UNEXPECTED CONVERSATION: Orson Welles

0:01Tetísimo perpetre.

0:12The problem is a stage term. It's an abbreviation of the expression stage property. But you mean example. Anything that you may see up on a stage besides the actor and the scene where he's likely to be a prop, for example, your ex -girl is a prop and the Romeo's vile of poise and the telephone and dial -in for murder, they're all props. I see. Then they're props in real life and we're self -conscious. We put our hands to our neckties and my cigarette all that sort of thing. In other words, a prop is just what it means in the dictionary. It's something to prop ourselves whether it's a tool. It's a crutch, something to lean on.

1:01I remember. The first night I was ever in Hollywood, I was speaking. After dinner speaking, I'd been introduced as a great after dinner speaker. I don't know quite why because I'm not. But I had been and this is a great Hollywood dinner. Every star I'd ever seen in my life, I was tremendously impressed. They all were and a lot of other grand people besides Maharajas and all kinds of title folk. I'd been called upon. Of course, being very frightened and very eager to please I started a funny story which I'd heard that day. And I'd gone for a while when it dawned on me that I'd forgotten how it ended.

1:48I continued with the story. I hoped that somehow I'd find an ending, somehow be able to invent one. And the people were all looking very eagerly waiting for the finish because they knew that although the story was very boring, it must be boring for a purpose. Obviously it was boring because the end was going to be so tremendously amusing. They often looked at me eagerly and I continued and continued. I thought, how in heaven's name can I get out of this thing? So what did you do? I could pretend to faint or drop dead or rush out in the air, continue to invent comical finishes that elicited no titters whatsoever, quietly and secretly praying to myself to heaven.

2:36And then my prayer was granted. Ever since then I've been a great believer in the efficacy of prayer because just as I'd given up hope, just as I was wondering how I could get out of this situation. The walls started to shake the chandelier fell down from the ceiling onto the table, the people jumped out of the table. This was California, remember. Wow! It was an earthquake. Unbelievable. I was saved. My Hollywood career was saved by an earthquake. Tell me about doing theatre in Europe. First night audiences are always in experience. In this theatre I faced the very first night audience of all.

3:14In Dublin, that grand capital of eloquence and violent opinion where audiences enjoy a delight in the privilege of free speech. And you can sometimes hear as much dialogue from the gallery as from the stage itself. Where first nights often end in literal riot. And actors have been known to seek police protection from the public they're trying to entertain. Well, here I am in Dublin on that very first of all my first nights. Now there's a reason for this lofty calm. It's the bliss of ignorance. Like a baby on a trapeze or a drunk taking a crest to run on the seat of his trousers. I was happy because I didn't know any better.

3:59Underneath all that makeup is a brash young amateur who hasn't seen his sixteenth birthday. And there's no assurance like that of the utter green horn. Nobody least of all an aspiring actor scared of being hurt until his fall on his face. You've all seen Donald Duck and Clue to the Pupp in the Disney cartoons when they run off the edge of a roof or off the ledge of a cliff. Run quite a distance and then they happen to glance down when they realize where they are. There's nothing under them they fall. So you don't know what to fear yet? Well, the beginner is rather like that. He goes tripping merrily out into space.

4:37No technique and no knowledge. Anything of that kind. Treading air as a swimmer, treads water, and then suddenly realizes where he is. And I see it as a full of people. And he realizes what that means. Then the happy dream changes to a nightmare. Terrible truth has just dawned on me. That an audience is not so much a compliment to an actor's ego as a challenge to his capacities. I've just received my first challenge. This was Ireland, remember, where audiences take a sort of professional pride in unpredictability. It wasn't until many years later. In fact, only recently that the police had to be called out to protect me from the wrath of an Irish audience.

5:24But that's another story. Maybe I'll tell that some other time. But I'd already received by that very first night of all a pretty good intimation of what was in store for me in the future. I remember the line that I had just spoken. I'll never forget that line as long as I live. Pretty girl. I just left the stage. Betty Chancellor, Dennis Johnson, as well. I was supposed to look after in my characterization as the wicked old archduke, watch her go letterlessly and shortle, and say, a bride fit for Solomon. He had a thousand wives to do not. And just at this moment when I said that line, he had a thousand wives to do not.

6:11A voice, somewhere in the audience, about the fifth row of the stalls spoke up. I said, he had a thousand wives to do not. And the voice said, that's a dirty black Protestant lawy. Wow. Well, I've given that remark a good deal of serious thoughts. As a matter of fact, I've been brooding over it for about 20 years. And I still haven't thought of an adequate reply. How could you? And anyway, that moment, the sound of that voice, was my first experience of feeling like somebody unfortunate and disney. That's when it was born in upon me with frightful force that is an actor. I wasn't so much skating on thin ice as walking in thin air.

6:59When I realized where I was, I started to fall. That's a long time ago. I've been falling ever since. Wow. And speaking of falling, it was actually a fall that saved me an act five. I was supposed to die of apoplexian act five. I've actually was half dead from fright. I was supposed to draw my sword, shout wildly, ring the bells and fire all the cannons, and then slump lifelessly into my throne. But I had just made the terrible discovery that an audience is not necessarily a group of friendly world wishes. An audience can be a pitfall of ravening lions, and besides there was the commentator in the fifth row.

7:44So I pulled it the sword and discovered it was stuck in the scabbard. Of course it was stuck in the scabbard's opening night. That always happens as a little invisible man who goes backstage on every opening night and glues the swords into all the scabbards and short circuits to telephones and jams a few doors. That's purely routine. As I say, I was a beginner. I didn't know I got the invisible little man. So I pulled it the sword and pulled and pulled and after a while discovered that I was left with nothing but my death speech. So in a voice which reverted to the warble of a voice of Prano, I cried shrilly, ring the cannons and fire all the bells.

8:26The effect of this was stupendous. Before anyone out front could volunteer another comment in an amode of suicide, I flung myself head first down the whole flight of stairs. Wow! Made as it was in the full muscular flower of my boyhood that was quite some dive. It was the only thing I could think of at the moment. I didn't care whether it killed me or not. It almost did. But also it brought down the house. Yeah. As the Dubliners, besides being very keen critics, are also generous. And I don't suppose that anything like that backflip had been seen on the shores of the Liffy before. Here was an actor who could fall on his head and really make you believe it.

9:08In all the long striving years since my debut, I've never received such an ovation. That's an amazing story. Did you always want to be an actor? You see, I'd come to Ireland, not to act, but to be a painter. I always wanted to be a painter. In the spring of that year, I'd arrived at the Donkian cut, traveled about Kahnemara, and found myself in Dublin in the autumn of that year, without what I technically referred to as financial resources. I had a few shillings, but I blew those on a good dinner, and I'd take it to the theatre, the theatre was the gate. And on the stage, I recognized in a minor part a young fellow that I'd known in the west of Ireland.

9:47For a while, he was a folkloreist, I went backstage to say hello to him. And he introduced me to the directors, headwins and meekly amor. And I heard myself introducing myself to them as a noted actor from the Broadway stage. Why'd he tell them that? Now, what had possessed me? I don't know why I told that, but the idea of earning my living as an actor was so preposterous that seemed to me probably the preposterous story was the only possible way of proposing it. I see. Some reason they gave me the job, it was a very good part. I'd intimated that I was willing to stay on in Ireland for a short season, if sufficiently interesting roles could be found.

10:30The first interesting role was the Archduke, and that's how I started, as I say in the theatre, it was an easy start. I must confess to you that nothing's been easy since then. Do you think it was beginner's luck? Or do you think it was something else? Every year I learn how much I've yet to learn. But on that first night of all, I learned an important discovery. I learned that an audience can be a very fierce creature. It can turn suddenly dangerous. Not fierceness is generally in defense of the fragile miracle which is expected every evening in the theatre. The audience defends that miracle.

11:16The artist presides over it. Nobody performs that miracle, everybody contributes to it, and above all, it must not be treated lightly. Respect in the presence of that miracle is a part of the normal respect of the professional for his job. I learned that job and learned to love the theatre. Respect naturally followed. Did you have a strong idea going in of what to do as an actor? When I started playing in a play, it was like playing a game. I didn't care whether I won or not. Now, of course, I do care very much, and I often find myself on the losing side of things, but I wouldn't trade my love for the theatre for all the hits on Broadway and the West End.

12:06I'm not proud of my start. I'm not proud of having begun in the theatre as an adventurer. I'm most sincerely grateful to the angry gentleman in the fifth row who raised his voice in the darkness of that Dublin theatre and made me the precious gift of stage fright. It was the beginning of respect. Very shortly thereafter, as I told you, I threw myself on my head. It seemed the only thing I could do, falling on my head is probably what made me an actor. Yes. Certainly, it's what made me a professional. Do you find that changing your appearance helps define the character you're playing? In most of the films that I've been in, I put on a false nose, usually as large as I can find.

12:57And right at the start of my career as an actor, I was playing in a play called Morgue of the Desert, which was in Blackverse. I was playing the role of Cosserois, King of the Persians, and he had an enormous nose, like one of those Persian miniatures that you see. I put it on, began here and ended there, be it and so on. And in the second act, I had to come out where the young lady, very pretty young lady, in a gentleman had to attempt to assassinate me. Another gentleman, Morgue, the title role, quipped the dagger out of the Woodbeer Assassin's hand. On the opening night, the first night of this play, instead of quipping the dagger out of the Assassin's hand, he quipped the nose off my face.

13:45And I was revealed, as you see me now. And of course, I was very invested in the Persian, so I put my hand in front of my face. I had a long love scene to play with the young lady in Blackverse, with your hand over your nose. You can imagine how well that went down on the first night in Dublin. You were as beautiful as the desert, I don't know if I'd at all find it. I had to say a line, at the end of the scene, at a climactic point, I had to say to Morgue, had you not brought me into the temple at the time you did Lord Morgue, I might have lost my throne. And instead of which I said, had you not brought me into the temple at the time you did Lord Morgue, I might have lost my nose.

14:29At which point everybody burst into the rice of laughter and the curtain slowly fell. And of course, it's the first night that I'll never forget. How would the reviews in your early days? For us, a critic of the first night is rather like a fairy godmother, the christening. From our point of view, it'd be so much nicer if the critics would only come on last night. And they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral operations. I remember one first night in Boston, it was, and you were the fifth. We were doing a show on a revolving stage as a turntable, a big circular stage of the turns. And when it came the great moment of the charge, I see you stand like greyhounds at the slips and so on.

15:15I had devised a plan which involved railbows and rail arrows. Really? This was folly on my part as it later turned out, but I had a large target made of cork just in the wings and forty of the English soldier played by Harvard men. Students from the University of Harvard, this was in Boston. Forty of these stalwart fellows were to shoot their arrows into the wings into the cork target. However, the revolving stage started to turn a little bit too soon. Oh, no. There I was saying, cry god for hairy angolands in Georgian, as I said it, the turntable slowly moved so that instead of looking off stage left, we were looking straight into the audience and forty bows and arrows were pointed right into the theatre.

16:10And I thought to myself, as I came to the tag, well, their university fellows, they're not going to just shoot into the audience. And so with a certain amount of confidence, I launched into the great line cry god for hairy angoland, and said, I think Georgia is a tremendous roar, and I noticed with horror that the roar was from the audience because indeed they had shot the arrows into the audience. Wow, forty of them. We even scored a direct hit on the Dean of critics. What are the odds? I thought of the story because of what sometimes can happen to a critic on a first night. Critics really ought to be more careful.

16:49I'd like to dedicate a little story, but a critic on the show of us, it's a murder story. I thought a critic who didn't like our shows, name was Percy Hammond, for a fellow dead now, so I told you it's a murder story. The play was Macbeth, which was laid in a West Indian island suggestive of Haiti at the time of the Black Emperor, Jean -Cruix Stoff. It sounds like a great idea. It works surprisingly well because the actors were very good and changing the blasted heath to the fetted jungle wasn't as ridiculous as you might think. Because there was all that vitality on the stage and the actors were so good and of course above all the witches translated terribly well into witch doctors, we'll do witch doctors.

17:39And these witch doctors were specially imported from Africa because the governments in the West Indian district of view that there was no such thing as voodoo. So we had to go all the way to the Gold Coast and import a troop and they were quite a troop headed by a fellow whose name was Asaddata Dufforo. Did they speak English? The only other member of the Coven who had any English was a dwarf with gold teeth by the name of Jazzbow. At least we called him Jazzbow up in Harlem. I don't know what his African name was. He had a diamond in each one of those gold teeth. He was quite a character, fairly terrifying.

18:17The other members of the troop not only spoke no English but didn't seem to want to speak at all. They can find the communications to drumming. It sounds like an incredible production. I suppose the entire history of Shakespeare in the theater has never been a request on the first day of rehearsal for 12 live goats. Part of the cast we said what? And Asaddata said goats, black goats for making devil drums. How did you find the goats in New York City? Well, we couldn't just go out and look for 12 live goats. We had to requisition them as being a government project. We had to file the requisitions in triplicate.

19:04You can imagine what went on in Washington. We heard about that. But the goats were finally provided. The sacrificial knives were sharpened. And the accompaniment of wild shrieks from the voodoo priests who were beasts were sacrificed. You can imagine the effect he had in the community of Harlem on the whole Lafayette theater was wreaking suggestively with the older blood. Wow. Finally the drums were ready. And the drumming began. The legend grew backstage and indeed all over the community of Harlem that to touch the drums was to die. Wow, did anyone touch the drums? Indeed one poor stage and did touch of drum and did fall from a high place and break his neck.

19:48And after that Asaddata and his rhythm boys were treated with a little respect. And then we opened with Macbeth and the drummers were fine and the voodoo sequences that is the witch scenes went very well indeed. And everybody seemed to like the show critics were very kind to us except for Mr. Percy Hammond was a very good critic. Did Percy review the show? I don't want to speak disrespectfully of the dead but he did write a notice in which he said that Negro should never be allowed to play anything except Negro subjects. Which went down of course very badly up in Harlem and was taken to be an unfair attack on the Negro race.

20:35And at the height of discussion on the subject I was approached by a jazz ball who said to me, this critic Badman. And I said, yes he's a bad man. You want we make very very on this bad man? Did you know what he meant? All this dialogue is very much like the native bearers in Tarzan and so on. I apologize for it was really what we're talking. I said, just go right ahead and make all the berry berry you want to. They said, we started drums now. I said, you go ahead and start the drums. Just be ready to the show tonight. They said drums begin now. He died 23 hours from now. Wow! Drumming began fine, show went on.

21:25I went home, woke up next morning, proceeded along ordinary course of work and bought the afternoon paper to discover that Mr. Percy Hammond for unknown causes that dropped dead in his apartment. Wow! So you got to see a voodoo ritual carried out successfully in real time in New York City. I know this story is a little hard to believe but it is circumstantially true. And I thought it might be interesting. Some of our critics to hear what can happen. So you're putting critics on notice? Well this is another voodoo witch doctor. It's a Brazilian. I ran into him in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro a few years ago.

22:16I tell you the story before I do I want to show you that I don't advocate voodoo. I don't even believe in it. That last story about the critic, well he died. We all do die and I'm sure that Percy Hammond who had a wonderful sense of humor would like to know that the story of his passing has been woven into a Broadway legend. It's hard for you to say you don't believe in voodoo after that story. What happened in Rio? In the case of Brazil we were down there making a documentary film, partly for the government but mostly for Hollywood studio. This was at the time of the Good Neighbor Policy. And it was my task to make a large technical documentary on the subject of the carnival.

22:59So we took up the whole question of Samba and the Samba Orchestra. And when I'd nearly finished the film it occurred to me that the origins of Samba lay in voodoo ceremonies, particularly in Shanggu which are practiced up in the favelas those strange native settlements on the mountains which are right in the midst of the city of Rio. And so I arranged with a good deal of difficulty to film a voodoo ceremony. How did you manage that? We had protracted conversations with the head of the group and an advance payment was arranged for. He came to my office in Rio to discuss it. And it was my unhappy lot to have to tell him that the filming was off because I had just received word from Hollywood that the president of the film studio had been removed.

23:54That sort of thing happens not only in South American governments but also in film studios had been rather abruptly removed. A new president was in his place. And the entire project was off. There was no more money to spend on voodoo ceremonies. Oh no. And the which doctor showed me that this was deeply offensive and that he and his group took it very badly. And I said I was most sorry about it myself. And I did want to finish the film and I did hope he understood. I have a job that I have to do. I have a job that I have to do. I have a job that I have to do. I have a job that I have to do. I have a job that I have to do.

24:33I have a job that I have to do. Which we rather like the material was very interesting and I thought it would be a good thing to do. Two finishes and so much effort had gone into it and I was pleading my cause for some time, praying that we would be able to. And I came back to the office and found that on my desk, in a script of the film, was a long steel needle. Wow. It had been driven entirely through the script. And to the needle was attached to length of red wool. This was the mark of the voodoo. So the film was cursed. The end of that story is that it was the end of the film we were never allowed to finish it.

25:37There are more things in heaven and earth that are actually in a dream job enough for last week. Yes. Before stage, you got your starting radio, didn't you? I was for many years radio commentator in America. During that time, of course, I had occasion to speak on a great variety of subjects. Of all those subjects, one of the most interesting stories, one that sticks most vividly in my memory, had to do with a Negro soldier, voicing service in the South Pacific, he was on his way home. Home was in one of the southern states, he was on a bus on the way to Lilleau. He asked the bus driver to let him off.

26:24The bus driver refused, busively. I was an argument. At the end of which a policeman was called in, who dragged the boy out of the bus, took him behind a building and beat him viciously. And when he was unconscious, poured gin over him, put him in jail, charged him with drunkardness and assault. When the boy regained consciousness, he discovered that he was blind. Oh my God. A policeman had literally beaten out his eyes. Now, of course, that sort of policeman is the exception. That sort of policeman is a criminal in uniform. It's a terrible story. I had the satisfaction of being instrumental in bringing that particular policeman to justice.

27:11Case was brought to my attention and I brought it to the attention of the radio public, and we did finally manage to locate this man and to bring him into a court of law. But there is another sort of police abuse. And I think we all suffer more or less. And we suffer at the hands of good policemen. Decent policemen. Policemen doing their duty. What do you mean? These are all a little petty annoyances. Don't seem very important, but add up to an invasion of our privacy and an assault against our dignified human beings. I'm brought in mind all this, because just now I've had my passport renewed.

27:57I've made me think of all the forms and police question as we have to fill out. The government bureaucracy is crazy making. One of the unpleasant things about your passport, getting a new one, of course, is that you have to have a new picture, which you invariably look older and sometimes a little worse than holder. It's the idea. I wonder why it is that so many of us tend to look like criminals and a police line up and we have our picture taken for a passport. It's true. Why do you think that is? I suppose it's the unconscious foreknowledge of the scrogenator, which our likeness will be subjected, that gives us that hangdog guilty look.

28:40What's the purpose of all this paperwork? Really. Theoretically, of course, a passport is supposed to be issued for our protection. But on how many frontiers and how many countries I've handed over my passport with all the emotions of an apprentice forge are trying to far -off a five -pound note on the Bank of England. It's guilty conscience, I suppose. But well, there's something about being ticketed and numbered, and gives the man the feeling of being a piece of baggage or a conflict. It does seem over time our freedom is continually more and more challenged. I can't help thinking wistfully of our father's day when the world hadn't grown so small, but one could move about in it without being watched so closely.

29:28Nowadays, of course, we're treated like demanded or delinquent children, and the eyes are always honest. Our father's, of course, there weren't any passports. The only countries that required an entry visa were Montenegro and Russia. Here I am in the hands of the police. This is an illustration of a story. It happened to me in a country that I think had better be nameless enough to travel in the world as it is. First of all, I better explain that I carry or at least carried what Mr. Roosevelt once described when I showed it to him as the cheapest diplomatic passport in the world. In an American passport, I don't know whether it's true in an English one or not, but in an American one on the front page, there's a place that says, in case of death or accident, please notify and then you usually put the name of some near and dear one.