Me and Orson Welles (18 page)

Now the whole theatre started
coughing.

In fifteen minutes we had become the Mercury Tubercular Ward.

Welles exited from the long conspirators' scene, and he whispered to Epstein: “For Christ's sake go back to what you had! What the hell are you doing to me?” But the damage had been done: the fluid, seamless scenes of increasing terror, on which Welles had worked so hard, were falling apart right in front of us. We were bombing.

Things finally pulled together a little with Welles's “Romans, countrymen, and lovers” speech. He played it about three steps closer to the audience than he ever had, and it seemed to be directed not so much at the extras around him, but at the audience itself. He stood there shouting,
screaming
at them. “ ‘Who is here so
base
that would be a bondman? If any,
speak,
for him have I offended!' ”

He was something to watch—the son-of-a-bitch—a real fighting star, seizing the house and dominating the stage. It was Welles alone under the lights.

And he
had
them again.

He left the stage dripping with sweat. As he passed me he said, “That'll teach 'em to cough, the stupid sons-of-bitches.”

We took our curtain calls to modest applause, but they couldn't quite forgive us for the first half. Everybody on stage was bellyaching about the music cues, and Epstein was defensive. “I did what you
told
me, Orson. One X for a fanfare, and—”

“One X meant a
march!”

“You told me
fanfare.”

Welles shook his head and walked off.

We heard his dressing-room door slam.

“John, are we going to fix the music?” asked Epstein. “You've got four union musicians standing here doing nothing, and the meter's running.”

“Wait for Orson,” said Houseman miserably. He pulled a stool center stage and sat on it.

“Let's go back to what we had,” said Cotten.

“Wait for Orson.”

“John,” said Jeannie Rosenthal from behind the light board, “I've got that woman on the phone—she says she can do the spot work on the upholstery, but she needs to know what we can pay her.”

“Tell her anything you want, “ said Houseman. “We're broke anyway.”

“We're running it through one more time tonight?” asked Gabel.

“Wait for Orson.”

“And how long do we
intend
to
wait?”
asked Gabel with the same sharply enunciated “t” he used when Marc Antony said, “And I perceive you feel the
dint
of
pity.”

Houseman shrugged. Then he looked around. He said to Cotten, “This is the essential Orson Welles moment, isn't it? Whole show in shambles. We open in under twenty-four hours. Entire vessel keeling over. Water breaching the deck.”

“But wait,” said Cotten in that same tone of mock-melodrama. “There is
one
man who can save us.”

“One man,”
said Houseman, “with the vision, the imagination, the—”

“From the beginning!”
bellowed Welles, coming from the wings. “We go over the whole goddamn son-of-a-bitch show from the very beginning! And
nobody
leaves!”

“ ‘Once more unto the breach!' ” yelled Lloyd.

The entire company groaned.

 

It was sometime past midnight; Welles sat in the fourth row eating his second steak from Longchamps while he reblocked the crowd scenes. A radio, set on the corner of the stage, played dance music softly. (Welles said this helped him think.) In the news on the hour we heard that Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague had declared “I am the law!” in a talk on city government, and that Tallulah Bankhead had opened in Shakespeare's
Antony and Cleopatra.
No reviews yet.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Welles said to the company. “A moment of prayer—complete silence, please! Dear Lord, let Tallulah's
Cleopatra
be a total unmitigated disaster so that ours will look brilliant in comparison. Amen.”

“Amen,” echoed the cast reverently.

“Now, let's run through it again!”

Sonja was sitting next to Welles, taking his dictated notes. Houseman had been banished from the theatre for daring to question the usefulness of another rehearsal at this late hour. One of the extras stood in for Brutus.

Welles was at the top of his form—pleading, shouting, slapping his head, running onstage: “No, no, no—don't you know
anything
about theatre?” He sat back down in the audience, then cursed—leaped up again. He was going through an entire cigar every twelve minutes (Lloyd and I timed him). He'd smash the butt into the ashtray next to him and cry out: “Vakhtangov! Another cigar! And come on, people, pick up your cues. Do you really expect to open like this? Jesus Christ, is
anybody
awake here? Horns: too loud. Jeannie, lamp fifty-seven out, and I told you at cues five and sixty-five to turn off the goddamn exit signs.”

“Orson,” said Jeannie, “that's against the law.”

“I am the law!”
thundered Welles—and cracked everybody up, including himself. “Five-minute break to fix the lights, and then everybody back for the tech run-through. Then the real run-through.” He turned to me. “Junior,
you
can go home. That's all I need—the goddamn Child Labor Commission shutting down my show.”

 

Sonja met up with me outside the theatre. I had one foot up on the fire hydrant by the stage door, and I was trying to finish the cigar I'd stolen from Welles's apartment. It was two in the morning on a New York City street, and I was smoking a cigar!

“Don't you have school tomorrow?” she asked, her breath steaming.

I waved a hand dismissively. “I'm enjoying watching him work.”

“The cigar's a nice touch,” she said. “Part of your new image, along with your new middle name?”

I nodded.

“You know, Richard,” she said, “Orson's going to be here 'til daybreak; he really is. I'm going to be here even later. I've got a ton of stuff to get organized. It's absolutely nuts for you to stick around here that long. You've got to get some sleep. You
open
tomorrow. Which is now almost
today.
These other characters can sleep all morning.”

“I can sleep all morning, too. I don't care. School feels like another universe to me right now—an insignificant universe. And
I'm
asking you out for breakfast before anybody else. So don't tell me no.”

I kissed her forehead.

Welles and Houseman came out the front doors. Welles was pointing to a place in front of the theatre. “Put the sign there: OPENING NIGHT SOLD OUT. It'll look good, and we'll paper the house anyway.”

Houseman stretched his neck trying to get it to crack. “I'm going home to get a little rest, Orson.”

“I envy you your rest.”

“You can over-rehearse, you know.”

“One more run-through.”

“At this point, can it possibly make any difference?”

“This is when the magic happens.”

Somewhere a churchbell chimed the late hour. They listened to its dying fall.

“ ‘We've heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow!' ” said Welles.

Houseman laughed. “Good night.” He walked toward Bryant Park.

Welles stepped into the street to admire his theatre with its illuminated sign—and that's when he noticed Sonja and me.

“Are you still here, Junior?”

“He doesn't want to go home,” said Sonja.

Welles took a deep breath of the night air. “ ‘I know young bloods look for a time of rest.' ”

“ ‘I have slept, my lord, already.' ”

“ ‘It was well done, and thou shall sleep again.' ”

“Really, I'm fine.”

He spoke warmly. “Lucius, I love you beyond measure. You're the one person in this entire company who doesn't need any more rehearsing. Your performance, your song—they're the
foundation
of this show. And let me tell you something, on a personal level.” Here he nearly whispered. “You are what I call a
God-created
actor. There are actors who will study their
entire
lifetimes who will never be able to do what you do with a look, a movement of your hand. When you're onstage, you
register.”
He fixed me with his intense brown eyes. “I look at you, and you know what I see?
Images of magnificence.”
He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “See you tomorrow.”

Welles held open the theatre door. “Sonja, I need you inside.”

“One minute?” she said.

He left us standing there.

“Why do I have the unmistakable feeling that I'm being hustled outta here?” I said.

“You
are
being hustled outta here.”

A cab passed.

“Orson wants to stay with me tonight.”

“Stay with you tonight? That's—”

“Yes.”

She said it without a flicker of remorse.

“And you're—”

“I'm not in a position to refuse.”

“He's
married,
Sonja.”

“It's more complicated than you think.”

“Sonja, I'm going to say the stupidest sentence that—”

“Don't.”

“I love you.”

She actually winced.

“Wrong sentence, I guess.”

“Richard, I have to watch out for myself. That's what my whole life has taught me again and again.”

“You can't trust me?”

“Not one person. Everyone betrays you.”

“I wouldn't betray you, Sonja.”

“You just haven't had a good enough opportunity yet.”

“I'm not Orson Welles, Sonja, but I would never—”

“You don't understand a thing. Sometimes you're so
young.”
She said the word like an insult.

“I would never betray you. That's something I understand.”

“Goodnight, my noble
cavaliere.
Get some rest.”

“Sonja—”

She stopped my hand. “Don't waste your energy. You're not going to win this one.”

Then she smoothed her hair self-consciously and walked back into the theatre.

“You want my advice?”

Cotten had been standing in the alley smoking. He stepped out of the shadows. “Sorry for listening. Want some advice from an old pro?”

I gestured weakly. “Sure.”

“Fight for her. It's what she wants. It's what she's hoping for.”

“Fight for her, huh?” I looked up toward the MERCURY sign. “I don't know if that's who I am.”

“And who you
are—
is that who you
want
to be?” Cotten tossed his cigarette to the sidewalk.

And he was gone.

For a moment I didn't know if he had really spoken to me, or if I had imagined it.

The white lights above my head which spelled out MERCURY were suddenly turned off. The wind blew a litter of leaves across the sidewalk.

It was late. I was bone-tired. And it was beginning to rain.

T
allulah Bankhead's
Antony and Cleopatra
was a titanic disaster.
Thanks God.
I'd heard Woolcott Gibbs on the radio that morning savoring its radiant awfulness: “Our old friend Tallulah Bankhead opened at the Mansfield last night in a production of
Antony and Cleopatra
that makes one understand exactly why every school-child hates Shakespeare.”

I couldn't wait for the papers.

Meantime, I was bolting down my coffee and Fig Newtons—half-listening to my mother.

“And these people are paying you?”

“Not yet, but this could
lead
to—”

“I can probably get a contract as an Equity Junior Member, and that would be twenty-five dollars a week, and then, after I work long enough, I become an Equity Senior Member—that's forty dollars a week. Think of that. Forty dollars a week.”

“And how much has he paid you so far, Mr. Forty-Dollars-a-Week?”

“Nothing so far but—”

“And how much has it cost you?”

“It hasn't cost me anything.”

“And who paid for the trains and the eating out and—”

“All right, I have—but think of this as an
investment,
Ma. An investment in my future as . . . some kind of an artist.”

“Some big artist like your Uncle Sol is an artist.”

“This is not like Uncle Sol.”

“His whole
life
he can't keep a steady job. Another one like you, Mr. Big Dreamer. Always big plans. Had to be his own boss. God forbid he should work for somebody and earn a regular living. No, he had to be in charge,
takha.
Right away had to be in charge. Look at him. Forty-six years old, he still doesn't have a job. Doesn't have a nickel in the bank! Had to ask your father for money. And his poor wife, Harley, dragging her from one lousy apartment to another. He should be shot.”

“Ma, this is different.”

“You explain to your father how this is different.”

“Someday, Ma, everybody in this town is going to know who I am.”

“Sure. You'll be the one who didn't graduate from high school. And if I get one more call from that school today because you're not there, one more call, I'm calling up your friend Orson Welles myself, and I'm telling him how you can no longer participate. And don't think I won't call him.”