disappointed, as he says in his book. When Castle encountered almost the same situation years later, when he had brought the rights to ROSEMARY'S BABY, nearly the same thing happened. Castle realized he couldn't make an A picture out of the novel and gave the job to Roman Polanski. Just imagine what a Castle directed version of ROSEMARY'S BABY would have been like! Maybe Joan Crawford would have played the Ruth Gordon role.

And Castle himself agreed to Welles plans, as he says:

"Trying to rationalize that working with Orson in any capacity would be a great learning experience, I tried to push aside my disappointment in not being able to direct. Orson had said that Cohn agreed to let Rita Hayworth play the girl and that If I Die was to be one of the big pictures of the year. If I had directed, it would have been an inexpensive $70,000-budget Whistler. After a sleepless night, I decided to see what would become of If I Die Before I Wake in the talented hands of Orson Welles, the boy genius.

[mido505]

Just imagine what a Castle directed version of ROSEMARY'S BABY would have been like! Maybe Joan Crawford would have played the Ruth Gordon role

You made my day with that, Todd. My mind is now running wild imagining the result of that casting choice.

[Jaganahi]

I tend to think that Welles' fanciful story of seeing the paperback of IF I DIE BEFORE I WAKE at an airport bookstore while on the phone to Harry Cohn was his way of covering over what, in retrospect, he realized was a broken promise to Castle. At the same time, Welles did keep Castle involved with the project which is more than some producers would have done. The initial screenplay (written by Castle?) set the action almost entirely on Long Island; I'm thinking that it was probably Welles who expanded the setting (and budget!) to spread the action down to Mexico and, ultimately, to San Francisco.

I am quite surprised that it was welles.

[Le Chiffre]

I am quite surprised that it was welles.

Why's that?