Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane (22 page)

Orson always needed collaborators—co-conspirators—in his artistic endeavors. He needed them more than he needed money or even, arguably, an audience. And he had a positive genius for finding the right partners for his plans. Once Orson realized that Skipper was a reluctant athletic director, their kinship was sealed.

Roger Hill presided over Todd’s elaborate dramatics program, which included several tiers based on age and class, as well as two all-school clubs—the Slap Stick Club, and the Paint and Powder Club—that shared responsibility for producing shows on Saturday nights. By 1926, the upper-grade Todd Troupers were staging five or six full-length all-school plays each year under Hill, who wrote many of these plays and directed all of them. After he was won over by Orson’s Halloween show, Skipper promoted the young man to a leading role in the school’s traditional Christmas pageant—playing a most unlikely Virgin Mary.

The school went all out for its shows, whatever the tier. A few years later, Orson contributed a description of the school’s dramatic offerings for the Todd catalog. “The scenery is in every case original, being designed and built and painted by the boys,” he wrote. “The make-ups are also done by the boys. Our stage is completely equipped. The lighting is most modern with all the circuits on dimmers, and a plaster back wall similar to the Goodman’s [Goodman Theatre’s] in Chicago makes possible very realistic and stunning outdoor effects.”

With so much to supervise, Skipper enlisted his wife, Hortense, as his lieutenant. And a former child prodigy, Carl Hendrickson, ran the school orchestra and chorus, composing music for the full-length “foolishments” that dominated the theatrical schedule when Orson arrived at the school. Skipper had discovered the handsome Swede at the Chicago Theatre on State and Lake in 1923, leading the orchestra behind the silent pictures and variety acts. After inveigling Hendrickson to Todd, Hill teamed up with him to create a number of original revues for the school, with the boys dressed up as ingenues, grandes dames, and chorus girls. There was a vogue for lighthearted drag shows in prep schools and colleges. Hill had written one such revue in college, and lyrics for another; he and Hendrickson even sold a few of the Todd foolishments to national agencies for packaging to Kiwanis and Rotary clubs.

Orson appeared in at least three of the Todd Troupers’ foolishments in 1926–1927:
Around the World
,
Finesse the Queen
, and
It Won’t Be Long Now.
He loved to dance and sing, even if that wasn’t his forte, and he loved the songs with their silly lyrics. Years later, while directing his first picture in Hollywood, Welles wrote to Hill to urge him to watch a certain dance scene in
Citizen Kane
for proof that his Charleston steps from
Around the World
were remembered.

The spring extravaganza,
Finesse the Queen
, a three-act play with fifteen musical numbers, was a love story between a prince and a commoner set in mythical Gondolivia. By now Orson had a singing
and
speaking role; he was billed as detective “William J. Spurns, who has a clew.” (He never forgot the
Finesse
songs either, and half a century later, on the set of one of his last, uncompleted films, “The Other Side of the Wind,” Welles repeatedly regaled cast and crew with snatches: “Everybody loves the fellow who is smiling,” he sang. “Ah Gondolivia, Gondolivia, land of melody!”)

His first roommate, John Dexter, was the “leading lady” in
Finesse
, and young Orson used his makeup expertise to give his friend an air of femininity. “When he finished with me, he kissed me, said he couldn’t help it, but I turned out so good,” recalled Dexter. “He had a crush on me every time we did that show.” A photograph survives of eleven-year-old Orson, still bantam-size, beaming up at the bigger, taller Dexter.

By the time
It Won’t Be Long
was produced, Roger Hill knew he could count on Orson, who was cast as one of six leads—the hero’s best friend, “with troubles of his own,” according to the program. Offstage, the sixth-grader was making himself just as indispensable, increasingly taking charge of lighting, sets, makeup, and costumes for the school’s many varied programs.

The Todd Troupers toured the foolishments to nearby prep schools and small colleges, and the experience sharpened their skills. Music director Carl Hendrickson was a severe taskmaster who insisted on precise timing and cues, but he was also fantastically resourceful—not unlike composer Bernard Herrmann, with whom Orson would forge an alliance a decade later. Skipper Hill was always unflappable in a crisis, a tolerant overseer—his wife, Hortense, less so. “Horty” famously corrected Orson during the spring tour of
It Won’t Be Long
, scolding him for laying on his own greasepaint a bit thick. “Just be still and let me do the makeup,” she told Orson firmly. “No doubt my fascination, if not obsession, with the art of make-up is an effort to, in some small measure, gain Hort’s begrudging approval,” Welles told Skipper years later.

Also, in the spring, Dick Welles took Orson and Dr. Maurice Bernstein on another trip to New York for a round of concerts, plays, museums, and motion pictures. Dr. Bernstein and Orson traveled on to New Orleans, sailing from there to Havana and other points in the Caribbean. Dick was called back to Chicago for an unhappy reason: to prepare for a court case against his older son, Richard.

Twenty-two years old by the spring of 1927, Orson’s brother was promoting himself as a magician, with a résumé boasting a stint doing magic and singing with a group in a western vaudeville tour. But Richard never held any job for very long without defaulting, and his employment history was no more reliable than his imaginary academic credits. He “was always trying to get some money and he was off some place and nobody knew where,” Roger Hill remembered. “ ‘Due to the Christmas festivities, I have contracted gonorrhea’ and he would like a little dough for that.”

There was something clearly wrong with Richard.

Orson’s brother was diagnosed with “dementia simplex”—a broad subtype of schizophrenia characterized by slow, progressive deterioration and mental inadequacy, though the term was often used as a catchall for unspecified mental illness. Simon Callow and other biographers have claimed that Dick Welles “conspired” with Dr. Bernstein to arrange this diagnosis, and certainly Bernstein, long Richard’s physician, was the medical authority supporting the determination. In May 1927, Dick filed papers to have his elder son declared incompetent and remanded to the State Hospital for the Insane at Kankakee.

About sixty miles south of Chicago, Kankakee housed nearly four thousand patients in eighty buildings on a thousand-acre campus, which included a working farm. Though state documents record a small number of deaths there every year, some due to experimental drugs and other treatments for hard cases, the general population had the use of a golf course, dances, regular movies, and occupational therapy. Because of his artistic upbringing, Richard was channeled into the arts and crafts program, thought to provide a positive stimulus for “the primitive creative instinct,” according to a state report.

But Richard wasn’t too delusional to fight his institutionalization tooth and nail. The young man filed suit repeatedly over the next eight years, trying to have his insanity judgment overturned. Court records of institutionalizations are strictly shielded by Illinois law, and Kankakee records have since been destroyed in a fire, so it is impossible to know what drugs or treatments Richard received there, or if these might have contributed to his debilitation.

Young Orson was also cushioned from this latest trauma; he was off with Dr. Bernstein in the Caribbean when his father went to court. Yet he must have been troubled by his older brother’s downward spiral, whether he felt that Richard had disgraced the family, or that the family had failed Richard. Either way, it was up to him alone now to carry the family banner.

Back at the Todd School, Orson took solace in the written word. He was encouraged to contribute to the school’s quarterly,
The Red & White
, also overseen by Roger Hill. Orson was a regular presence in the pages of
The Red & White
throughout his first year at Todd. For the Easter issue, he wrote a singsong ode to Chicago that he coyly entitled “Pome.”
⁴
It was a parody of one of those long poems he had committed to memory—Henry Van Dyke’s “America for Me.”

POME

Tis fine to see the old school, and wander all around,

Among the knarly oak trees and buildings of renown,

To admire the ancient Clover Hall and the office of our King

But now I think I’ve had enough of all this sort of thing.

So it’s home again, and home again, Chicago town for me!

I want a train that’s southward bound, to flit past field and tree,

To that blessed land of “Home” and “Folks” beyond Cook County line

Where movie shows are always good and malted milks are fine.

Oh, Crystal Lake’s a hick’s town, there’s hayseed in the air;

And Woodstock is a factory town, with Dagos everywhere

And it’s sweet to dream in English Class, and it’s great to march in gym;

But though this student may love Todd, home’s now the place for him.

I like our games, I like our shows, with actors nicely drilled;

I like our Beans, I like our Hash, with luscious thumbtacks filled;

But Oh, to take you out my lad, for just a single day,

And eat at Childs or Thompson’s (that is, if you will pay).

I know that Todd is marvelous, yet something seems quite wrong,

The teachers like to make you work entirely too long.

But the glory of Chicago is “No parking on the streets,”

We love our town for what she is, the town of “Home” and “Treats.”

Oh, it’s home again, and home again, Chicago land for me.

I want a train that’s southward bound to flit past field and tree,

To that blessed town where Big Bill’s frown has King George on the run,
⁵

Where the hours are full of leisure and the leisure’s full of fun.

For the magazine’s commencement issue that year, Orson produced a flurry of cartoon sketches and no fewer than four verse offerings. These included a romanticized portrait of an ancient mariner (not far from Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick, a character the older Orson Welles would stalk on the stage and screen several times during his career).

THE PILOT—A DESCRIPTION

Staunch he stood, his great grim face, marred by the wrath of the sea,

His burly hands gripped tight the wheel, his pose both wild and free.

The biting wind clawed for his face and kept its fingers there.

And the icicles came streaming down from his gray and sun-bleached hair.

Another was a Longfellow-like ode.

AT NOONTIME—A DESCRIPTION

The sun beat mercilessly upon,

The scorching heat cursed plain;

And the field that lay in sunny wealth,

Was gold with sun and grain.

The toiler sought with lagging steps

The comfort of the great oak trees

And there to taste with hungry lips,

The coolness of long sought breeze.

The bloodstained sword and the earth stained plow

Now lazy and idle lay;

For all men’s number and various tasks

Are left in the great noon day

Close by a knotted oak there laughed

A silvery rippling stream

Whose shining crags and glittering rocks

Cut the water in between

On one moss bank his head in air,

There dreamed a peasant boy;

Who from sun bronzed feet to sun bronzed hair,

Was a symbol of boyhood joys.

His lengthiest contribution recast Camp Indianola’s rival sports teams as warring Indian tribes:

THE ONAWAYS AND THE WENDIGOS

The Onaways were hot and mad

And in their war togs they were clad;

Dancing up and down with might;

Dancing in the firelight.

Singing praises to Gods of war,

Of ancient legend and olden lore,

Of how they captured the fearless braves,

And made them serve them as slaves.

Waving scalps with thought of more,

With hopes of hearts they’d have to gore,

When suddenly from the forest trees,

Blown by the gentle waving breeze,

Came the cackling voice of an ancient hag,

Who silenced the braves by the wave of rag;

It is prophecied in the magic sands,

That a terrible curse is upon these lands,

And unless its braves shall turn to the wise,

The almighty spirit his children despise,

You of yourselves must not be talking

Or with Wendigo packs you’ll soon be walking.

The warriors knelt down upon the ground,

And with attention most profound,

Promised these things they would not do,

And kept their oath right well and true.

They won the war with the Wendigo braves,

And made them serve them as their slaves.

Orson closed the year with a solemn verse commemorating the terrible battles of the Great War:

AT THE CALL OF THE DRUM AND FIFE

From scorching heat to freezing cold,

The men of whom these tales are told,

Come from every walk of life,

Come at the call of the drum and fife.

From cobblers’ boys to rich men’s sons,

They came to fight the tyrant Huns,

Entranced by the song of blood and strife,

March to war with the drum and fife,

Thru fiery rain and gorey mud,

The boys who bathed in the cleansing of blood,

Sacrificing more than life,

March to hell with the drum and fife.

When Orson’s first year at the Todd School was over, a month after he turned twelve, he left Woodstock for Grand Detour and the last summer he would spend with his father in the small Illinois town that, he told Hill half a century later, came closest to being his private Rosebud.