Orson Welles, Vol I (97 page)

Richard Wright was drawn by that white heat. More Houseman’s man than Welles’s, he nevertheless acknowledged his ‘profound admiration’ for him. ‘He is beyond doubt the most courageous, gallant, and talented director on the
modern stage in the world today. He presents here something never before seen on the stage in America. The stamp of his hallmark has been vital in advancing the production of
Native Son
to this stage.’
¹³
He noted, with approval, that ‘running through all of Welles’s directing is a high spirit of play and fun.’ Wright rather fell in love with the company, too. ‘Never in my life have I been associated
with a more serious, young, spirited and talented theatrical group than that which comprises the Mercury Theatre.’ Initially Wright had been bemused by the process. ‘My first reaction naturally was one of confusion. Welles and Houseman … warned me to keep away from the theatre till some coherence and continuity had been reached through rehearsals.’ But his ‘old love of witnessing something
new’ overcame him. ‘I ignored their advice and hung around anyway … that was precisely what I wanted to see: – the process whereby the repetition of single lines and passages were welded into a coherent dramatic pattern.’ His somewhat unloving biographer Margaret Walker believes that Wright, as co-author, felt that ‘he had a constant privilege and duty to interrupt and give advice on how he wanted
to produce
Native Son
on the stage. Knowing Wright, there is no way he would have kept his hands off and let Houseman, Welles, Paul Green and Canada Lee take care of what he considered his business.’
¹⁴
For this, there is no evidence whatever.

His co-author, Paul Green, on the other hand, might have liked very much to interfere, but he had wisely been kept away from the theatre until the last
moment. Turning up for a run-through, he stayed to the end of the play – which of course bore no resemblance to what he had written – then left without a word, returning the next day with his lawyer. Houseman calmly refused to restore to the play a single line of his text, while Green and his attorney unconvincingly threatened lawsuits; they scarcely had a leg to stand on here since only Wright’s
words from the novel had been used. At a strategic moment, Houseman had Welles summoned from rehearsals. ‘Orson began to howl at him, Green got up and left, and I have never seen
him again.’
¹⁵
Work proceeded more or less according to plan, though the traditional Mercury postponements were observed (Houseman, in
Run-Through
, claims otherwise, but the delays were sufficient to be reported in
The
New York Times
:
‘TWO POSTPONEMENTS IN A ROW’).
Welles was unable to resist an ironic reference to his still imprisoned film; he placed a sled inscribed (invisibly to the audience, of course)
ROSEBUD
on a corner of the set, to the complete satisfaction of Richard Wright. ‘I had the honor recently of seeing a preview of
Citizen Kane
.’ Wright said in a contemporary interview. ‘Running through this
great film is a rather poignant and symbolic sub-theme of a boy’s sled, called Rosebud. You can imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that Orson Welles had taken the beautifully varnished sled of the white boy in
Citizen Kane
and thrown it into the first scene of
Native Son
.’

Kane
beat incessantly on Welles’s brain throughout the period of work on
Native Son
. Most terrifying was
the silence from RKO. On 7 March – a third of the way into rehearsals – in some understandable distress, Welles sent a wild and impassioned telegram to Schaefer: ‘think about the impossible strain you have put in my faith in you stop i see a good many important people in the ordinary course of things in new york and a great many more now make a point of seeing me stop they all tell me what i refuse
to believe and i tell everybody what i have no reason to believe beyond my belief in you stop as a matter of fact as regards kane im the only person i know who has any faith in you at all’.
¹⁶
Turning rather swiftly from this dangerous tack, he darkly suggests that strings in Washington may be about to be pulled. Then he turns to his personal feelings. Principal among these, obviously, is humiliation:
‘my mail is one long accusation from the american public which truly believes i have sold out and the sympathy and good advice of my friends make their society intolerable stop my nights are sleepless and my days are a torture stop this is no exaggeration … dont tell me to get a good nights rest and keep my chin up stop dont bother to communicate if thats all you have to say stop theres no
more rest for me until i know i have something concrete, and as for my chin ive been leading with it for more than a year and a half … i must know if i overrate our friendship … as ever, my fondest regards orson’.

RKO’s silence was finally broken on 11 March –
Native Son
was in its final week of rehearsal – by an unexpectedly impassioned statement from the strictly non-political George Schaefer
in
Variety
: ‘A free speech, a free press, and a screen free for expression tell the
story of American democracy. They merit no criticism. They need no defence.’
¹⁷
This was encouraging. Schaefer (a notoriously obstinate man) was digging his heels in. Then, just days before the opening of
Native Son
, Welles gained an important ally. Henry Luce, sometime investor in the Mercury Theatre, owner of
Time
and
Life
magazines, rival and opponent of Hearst, took up the cause of
Kane
. ‘He has ordered his staff to unleash their guns to get the film released,’ reported
Variety
. The first fruit of Luce’s commitment to Welles appeared in an article in
Time
on 17 March, a week before the opening of
Native Son
. ‘As in some grotesque fable, it appeared last week that Hollywood was about to turn on and
destroy its greatest creation,’
¹⁸
said
Time
. ‘The objection of Mr Hearst who founded a publishing empire on sensationalism is ironic. For to most of the several hundred people who have seen the film at private showings,
Citizen Kane
is the most sensational product of the US movie industry … it is as psychiatrically sound as a fine novel, but projected with far greater scope for instance than Aldous
Huxley was inspired to bring to his novel on the same theme. It is a work of art created by grown people for grown people.’ The danger that Welles was now caught in the crosslines of a new war, that of the newspaper barons, was nothing to the exhilaration the public support brought.
Newsweek
, the same day, carried an even more complete encomium, from John O’Hara, already the sensational author
of the novel
Butterfield 8
and the musical show
Pal Joey
, currently running on Broadway: ‘It is with exceeding regret that your faithful bystander reports that he has just seen a picture which he thinks must be the best picture he ever saw. With no less regret he reports that he has just seen the best actor in the history of acting … reason for regret: you, my dear, may never see the picture.’
¹⁹
He offers a pleasing side swipe at the Hopper–Parsons axis: ‘a few obsequious and/or bulbous middle-aged ladies think the picture ought not to be shown,’ then launches into his blazing finale: ‘
Citizen Kane
is Late 1941. It lacks nothing … there never has been a better actor than Orson Welles. I just got finished saying there never has been a better actor than Orson Welles, and I don’t want any
of your lip. Do yourself a favor. Go to your neighborhood exhibitor and ask him why he isn’t showing
Citizen Kane
. Then sue me.’ The still unshown
Citizen Kane
was rapidly becoming the
Look Back in Anger
of its day, polarising the progressives and the conservatives, the young and the old – except that no one ever tried to stop
Look Back in Anger
being seen.
Kane
was still on ice. Encouraged by
the support, Welles took time out from the rehearsals for
Native Son
to call a press conference.

He threatened to sue, first RKO, then Hearst, if the film was not released. ‘How can you copyright an enterprise, a profession? I must be free to film a story of a newspaper publisher. If I am restrained, it will force us all to go back and take our characters, say, from Greek mythology. And even
then I suppose somebody would contend he was Zeus … I believe that the public is entitled to see
Citizen Kane
. For me to stand by while this picture was being suppressed would constitute a breach of faith with the public on my part as a producer.’
²⁰
He had, he said, sufficient financial backing to buy
Kane
from RKO and to release it himself, and the legal right both to demand that the picture
be released and to bring legal action to force its release. ‘RKO must release
Citizen Kane
. If it does not do so immediately, I have instructed my attorney to commence proceedings.’ Roy Alexander Fowler, Welles’s first biographer, suggests that this threat of legal proceedings was a ruse agreed by Welles and Schaefer. It seems likely. RKO certainly had no intention of writing off the $800,000
it had cost, and Schaefer’s entire ‘new Prestige RKO’ depended on its release. His regime could scarcely have a worse start than the non-appearance of the most publicised film in the history of Hollywood. Herb Drake signed off the press conference in characteristically hard-boiled manner: ‘Welles will show the picture and show it in tents, if necessary. He will probably open it at Soldiers’
²¹
Field and saw Dolores in half at each intermission.’

Meanwhile,
Native Son
opened to the press. The Broadway first night audience (the show was playing at the St James’s Theatre, slap in the heart of mainstream Broadway) was taken aback by the lack of an intermission, even more so by the decision not to issue programmes until the end of the show; Welles refused to allow the tight grip he had
exercised over the play to be diffused by an audience rustling programmes and lighting matches to scan the cast list. The performance was remarkably successful; among many telegrams of congratulations was one from a man Welles knew had little regard for him personally or artistically, the ever-brittle Joe Losey: ‘saw your show tonight stop its the first theatre job since little foxes for which
i have complete respect and admiration stop would like to have done it stop that may not mean much to you but it means plenty to me stop i envy you profoundly stop wish you the long run which it deserves my sincere congratulations joe losey’.
²²
Richard Wright, too, was delighted, even if his telegram was to both Houseman and Welles: ‘let me thank both of you for the energy talent speed and courage
which both of you brought to the staging producing and directing of native son stop i have said time and again and i say
now that i feel that native son has been in the hands of the two most gallant men in the theatrical world stop good luck always to both of you stop richard wright’.
²³
Canada Lee’s telegram promised nothing that it didn’t deliver: ‘thanks for my big chance orson stop i shall
live up to your confidence in me stop i will be there punching till the curtain comes down canada lee’.
²⁴

The reviews the following day were full of stentorian acclaim for Welles, even if the venture as a whole provoked reservations. These came principally from two quarters: those who felt the book had not been well served, and those who felt that it had been too well served. Most critics,
however, before entering reservations, took time to welcome back the prodigal son. It was his return, rather than the play itself, that was the news item. Sidney Whipple, an old scourge of Welles’s, led the huzzahs:
‘STARK DRAMA STAMPED WITH GENIUS:
Native Son
proves that Orson Welles, whether you like to admit it or not, is not a boy wonder but actually the greatest theatrical director of the
modern stage.’
²⁵
Stark Young, who had also not been uncritical of Welles as both actor and director, was almost equally enthusiastic, observing that ‘it may at times be quite ham, but this is not too dreadful a fault in these soft days.’
²⁶

Brooks Atkinson of the
Times
, staunch supporter from the beginning, was just as glad to see him back: ‘It is as if the theatre had been shaken up and recharged
with life.’
²⁷
Then came the reservation: ‘Mr Welles’s wide pulsating style of direction is not the only possible approach to
Native Son
. In fact, it may not be the best.’ This note was sounded elsewhere: ‘there is no way of telling how far this rushing and plentiful use of the theatre medium
per se
that he is capable of and practices here cuts down the pathos, or the tragic element, that might
have been possible to
Native Son
and its performance,’ wrote Stark Young, who admitted to being ‘excited rather than moved’ by the play. No one denied the theatrical excitement engendered; the widely expressed doubt was whether it served the material. ‘Beyond a bit of theatre commotion, publicity, sitting in our seats through ten scenes without intermission, and running into waves of intermittent
emotion, there is very little remaining with us when the evening is over, though the subject matter of the play concerned one of the most pressing issues in America.’ It was, of course, melodrama, Welles’s essential technique; but was that appropriate to his searing, epic subject?

The
Daily Worker
(by no means predictably, since Wright, as an ex-member of the Communist Party, had fallen foul
of the Marxist establishment) had no doubts: ‘in comparison, all the productions of
the current season seem dim and ancient chromos.’ This included
The Grapes of Wrath
and
Watch on the Rhine
, so this was no idle praise. ‘The theatre, that slumbering giant, tears off its chains in this production. From the theatrical point of view it is a technical masterpiece. As a political document it lives,
with the fire of an angry message.’ The Catholic
Commonweal
, coming from the other end of the political spectrum, was outraged that a murderer should be glorified; and the
Journal-American
, not entirely surprisingly, since it was the flagship title of William Randolph Hearst, found that the play had more to do with Moscow than Harlem. This was the first hint of Hearst’s new tactic in the
Kane
war of attrition: vilifying Welles’s politics.