Me and Orson Welles (16 page)

There was a line of people waiting to buy tickets. I sang “The Moon Got in My Eyes” loudly, hoping for a few turned heads, then I walked with a studied nonchalance through the stage entrance.
Take a good look, you jealous sons-of-bitches!

 

“Ma! Yeah, I'm calling from the Mercury Theatre.”

I was up in the projection room/office. Onstage below—ten minutes before the matinée audience was going to enter—Orson was still rehearsing.

“What kind of a—”

“Ma! I've got thirty seconds! Look, everything's crazy here! We'll be rehearsing all day and—”

“What are you doing about school? I told your father—”

“Orson Welles's secretary is going to call the school this morning. I was just talking to her about it. She's going to take care of everything.”

“But how can she—”

“One call from her, Ma, and everything is fixed.”

“And your job?”

“I've got Phil Stefan covering for me for a few days.”

“Richard, I don't under—”

“Ma! I gotta get out of here! Ma! I'm a star! I'm gonna be on Broadway! Everybody's waiting! I'll explain
everything
tonight. I'm going to be home very late. But I'm going to school tomorrow. All day. Don't worry. I'm going to hit those books like you never saw. Ma! You're the greatest mother in the world!”

I thought to myself: Is there even school tomorrow? It would be Armistice Day. I didn't know anything anymore. All I knew was this theatre.

 

Oh, we were
hot!
The place was packed—682 faces straining forward in their seats to catch every word.

The big “secret” that nobody was supposed to know (and which everybody knew) was that John Mason Brown, of the
New York Post,
was in the audience. You could actually see him: stout, pink-pated, glasses glinting, third row on the left. Apparently he had to be out of town tomorrow, and, God knows, he didn't want to miss an Orson Welles opening, so he had worked out a deal with Houseman to see it in preview so that he could still write his notice. And if ever any show in the history of the theatre was played entirely to
one
member of the house, it was the Wednesday matinée of
Caesar.
We practically hurled the show in his face. Even Orson stood four feet farther to the left than he ever had before.

Gabel roared:

—and he practically grabbed John Mason Brown by his lapels and shouted in his face: For God's sake, look at my performance, will ya? Am I a full-fledged, son-of-a-bitch star or what?

And Orson, the confused liberal, sat listening in his dark blue suit. Quietly magnificent. The magician who had wrought this masterpiece.

Oh, we had John Mason Brown right where we wanted him! And Orson had been right: the
speed
made all the difference. Even if you lost the thread of the poetry, there was something so relentless in the pull of the pure melodrama of the thing that you simply got caught up in it.

Blackout. Thunder. The conspirators entered with their flashlights—and we strained our eyes from the wings to make out John Mason Brown writing furiously in his notebook.

“He likes it,” whispered Lloyd. We were standing behind the thunderdrum. “He only writes when he likes something. He
remembers
the crap.” Lloyd rubbed his hands. “Wait 'til he sees Cinna! He'll piss in his goddamn pants.”

Muriel Brassler—butterfly shadow firmly under her nose—was a riot to watch. She'd pinned back her gown so tightly that her breasts were practically ripping through it. She'd altered the neck about two inches so that there was a
lot
of throat and chest visible. And she wore the silver earrings and the silver ring that Orson had forbidden.

But she took her lousy two-and-a-half-page scene, and she made you remember her. She marched that body in front of you and said, “Look, even if you hate Shakespeare, you've got to admire my ass. Just think what I must be like in bed.”

“I think Brown's got a boner,” said Lloyd.

“The audience hates it,” murmured Coulouris behind us. “They're bored.
I'm
bored!”

Jeannie Rosenthal messed up the cues on Cinna—the whole scene was played in too much light, but the acting was so intense nobody seemed to notice. For the first time Lloyd did Cinna with just the slightest hint of a Jewish accent, and when Cotten and the others began to physically knock him down and pull the poems from his hand, it made you a little sick with the echo of the anti-Semitism.

I was walking downstage with my ukulele/lute.

“ ‘Lucius!' ”

“ ‘Here my good lord.' ” My voice cracked with nervousness.

“ ‘What, thou speak'st drowsily? Poor knave, I blame thee not; thou are o'er-watched. Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so.' ”

“ ‘I was sure your lordship did not give it to me.' ” I was terrified, and my voice showed it.
Come on, shake it, Richard. There's one critic here, and you've lost your concentration—what are you going to do tomorrow? Pretend these are your friends out there. Be yourself. To thine own self be true. Calm the hell down!

I was sitting downstage, leaning against Orson's right shoulder, singing:

I thought: I just might get away with this.

Blackout.

I watched the last five minutes standing behind the thunderdrum: the marching stormtroopers, the black banners adorned with the crests of Caesar that looked suggestively like swastikas, the stately funeral music played on trumpet and French horn—then the lights shooting up from below like the grand finale of a fireworks display. Coulouris stood there, lights streaming around him, a figure of pure light. “ ‘This was the noblest Roman of them all.' ”

I smiled.

Caesar
was Orson's love letter to himself.

Crescendo music—and then the final blackout.

One second's silence.

Then tame but decent applause. Something still felt a little off.

Curtain calls. We extras bowed modestly.

Then the principals.

And loud applause for Orson—oh, you felt the power of his rising star then.
(The noblest Roman of them all!)
He was the famous one, the one they'd heard on the radio, the star presence who had pulled them into this old theatre.

After the show, people milled around onstage—everywhere the smiles, the hopes for a hit. In his black military coat and black gloves, Orson seemed happily out of breath, fully aware now of what he was about to bring to birth, talking to ten people at once, giving notes to the actors as well: “George, I'm begging you to play down the oration. I know you won't listen to me—but you have to bring it
up
to that level.”

“Photograph, Mr. Welles?”

“Get my good side.” A flashbulb fired. “And Muriel, sweetheart-darling, light-of-the-New-York-stage?” He pointed to her skintight costume and her earrings. “This is a masterpiece, not a Minsky's piece.”

She sneered: “How long did it take you to think up that one?” She turned on her heel.

“And no jewelry!”

“Junior?” said Orson with his hand on my shoulder. “You sounded as nervous as I felt.”

He laughed. I didn't.

A photographer caught the moment.

Houseman was pushing through the actors. “Orson! A word alone.” He pulled Orson into the wings, and I was close enough to hear them. “Brown loved the show!” Houseman whispered urgently. “He wants to meet you. It's a complete violation of every canon of the critic's art; it will completely destroy the objectivity of his review, and I told him you'd talk to him in five minutes. He's waiting in your dressing room.”

Orson laughed. “Is there any other profession so deliciously fraudulent? C'mon, Junior.” He walked me toward the dressing room. “It's too absurd if I walk in there alone, eyes lowered, waiting humbly for him to tell me how
wonderful
I was—so we walk in together—talking—and
then
he can tell me how wonderful I was.”

Sam Leve came up to Orson with a freshly printed
Playbill
in his hand. “I have to talk to you, Mr. Orson Welles. There's a mistake here, and it must be corrected immediately.” Leve was genuinely angry, trying hard to hold it in check. “A mistake in the wording—my name has been completely omitted here.” He pointed to the
Playbill.
“There's no mention here at all that I designed the sets and the lighting, and I insist that it be completely reprinted before the opening. As it stands now, this document is an artistic misrepresentation.”

Orson looked at him calmly. “Every
moment
of this show is mine, Sam. The concept is mine. It's
my
work. It existed long before you came onboard. John'll vouch for that.” The photographer was still firing away. “You did a fine job in a technical capacity, and I'm sincerely grateful for your help, but there isn't enough room to print the name of every carpenter and—”

“Carpenter!” said Leve. “You insult me, Mr. Orson Welles.”

Orson turned from Leve and walked me into his dressing room. He altered his entire tone as we entered. “Now, Junior,” he began. “I see the Lucius/Brutus scene in terms of a purely musical
retard
; we've had two very
grandissimo
scenes: the funeral oration and the tent scene, and what we're looking for now is
pianissimo
—shut the door, will you?—an interlude which—oh,
hello!
What a surprise!” said Orson to John Mason Brown, who had risen from his chair. “How wonderful to
see
you again, Mr. Brown. We met at the Theatre Guild luncheon. Give me one minute, will you?” And then Orson sat me down, and for three minutes, without a pause, lectured me how the Lucius/Brutus scene must be played
pianissimo,
and how the friendship of Brutus for the serving boy was the key scene in the psychology of Brutus. Yes, that scene and his brief scene with Portia, while musically
pianissimo,
and lacking the theatrical
crescendi
of the rising action around it, were vital elements in the music of the play whose whole theatrical energy was a matter of
tempi
increasing
poco a poco.

It was the single greatest load of horseshit I'd ever heard—delivered with a perfectly straight face—and half of it in Italian! I listened and I nodded: the perfect performance of the disciple at the foot of his
maestro
. “What we need to do,” said Orson, “is go over the scene line by line in terms of
tempi.
Stay here for a little longer. Now, Mr. Brown, I
apologize
for ignoring you, but I am still trying to tighten the performances—fine-tune them if you will.”

“Fascinating to hear you work,” said John Mason Brown. “I feel as if I'm getting a glimpse into the very crucible of the artistic process. And, as to your play, Mr. Welles, even in preview, let me tell you—off the record—that it is, quite simply, a theatrical miracle. It's as I imagine the Elizabethan theatre itself must have been: unimpeded with the trappings and hokum of four hundred years of hackneyed stagecraft. What I felt here tonight was a dramatic
immediateness,
an electricity I haven't felt in New York theatre in years.”

“I only wish you could see it tomorrow,” said Orson humbly.

“I saw greatness this afternoon—and a theatrical power and purity that we critics usually just dream about. Acting at a level that equals anything the Group has done, anything
anybody
has done in this city. Not a wasted gesture. Every moment, every scene, every inch of the play filled with the audacity of your imagination. And—as you were saying to this talented young man—what a sense of
music
you bring to it! The rhythm! The pacing! Your
Caesar
is, quite simply, an opera—an oratorio in which every note blends with every other to produce a symphonic totality of
tempi.”

Brown stood up to leave, but not before shaking Orson's hand twice more. Houseman had entered along with Sonja. They stood in the open doorway, and Brown practically repeated the whole speech again. “. . . the tonality, the
tempi!”

After Brown left, Orson and Houseman looked at each other for a second. Then they broke into laughter. “Somebody go by the
Post
and slip that son-of-a-bitch five hundred bucks!” howled Welles.

“A thousand!” said Houseman.

Sonja gave me a thumbs-up, and mimed a kiss.

And then Sam Leve was standing at the dressing room door. His face was red. “Mr. Orson Welles, we must rectify this, or else you will have a lawsuit on your hands. And a union violation. A clear breach of contract.”

He was waving the
Playbill
in his hands. There in the credits it read simply:
Entire production designed and staged by Orson Welles.

Orson glared at the program. “It says ‘designed and staged by Orson Welles' and that's exactly what I did. There's nothing to discuss.” He turned back to Houseman. “Can we get an advance copy of the review? Do we know anybody at the
Post
? Maybe we can pull some lines for the poster.”

The photographer's flashbulb fired off again.