Me and Orson Welles (10 page)

About ten men and women waited in line outside the box office.

I pushed up the brim of my hat, and as slowly as I could, entered the main doors of the theatre. A woman turned to look at me.

There was shouting—Welles and Houseman arguing in the lobby.

“I'm sorry,” said Welles, holding up his hands. “I have a commitment to Joe Ainley. He moved the whole goddamned radio show to New York just for me. It will
not
take more than an hour.”

“Your primary commitment is to the Mercury!” said Houseman.

“You'll get your Thursday opening.”

“Do you have any idea how much we have riding on this, Orson?”

Welles put his arm around my shoulder. “Don't go, Junior. We'll rehearse in the cab.”

Now Welles, Houseman, and I were all walking out the front door of the theatre. A few people on line recognized Welles.

“Orson, for the last time, we need you here
now
. We need every bit of your energy directed toward the Mercury.”

A cab stood waiting in front of the theatre.

“Get in, Junior,” said Welles. Then he turned to Houseman. “One hour. Have Ash run through the whole show while I'm gone.”

“Don't do this to me, Orson.”

“This is
network,
John. If the whole goddamn country knows who Orson Welles is, then that can't be bad for the Mercury, can it? 485 Madison Avenue!”

We headed uptown.

“I'm absolutely
starving
to death.” He lit his cigar. “Well, Junior, it's Monday, and we haven't had the Bad Luck Thing yet. I'm a little worried.”

“The Bad Luck Thing?”

“An old theatrical superstition. You need to have the Bad Luck Thing
before
you open. If you don't, then opening night
becomes
the Bad Luck Thing.”

“You believe that?”

“I've seen it,” said Welles darkly. “And this time it's making me afraid. It's the one hurdle we haven't passed.”

“People have fallen down the—”

“No. Deeper than that. More sinister. It's a malevolent spirit that must be exorcised. But you pray it happens before the opening. If it doesn't . . . .”

“How will you know?”

“You'll know. Everybody will . . . .” He looked at me. “So tell me about you, Junior. What's the story of your life?”

“Well—” I began.

“Do you know Booth Tarkington's
The Magnificent Ambersons
?” Welles unsnapped his briefcase and removed a well-thumbed hardback copy of the book. “Tarkington was a friend of my father. Based the character of Eugene, the inventor, on my father. My father died when I was fifteen.” He puffed on his cigar.
“Ambersons
is about how
everything
gets taken away from you.” He opened the book, which was inked with crossed-out pages. “I've been adapting it for radio. Did you hear my
Les Misérables
in August? Sensational reviews and the worst goddamn Crosleys in radio history!” He laughed, and I realized, once again, I was a totally irrelevant element in the conversation. But still he was riveting. “Listen to this. Pure American poetry.” He pointed to an illustration in the novel: two well-dressed men holding canes and gloves were speaking to each other in a train station. A large valise lay on the ground behind them. In the upper right-hand corner you could make out departure times for the trains.

Welles began to read in his deepest and most resonant voice—even the taxi driver turned around to look; you could
feel
his voice shake your bones—and instantly he had transformed himself into someone else. His accent was Midwest; his rhythm slangy, whimsical, wistful.

“ ‘I may not see you again, Georgie,' ” said Welles to me as if we had acted this scene hundreds of times. “ ‘It's quite probable that from this time on we'll only know each other by letter. Well, it's an odd way to be saying goodbye: one wouldn't have thought it, even a few years ago . . . .

“ ‘We can't ever tell what will happen at all, can we? Once I stood where we're standing now, to say goodbye to a pretty girl . . . I was
wild
about her . . . . In fact, we decided we couldn't live without each other, and we were to be married. But she had to go abroad first with her father, and when we came to say goodbye we knew we wouldn't see each other for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it. And she stood here crying.' ”

Welles's voice had grown quiet.

“ ‘Well, I don't even know where she lives now, or if she
is
living—and I only happen to think of her sometimes when I'm here at the station waiting for a train. If she ever thinks of me at all she probably imagines I'm still dancing in the ballroom at the Amberson Mansion . . . . Life and money both behave like quicksilver in a nest of cracks. And when they're gone we can't tell where—or what the devil we did with 'em.' ”

We'd pulled in front of 485 Madison Avenue. “Come on up with me,” said Welles. “You can learn everything there is to know about radio in an hour.”

He stopped to buy a newspaper in the lobby, and now we were striding toward the elevators, Welles in that dark blue suit, looking brash, handsome, successful, talented—everything I believed I wanted to be.

“Excuse me,” said a young man stepping from behind a column. He was wearing a black sweater and black trousers. “But aren't you Orson Welles?”

Welles glanced up warily.

“I saw you as Tybalt in
Romeo and Juliet
last year.”

Welles nodded graciously, whispered “Thank you.” He turned to the elevator operator. “Twenty-two, please.”

“One minute of your time is all I need, Mr. Welles,” said the young man, getting into the elevator with us. “One minute.”

“The sad truth is that I don't have one minute.”

“And the sad truth is that I'm trying to get work as an actor.”

“I appreciate your dilemma, but I'm not in a position to—”

“Just hear what I have to say for
one
minute.”

“On what floor do you have business?” the elevator operator asked the young man.

“I'm talking to Mr. Welles.”

“Look,” said Welles. “Drop off a photo and a résumé at my office. That's all I can do for you. Twenty-two, please.”

“Please step outside,” said the elevator operator.

He forced the young man out and closed the sliding metal doors in front of him. The young man was now shouting: “ ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen! Lend me your—' ”

The door closed.

Welles shook his head. “Everywhere I go they start reciting. In restaurants, bathrooms. Christ, the guy who shines my shoes starts auditioning!”

We walked down a corridor and through an open door that said COLUMBIA BROADCASTING STUDIO ONE.

“Mr. Welles?” A young woman was waiting for us. She was stylishly dressed in a man's houndstooth sport jacket and white shirt. “I'm afraid we're going to have to ask your friend to wait out here during the recording; Mr. Ainley's very strict—”

“He's my biographer,” said Welles, putting his arm around my shoulder. “I've already cleared it with Joe. Let's get started—your name is?”

“Lorelei Lathrop.”

We were heading swiftly down a corridor lined with electrical cables taped to the floor.

“That may very well be the most musically perfect name I've ever heard.”

She smiled and pulled open a door that read TALENT ONLY in large black lettering.

“Something so graceful in the way you move, too,” said Welles. “You're a dancer, aren't you?”

“I studied ballet.”

“You've seen Jack Holland and June Hart at the Ritz-Carlton?”

“No—”

“My God, if you love dance you
must
see them. Will you let me take you tonight?”

In the studio the small orchestra was running through its cues. The principal actors and actresses stood before two floor microphones. Three men in front of a sound-effects table were trying out buzzers.

I was told to sit quietly on a metal folding chair near the control room door. Lorelei Lathrop handed me a copy of the script. It was the first radio script I had ever actually held in my hands—twenty-three multigraphed pages.
The First Nighter—program #377—“A Late Edition for Love” by Anthony Wayne. Sponsor: Campana Cosmetics.

A voice came over the overhead speaker: “Let's run it through, ladies and gentlemen, and keep it fast and light. Eric, watch the timing. We'll be cutting an acetate to hear what we've got. Orson, you want to run through your scenes first? We've been rehearsing without you.”

“Not necessary,” said Welles. He lit a fresh cigar. “What do you want for Van Doren? Gruff and abrasive? Sort of
Front Page
?”

“With a little heart in it,” said the director.

“Naturally,” said Welles.

And so without any more rehearsing than that, somebody was counting down—
three, two, one
—and suddenly the Eric Sagerquist Orchestra was playing “Neapolitan Nights,” the theme song I'd heard a hundred times, but now I wasn't sitting in my bedroom on a Friday night; I was sitting in a studio on the 22nd floor of the CBS building, and it was happening in front of my eyes and ears—the music and these wonderful voices coming out of tired-looking people who smoked cigarettes and wore ordinary clothing.

A sound-effects man played a recording of crowd noise, which was augmented by live ad-libs in the studio. The announcer leaned forward and read urgently: “All of Broadway can feel the electricity tonight”—there was that voice!—“as we eagerly await the opening night of what promises to be another hit at the Little Theatre off Times Square. Already outside the theatre, a crowd of autograph-seekers and onlookers has gathered, hoping for a glimpse of some of the celebrities in attendance tonight.”

Another man leaned into the microphone. “Have your tickets ready, please! Have your tickets ready! Good evening, Mr. First Nighter! Let's see: fourth row, center. Very good. The usher will show you to your seat for tonight's show, Miss Barbara Luddy and Mr. Les Tremayne in Anthony Wayne's romantic comedy about life at a great metropolitan newspaper: ‘A Late Edition for Love'—featuring a special guest appearance by Broadway's newest star, Mr. Orson Welles!”

The orchestra went into an “overture” and the crowd noise subsided a little.

“Curtain! Curtain! Seats please, ladies and gentlemen,” said the woman playing the usher.

The announcer leaned forward: “Act One of ‘A Late Edition for Love' after this brief word from Campana Lip Balm.”

The red light went off in the studio, and from some isolated booth came the voice of an announcer reading a commercial.

There they were: Les Tremayne and Barbara Luddy, looking short and dumpy and way too old.

Then the orchestra was playing “big city” music, and one of the sound-effects men was clacking away at a typewriter while the other made sounds of ringing phones by pressing what looked like a panel of doorbells.

“ ‘Did you give it to him! Did you give it to him!' ” said the actor who had played the ticket seller. Now he was a reporter.

“ ‘Of course I gave it to him,' ” said Tremayne. “ ‘I'm just waiting for Van Doren to come walking out of that office, throw that story on my desk, and say, Runyon, my boy, this is the greatest story in the history of journalism!' ”

One sound-effects man opened a miniature door; another walked a pair of shoes with his hands.

“ ‘Runyon!' ” yelled Welles.
“ ‘Runyon!' ”

The voice on the monitor broke in. “You're pinning, Orson. Step back if you're going to—”

“ ‘Runyon! This is the worst story in the history of journalism! If you weren't working here for free, I'd fire you.' ”

I felt as if I didn't breathe for the next fifteen minutes.

Act Two. Phones ringing, typewriters clattering.

“ ‘Your story! Your story! I'm so sick to death of hearing about your story!' ” Barbara Luddy cried in that little-girl voice of hers. “ ‘Runyon, it's that story or me!' ”

Five-second musical link. Then just the sound of a clock ticking.

“ ‘I need more
time
,' ” said Tremayne.

“ ‘Story of a lifetime breaking right in front of your nose, and you need more time,' ” said Welles. He was puffing on his cigar now in the manner of some old newspaper editor. He wasn't looking at the script at all; he was studying Tremayne.

“ ‘It's Marjorie. I'm spending so much time at the
Eagle
. I'm afraid she's going to leave me.' ”

“ ‘And what if she did?' ” said Welles. “ ‘You think you'll
never
forget her?' ” And here Welles—astoundingly—put his script behind him, and, staring right into Tremayne's eyes, pulled his words out of nowhere. Or so it appeared. “ ‘Look at us, Runyon. Me without my story and you without your girl. We can't ever tell what will happen at all, can we? Once I stood in Grand Central Station to say goodbye to a pretty girl. I was
wild
about her. In fact, we decided we couldn't live without each other, and we were to be married.' ”

You could see everybody in the control room going crazy—searching their scripts for the nonexistent speech. But the director, wearing his headphones, was listening. He was looking through the glass at Welles; he had his hand raised for his assistants to stop talking.