The Free Company - His Honor, The Mayor

[Terry]

Here's a one-off Welles production from the long lull between The Campbell Playhouse and his series for Lady Esther (during which time he was making Kane.) It's as sublime as anything The Mercury ever did in any medium (Ray Collins stars and is especially excellent.) Simon Callow called it "innocuous," which can mean either inoffensive or insipid, but his use of the word is vague and the context doesn't specify which. The authorship is generally attributed to Welles, and if so it was a fluke, being the best original script he ever penned (my own sense is it originated with someone else, though I know not whom.)

The Hearst Press wasn't enthused by Welles' illustration of the right of Freedom of Assembly; they denounced it as being subversive "Red propaganda."

http://www.box.net/shared/xky7hn4uxk

[ToddBaesen]

Thanks for another great radio find, Store Hadji!

It's also strange how the subject matter of HIS HONOR THE MAYOR still seems fresh and very alive on the current political scene with an Immigration bill under attack, as well as the growing assult on American civil liberties guranteed in the Bill of Rights.

After Welles show was denouced as communistic from Hearst newspapers and the American Legion, Time Magazine came to Welles's defense in this article:


FREELY CRITICIZED COMPANY

Time Magazine, Monday, Apr. 28, 1941

The attack began suddenly. First there was a brief communique in William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner. Next morning the item was blown up into a front-page spread. Across the continent the story streaked to make headlines in the New York Journal and American, many another Hearst paper en route. Burden of the tale told by the Hearstlings: a number of American Legion Posts, several other veterans' societies, as well as the California Sons of the American Revolution, had found subversive propaganda in the broadcasts of CBS's Free Company, particularly in a program called His Honor, the Mayor, written and directed by Orson Welles.

As reported by the Hearst press, a typical Legion stricture on Welles and The Free Company was that of Homer L. Chaillaux, chairman of the Legion's National Americanism Commission: ". . . cleverly designed to poison the minds of young Americans. . ." Echoed a spokesman for a Legion post in Brooklyn: "The name itself, Free Company, sounds suspiciously Communistic..."

All this suggested a renewed spring drive by the Hearst press against Orson Welles, and it coincided strangely with the release dates of Mr. Welles's film, Citizen Kane. The first drive had for its objective the suppression of the movie on the grounds that it looked too much like an unflattering portrait of Citizen Hearst.

Unfortunately for the Hearst strategy, The Free Company, a non-commercial series of democratic propaganda plays by people like Maxwell Anderson, Ernest Hemingway and William Saroyan, operates under what is virtually a Government charter. The Company's chairman, distinguished Author James Boyd (Drums, Marching On), pointed out that he is a dollar-a-year man with the Department of Justice, had shaped up The Free Company on official advice from his good friend Solicitor General Francis Biddle.

His Honor, the Mayor, which aroused Mr. Hearst and Legionnaires, described how an honest, small-town mayor supported the right of assembly by letting a gang of fascistic "White Crusaders" hold a meeting, then held a bigger and better meeting of his own. Another Free Company drama to which the Legion objected was The Mole on Lincoln's Cheek. It made a plea for freedom to teach, put in a plug for honest textbooks. Probable cause of the Legion's gripe was that its characters included a few witch-hunting operatives of a "Veterans' League."

During its show this week, The Free Company mildly replied by pointing out that many of its members had served in the Army, that all Free Companymen had "dedicated their talents to the proposition that we have in this country a way of life that is unique and precious and something to be infinitely proud of."

[Jeff Wilson]

The entire Free Company series can be listened to at the link below.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/RADIO/Free/main.html

[tonyw]

Thanks to Jeff fixing the "snafu" I can finally transmit my tanks to Store for again providing us with another important historical document. I think it also answers why Welles was supposedly "used up" in the post-war era. During an time when the American political scene was moving to the right, it made perfect sense to turn against one of the most creative talents associated with the New Deal era who represented progressive culture and politics. Hence the process of denigration began, one continuining today. The value of having this material readily available is that we all have the evidence and can counter certain arguments made by Callow and others concerning the value of this material.

[Glenn Anders]

Let me add my thanks to Jeff, also.

Your observation, tonyw, supports a point that I make in the general discussion area concerning Welles, by the end of the 1940's, having used up his future. [See "Welles -- "Quietened by his own genius"?] When "Liberals" and "The Left" are railed against in our present political climate, the critics should really be referring to that generation of forward-looking artists and thinkers, alerted by the Depression, and nurtured by the New Deal, who were looking toward a more co-operative, peaceful World, at the end of World War II. The forces in America which had supported the rise of Fascism in Europe found such people anathema to their plans for returning the country to the days of the Robber Barons. They drowned these talented, truly democratic people in smears of red. As you suggest, young, vital, brilliant Orson Welles was a great target for their scorn; their economic and political attacks.

Hadji: Do you have any more of the March of Time episodes in your cache? I have a notion that a careful examination of Welles' participation in this series would reveal the source for many of his successful themes and techniques in other fields of activity.

Glenn Anders

[Terry]

I've got one and only one March of Time ep which I believe has Welles on it. I'll post it when I can.

[Glenn Anders]

Thanks, Hadji.

I know that they seem to be scarce.

Glenn

[tonyw]

Glenn, This is exactly the point I've been making in my Robert Aldrich class and mentioned just this moment to a student who brought a draft of her paper to show me. Both Aldrich and his director/screenwriter friend Abraham Polonsky knew that the New Deal era was over and a different card game was in play. They both urged a realistic and non-sentimental perspective to the challenges of this new era. Aldrich was also influenced by Welles's RKO style as the various low-angle celing shots in THE BIG KNIFE and the deep focus ones in KISS ME DEADLY reveall. I made similar comments in my presentation on Aldrich and Welles at the Gregg toland Centenary Conference at Eastern Illinois University a few years ago.

[Glenn Anders]

Great stuff, tonyw!

I'm glad that I appear to have been putting forward a reasonable thesis here.

Might you have a book on that subject? Seems reasonable to me.

Glenn

[tonyw]

I've written about Aldrich in BODY AND SOUL: THE CINEMATIC VISION OF ROBERT ALDRICH. Scarecrow Press, 2004, and developed the ideas in my posting at that cinference which I hope will appear in a collection of essays.

[Glenn Anders]

Excellent!

All hail. tonyw!

Glenn

[Wellesnet]

75th anniversary of the broadcast this month:
http://www.wellesnet.com/his-honor-the- ... io-script/

[Le Chiffre]

Real nice sounding copy at the new Lilly website:
https://orsonwelles.indiana.edu/items/show/2027

BTW, here's the sequel:
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/29/a-n ... halloween/

[Terry]

Welles would have been in town at that time, the beginning of the Campbell Playhouse run. This makes the moral of His Honor, The Mayor even more surprising.

[Le Chiffre]

Yes, that Nazi rally was three days after BURLESQUE. Funny that Welles would seem to totally contradict the message of HHTM in 1944 with RACE HATE MUST BE OUTLAWED, maybe his most well known newspaper column.
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