Orson Welles Dick Cavett 14/5-1970

i know that you all know my next guest he was a broadway star producer and director at the age of 22 at 26 he directed what almost every film critic has had on his list of the greatest films ever made citizen kane he has continued to be a wonder uh ever since critic alexander wilcott once said years ago i don't remember where he said this uh there but for the grace of god goes god speaking of orson welles um would you please welcome a giant of the entertainment industry mr orson welles this is your [Applause] we gave you the honor of no music on your entrance if you had had your druthers robert what would you have played i couldn't think of anything enough for mr wells that's amazing that's the highest compliment we could pay you thank you see this i used to be chased by a theme song for years sure was it harry lyme i'm so glad everybody forgot it oh yeah from there yes thank you thank you we always can play whatever wins for next time yes when when dick goes out to fix his makeup we can fill in do you worry about that things like how you look and are you conscious of that when you're on television with your hands to be made well i'm not on television enough for it to have worked itself up to a phobia because the few times i've been on i got out of town soon enough so i didn't see it on the box and that that makes it possible for me to be here tonight you know you have me scared a bit not as scared as i am mr wells called on the phone the other day and uh you know that feeling uh that you get that it couldn't really be true and i couldn't believe that it was you on the phone for a while and then and i realized that it was and i uh there it is yeah yeah and here and one of us must be actually here at this moment we were talking about reality or you were and then what it looks like and i i that's the spooky thing about television is that it is it is real we're just sitting here and that isn't like show business is it no it's supposed to be up in here i'm doing sir jack let jack do something no you know uh if you were to ask i think the average person where is orson well's hometown i have a feeling that you would get a guess that would go all over the globe probably starting with budapest or something and the fact that it's kenosha wisconsin is one of the most startling that's the truth isn't it that's right i was born in kenosha have you ever do you ever go back to kenosha i i left when i was uh uh three weeks old so my memories are limited i've been i've been back to wisconsin a lot and i've lived in wisconsin but i never made it to kenosha three weeks old yeah and i've got people who remember going to school with me there you know you know never been what uh at three weeks that's amazing dude maybe maybe five i don't know did anyone try to talk you out of leaving at that age can you remember early early memories way way back before you could speak yes but i'm not sure it's true do you have memories that you think are real and i'm not sure whether i saw it on you know yeah on television yeah of course i'm i'm one of the younger fellows i i remember television very well it's a uh it's the kind of thing that uh i have pictures of uh i don't remember the dialogue it's sort of silent movies more than you know of a grandmother that was dead when i was four things like that but nothing very fascinating i i i better go and make up my hands no no are there any legends about you that you would like to scotch right now like the fact that you uh at the age of uh four months or something wrote a thesis on nietzsche's philosophy or you know all these incredible things uh like that yeah hack of lies pekka lives back of life okay yeah and i was rather backward student you know and i read also about you that you were supposed to go to harvard mr lemon did go to that's true i had a scholarship to go to hollow to harvard hollywood is what i want to say what i wanted to go to was hollywood what i what i had the scholarship for was harvard and i did everything i could think of not to go including show business the only reason i'm in show business was to keep out of school you're getting ready to go to harvard you went through all this are you and uh i just didn't want to go not because i have anything against harvard but i was uh i never know the answers to anything as you found out we were talking upstairs i would like to ask you one thing though that it may be a kind of question that's a little annoying but if someone were to give you say 10 million dollars tax-free now yes do whatever you i'm considering it what would you do with it well since we're on the full network give it away but i'll tell you afterwards you know i guess what an angling for would be would you would you would you make a movie would you produce plays i think really anybody would is suddenly given an awful lot of money until it happens you think you're going to go out in the street and hand it out to everybody i'm sure i don't have enough class to do that but until until they show me that green stuff the instinct would be you know some kind of giving it away with all the misery there is but of course the minute you've got it you turn into somebody else you know come on yeah that's a monster your dad was an inventor yes what did he invent anything we would know of he invented a great many things none of which worked some of them were very successful he invented something called the picnic which was a square box into which everything fitted for your outing under the trees which included a salt cellar which collapsed that meant there couldn't be any sold in it things like that yeah and the war came along the first world war and every american soldier had to have it in knapsack so of course my father was fabulously rich on the picnic this useless box of toys went over there with all our boys and then he invented he invented one of the early aeroplanes he was an automobile manufacturer he'd uh he braced some of the early automobiles and in fact a picture i made ambisons is partly based on him not by me but by talkington who wrote the book who was a friend of my fathers and my father was a kind of mad playboy he was well along when i was born he was in his late 60s when i was born we went back to older and happier times and when the wright brothers came up with this thing he said that that was a very good idea but there was a basic fallacy which was having the engine in the plane any fool could see that the airplane should be light enough and the engine should be on the ground so he built he built an airplane which was in effect a sort of glider mm-hmm and uh a friend of his it wasn't his own car had a a a a stanley steamer which was the automobile worked by steam you know and with big wheels that could go over uh rough ground and this plane was hauled along by the stanley steemer with one of my father's servants as the pilot he said it wasn't time yet for for him to go up he was going to try it out on the help so there are two pictures i have one is everybody lined up before in front of the stanley stee steamer and the glider looking very happy and the second one is the wreck of the aeroplane with everybody lined up looking just as happy that airplane is now known as the super chief on the long island railroad but he was uh he was uh he was a he liked to call himself an inventor because what he was he came from from an epic in which you should pretend to be a great tycoon you mustn't say you're a playboy he was just a playboy he inherited some money and he he spent it that was what he did so he put down i'm an inventor so it would be respectable and these fantasies were came up through the years he was also a very lucky gambler he really broke the bank at monte carlo and he lost money all the time in business and made it up gambling which is an interesting switch yes it is and uh in fact it was in kenosha where he was manufacturing some mysterious object that i uh have to come into the world can we can you hold on for just a moment uh could we at some point in this evening although i know it's the one subject you always have thrown at you talk a little bit about citizen kane well sure okay okay if you've got dandruff could you direct me in how to make this transition gracefully if you've got dandruff that you can't seem to get rid of watch this from tiger medicated shampoo oh it's us does this medium intrigue you television would you like to yeah does it well i expected you know i'd done an awful lot of radio and theater and movies and everything so when the television scene began i said just wait you know and i stayed near the telephone but for for 15 years it didn't ring so from madison avenue so it's just now i've started into it they're giving me a special on cbs mike dan has given me uh you know the kind of contract for a television that i only had once in movies and that's but it took an awful long time for the phone to ring but it intrigues me i think it's just the great great medium but it also mystifies me doesn't it you yes yes often even though you're a master of it don't you really think it's there's something we haven't figured out what what well you are looking at his race where would a person reach you though how would they know where your telephone is i think of you as a citizen of the globe uh you're photographed one day in spain and another day you're luxembourg [Laughter] how would a person get a letter to orson welds or something that once uh once intrigued me for a long time and i often wonder i really do i think about you a great deal and i wonder what you're doing after i wake up and i wonder what orson welles is doing today does this well he's watching you if he's anywhere in america wait a minute you're not very big in budapest but that's coming you know a lot of uh well i guess all the young people in this country uh it's you sometimes you get the feeling are film happy someone once said about this generation they would rather make film than make love and of course you are one of their great heroes the thing is they are there doesn't seem to be anybody wants to go to movies anymore just make them in the young generation isn't that true you know can i interrupt the justice please do but anyways uh i i assume maybe you heard this or maybe you didn't but uh i know it is a fact that uh uh catch 22 was recently uh sneak previewed in boston and when orson said all of the young kids really want to make films and so forth only 50 uh students were told that it was catch-22 and by the time eight o'clock in the evening came along there was such a mom they had to run it twice back-to-back uh 90 of the audience were young bright college students really that's good news now when your name came on the screen there was a standing ovation the biggest of all including the director and the rest of the cast and everything but when the name awesome wells came on from this young generation the whole place fell apart i don't know whether you would had heard that didn't know that yeah isn't that wonderful almost as faith you see that our industry will the point is that was in boston and that's a new generation because i used to open shows there and that that was a different generation that i hoped to believe you had trouble in boston boston the worst thing that ever happened to me can i tell this of course you're not here even with the white hands this was uh this was uh for a show i did with the theater guild and the mercury together which is called five kings which was a an adaptation of several of the shakespearean histories and we had the big scene where henry v says cry god for harry england and saint george and i had a tremendous stage set with 50 extras all with bows and arrows and when he says that we shot off a cannon and they all shot the real arrows across the stage and that was the end of that scene big effect opening night in boston we had a revolving stage which slowly started to turn around so that they all now this is all harvard boys all your men dressed as archers and they're all facing front i wasn't in the scene i was standing in the wings and i thought to myself they're harvard men they know better than to shoot into the audience ah they're not going to do that you know and he says cry god for harry england and saint george and all 50 of them right out into the ark we didn't miss a critic we uh they got their money's worth that night and after this message from our local station we'll be right back stay with us um you just joined us i'm talking with orson welles and jack lemmon should none of us be familiar to you can you talk to this generation can you communicate with your daughter do you feel cut off from the young generation well i keep talking whether i'm i'm heard is another question i don't feel any embarrassment i hear all about this great problem and uh uh i think that gap is partly a generation one and partly a point of view gap you know uh i think it's it's the way you look at things that divides you from from the kids more than the years but maybe i'm just whistling in the dark about that but it's the way i feel about it anyway i was a kind of a middle-aged gentleman when i was 15 in a way you know because i pretended to be 25 when i was that age to you know to match my voice how does a 15 year old assume a 25 year old manner well he gets hooked on cigars and he lies a lot those are mannerisms we associate with 50 year old people that's it so i came on with that and and i never was young and so then i started practicing being young as i got older so maybe i just don't notice it because i the i've never been around the gaps long enough you know would you recommend the kind of childhood you had where you were taken all over the world oh yes oh yes i think that's what uh that's what a lot of dropping out is about people who'd like to be as lucky as i was yeah i think your your life is uh so appealing just luck that's all yeah that's what you were talking about i i wasn't smart about trouble just dragged around and taken to see shows and even nightclubs where children aren't supposed to be and everything and people used to say oh that'll spoil it for you when you grow up you'll think you've seen it all not a bit of it you know not a bit of it you know the one time i saw you in person was on stage in king lear at the city center and i had not read the papers that day and i had bought tickets and i went to see it and just before the house lights went down and a voice came over and said something to the effect that of all the tragedies that befell king larry one of them was not breaking one ankle and spraining the other one and you appeared and did the whole thing in a wheelchair that's right how does one manage to do both ankles well i'm i'm pretty good at it yeah i uh uh i'd sprained one just before the opening and halfway through the opening i broke the other you know they always say break a leg you know meaning good luck and i had it somebody said but it's all right the king learned in a wheelchair it sort of adds to the pity of the dog it's comfortable you get to sit down you know in shakespeare you never get to sit down normally if you analyze it go and see shakespearean plays nobody ever gets to sit up so if you've got an excuse like a broken leg you're the you know you you've got the best part because that wheelchair is marvelous it's a long long play and i have flat feet [Laughter] do you how do you feel about psychoanalysis oh i'm against it are you yeah i would be interested in if you would ever go into it i would love to have a transcript of what is said because it seems to me that your life is so fascinating what's seen that what is unseen must be just fantastic but i don't think you that you get to the unseen without i think analysis is just another form of talk show [Applause] i prefer this scene to the couch i really do i think it does do a lot of good for some people but for a lot of people it's just an excuse to talk about themselves at high rates you know and i i'm awful tired of the the language of psychoanalysis you know the jargon or that jargon you know you never you can't say anything you can't say i'm you know i got spooked a minute there i thought i saw you and it turned out to be the coat hanger and they've got a big thing about that you know and coat hangers right away you know what they go into and it's very limiting i hate jargon anyway whether it's political or psychoanalytical or anything because it's a sort of a substitute for conversation it's a real communications breakdown when you can only talk in in in slogans do you believe in any sort of the occult uh clairvoyancy or any of those things uh i don't want to i don't want to i've had enough experiences so that i can't say that there isn't such a thing little little odd things like what happened to me none of them very dramatic but but the uh i don't think it's right i hope it isn't i hope it isn't true what sort of thing has happened to you oh you know i've a couple of times i've kind of kind of got a hunch about what's going to happen not about myself but about somebody else things like that and i'm against it i think that it's too i think there is some sort of a force but it's kind of what electricity was uh before franklin flew that kite it's something that sparkles when you rub a fur coat the wrong way it's nothing more than that and there's probably a great powerhouse somewhere that can be tapped but until it is it's in the hands of dangerous people who can greatly influence your life by what they say and to your harm and you have predicted a couple of things again yes but then yeah i don't want to come on and do that scene because i'm i'm against people who do it i think we the best thing in the world the best thing we have in life is the ability to choose the act of choice and decision is is freedom and i think the uh uh uh uh occultism as practiced by swamis and all of this kind of thing and the stars and all of that may limit us in our choice or inhibit us and anything that does that i'm against that's interesting you you once did it sort of as uh semi-seriously didn't you as a yes but it's all it's all a kind of a side of uh of magic you're you're a magic but if i know you are i saw you once said at some kind of magic club or something yeah yeah i think we're sort of terrible magicians here bloody yes we all frustrated you when when we come back uh we will we will be back as a matter of fact after this message from our local station mr wells i apologize right now please oh don't call me yes my goodness all right yeah and i must say though there is a thing about calling you by your first name which is done by people whose last names you don't know that rather bewilders me have you ever had that happen in showbiz in the movies we get it all the time you know the second assistant director to whom you haven't been introduced to always called you by your first name and i had one meet me at the airport for a plane this year and he said hi orson glad to see and he turned to the border and said sir do you mind taking these back curious when you when you were out there i i've always wanted to know the answer to this you always hear that when you were 26 years old and you made citizen kane and they said you can't do these things you can't have the background in focus or whatever it was or you can't shoot a scene that way mr wells or young mr wells or horse or whatever they call you then and you knew that you could and how did you know this uh because i didn't know any better and it's very much in the line with what jack was saying earlier in the show it comes from from just you know sheer dumbness you're sure it's got to be your good and your gretchen ignorance there's no authority in the world like it but but there's there's got to be something more than that technically i mean how did you know that you know technically that the whole bag of movies can be learned in about a day and a half guy i kid you not now how how does it work how do you do it you get a guy who knows what happened and ask him and that's the end of it it isn't much harder than taking uh uh uh home movies it's just about three points harder and all these guys who do it try to make a big mystery of it because that's their living and i have the right to say it because i had in my first picture in kane the greatest cameraman who ever lived was greg toland and he came to my office and said i want to work in your picture my name is toland i said why do you mr toll and he said because you've never made a picture and you don't know what cannot be done too and so i said but i really don't can you tell me she said there's nothing to it he gave me the day and a half lessons and he was right showed you how the camera went that's right there's nothing to do and so we had the day and a half and there it was but the only thing was i've been directing in the theater for years and i nowadays they have lighting people we did then and i had some some of the greatest lighting people in fact i think but many of the shows i lit myself and i was supervised it and i thought a director did that in a movie so for the first 10 days i was moving the lights around you see and uh toland was behind me fixing it up and changing the readings and saying shut up let him go on i want to see what he's up to which was very chic of him i think and then somebody somebody told me and then i went and got on my knees and apologized and everything i thought that's what the directors did because if you see a picture by ford for example you were speaking of jack ford earlier he's had what uh must be in a hundred cameramen in his long career and almost every ford picture you can tell from the look of it that it's a forward picture just from the physical look of it his signature is on it you know now when every every list of great films of course many of them lead with citizen kane and and say it's it's the finest film made um do you agree no certainly not that's my next one is though that's the magnificent embassy no the next no not the not the one after that the one i'm preparing at this moment or the next one that's just that's going to make history could you give us the title of that i haven't decided what it is yet oh i see now could i just check one other thing with you is it true that the the hearsts tried to actually have the film destroyed before it was they tried to have it destroyed they even tried to frame me one why in one town i was doing some kind of date i don't know what bond tour lecture some kind of a gig and i was a in a nightclub afterwards waiting to go back to my hotel a little supper and waiter came up says there's a police officer wants to see you well i tried to hide because if that ever happens i'm sure i'm guilty i don't know how you are about but you know absolutely and then i see a cop i know i did it there was no way out of it i had to go see him and he took me aside and he said uh orson i don't know why they almost call me austin he says don't go back to your hotel room yeah i said why he says they've got a minor staked out there and a photographer a lady luckily a lady i think i think i prefer to tell it that way i mean er as opposed to o.r i'm sorry sorry and uh they were going to frame me i would have been in jail if the you know were the cops waiting to jump in and arrest me that was not mr hurst itself it was somebody in that town who thought he'd get in good with the boss by doing a favor by doing doing a favor yeah i don't think hurst would have stooped to that would you change although i did have a conversation with him about about the picture yeah which was in an elevator in san francisco the night at open night we found ourselves going up together and he'd known my father i'd never met him you know and i introduced myself things you'll do when you're young you know and i said uh would you like to come to the opening tonight and he didn't answer and i said well mr cain would have come and that's the difference between the two people because the character of charles foster came had enough class to have gone to the opening he just very uptight that was the end of that it wasn't really about him it was made up of a lot of people that's the truth what's the last time you saw it i i saw it the the that opening in san francisco and i snuck out right after it started i've never seen a picture of mine after i finished it you haven't seen citizen kane in all these years no picture i've ever made except as an actor but never seen a picture of directed only words yeah well a thousand times in the cutting room yeah but why wouldn't you want to see it now because i like to sit here and think how good it must have been you know is there ever is there any chance that you would change any of it or do any of it again of course everything you'd want to change everything i think you do you know don't you want to change things after you've done them and a movie can't be changed no that was the whole thing i just and i like to think oh yes and all those great pictures and i know if i saw them that all confidence would go well we have a message and we'll be right back do you find that same thing jack that you don't like to see your films yeah i fully understand it not uh now i would speak only uh uh uh you know as an actor but you're gonna direct one though but aren't you gonna i was so delighted to hear you give me that day and a half bit i can't wait to get a cameraman work for a day and a half i got the rest of the summer off until i shoot it in the fall make it sound easy because i'm petrified i'm scared to death but i think you should be actually uh you bro you know if i was at all blase about it i doubt that i'd be any good i'm not sure anyhow but it's true because i know that in films once i have done them and seen it once the each time if i do happen to see it i just see more wrong you know and so i try not to even when they come back and haunt me on television you know i don't but there are the ones who sit and just run it over and over again you know i just think they're winning it's just i just think they're wonderful yeah uh are you making a movie there there is this there is a story that you have been making movie for a long time about don quixote it's a home movie it is it really is because every time i get a little loot you know i run and do another sequence it's a picaresque novel that you know you can do bit by bit i have this old actor and i better hurry up though he's getting on playing coyote and i you know dig him up and we grind out another minute there's a little more bread around but i confidently expect to have it out before the end of the century is it true that you were the voice of the shadow or i was that's true you bet and hold up welcome 85 a week that was can you remember the words uh what is it um who knows what evil looks in the hearts of men the shadow knows crime does not pay and then that laugh you remember yeah all the kids in america could do it better than i could i just i just got a few goose pimples as you did there but it was it was great and i didn't know how it ended you know yeah because i part of the deal was i was very busy running the theater was that i wouldn't have to rehearse so i would just come on they'd hand me the script i'd go on the air and they'd get me into this pit with the cobras or whatever it is and then uh my secretary played by agnes morehead would break in and say lamont you're something you know and uh come on it was always a big surprise to me how i had the whole thing solved it added interest as far as i was concerned where were you when you realized the effect that the war the mars broadcast the war of the worlds had had on people in the studio when the cops came in they didn't know who to arrest but they'd been sent in you know i mean they had that expression that we've come to know and understand so well and uh they weren't as well organized back then for the martians they've got it under control now i think a little better didn't it ever occur to anyone that intelligent beings who were intelligent enough to perfect all of the uh mechanisms and things to get to this planet would be very unlikely to land in new jersey you know you know what wolf had sent me a wire alex wilcott uh there was a uh you know i was against bergen you were opposing him i was opposite bergen he was on the other network and uh walker sent me a wire that said this only goes to prove my beamish boy that all intelligent people are listening to burgett and that man was a friend of yours yeah um gee i i don't know how much time i have left and there's so many things i would love to talk to you about are you still a bullfight fan yes yes i'm still not as keen not as keen but it's uh it's a big thing to get into you know you always have to explain it and everything yeah yeah and i'm not i don't have the pigtail on you know i'm not ready for it let me let me ask you i must ask you who what film directors do you admire well i we i think the one weird one we we mentioned is is as good a fellainis start off with as there is jack ford in america and i would say the greatest maybe of all time is renoir when you know when they talk about greatest pictures of all time he made five of them minimum is there anyone you'd like to meet that you haven't people would love to meet you yeah i would there's so many is there anyone you like me so many people i'd like to meet uh some of them aren't very popular you know like i'd like to meet uh mao not because i'm a fan but you know what's he like and uh i don't know almost everybody i don't know i'd like to meet i wish i had a good answer for that jack who would you like to meet i i was fascinated by your answer because it's such an intelligent one and it also means that you have such a an interest in a capacity for everything in life which is part of your genius i think and i can fully understand what you mean i think that uh you would like to spend 100 years meeting people because people fascinate you and those those those way out people too you know and great leaders you know some of them frauds and some of them not that you don't get to meet except in some silly capacity and then all these great people that never get to be anything because as jack was saying earlier in the show and how i agree with him that uh if you have talent it will out that isn't true at all you can have all the talent in the world and never get anywhere and i like to meet those people who didn't get anywhere i know quite a lot of them and they're fascinating too can you can you enjoy a movie when you go to it can you sit and be carried away but not as much as i would like to be because before i made movies uh i liked them more now i have a little thing where i see a ghost of that slate in front of a scene a little bit i don't believe it as much as i did before i enjoy them but i don't have that perfect suspension of belief that i had as an innocent movie fan and now i'm saying you know uh you know there's jack and he's i like him better in this one and all that it's very hard for me not to uh uh completely take away my friends who are in it and how they did that and it's very hard for me to turn all those those things off and enjoy it as you ought to yeah i would think that making movies would kind of spoil them for you and to some extent don't you think yes yeah you become more and more aware of the technique that the uh director is using people you know and all that there they are you know it's hard not to put those things into it but i'm a pretty good movie fan still go oh yes and love love them still when they're great we have a message that's one of the problems you don't have in movies after this brief message we will return [Music] there's a bit of the third man theme it's haunting you yet thank you sir we only have uh very little bit of time left uh jack your film is called the out-of-towners right yeah can i see it sure is it opening soon i'm delighted i don't want to be with you because i'm petrified of uh what you might think yes it's opening may 28th at the music hall and please get down quixote out before 2000 will you you can i will oh good thank you both for being here thank you we'll see you tomorrow night and good night wa 747 the ultimate in comfort and elegance wide aisles oversized seats meals on requests and your choice of movies somehow you feel more important on twa fred boy speaking good night you

Channel: Archy M

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Id: 9qqz2HqeMR4

Length: 36min 34sec (2194 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Gimme-Yoshite]

I love his humility “ignorance is the greatest authority” what a quote... also mentioning a “power house” we can “tap into” . Fucking brilliant. This vid should be donned in gold

[u/AnarchyAnalBeads]

Amazing person

[u/Stink_Pot_Pie]

Who is the other gentleman in this clip? I’m going to feel stupid when you tell me, because I know he’s very famous, but I can’t think of his name or what I know him from. Edited to add - I finally thought of it - he’s Jack Lemmon.