Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane (73 page)

Casting outsiders tore at the actors’ delicate egos; compensation was a related issue. The few elite cast members who nabbed the lead roles also drew higher salaries than their colleagues. “We have consistently carried in our company a number of actors receiving full pay but playing only three or four performances a week,” the partners noted in “The Summing Up.” For most of the Mercury players, however, “full pay” meant Equity minimum, while actors playing concurrent leads in
Julius Caesar
and
The Shoemaker’s Holiday
, for example, received double pay—some even received raises—and the top names scored a percentage of the box office. That was one reason George Coulouris, a steady grumbler, hung around: he was assured of leading roles and wages to match. Some weeks, he was paid more than Welles.

The disaffected players blamed the inequities on Welles and Houseman equally: Houseman because he was penurious and dismissive; Orson because he seemed to live high on the hog while others scraped by. Orson’s standard of living was, by now, inseparable from his image—he traveled by limousine, dined luxuriously, checked into ritzy hotels—and when his face appeared on the cover of
Time
, the magazine was compelled to ask him about his lifestyle. “Stories of his recent affluence,” reported
Time
, “annoy him. First of all, Welles insists, this has nothing to do with his Mercury triumphs; for years he has had these things by virtue of his radio earnings,” which the magazine estimated to be in the range of $1,000 weekly. (“Last summer for two or three weeks he hit a high of $1,700.”) When pressed on the matter, Welles insisted that his radio earnings were what
enabled
the Mercury Theatre to exist.

Such publicity annoyed members of the company. In interviews later in his life, Orson said he felt guilty about friends like Joseph Cotten, who struggled to get his career going independent of the Mercury. “That was a difficult period for me, as a friend,” Welles told Henry Jaglom, “because suddenly I was making a fortune. Jo was still making those smaller salaries, and I was big stuff.” Cotten always supported Orson, but their friendship was strained.

When
The Shoemaker’s Holiday
was closed and replaced by
Heartbreak House
, a number of the Mercury players demanded a meeting to air their grievances. Welles stood his ground. “Some of you may have thought that . . . the Mercury Theatre owes [you] some obligations,” he reportedly declared. “I want to state, here and now, I am the Mercury Theatre.” His point was hard to argue—he was the company’s undisputed mastermind; the Mercury would hardly have existed without him. But it was a difficult pill to swallow, especially when the much-publicized mastermind rarely mentioned anyone else in his interviews. “How could you feel part of a collaborative effort when Orson took the credit for everything?” Chubby Sherman complained in an interview a quarter century later. “You were supposed to surrender yourself, bask in his reflected glory and be satisfied.”

And there were other sources of restlessness—not least the perpetually forthcoming
Five Kings.
The Mercury players were tired of treading water and waiting for the mastermind: they wanted guarantees for the summer and fall. Houseman spoke publicly about taking the innovative Shakespeare production on the road for a summerlong West Coast tour, leading to a fall 1938 opening in New York. He arranged with Lawrence Langer and Theresa Helburn, his friends at the prestigious Theatre Guild, to reinforce the Mercury by coproducing
Five Kings
with “part of the backing and the fat pickings of its 60,000 subscription list,” as the
Time
cover story noted. But when the first casting choice was leaked, it was another outsider: sure enough—Burgess Meredith as Prince Hal/Henry V.

On the last day of May, the partners announced that
Five Kings
would be postponed until the fall—and another play would precede it on the fall schedule. Orson had decided to direct a revival of Oscar Wilde’s farce
The Importance of Being Earnest
, with Chubby Sherman and George Coulouris as the stars. It was going to be workshopped in August as a “guest attraction” in a summer theater friendly to the Mercury. However, “a sizeable number of the Mercury actors were not too anxious” to commit to the Wilde farce, according to the
Times
account; they had their hearts set on
Five Kings
, whose projected lengthy tryout tour and Broadway run would “insure longer employment.”

The lead role of “Ernest,” who juggles a double life as a gentleman and a wastrel, was tailor-made for the company’s foremost farceur. Chubby Sherman’s casting in the role was even reported in the
New York Times
, although the actor would tell Richard France years later, “Orson never so much as mentioned wanting me in anything after
Shoemaker.”
By early June, with Lloyd, Price, and a few other Mercury actors bolting from the company, Sherman was torn between the factions. Starring in the Wilde comedy should have pleased him, but it would mean disappointing the other actors who were pulling for
Five Kings
—and make Sherman an unwilling symbol of loyalty to Orson.

Tempted by another producer’s fall Broadway musical revue, Sherman stalled. He may simply have been waiting until the Mercury partners were out of town. On June 23, 1938, almost three weeks after reporting that Sherman would be showcased in
The Importance of Being Earnest
, the
Times
broke the news that he was quitting the Mercury.

Sherman was the oldest, most conspicuous of “Orson’s people.” He and Orson had known each other since the late 1920s, the heyday of the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. In a sense, Sherman, Welles, and Houseman, were three Musketeers, dating back to their dreams of a repertory company in 1936 and their wishful plans for ’
Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

Orson had long believed in Sherman’s acting prowess (“The Mercury Fuehrer had expected to build his production of the Oscar Wilde work around Mr. S.,” the
Times
noted). Sherman had emerged as a valued, versatile stalwart of the Mercury ensemble under Orson’s direction—while also serving as Orson’s casting director and his assistant director for Mercury plays and outside projects like
The Second Hurricane.
Often an invaluable spokesman for his fellow actors, Sherman was known within the company as its “conscience,” Houseman wrote.

One of Sherman’s frustrations was he wanted to direct plays for the Mercury. Decades later, Orson insisted to Barbara Leaming that he tried to give Sherman such a chance on a nascent production of Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure
late in 1937. Sherman cast the play, reimagined in a New Orleans setting, and convened a few read-throughs. From “what I heard,” Welles told Leaming, “it was really very good.” Welles claimed that Houseman unaccountably canceled Sherman’s directing debut, “Orson was terribly puzzled by the cancellation,” wrote Leaming—although many Mercury projects fell by the wayside in similar fashion.

The pain of Sherman’s defection was compounded when Welles learned that Whitford Kane, who, as an actor and director at the Goodman Theatre, had been his idol—and who was Sherman’s life partner—had mounted a whispering campaign against him.

Tension between Welles and Kane had been mounting for some time. From the earliest run-throughs of
The Shoemaker’s Holiday
, Kane contributed “the only discordant note” in the production, taking “exception to what he regarded as Welles’s lack of respect,” said Houseman. Among other things bothering Kane was that his role gradually shrank as Welles’s script compressed the scenes involving his character, the shoemaker who becomes lord mayor, in order to shift the focus to Sherman.

The atmosphere during
The Shoemaker’s Holiday
was also affected by a generation gap, as the “youthful spirit” of most of the cast “clashed bitterly with the habits of the older performers,” according to Andrea Janet Nouryeh. Kane and actress Marian Warring-Manley, playing the lord mayor’s wife, led this small older group. When Welles held forth at rehearsals, telling anecdotes mocking the Shakespearean actor Maurice Evans, Kane bristled. He took Orson aside, questioning some of his directing decisions and warning him about eroding the company’s morale. Welles was open to outside opinion, if he was in the right mood. Not this time: “He’s above taking advice,” Kane complained to Ashton Stevens, adding that Orson would be “a much better liked young person” if he listened to his elders.

When
The Shoemaker’s Holiday
was closed to make way for
Heartbreak House
, Kane was effectively dropped from the Mercury. “The fate of
The Shoemaker’s Holiday
,” wrote Andrea Janet Nouryeh, “angered both Hiram Sherman and Whitford Kane.”

There was another, more personal factor: in the domestic rift between Welles and his wife, Sherman and Kane sided with Virginia. The two knew all about Orson’s late-night carousing—Orson often dragged Sherman on his rounds of parties and nightclubs—and, as homebodies themselves, they empathized with the suffering wife. Besides, Orson was always handing Sherman the check and darting out the door to grab a taxi. “The high-livers were killing me,” Sherman complained years later. Orson exploited too much of Sherman’s energy, work time, and playtime too. “The pace [for Sherman] had become so wild, the mood so intense and violent,” Houseman wrote, “as to be physically and mentally unendurable.”

Sherman’s departure threw the already splintered Mercury into disarray. And with his featured player gone, Orson lost interest in
The Importance of Being Earnest.
³¹
The company found itself once again on tenterhooks, waiting for its mastermind to choose a new opening play for the fall season. “Coincidental with rumored rifts in the Mercury, several important company members have turned to other managements in order to ‘get set’ for next season,” reported the
Times.

As he often did at times of crisis, Orson telephoned Roger Hill in the wake of Sherman’s departure. The Todd School headmaster knew Sherman almost as well as Orson did, and never lost his fondness for the good-humored actor. In later years, Hill raised Sherman’s name with Welles repeatedly—in part because he nurtured a pet theory (influenced by Houseman’s memoir) that Sherman’s departure was the first domino to fall in the Mercury’s ultimate collapse.

“It always seemed to me that Chubby’s leaving the Mercury was the reason for its demise,” Hill insisted during one conversation. “You were so high on him and, all of a sudden, he called you on the phone and said he wanted to make more money somewhere else.”

“Yes,” Orson replied sympathetically, “he had a good play where he could get a bigger salary. I didn’t have a major part for him then, so it was a natural thing to do.”

“Yes, but I remember your phone call and you were pretty—”

“Upset,” Orson admitted.

“Upset,” repeated Hill. “Of course, we all have simplistic answers, but it seemed to me that Chubby killed the Mercury.”

“I don’t really think so because the Mercury went on to Hollywood fame.”

“No, I mean the Mercury Theatre,” Hill persisted.

“The Mercury Theatre was killed by lack of funds,” Orson parried evenly, “and our subsequent move to Hollywood. Hollywood was really the only choice. It wasn’t because of Chubby leaving. I think all acting companies have a life span. The Mercury Theatre came to an end.”

But the Mercury Theatre was not dead yet. Orson was never the type to be deterred by catastrophe, or even slowed by it, for very long.

Late in June, on the pretext of escaping from the hay-fever environs of Sneden’s Landing, Welles moved into the air-conditioned St. Regis Hotel to concentrate on the launch of the radio series. Just two months had passed since the birth of his daughter, Christopher, but Welles was content to leave his troubled domestic life behind for the summer; while not unloving, he was destined to be an absentee father who left child rearing to the mothers of his children.

One of Orson’s masterstrokes was placing John Houseman in charge of scripts for the new radio series. Orson had long viewed Houseman as a shrewd script editor—commending him to David O. Selznick for just that purpose on one occasion—and now he gave his partner a lightning tutorial in writing and editing for radio.

Orson chose Robert Louis Stevenson’s pirate story
Treasure Island
and Bram Stoker’s vampire tale
Dracula
for the first two shows, announcing
Treasure Island
first but later switching to
Dracula
for the premiere. He loved the fact that the Irish-born Stoker once served as an aide-de-camp to the legendary English actor-manager Henry Irving, and he considered
Dracula
“the most hair-raising, marvelous book in the world.” Orson could play two principal roles: solicitor Jonathan Harker, who narrates the horror story, and Count Dracula himself. As for Stevenson’s novel, he knew the text almost by memory from boyhood—and that play, too, offered him two important parts: the innkeeper’s son (the story’s narrator) Jim Hawkins, and the colorful pirate Long John Silver. Both novels thus allowed Orson to fulfill the concept behind the “First Person Singular” series.

Since Orson was the star of the show, the script discussions tended to involve building a structure around his favorite scenes. Orson always wanted an unconventional approach, with subjective narrative passages—diary excerpts, letters, stream of consciousness.
Dracula
is an epistolary novel with multiple narrators, and he wanted the radio adaptation to honor that conceit. Equally important, the radio scripts all had to be punctuated with music and sound effects; like lighting in theater, the music and effects served to accent the mood and heighten the drama. For the radio version of “Dracula,” Welles taught Houseman to be creative with these effects, inserting cracks of thunder, whistling wind, clopping hooves, crashing waves, and more.