Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane (139 page)
Read Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane Online
Authors: Patrick McGilligan
Orson married twice more after his divorce from Virginia Nicolson. His marriage to actress Rita Hayworth was short-lived, though it yielded a daughter, Rebecca, and one film beloved by fans:
The Lady from Shanghai
.
The couple with “Dadda” Bernstein, who moved to Hollywood to be closer to his erstwhile ward.
His third wife was an Italian countess who acted under the name Paola Mori, playing a lead in
Mr. Arkadin
. They vacationed in Spain with their daughter, Beatrice, in the early 1960s.
SCENES
FROM
A
LIFE
ON
CAMERA
: With Marlene Dietrich in
Touch of Evil
; as Falstaff in
Chimes at Midnight
; with Joseph Cotten in
The Third Man
; with Oja Kodar in
F for Fake
; on the last day of his life (
BELOW
), reminiscing with talk-show host Merv Griffin.
Patrick McGilligan
is the author of
Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light
;
Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast
; and
George Cukor: A Double Life
; and books on the lives of directors Nicholas Ray, Robert Altman, and Oscar Micheaux, and actors James Cagney, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. He also edited the acclaimed five-volume
Backstory
series of interviews with Hollywood screenwriters and (with Paul Buhle) the definitive
Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, not far from Kenosha, where Orson Welles was born.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
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Cagney: The Actor as Auteur
Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff
George Cukor: A Double Life
Jack’s Life: A Biography of Jack Nicholson
Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast
Clint: The Life and Legend
Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light
Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only
Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director
E
DITED BY
P
ATRICK
M
C
G
ILLIGAN
Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
(with Paul Buhle)
Six Screenplays by Robert Riskin
Film Crazy: Interviews with Hollywood Legends
Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age
Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s
Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1960s
Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s
Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990s
Cover design by Gregg Kulick
Cover photographs © W. Eugene Smith/Black Star (front); © Apic/Moviepix/Getty Images (spine)
Front image after cover courtesy of Jerry Ohlinger's Movie Material Store.
YOUNG ORSON
. Copyright © 2015 by Patrick McGilligan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint photographs:
Orson Welles Collection, Lilly Library, Indiana University; Federal Theatre Project Collection, George Mason University; Keeneland (Old Rosebud); Kenosha County Historical Society: Joseph McBride; Russell Merritt; Milwaukee Art Museum (Dudley Crafts Watson); Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store; Ashton Stevens Collection, Newberry Library; Duane Paulsen (Hotel Sheffield); Sangamon Valley Room, Springfield Public Library; Todd Tarbox; Oja Kodar, Orson Welles, Richard Wilson and Chris Feder Welles Collections, Special Collections, University of Michigan Library; Charles Higham Collection, Archives of the Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California (Dick Welles group photo);
Los Angeles Times
Collection, Doheny Library, University of California at Los Angeles (Richard I. Welles photograph); Woodstock Public Library.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN: 978-0-06-211248-4
EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2015 ISBN 9780062112507
15 16 17 18 19
DIX
/
RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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1
As often as not the horse’s name was spelled “Dick Wells.”
2
Noble’s 1956 book was the first extensive biography of Welles and the one most influenced by Dr. Bernstein. When speaking to Peter Bogdanovich, Welles debunked it as “a perfect treasury of misinformation,” but Noble tried earnestly to interview Welles and others, and the trick, for him as well as readers, became sorting out the facts from the factoids.
3
Originally, the school was known as the Todd Seminary for Boys.
4
The original spellings and punctuation of “Pome” and Orson’s other writings are preserved.
5
“Pome” showed that young Orson was already attentive to politics: “Big Bill” referred to corrupt, buffoonish Mayor Thompson of Chicago, and “King George” to George V of England, whom the mayor had denounced as America’s worst enemy, threatening to punch the monarch in the nose if they ever met.
6
Trixie Friganza was a vaudevillian who was Dick Welles’s contemporary. In his
Paris Vogue
piece, Orson made a conceit of coupling Friganza’s first name with his mother Beatrice’s supposed nickname, “Trixie.” Some accounts say Beatrice Ives used “Trixie” as a stage name. Others say it was Dudley Crafts Watson’s pet name for his cousin. Both versions are unlikely.
7
The newspaper preserved Orson’s misspellings of “Montemezzi” and “incomparable.”
8
“Gissing” was a reference to Christopher Morley’s 1922 novel
Where the Blue Begins
, which concerned a dog named Mr. Gissing, who makes an exhausting search, traveling vast distances to seek the meaning of life, meeting with little success until he returns home to find solace in the blue of the cerulean flames in his fireplace.
9
The song was probably from Orson’s favorite foolishment,
Finesse the Queen
.
10
Orson also would perform his old Camp Indianola favorite on radio, and he would be very funny as Maurice, the leader of a traveling troupe staging a hapless version of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
in the 1969 comedy film Twelve Plus One, a.k.a. The 13 Chairs.