Talking Pictures: Orson Welles

orson welles was a giant of a man in every sense big talent big personality big achiever in theater radio and films Welles was one of the 20th century's dominant forces a flamboyant figure who lived life to the full Welles masterpiece was of course Citizen Kane which he directed at the tender age of 26 but he'd already established himself as a young genius and something of a maverick with the international success with a notorious War of the Worlds radio broadcaster he talks about it here in the 1955 episode of a BBC series called the Orson Welles sketch it well we did on the show exactly what would have happened if the world had been invaded that little music playing and then an announcer coming on and saying excuse me we interrupt this program to bring you an announcement from Jersey City Jersey City has just fallen take you back to our studio little organ music and another interruption so on we did all of that very carefully and exactly reproduced as I say what would have happened thinking to make make the whole thing more effective but we had no idea how effective it would be because about halfway through the show as we were continuing with the script in front of us we saw that in the control room there were a great many policemen in every moment more I had no idea that I had suddenly become a sort of national event it was immediately after our show went off the air that Walter Winchell who was on a on a rival Network and had heard about how all the telephone lines had been jammed and all the excitement going on went on the air on his network on his program of news commentary and said mr. and mrs. America there is no cause for alarm America has not fallen I repeat America has not fallen it's only a little while ago that I again ran into some workers him some some welfare workers Quakers and Red Cross people who had been up in the Black Hills of Dakota some five or six weeks after this broadcast persuading the people to leave the mountains and go back home because the Martians really hadn't come and was some I think four or five years later and I was on the air doing a show very polite show with a lot of people choruses singing well that's a typical solemn Sunday broadcast on commercial sound radio in America at the time was full choir and orchestra everything else for some reason at this time this particular Sunday that I've Illustrated we were doing a patch like broadcast with excerpts from Walt Whitman I don't know what else Norman : all the rest of it choirs humming melodically and so on and I was in the midst of some hymn of praise to the American cornfields or something of the kind when suddenly a gentleman darted into the radio studio held up his hand and said we interrupt this broadcast to bring you an announcement Pearl Harbor has just been attacked of course this very serious and terrible news was never believed not for hours by anybody in America because they all said well there he goes again really rather bad taste was funny once but not a second time I suppose we had it coming to us because in fact we weren't as innocent as we meant to be and we did the Martian broadcast we were fed up with the way in which everything that came over this new magic box the radio was being swallowed people you not do suspect what they read in the newspapers and what people tell them but when the radio came and I suppose in our television anything that came through that new machine was believed so in a way our broadcast was an assault on the credibility of that machine we wanted people to understand that they shouldn't take any opinion predigested and I shouldn't swallow everything that came through the tap whether it was radio or not but as I say it was only a partial experiment we had no idea the extent of the thing and I certainly personally had no idea what it would mean to me as in fact by my life I don't know going back to the time of the actual broadcast my life was threatened there was somebody as a matter of fact who kept telephoning about every quarter of an hour saying you will die on the opening night of your present matter fact the opening night of my play was the night after the broadcast it was a play called danton's death that we did in my theater and which incident was a horrible flop and at the end of the play I had to stand in front of the curtain and deliver a speech in the character of Santa juste on the subject of something and he was the French Revolution anyway I had to be alone in front of the curtain in a blazing white spotlight and I promise you that I've never been so terrified in my life I had to come out in front of this audience waiting for the sound of a pistol being cops some angry victim of our broadcast shooting at me deliver the speech but what actually what actually happened was that as I stood in front of the curtain there was a little spill from the spotlight I could see the front row in the audience there was a man sitting in the front row who looked up at me as I say the play was a flop people didn't like it they're probably right man who looked up at me as I opened my mouth to speak raised his hand looked at his wristwatch looked at me what folded his arms well I assure you that I would rather have been shot at least that's the way I felt about it the notoriety that came with war of the worlds' had Hollywood throwing itself at Welles he was offered a contract guaranteeing him total artistic freedom to make the film of his choice what his chose was Citizen Kane Welles co-wrote produced and starred in Kane and his directing broke new ground changing cinema forever it wasn't a hit when it came out but quickly came to be considered one of the great movies and stories of how it was made continuously fascinate television interviewers and audiences is it true that when Citizen Kane was being made that people actually tried to stop it being made and is it true that Randolph Hearst the newspaper tycoon took it to being an attack on himself and tried to stop it when it was made being shown to the first part of your question there was indeed a definite effort to start the film during shooting by those elements in the studio who were attempting to seize power because in those days studio politics particularly arcade indeed many of the big studios in Hollywood have a much like Central American Republic's and there were revolutions and counter revolutions and I have a sort of palace intrigue and there was a big effort to overthrow the then head of the studio who was taken to be out of his mind because he given me this contract which made the making of these films possible and stopping me or proving my incompetence would have won that case he mr. Hearst was quite a bit like Kane although Kane isn't really founded on Hearst in particular there many many people sat for it so to speak but he was like Kane in that he wouldn't have stooped to such a thing but he had many hatchet men editors and representatives of this great network of newspapers all over the country and to get it good with the chief there was a good deal of very strong edge including an effort to frame me on a criminal charge which a policeman was good enough to tell me about his sensational and silly and dangerous and gangster issues that was mr. Hearst staff absolutely wrong I mean when you say that it was based on that kind of man was he really stronger in your mind than just being that kind of men well let me ask you if you think he was libeled well I don't know him I think yes well do you think that the figure of Kane himself is a deeply unsympathetic figure in in no Soviet Union for example the film has been forbidden general distribution because this important capitalist and newspaper tycoon and antisocial and crypto-fascist figure etc quote all the slogans is too sympathetic and for that reason it's not shown never has been when you read about Citizen Kane a lot of the things you read suggests that he was a very big social document a massive attack on big American institutions of the day now I've always seen it rather as a story to be honest naturally any story it's got it implications but I've seen it as a story I'd like to know what your intentions where did you mean it as as a social document or as a story I must confess to having to I must answer this in a way that I must admit that it was intended consciously as a sort of social document as an attack on the acquisitive society and indeed on acquisition in general but I didn't think that up and then try to find a story to match the idea of course I think that the storytellers first duty is always to the story they make it all the more ironic doesn't it that it should have been stopped in the Soviet Union yes but of course it wasn't at all a communist picture or a Marxist picture it was an attack on property and acquisition of property and and the corruption yes and that of the acquisitive society of a man who of real gifts and real charm and real humanity who destroys himself and everything near him because you know tired old words Mammon and all that really was you know now when you made this film you were only 25 when job I mean everybody knows that you had the most astonishing contract that Hollywood has ever provided here ever not financially speaking in terms of authority rights financially it wasn't extraordinary any way at all it was extraordinary and they in the control it gave me over my own material you had total control total control so much so that the rushes which I prep should explain this are the pieces of film that are shown at the end of the day's work as I'm sure you understand and are always checked by everybody in the studio department heads and the bankers and distributors and everything long before there's a rough cut according to the terms of my contract the rushes couldn't be seen by anyone and indeed the film couldn't be seen it was ready for release I got that good a contract because I didn't really want to make a film well you better develop that and you know when you don't really want to go out to Hollywood at least this was true in the old days of the golden days of Hollywood when you honestly didn't want to go okay then then the deals got better and better in my case I didn't want money I wanted Authority so I asked the impossible hoping to be left alone and at the end of the years negotiations I got it yes only because there was no real vocation there my love for films began only when we started work what I'd like to know is where did you get the confidence from to make an arrest with such ignorance sheer ignorance you know there's no confidence to equal it it's only when you know something about a profession I think that you're timid or careful well is it going to show itself I thought you could do anything with a camera is that the I could do or the imagination could do and if you come up from the bottom in the film business you're taught all the things that the camera man doesn't want to attempt for fear he will be criticized for having failed yes and in this case I had a cameraman who didn't care if he was criticized if he failed and I didn't know that there were things you couldn't do so are anything I could think up in my dreams I attempted to photograph you got away with enormous technical advances simply by not knowing that they were impossible or theoretically impossible yeah and of course again I had a great advantage not only in the real genius of my cameraman but in the fact that he liked all great men I think who were masters of a craft told me right at the outset that there was nothing about camera work that I couldn't run in half a day that any intelligent person couldn't run in half a day and he was right it's truly awful lot of things of all you know I've ever of every other you know that the great mystery that requires 20 years that doesn't exist in any field and certainly not in a camera and I just like to look for a moment and have a look at this clip what I'd like to ask you about that it's rather a technical question in a way when you were making that sort of scene and making that sort of shot did you ever feel nervous that maybe you'd gone too far I put myself in your shoes you see if I'd made that I'd be I'd be terrified that I was just on the point of toppling over in too fast that I've made the room too large did you have this little anxiety no because the room is that big what room is that big awfully pompous answer his room yes bumpass question reps no not at all you're quite right and I should have had that fear but I do feel that a man like Caine is very close to fast and break and very close to parody very close to burlesque and that's why I tried every sort of thing from sentimental tricks to an attempt to genuine humanity to keep him always counterbalance but of course anybody who could build a place of that kind yes you know he's very close to lost comedy of course he is sure when eventually Caine was made it was an enormous success as all the world knows and it's gone on being a success and it's a long time ago now have you ever regretted that so greater success came so early well I've regretted early successes in many fields but I don't regret that in Caine because it was the only chance I ever had of that kind I'm glad I had it at any time in my life I wish I had it more often I wish I had you know a chance like that every year that b18 pictures yes not just one is to embers to accept Ambersons the end of it there's a very serious piece of surgery involved there change which wasn't done by you know there's there two short scenes I did I didn't write or direct and over three reels were taken out in their entirety and they were in my view the reason for making the film not simply good reels but the whole film is a preparation for those reels which were to toughen to in those days to hard-boiled for the exhibitors tastes and by the time I returned from South America that's a long struggle go into to supervise the release of Ambersons archaea had fallen into the hands of the counter revolutionary forces and i no longer was invited into the cutting room you've been denied the cutting room before they're organized but a touch of evil yes that's happened really quite often - - extremely the individual film makers I'm not saying I isn't a qualitative thing it's a it's a style and there's a certain kind of filmmaker who really wants to make the film entirely on his own and that sort of fellow is the sworn enemy of the system so the system and the system is at great pains to denigrate such a person not only myself with many people like myself in and that's happened in Russia as well as he America it's happened in England it happens everywhere in varying degrees seeing that this whole thing happens they rightly regard the artist is the enemy of their profession what do you think of Hollywood awesome I'm not at all against Hollywood not at all it's a it's a yeah I think a remarkable community with a great history and a very entertaining place to work in the obvious things against it are so obvious there's really no need to list them over again anything you can say about Hollywood is true good and bad there's no extreme statement and doesn't apply anything I have heard it suggested that Citizen Kane is in some sort of sense autobiographical the notion that Kane himself is some sort of version of myself i I'd really fail to recognize maybe out of blindness but it seems to me that Kane is a everything that I'm not good and bad after Citizen Kane and the Magnificent Ambersons Wells fell out with the studios he directed his estranged wife Rita Hayworth in the lady from Shanghai but it was a financial disaster the rest of his career would seem struggle to make the films he felt passionate about funding his own productions with money earned from acting roles it was on the 1959 film ferry to Hong Kong that I got to work with him and found him to be funny warm generous and sometimes difficult and he was a great storyteller as he demonstrates here talking about his childhood with David Frost in 1970 had the greatest influence on you you your mother or your father my mother she died before my father did she died when I was 8 but no question about she was absolutely extraordinary woman she said fantastic she was she was a imprisoned suffered yes pacifist she was a violent radical a great concert pianist and beauty she was one of those crack shot everything you know she really was quite superlative that's improving yeah and in fact you were reading fluently when you were 2 according to one oh it's not true course not that was three we they are they also say you you'd memorize speeches from King Lear by the time you were seven is that true I don't know maybe I had it doesn't seem the right part at that age but of course I began my career pretending to be older than I was because I started I was just sixteen and I pretended to be 25 and that I played 60 year old man that was it so I suppose I was getting in practice when I was doing Lear at seven if it's true you all said you also threatened what is this true that you once threatened because of music lessons to throw yourself out of a hotel window yes that was again that was my mother surely you the kind of strength of character she had because we were in the Ritz Hotel and she didn't give me the piano lessons because of the exercises and all that she's got a lady and in this case it was a poor unfortunate spinster and I saw I could bully her you know so I said I don't want to do any more scales and if you make me do another scale I'm gonna kill myself and the spinster you know really fed me so well on that that I when another scale was asked for I went out and there's a balcony and I climbed over the balcony and stood like this holding you see over the thing and when you're very young you don't believe in death all you see is the people standing around and saying now we're sorry you know yeah you know what shouldn't have done that Jim you don't think you're gonna suffer they're good at suffer so I was ready to go you know and this poor music teacher ran into my mother was in another another room and said he's out there he's going to jump he's gonna kill himself and my mother thought to herself if I come in and run at him he might be idiotic enough to jump so I just heard this voice from the other room which said well if he's going to jump let him jump and my mother had the strength of character enough to say that she told the story later and she waited it was a long pause and then she heard it was an island you first acted wasn't yes that was to get out of school I had a scholarship for Harvard I'm a dropout and the only way I'd been painting in Ireland and it got to be winter and the days were getting short and so was my money and I knew I was gonna have to go back to America and go to this dreaded school of learning so I went backstage to the gate theater and told them I was a famous star from the New York theatre guild and just as for the fun of it I'd like to stay with them and play a few leading roles now you can only do that if you don't believe that it matters if you don't care I had no desire to be an actor if I had I would have said could I have a spirit of old you know but because I didn't think it was it was ridiculous that I would be an actor in my life so I just said I am a leading it why not and I began as a leading actor I played a star part the first time I ever walked on the stage and I have been working my way down ever since he was joking there but Welles did have his downs with films that flopped and a long list of projects that never got off the ground but he always bounced back and as new generations of film fans came to his early works for the first time his reputation grew a fact he discussed in an interview with Michael Parkinson in 1973 because I know to a to a lot of people that you have asked them that question they would say that you were there here I can't imagine why but I love earrings you know who necessarily don't know I sincerely can't see how anybody could make arrow but I've never yet been cold I must ask you this new being column a time you've been called a genius many times yes which is one of those words you know it's one of those words I suppose they've only been two or three geniuses in this century we all know who they are you know really I suppose yes what Einstein and Picasso and somebody China we haven't heard about so you don't accept the oh I accept anything you get but but between friends you know there aren't many of them and I I will really wouldn't I really wouldn't want to try to edge my way into an elevator that Virginia's is only going up well that's you know that about about experts and their idea I suppose you take your experts I would be film critics were being would call themselves experts money imagine now they've judged a film of yours twice running the best film ever made now how do I show you how crazy experts are no I think it shows you how fundamentally sound film criticism is no I don't I I never talk about critics because there is anything to be said about them if they if they criticize you anything you say is sour grapes and if they like what you do you should shut up you know it's it's it's there's no way of criticizing the critics do they dream you do they have a wound you deeply yes any I can remember every bad notice I've ever had I can remember one I got when I was 18 years old in in Salt Lake City when I played Marsh banks with Katharine Cornell and I was described as a sea calf whining in a Basso profundo and I'm sure it's an absolutely accurate description of that performance which must have been abominable but it still goes through my head before I go to sleep at night along with thousand other litanies of the same time I have a misfortune is that I it isn't God of modesty it's I suppose some form of masochism if so it's the only thing that I'm masochistic about but I do remember all the bad notices and I do forget or or take not very seriously the good ones yes and the other curious thing is that you genuinely do not like talking about your work in movies - no but because it's done I really don't you know that that isn't because we've got a cameras on that's right I really in my family has never heard me say a word about any picture I just thought you know very very curious indeed because you know the number of people I have interviewed directors film actors particularly opening ice all they can talk about well I'm sure they could talk about things but they like to talk about it a lot of directors and actors like to run their movies you know their idea of a happy night at home is to turn on the projector and see one of their pictures again you know and I can't think of anything more horrifying now because you can't change it what can you do about it yes there it is forever and if you were you know if you're a writer and you've written a bad chap to and they're going to bring out another edition if you're lucky enough of your works you get to fix up that chapter nothing you can do about a movie there it is locked in forever yes you know yes but of course you will talk generally about about movies not your own about the industry yes I'm not as interesting about it as I'd like to be though because I don't see enough movies no no no I'm just wondering about the the changes that you've seen in the in the industry since you first started making movies in Hollywood the Venus turn with us right you think it's still an industry Michael really an industry it's not an industry like it used to be that now sure and I wonder if it really was I think it was a kind of I think it always was show business and that when there were big studios which still existed when I went to Hollywood and were but we're in their very last days as Golden Age big studios I think they were pretending to be factories and it was still show business it's true they were grinding them out and all that but it's show business the true industrial process cannot be as as helter-skelter and idiotic as every form of show businesses otherwise you know every car we'd get in would break down after the second block I can't believe the rest of the people are as stupid as we are how do you get the product then if you sold as mad as that I mean those it sort of happens it sort of happens you know movies are terribly easy to make it's much harder to put on a play then a movie oh yes you see because the minute what's hard to do is to make a very good movie yes a good movie is evening easy to make because if you a good cameraman if you have the the cast that happens to be right if you have a story that happens to be vaguely interesting that is the art form that works in our day and age so that it would be very hard to write a great play and blank verse today but I think it was pretty easy in Elizabethan days to write a good Elizabeth or to write a good verse play yes not a great one but a good one yes and it's damn near impossible now because there's nothing to do with our culture yes but somehow a good movie gets itself made even by a lot of second-rate people yes you know yeah a very good one is of course another another thing yeah what about the thing that has changed of course a I'm sorry I didn't really answer your question you're talking about changes about you wandering on all I really wondered about was that when if you look back at those days in Hollywood when you were first operating over there and it really was the Dream Factory wasn't it me something when you look back I mean are you lost a logic about those days or are they just as well they're just comic relief I love them did you you know I thought it was great really I never belonged to it you see when I came I was this terrible maverick that they all you know I was I represented I was sort of the you know 40 of 30 years ahead of my time whatever it is there was a sort of ghost of Christmas future there was the one beatnik you know there was this guy with a beard who was gonna do it all by himself you know I represented the terrible future of what was going to happen to that town so I was hated and despised theoretically but I had all kinds of friends among the real dinosaurs who were awfully nice to me yes and I had a very good time but I believe that I have looked back to optimistically on Hollywood because my daughter has it has a group of books about Hollywood that she bought I don't know why probably vainly looking for references of her father in them and I took to reading them lately and I realized how many great people that town has destroyed since its earliest beginnings how almost everybody of Merit was destroyed or diminished and how the few people who were good who survived how what a great minority they were and I suddenly thought to myself why do I look so affectionately on that town it was because it was funny and it was gay and it was an old-fashioned circus and everything that were nostalgic about made it funny and gay when it was really happening but really it was a brutal place yes and when I take my own life out of it and see what they did to other people I see that the story of that town is a dirty one and its record is bad one reason well survived Hollywood was the magnetic quality he had as a performer his presence and that rich voice meant he commanded every scene this was perhaps best demonstrated and one of his most famous roles Harry Lime in the third man which he discussed in an arena special from 1982 what kind of a spy do you think you are satchel foot what are you telling need for cat got your tongue come on out come on come out whoever you are step out in the light let's have a look at who's your boss Sam's misogyny Robin sanza peppered yeah Z management is alert and foreign Chinese cosmic mean I'm not joining Elijah sorry Chinese joining carbide yes you were saying about vadas being rare for for directors to be very fond of actors and acting and I was saying that Carol Reed nobody ever loved acting more than he did and was passionately interested in in his actors and in the process of acting without the remotest feeling that he was imagining himself in that position or imposing himself he was the real act as a director his joy was in your work not in seeing something of his come to life he was exceptional in that case and did he invite your collaboration oh yes he invited everybody's collaboration as I do that's why I loved working his style was so much like mine in the respect that he wanted he wanted any suggestion he could get my eyeball was neither do you know I'm good I can tell you scenes in in in pictures of mine that were suggested by members of the crew you know anybody can make this suggestion that doesn't mean they get to have it in the picture but if it's good it goes and he welcomed it and so that at an earlier time when I was being in interviewed in another language I gave the impression that I somehow co-directed my scenes with well that's not true and I never meant to say that I give that impression I was however to a large extent the author of the dialogue of Harry Lime including the cuckoo clock and all that kind of stuff and these are grooming after all it's not that awful about the fella said Natalie for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare terror murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance in Switzerland they had brotherly love had 500 years of democracy and peace and what did that produce the cuckoo clock but that is what I do when I act in other people's pictures I never argue about the direction but I'm usually come up with a rewritten scene that's the headache they have to put up with and then if they don't like it I'll go back to the other but I go back home at night and right next day see and hope they'll take it instead of what it is but I never would tell a directive would you do that or something unless they asked me do directors often tell you how to do things when you're right oh yeah sure sure RR Dora I had one director in there in England who yeah was wonderful about halfway through every take he'd say cut Tod there'd be a long silence look at him you know I see how would you like me to do it just just do it again so we do it again and then there'd be this cut we went through the whole picture like that I never I never knew what was giving him this pain you found yourself turning down really substantial parts because he wanted to get on with directing no I haven't been offered them I would have sold my soul to play The Godfather for instance but I never get those pots they offered to me at all why why have you accepted so many pots no matter how wouldn't he may have done them in the end that whether based a little from bad Sprint's to liver I have to live in the you know if you if you run it if you're going to try to finance movies and live you have to earn your money somehow and I've done most of my movies have been movies I didn't want to make I've never done a movie that I disapproved of morally the last star part that I was offered was Caligula and I refused it on moral grounds and yet there I would have been playing the leading part in a eight million dollar picture and it would have been nice to do that but I did I didn't even have a moment's Donald about not doing it and the same thing would be for a political reason or anything like that I've turned down a lot of things for those kind of reasons but no great parts I haven't had any great parts offered me only a few good ones in all these years they hire me to they hire me when they have a really bad movie and they want a cameo that'll give it a little class you know so every time I do one of those things i chip off something more from me as an actor it's kind of you know you're in liquidation when you do that and that's why I hope to avoid it now it looks as though I just have a chance for to direct a couple of more movies and I've got a couple of good parts I've written for myself only way I know else yes sire I played all the great parts of the theater by by running you know there's an old old Yiddish saying in the inish theater that the stars the Rhine who owns the store you know so some of my stores have been rather small establishments but I was the star because I owned it I think I made it essentially a mistake and staying in movies because I but it it's the mistake I can't regret because it's like saying I shouldn't have stayed married to that one but I did because I loved her I would have been more successful if I hadn't been married to her you know I would have been more successful if I'd left movies immediately stayed in the theater gone into politics written anything I've wasted the greater part of my life looking for money in trying to get along trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paint box which is a movie and I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie it's about 2% moviemaking and 98% hustling it's no way to spend a life do you feel that's going to go on oh I'm going to go on being faithful to my girl I love her I felt so much in love with making movies that the theater lost everything from it you know I'm just in love with making movies if he'd never made a movie after Citizen Kane Welles would still have gone on into the history but that love of filmmaking was with him to the very end three years after that interview at the age of 17 he died from a heart attack at his home in the man who made the perfect picture when he was 26 was found at his typewriter wagering were here a new script doing what he loved best right up to his final moment

Channel: JayArgonaut

Views: 109,476

Keywords: Orson Welles, Citizen Kane (Film), Interview, Cinema, Film (Invention), Film, Film Director, History, Culture, Documentary, The Third Man (Film), Parkinson, Hollywood, Intellectual, Theatre, Arts, Legend, Sylvia Syms, Talking Pictures, William Randolph Hearst, Entertainment, Joseph Cotten, A Touch of Evil (Film), Icon, War of the Worlds (Radio), Stage, Performing, Drama, Theater, Maverick, Genius

Id: pZPTHZujMt0

Length: 41min 58sec (2518 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/stevenwangstron]

this is the best post ever made in this subreddit

[u/ohnjaynb]

This is amazing.

[u/thirstyquaker]

He gives a shout out to Quakers in there too what up! Trying to convince hill folk in the Dakotas that there are no aliens haha. This is an amazing video I love it.

[u/balanceofpower]

Here's an alternate link as the original got taken down on copyright grounds.

Pretty sure Orson Welles' pronunciation is thanks to his Mid-Atlantic English accent.