2/29 LA Times Welles Article

[Flint]

FYI:

The Los Angeles Times book review section for Sunday Feb 29 features a review by Henry Jaglom of the book "Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life" written by Peter Conrad. It's a nearly 2 page article wherein Jaglom discusses his relationship with Orson almost as much as the biography. Interesting stuff.

-Flint.

[Oscar Christie]

Jaglom writes,

'Wait till I die', Orson told me at lunch one day. 'They'll write all kinds of things about me. They'll just pick my bones dry. You won't recognize me, and if I came back to life and read them, I wouldn't recognize me myself.' ...
...Orson didn't get a chance to write an autobiography. For years we talked about it, taped the lunches that we had once or twice a week, always with the idea that 'when I'm no longer physically able to make a movie, I'll use these tapes to write that damned book.'

Is this all true?
D i d O r s o n k n o w h e w a s b e i n g t a p e d ?

[blunted by community]

i would say jaglom is lying. in one of the articles i have, and don't ask me which because there are 3 huge notebooks full, it said the night welles died he had found out jaglom had been taping him. he called jaglom and bitched him out, then passed away shortly after.

first i read an article that mentioned the welles/jaglom tapes, and it was a long time ago because those huge, franchise bookstores were not around yet, i was still buying books from samuel french. the article mentioned the tapes. i was working on the first welles project i started (and never finished), and a part of the book would be great if it had transcripts of welles' filmmaking intuition. i called samuel french for the tapes, and the girl corrected my pronounciation of jaglom's name then told me no such tapes are in the store. i called sag and got jaglom's number. i called jaglom's office spoke to secretary, told her what i was trying to find out about, then jaglom came to the phone. that meek character he plays in his movies is not a part of his character, he sounded like a cigar chomping NY mobster. he corrected my pronounciation of his name (i was right, the girl at samuel french was wrong). he corrected my pronounciation of oja's name, i pronounced it with a J, it's pronounced "oya." and he was very defensive about the tapes.

much later i found the article that said jaglom was taping welles secretly. then jaglom's attitude when i mentioned the tapes, jived.

[Christopher]

I also heard from a reliable source that Welles was tremendously upset when he found out Jaglom had been taping him, without his knowledge or consent. He had thought of Jaglom as a kind of son or protege, and he felt betrayed by the taping. However, I was under the impresson that Welles found out about it some months before he died, because I remember all of his closest associates were told not to have anything further to do with Jaglom.

[jbrooks]

What's the source of this story that Jaglom taped Welles without Welles' knowledge? I've heard it mentioned from time to time (I think it even comes up in the documentary "Who Is Henry Jaglom?"), but I don't think I have ever seen anyone go on record with first-hand knowledge of the facts.

I do know that Jaglom told me about the Welles tapes back in 1987. He said that Welles had asked him to tape the lunches as starting material for Welles' autobiography. Jaglom said then that he hoped to put the transcipts out as a book.

My opinion, for what it's worth, is that there is no way Jaglom made these tapes behind Welles' back. First, it would have been very difficult to secretly tape record lunch after lunch without Welles noticing something going on. Second, I just don't buy that Jaglom would betray Welles. They were great friends for many years. They spoke together almost every day, and Jaglom seemed to have Welles' best interests very much at heart. Indeed, Jaglom later named his own son after Welles. Jaglom says that Welles called him the day Welles died to inquire about Jaglom's mother, who had just had surgery.

Also, I have seen no evidence whatsoever that any of Wellles' associates have distanced themselves from Jaglom. Didn't Jaglom appear at the Welles Memorial Service (at the DGA?) with Oja in LA shortly after Welles' death? And certainly Peter Bogdanovich remains friends with Jaglom.

Incidently, Jaglom appears in one of the clips from "The Other Side of the Wind" shown last weekend in New York. In the clip, he is discussing film with Dennis Hopper and Paul Mazursky.

[Glenn Anders]

I'm with jbrooks here. Why would Welles make that last jovial appearance in Jaglom's SOMEONE TO LOVE, if they were on the outs?

Glenn

[blunted by community]

one article calls them by name, THE WELLES/JAGLOM TAPES. the other article says welles found out the night he died. these are the only 2 places i ever heard the tapes mentioned, and i really don't care how he got them, it's good that he got them. maybe he's lying, maybe he's not. i think he is but what the hell.

if the tapes were recorded without welles' knowledge, that might be one of the reasons why they are not out yet. couldn't he get in legal trouble?

[Hannaford]

If anyone had the Jaglom article from the LA Times can they paste it in here, as I can't seem to access it from the LA Times website. Thanks.

[blunted by community]

a friend emailed it to me, i read it then dumped it. sorry. but jaglom doesn't think much of the book. according to him it's filled with a lot of fantasy, and answers nothing.

[L French]

Reading Henry Jaglom's review of the Peter Conrad book on Welles, I found it quite strange that he dosen't really talk very much about the book he's supposed to be reviewing, but instead, centers the article on his own relationship with Welles, (and how Welles acted in two of his movies). While that's all very fine and interesting, it's certainly not the point of a book review. But like most of Jaglom's movies, it seems everything has to center around the activities of Mr. Jaglom. And, if in fact, Jaglom did have Welles' permission to tape their conversations, I wonder why he hasn't done anything with the tapes.

Just another Welles mystery which will probably never be solved, unless Jaglom releases audio copies of the tapes in question. I believe he has always refused to let anyone hear them, which cannot be a very good sign in his favor, especially in light of what Gary Graver has to say about the situation:


LF: There was quite a hachet piece in The Hollywood Reporter about you - which was full of errors - after you put Welles' screenwriting Oscar for CITIZEN KANE up for sale.

GARY GRAVER: Yes, it was very nasty, mostly quoting Henry Jaglom.

LF: Henry Jaglom called you a hack director, but I read where he was apparently taping his conversations with Welles when they met for lunch, without Orson's knowledge.

GARY GRAVER: That's right. Orson found out about that before he died, and that's why Jaglom doesn't like me, and that's why he always says the nastiest things about me. I was at a film festival one year, and I had my feet out in the front row, and Jaglom came by and tripped over my feet, and turned around and pretended he didn't even recognize me! Jaglom has so much money, he could have easily done something for Orson. If he was such a friend of his, why didn't he? And if you've seen his films, where do quite a few of them take place? At a party, where all these people come around to talk about him-as a director. Where do you think he got that idea from?

LF: Apparently, Oja Kodar had such a low opinion of him, she actually wanted to cut his scenes out of THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. She said, "with Jaglom you hope to God he doesn't finish his movies."

GARY GRAVER: Well, he's a real character. He did a documentary for Belgium television, called THE BIG O, about an actor who came to Hollywood looking for Orson, but never finds him, because he was drunk all the time. Instead he finds Henry Jaglom and Peter Bogdanovich! But Jaglom was putting me down in this movie. The phone would ring, and he'd say, "oh, that's probably Gary Graver now." So he was actually insulting me and putting me down in this documentary. What happened was, after Orson died, I was very upset, and some journalist asked me about these tapes Jaglom was making of Orson, and I said, "yes, Henry Jaglom made these tapes while he was talking with Orson, and Orson didn't know about it." So that got printed, and after Jaglom found about it, he's never liked me.

LF: It would seem to me that Jaglom must have been taping Welles surreptitiously, otherwise why has he never done anything with those tapes?

GARY GRAVER: Well, after Orson found out about it, he told me, "I always wondered why Henry would always be leaning over to look into his bag when we were having lunch. I thought he might be getting some money out to pay the check," but afterwards, Orson realized, no he was merely turning the tapes over. Orson was very mad about that. Anyone would be.

[blunted by community]

that is funny. welles wondering why jaglom was always leaning forward into his bag. so glenn was wrong, and jaglom did get the tapes on the sly. if he releases them the queen of litigation, beatrice, will slap him silly. so we'll never get to hear the tapes.

some one said that to me a long time ago, that jaglom's comes from a family that is loaded, he himself has a bundle, why didn't he help orson out? and i never knew about jaglom bad mouthing graver.

[Hannaford]

Reading the above comments from Graver, it sounds to me like Welles may have been psuedo-friendly with Jaglom, in the vain hope that he might contribute some funds towards the backing of one of his movies, rather than using the money to fund one of Jaglom's own awful films... which is why Welles probably agreed to appear in SOMEONE TO LOVE... after all, it's no secret that Welles would appear in any trash movie if the price was right.

[jbrooks]

Hannaford,

It is a documented fact that Welles and Jaglom were great friends. Jaglom isn't making the relationship up. They had lunch together all the time -- for years!! And they knew each other's families. I spoke at length with Jaglom about Welles back in 1987, and his overwhelming affection for Welles as a great friend was very real. Jaglom was also (and presumably is) a big fan of Oja, who he called "the great love of Welles' life." And of course, Oja has a significant part in "Someone to Love." As I've mentioned before, Jaglom has named his son after Welles.

The notion that they had a pseudo-friendship is ridiculous.

All anyone has to do is watch "Someone to Love" to see that there is real affection between these two friends.

And as for whether Jaglom could have helped Welles get some films produced, there is again lots of evidence that he in fact tried to do so on numerous occasions. The most prominent example is the Big Brass Ring. Jaglom encouraged Welles to write the script and was instrumental in getting Arnon Milchan lined up to produce it. Jaglom was also very involved in trying to resolve the legal problems associated with "The Other Side of the Wind," as is documented in Barbara Leaming's biography. Incidentally, Jaglom introduced Barbara Leaming to Welles. Also, I believe that Jaglom has written that he told Welles that he could have arranged low budget financing of about $1 million for a Welles project (this was about the budget of most of Jaglom's films) but Welles didn't want his big comeback picture to be a small low-budget film. Welles said that he preferred to make a larger scale film (such as The Dreamers or The Big Brass Ring or The Cradle Will Rock) and then he would follow-up with a smaller, more easily financed film.

In short, Jaglom clearly did a lot to help Welles. Whether Jaglom has a personal fortune such that he could have given Welles $10 million to go make a movie, I have no idea. But I do know that there are lots of other people who did have such resources and who did nothing for Welles.

As for Jaglom's relationship with Graver, I don't know what the story is. I know that some people don't like Jaglom's films. (But there are also many people who do. I would certainly count myself as an admirer, though I don't like all of his films.) Certainly, Jaglom is a far more serious filmmaker than Graver. I don't want to disparage Graver, who seems to me to have been very loyal to Welles, but as for whether Graver can fairly be called a "hack director," I would respond simply by taking a random clipping from his directorial credits, as listed on the internet movie database --

Maverdick (1995) (V)
Tail Taggers 122 (1995) (V)
Wet & Slippery (1995) (V)
Backing In 6 (1994) (V)

I haven't seen these films, but I don't recall them being up for Oscar consideration.

As for this "Big O" documentary for Belgium TV that Graver says Jaglom made about an actor coming to Hollywood to meet Welles, I cannot find any reference to any such film ever existing. (Does anyone know if this movie exists?)

And Graver's quote that

"And if you've seen his [Jaglom's] films, where do quite a few of them take place? At a party, where all these people come around to talk about him-as a director. Where do you think he got that idea from?"

is a bit absurd. I guess one could argue that Jaglom's Venice/Venice fits that description to some degree. (And it would be certainly fair for Jaglom to be influenced by Welles -- who better to be influenced by?) But most Jaglom films don't take place at parties where people talk about him as a film director. For proof, go rent Déjà Vu (1997), Last Summer in the Hamptons (1995), Babyfever (1994), Eating (1990)
New Year's Day (1989), Always (1985) Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983), Sitting Ducks (1980) or Tracks (1976). (Jaglom does use the framework of a party quite a bit -- and perhaps this was Welles' influence to some extent. But again, good for him, if it was.)

To return to the original topic, I also just don't buy that Jaglom taped Welles without Welles knowing. Welles clearly had a temper and wasn't always 100% honest -- so maybe he said that to Graver at some point for whatever reason. (I'm not inclined to believe that Graver just made that up). But Welles was no fool and I don't buy that he was wondering for years why Jaglom kept fiddling with his bag at lunch. Moreover, I just don't get why Jaglom would do it. If he wanted to tape Welles, he could just ask -- and why wouldn't Welles agree? Welles was not shy of speaking on tape. And what would Jaglom's evil motive be, exactly? If Jaglom is the billionaire that folks allege, then he didn't need to throw together a book to make a cheap buck off Welles' name. And, of course, it is significant to note that Jaglom has not done so. (Though I wish he would because I'd love to read the transcripts).

Okay, that's enough.

Cheers.

[Oscar Christie]

JBrooks,
Although you do succeed in taking an easy, cheap shot at Graver, nothing in your lengthy post directly refutes the assertion that Welles did not know that he was being taped, which if true, would negate your entire premise of the nature of their relationship and Jaglom's character and motivations.

Has Mr. Jaglom ever said definitively that the allegations that he surreptitously taped Welles are spurious, outrageous, etc. and that he would never, NEVER even think of doing such a think to his dear friend?

[Christopher]

None of us will ever know what really happened at "Ma Maison" restaurant when Orson Welles was having all those lunches with Jaglom. What is significant is that Orson Welles believed Jaglom was secretly taping him, and as I've already said in a previous post, Welles was outraged by this, as were those closest to him, including Oja Kodar, and from then on Jaglom was persona non grata with Welles's intimate friends and relations. It also seems significant that Jaglom was not at the recent LA screenings (according to Stefan Drossler) and that when Oja realized some clips of Jaglom were still in TOSOTW, she exploded to Drossler, "What is that son of a bitch still doing there!" Finally, I assume Welles and Kodar appeared in Jaglom's SOMEONE TO LOVE before the issue of the tapes reared its ugly head since I can't imagine they would have done it afterwards. So the taping must have come to light some time after the filming of SOMEONE TO LOVE and before Welles's death. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know exactly when Welles and Kodar were done with SOMEONE TO LOVE?