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“That must have been
House of Blood
,” I suggested.

“Yes, that's it. Max was just finishing the movie when he heard I was in town. I'd already sent a letter saying I hoped to meet him. There was so much in his films I admired. Well, no sooner do I check in at the Roosevelt than Max phones. I remember how he introduced himself. ‘This is Max Castle. I wish to speak to the greatest Dracula there ever was.'” He paused to sip his cognac, puff the cigar, wait for the predictable question. Clare asked it.

“When did you ever play Dracula? You hadn't even made a movie yet.”

Orson roared with delight. “They ought to give prizes for showbiz trivia. This could sell for thousands. ‘When did Orson Welles play Dracula?' Answer: on the radio. The premiere broadcast of the Mercury Theater on the Air. As the bloodsucking Count, I had one line.”

Leaning across the table, eyes closed, scowling, he recreated the line: a vulpine snarl, mixed with a whine of enraged frustration. “Well, something like that. You see, Max knew that as an actor I was never
anything but a voice. No, it's true. The body is just a sound chest. All the talent's in the larynx. But a larynx was what Max needed. Not a human voice, mind you. The voice of the great beast. A voice from beyond the grave. A voice out of eternal perdition. In short, your obedient servant.

“Max was struggling with the death scene to his opus. The vampire has just been impaled. As he expires, he delivers a dying sigh. Max wanted to pack the whole movie into that sigh. It was supposed to accompany some spectacular effect on the screen. I don't know what: the vampire decaying into jelly, something of that sort. Anyway, Max wasn't getting what he wanted from John Abbott. So he and I go into a sound studio at Universal and we spend—can you imagine?—two hours recording groans, gasps, growls.” A great guffaw bubbled out of him. “Anyone listening in would've thought there was an orgy going on. Finally Max got what he was after. He wasn't much for voice work in his movies. Like most directors from the silent era, he was more comfortable working MOS as they used to say:
mit out sound.
But this time, since I was there and willing, he decided to make the most of the occasion. He actually had quite a good ear. He knew exactly what he wanted and worked me until he had it. As I said, it was all done
gratis.
But I didn't feel ill-used, because I came away with something that was worth more than money to me just then. An idea. You see, that's when Max first mentioned
Heart of Darkness.”

“So it was his idea?”

“Not entirely. I'd been flirting with a radio adaptation off and on for about a year. But as soon as Max began telling me the movie, I saw the possibilities. Of course! A movie! And what a movie. With the whole so-called civilized world sinking into barbarism around us, what could be more timely than
Heart of Darkness?
Oh, he had some wild ideas, did Max. He wanted to do the story in first person. The whole movie seen through the eyes of Marlow the narrator. Quite a daring idea back then.”

I couldn't resist asking the question. “Did you know that Castle once planned to make a first person movie out of
Oedipus at Colonus?
The whole movie seen through a blind man's eyes.”

Orson's curiosity was immediate. “You mean a totally blank screen?”

“Not blank. Dark.”

“Max never mentioned that one to me.” Clearly impressed, he sat
pondering the idea for several seconds, his taut breath signaling his concentration. Finally there was a considered nod of approval. “Well, if there was ever anybody in movies who could pull it off, it would've been Max. I would have loved to be his Oedipus.” Then, belching up a laugh, “Of course when Joe Cotten heard we were planning something like that for
Heart of Darkness
—he would've been our Marlow—he went through the roof. The star, and he wouldn't get to show his pretty face on screen.

“No, I take that back. Max's idea was that the jungle should be the star.
Heart of Darkness
starring the jungle. The state of nature. Savage nature. A living, devilish presence—right at the core of the story. How did Max put it? ‘It will be a mouth—there on the screen. It will eat them alive.' Now that I think of it, he actually did shoot a scene where a severed head opens up its mouth and devours the camera.”

Orson paused to give a little mock shudder. “ ‘A man-eating movie!' That's what he called it. When he talked like that, Max got this fire in his eye. Very commanding. You didn't want to say no to him. John Houseman said he looked positively Hitlerian, which was probably unfair. I don't think Max had any politics one way or the other. But there
was
something of that Teutonic fervor in him. ‘The audience must suffer the evil.' That's what he was after. Sounds almost sadistic, doesn't it?”

I glanced across at Clare, who was still seated at Orson's side. I nearly flinched to discover that her eyes were drilling their way into me, a fierce, questioning gaze. I knew what was in her mind. She was asking:
What do you make of that, Jonny? Is that what movies are all about?

“I can assure you, all this was pretty strong medicine, even for me, the man from Mars. But I tell you, Max had me so spellbound with his vision of the story, I didn't think to ask basic questions. Others did. People close to the production wanted to know, Who's directing this movie, Orson Welles or Max Castle? Yours truly, I assured them. But at times I don't think I really knew. Can you imagine the naïveté! Well, I was the new boy in town. I went with my enthusiasm. Oh, it made no sense, I can see that now. But any time you hear someone accusing me of being an egomaniac, tell him how I once nearly gave away my first movie—to an even bigger egomaniac.

“For that matter, I have no idea what sort of division of labor Max had in mind. He never raised the question. I suppose he was hoping
to arrange some sort of shared direction. It wouldn't have worked, of course. You can't have two captains piloting the same ship. We must've both known that. But we were so intoxicated with the project! Well, I finally gave Max the go-ahead to start filming with a small crew of his own, Zip Lipsky and some others. We had this mad notion that between the two of us we might have most of the film in the can before any of the studio heads knew what we were up to. And we might've gotten away with it, as we did later with
Citizen Kane.
We really had them buffaloed. We'd hung out this sign, you see: ‘Geniuses At Work—Do Not Disturb.' I don't believe anybody in films ever enjoyed so much artistic freedom … at least for the first two months or so.

“Then, as our English friends might say, the excrement hit the fan. Rumors began to circulate. Max Castle was on the lot. And he was doing some very odd things with Olga Tell on a closed set in studio four. Olga was his sweetheart then. Fabulous beauty. She and I … well, that's another story. Next thing, I began to receive worried rush memos from the front office. Explanations were in order. Did I know what Castle was up to? Did I approve? I was quite fearless back then, or simply very green and headstrong. I marched right up to George Schaefer's desk, summoned up my best imitation of Westbrook Van Voorhees announcing ‘The March of Time,' and asked ‘Do I have
carte blanche
here or not?' To which George replied, ‘Of course you do, as long as you clear things with me first.' It was like that in the studios.

“Well, about that time Max decided he had to get away for a while. And I decided that was a very good idea. Where did he want to go? To Yucatán, would you believe it! Said he needed some jungle footage, some
real
jungle footage. I don't think that was true. He just wanted to get off on his own, nobody breathing down his neck. So I told him why not? I had money to burn—or so I thought at the time. The fact was, I took a sort of Tom Sawyer delight in playing cat and mouse with the powers that be. I'll admit another thing. I frankly wanted to get everything I could out of Max before I was forced to drop him from the payroll, as I fully expected I would be.

“Now one thing you have to understand. My life in those days was insanely hectic. I was keeping my radio show going in New York, working on
Heart of Darkness
in Hollywood … I think I may have been America's first coast-to-coast commuter. Back and forth, eleven
hours of air travel, sometimes twice a week. Talk about jet leg, imagine what prop lag was like. So even when Max and Zip got back, I didn't get around to seeing any of their footage until they had five or six rough cuts in the can. When I did, I was staggered.

“Oh, there was some excellent material. The jungle photography was overwhelming. Done with some kind of filter Max had invented. A classic study in moving chiaroscuro. There were darks in Zip's cinematography that were positively 3-D. You could walk right into them and get lost. I don't know how Max did it, but he made that jungle come alive. It stared at you like a beast of prey ready to pounce. And then there was that section with the severed head I mentioned. There was actually a whole chorus line of disembodied heads. If you know the story, you'll recall the heads are mounted on the fence, that infamous fence, which is meant to be the outer boundary of civilization. I never asked Max where he got all those heads. I was afraid to. They looked too real. The rumor I picked up“—Orson paused for the dramatic effect—“was that Max paid some of the Indians to go out and dig them up in the local graveyards. As you see, there might have been a little bit of Mr. Kurtz in our Herr Castle.”

It was time for a new cigar. Orson took his time cutting and lighting it while Clare went for more coffee. While we waited, nobody spoke. Nobody wanted to stall the momentum.

“But then,” Orson resumed in his own good time, “we got to the heart of
Heart of Darkness
as Max saw it. You see, he'd sold me on the idea that the grand climax of the story takes place when Mr. Kurtz is discovered in his jungle stronghold on the other side of that fence. The novel speaks of ‘midnight dances … unspeakable rites.' For Max this was the depth of Kurtz's degeneration. Oh, he gave me dances, he gave me rites. I'm not sure they were unspeakable, but they were damn sure unshowable, certainly in any motion picture theater in the civilized world. Though, of course, that's what the story is about, isn't it? How civilized are we, any of us? Civilized—or just fastidious?

“The dances were bad enough. I have no idea how Max got these semi-insurgent Indians to perform them. But there wasn't the ghost of a chance the studio would let them be used. Nudity? Yes, there was nudity. But that was the least of it. The
most
of it was the footage Max had shot with Olga, the stuff that had set off all the rumors. Now I saw, there was good reason for the rumors. Why Olga agreed to do
what Max had her do, I'll never understand. Let's be charitable and assume she did it for the sake of art. But
was
this art? No one at RKO would have agreed that it was.

“We came out of that screening quite simply stunned. Myself, Bob Wise, Mark Robson, John Houseman. The question was too obvious to ask, but I asked it. ‘Max,' I said, ‘how can we put material like that in a movie?' Max never batted an eye. ‘We will
hide
it.' That's what he said. ‘Hide it?' None of us had any idea what he was talking about. ‘There are ways,' he said. ‘We will make a movie
within
the movie.' And that's all he'd say. At that point, my colleagues were convinced we were dealing with a loony-bird. But not me. I had too much respect for Max. And now he really had the hook in me. I was determined to find out what he meant.

“Because, you see, I'd always been convinced that, when it came to Max Castle, the camera was quicker than the eye. You may know I have a fascination with magic, sleight-of-hand, now you see it, now you don't. That's what Max's movies were like. Sleight-of-vision, if you see what I mean. How did he do it?

“Well, I never found out. Max kept promising to let me in on his secrets. He used that as bait to keep me close to him. I felt the way an alchemist's apprentice might feel waiting for his master to reveal the secret of the philosopher's stone. Waiting, waiting—until
Heart of Darkness
fell through. As I knew it would. Fact is: when word came down to kill the production, I was relieved. I could see it coming weeks before it happened. If the front office hadn't done it, I would have. There wasn't a chance Max and I could share the movie. Two directors is one director too many. And besides, by then my interest had gravitated to another project. Something more American, more contemporary, and, everybody thought, more commercial. So … we decided to make
Citizen Kane.
Which turned out to be a modest success.”

A long pause. Again, no one spoke. Orson had an uncanny talent for holding the floor even when he fell silent. He wasn't finished until he let you know he was finished. “Of course I kept Max around while we shot
Kane.
He was a treasure house of ideas. Lighting, camera angles, effects. I was the only person in years to give him the chance to contribute to a first-class production. I pilfered from him shamelessly. He didn't mind. I think he was grateful. The little crystal ball at the beginning of the movie—Max gave me that. He wanted to do more with it, with the light, the snow. ‘We can put the whole movie
in that little globe.' I remember him saying that. He could have kept us monkeying around with that broken glass for a month. As it stands, I guess it's the image most people remember from the film.” He blew out a grumpy laugh. “That's all I need at this point, for the world to find out that even Rosebud isn't mine. And what I couldn't use in
Kane,
I squirreled away for later. The fun-house scene in
The Lady from Shanghai,
all the splintered mirrors, the contorted images—that was totally Max's. He wanted to slip something like it into
Kane,
but there was no room. So I saved it. Mirrors, windows, fog, haze, light on water … that's what movies were all about for Max.