Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane (31 page)

The Melians
failed to impress young Orson—he called it “stupid” in a letter to Skipper Hill—but he spotted his Galway friend Ó Ceallaigh onstage, and after the show Orson went behind the curtains to say hello. There he contrived to meet Edwards, who was immediately struck by the “very tall young man with a chubby face, full powerful lips and disconcerting Chinese eyes,” as MacLíammóir wrote in his autobiography,
All for Hecuba.
“His hands were enormous and beautifully shaped,” MacLíammóir continued. “The voice, with its brazen transatlantic sonority, was already that of a preacher, a leader, a man of power.”

Waving a cigar, the backstage visitor introduced himself—fudging his age—and babbled haughtily about his experience with the Goodman Theatre and the New York Theatre Guild.
¹²
(In fact, Orson
had
performed onstage at the Goodman, and he
had
acted in a play originally produced by the Theatre Guild—albeit both occasions were Todd School affairs.) The Gate partners didn’t really care about vetting the young stranger’s résumé; they were too intrigued by his look and aura and “some ageless and superb inner confidence . . . that no one could blow out,” in MacLíammóir’s words. “It was unquenchable.

“That was his secret.”

The Gate men were “gracious and candid,” Orson recalled in a letter home, and Edwards said he might consider Orson for a small part in the Gate’s next production, Ashley Dukes’s dramatization of the Lion Feuchtwanger novel
Jud Süss
, or
Jew Süss
, as the Gate version was known, which was just then being cast. “You would have to work on amateur’s wages,” Edwards cautioned Orson, “which are but a gesture. If you care to stick and if we get along together, bigger parts might come and I might even persuade the committee to pay you an extra guinea.”

After a night of carousing with Ó Ceallaigh and a morning of quick study of
Jew Süss
, Orson returned to the Gate for his audition the next afternoon. He had focused on “two big parts,” both attractive. “One is the Süss, the George Arliss title role, which Matheson Lang made so famous in London last season—and which is dramatic by virtue of its negativeness,” he wrote to Skipper, “and the other is the half-Emil Jannings, half-Douglas Fairbanks contrast to the Jew: Karl Alexander, the Duke. It is really the fattest of the two parts—all positives and I prefer dealing in negatives—but meaty from first to fifth acts—it runs the gauntlet of fine temper scenes, drunks, darling seductions, rapine, murder, heart attacks, and death.” But he “scarcely dreamed of” playing Süss, a role earmarked for Edwards, and his real goal was to win the part of Duke Karl Alexander. He auditioned for a “committee” of repertory company officials and rotating directors, including Edwards and MacLíammóir.

In a 1946 account of the audition, MacLíammóir recalled young Orson arresting everyone’s attention by flinging a table, a chair, and some books around the stage and savaging a plum blossom floral display, stirring up “a violent cloud of dust, like a miniature sand-storm.” Orson described his performance differently in his contemporary correspondence. “Being as I was,” he wrote to Hill, “terribly nervous and anxious to impress them, I performed a kind of J. Worthington Ham Karl Alexander with all the tricks and all the golden resonance I could conjure up.” But his golden resonances proved “a bitter failure.” Edwards, for one, could barely control his mirth as Orson struggled to impress the committee.

MacLíammóir, however, saw potential. “An astonishing performance,” he recalled, “wrong from beginning to end, but with all the qualities of fine acting tearing their way through a chaos of inexperience. His diction was practically perfect, his personality, in spite of his fantastic circus antics, was real and varied; his sense of passion, of evil, of drunkenness, of tyranny, of a sort of demoniac authority was arresting; a preposterous energy pulsated through everything he did. One wanted to bellow with laughter, but the laughter died on one’s lips.”

The committee huddled. Edwards beckoned Orson to the stalls. In a letter home, Orson transcribed their conversation “practically word for word”:

“Terrible, wasn’t it?” asked Orson

“Listen old boy,” responded Edwards, “you’ve been playing Shakespeare and you’ve learned Shakespearean poise, manner, and resonance of voice. You’re very young and you’re one of the finest technicians I’ve ever watched. It’s an enigma . . .”

(“I glowed,” Orson wrote to Bernstein.)

“You have a greater accumulation of manner and technique, more tricks, more subtlety than the average professional first-rater picks up in a lifetime,” Edwards continued. “And you can’t be very old are you?”

(“I told him my age,” Orson wrote to Bernstein—though what age he said, exactly, is unclear.)

“God help you!” Edwards gasped.

Young Orson roared with laughter. It was one of his endearing qualities that he enjoyed nothing more than a good laugh at his own expense. And the laugh itself was unforgettable. Milton Berle, meeting Welles a few years later at a New York showing of Chaplin’s
Modern Times
, called it a “deep, guttural” explosion. Others, who knew his love of Shakespeare, sometimes described the laugh as Falstaffian. It was a gorgeous instrument, with many uses and meanings, not all of them sincere. As Mercury Theatre actor Everett Sloane later said, Orson was capable of laughing simply because he wanted something. “When Orson calls with a smile in his voice,” said Paul Stewart, another Mercury stalwart, “he’s already lying.” To playwright Tennessee Williams, Orson’s laugh was a wonderful thing, “forced and defensive, like mine.”

Backstage at the Gate, Hilton Edwards looked kindly on the young American. “It’s no laughing matter,” he told Orson. “You’re at the point a matinee idol arrives at when he has got on in years and people are writing plays around his little tricks and capers. But of course that won’t do—nobody’s going to write nonsense for you to show off in.

“I tell you frankly you have a gorgeous stage voice and a stage presence in a million and you’re the finest
over
actor I’ve seen in eons, but you couldn’t come in and say, ‘Milord, the carriage awaits’ as well as Art, our electrician; you could put more somersaults in
Hamlet
than John Barrymore and handle theatrical, very theatrical restraint with more delicacy than Matheson Lang, but you couldn’t say ‘how-do-you-do’ behind the footlights like a human being; you handle your voice like a singer but there isn’t a note of sincerity in it. You’re all flash and finish.”

Edwards sent Orson away with valuable advice. “You go back to your hotel and practice acting like a man and not an actor,” he said. “You expend a great deal of energy on throwing weight and strength into characterization—forget it—despite your youth, you have all the strength you need. Drop affectation, over-studied grace. Try and make over what you’ve been doing all your life tonight—learn that art that conceals art—learn restraint and, above all, sincerity. It may take you years, but come around tomorrow and I’ll see how you’re coming along.”

Orson took the words to heart. What he didn’t know was that the part of Duke Karl Alexander was his to lose. The Gate’s most likely candidate, a member of the ensemble named Charles Marford, had just quit the company. Edwards himself was not only portraying Süss but also directing the play. The casting of Karl Alexander was an urgent matter to him.

In his hotel room, Orson practiced and practiced his lines, trying to muster every ounce of restraint and sincerity he could. When he returned, Edwards spent days putting him through “repeated auditions” and “endless consultations among the producing staff” before finally deciding to roll the dice and cast him in the role of Duke Karl Alexander—the first-billed role in the play.

“I am a professional!” Orson wrote to the headmaster, adding multiple exclamation points and underlining the word “professional” several times. “Forgive the somewhat salesman-like exuberance of this last. It was written immediately after my getting the job.”

In the meantime, Dr. Bernstein had finally sent him some money—including a check signed over to Trinity College, where he was expected to apply for admission. But Orson made only halfhearted gestures in that direction, and it was just too bad for Trinity and Dr. Bernstein.

All his energy and abilities were trained now on the Gate.

Orson had other responsibilities besides acting. Edwards also hired him “to fill in the various [other] departments” formerly occupied by Charles Marford, including scene painter and publicity agent. His habitual sleeplessness was an asset. The Gate seemed busy twenty-four hours a day, and Orson had a knack for finding extra time for both moonlighting and pleasure.

Edwards saw the young American as a diamond in the rough. The director and star of
Jew Süss
, in his late twenties, was more down-to-earth than his older partner, MacLíammóir, although Edwards was perfectly capable of fiery displays of temper when the occasion warranted. A short, chubby fellow with small, bespectacled eyes and a prominent nose, he could have been mistaken for a bank clerk. With his common sense and good-heartedness, though, Edwards was the anchor of the company.

Jew Süss
—the title is a reference to the main character, a historical figure, a court banker named Joseph Süss Oppenheimer—is set in the duchy of Württemberg in 1776. The story revolves around the enthroned Duke’s resentful dependence on the rich, cultured Jew. Duke Karl Alexander, Orson’s role, was a villainous rapist and murderer, “beyond any question the most difficult characterization in the entire play,” in Orson’s words. But whenever he tried to play the character to the hilt, Edwards reminded him of the virtues of restraint and of “absolute and unalloyed sincerity,” as Orson noted ruefully in his letters home.

“There are moments in the play,” Orson wrote, “when I feel I must make my voice ring and boom and make a gesture simple but studied and stagey, but even in the moments of the most intense comedy or tragedy I must be Karl Alexander without a single tassel or tinsel.” Orson sometimes balked at Edwards’s direction, but Edwards brought him to heel, giving him detailed instructions and asking him to follow them to the letter: Orson could reflect on the whys and wherefores later. It was a lesson Welles himself would later pass on to other actors.

The Gate mounted one new play every month, so time was short and the company was under constant pressure, with
Jew Süss
rehearsals going on “all day and every day,” in Orson’s words. It was hard work, but “lots of fun,” (another of his by now frequently recurring phrases). “Everyone has such a fine, keen, clean sense of humor and is so easy to work with.” Adding to the fun was the fact that the Duke was supposed to be in his fifties—giving the sixteen-year-old actor a perfect excuse to festoon himself with deep wrinkles, false hair, and stomach padding. His towering height and sonorous voice, lowered to bass baritone onstage, would complete the illusion of age.

Orson’s primary hurdle in this role, however, may have been learning to speak with an accent the native-born audience would accept (“in the most accent conscious city on the globe!”). “It’s wonderful diction training,” he wrote to Skipper. “I’m really learning the English language.”

Orson made strides during the nightly rehearsals, and by day he juggled his other duties—including publicity-mongering, already second nature for him; he easily dashed off reams of puffery of the sort he’d learned from the likes of Roger Hill, John Clayton, and the master newshounds of the Tavern Club. Best of all, writing publicity for the Gate gave him an excuse to tout himself—the exciting new discovery from America—inflating his age and reputation. Sometimes, as in a column he scribbled fitfully for a tabloid, he offered Gate hype under the pseudonym “Knowles Noel Shane,” an anagram of Welles, Kenosha, and, tellingly, “non.”

The lesser Irish newspapers gobbled up his breathless handouts, but so did the high-minded press. Even the
New York Times
, reviewing
Jew Süss
later, parroted his publicity handouts, describing “Orson Wells” as an eighteen-year-old who had “appeared occasionally” in Goodman Theatre plays and in “small parts” with the Theatre Guild in New York.

He had to make time for a little scene-painting for local groups of “Gaels,” “our deprecating term for the players who—monthly—edify Dublin with Irish plays
in
Irish,” in Orson’s words. The Gate provided the Gaelic troupes with made-to-order scenery as part of the bargain, and it fell to Orson to “dig out some stock flats” and “mottle” or “finish” them under strict instructions. This he “did with much care,” Orson reported to Dr. Bernstein, “being anxious to impress.” But he couldn’t resist improvising his own touches, and then felt “indescribable shame” when the stage manager complained about the results. (In his letter home, Orson illustrated this anecdote with a drawing of himself, glimpsed from behind, standing forlornly onstage with arrows pointing to mismatched scenery.) The Gaels “raged and ranted” until Charles Marford himself, “still in town, was hired to do the list over—per
instructions
!”

Micheál MacLíammóir hovered in the background as preparations for
Jew Süss
continued, keeping a wary eye on Orson and feeling much like a babysitter. When he wasn’t acting in the Gate’s current offering, the theater’s cofounder wrote poetry and original plays, and translated works of literature into Gaelic. (Though a champion of the Gaelic language movement, he was secretly an Englishman born and bred.) And he usually designed the sets—or supervised the design—and this was true of
Jew Süss.

MacLíammóir was a stylish and expressive stage designer, who achieved tremendous effects on cost-conscious budgets with sets that were typically complemented by Hilton Edwards’s atmospheric lighting, both men drawing from whatever was au courant on the Continent. MacLíammóir valued imaginative set design as much as Edwards valued restraint and sincerity in acting.

Thirty-one when Orson arrived in town, MacLíammóir was tall, dark, and charismatically handsome, notwithstanding the feminine powder, thick eyeliner, and toupee he affected offstage. He was not an easy man, and he would not have an easy relationship with Welles, who was on his way to becoming more famous than MacLíammóir would ever be. At first he saw Orson as a dangerously charming upstart—talented, perhaps, but an upstart all the same.