The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,27
designed it dramatically—no, melodramatically, in a fashion that I think will demonstrate to the brothers Warner, and the minions they’ve dispatched to scout me, that I have the visual sense required to make films.”
Gibson nodded. “The striking sets, the movement, the sort of...‘cutting’ between scenes, it’s all meant to show you off as a potential filmmaker?”
The kiss of a mouth twitched approval. “Precisely. I expect several key Warner Bros. executives to attend early performances of Danton’s Death—and I want to be ready with a film project for them, to strike while the iron is hot, as they say.”
“Is that the reason for all of the celluloid scattered about?” Gibson asked, gesturing with a thumb toward the French doors. “And that gizmo?”
“What?...Oh, the Moviola! That’s an editing machine. I’m still playing with the film we shot for Too Much Johnson, the farce we’re planning to mount. We had a bad experience trying it out in summer stock, but I’m still hopeful.”
“Ah. You mentioned that on the phone.”
“Yes, I wanted to combine theater with film—present two lengthy portions of the show as a movie. It’s delightful stuff—Joe Cotten’s a natural on screen, funny as hell. But I ran into a wall.”
“How so?”
“Well, I didn’t realize that what I was up to required any special...dispensation. But it turns out MGM had film rights to the play, and they insist on charging us an arm and a leg for me to use my stuff.” Welles shrugged again, a larger more fatalistic one.
Gibson wondered how this skilled if young producer could have used the bad judgment to just do what he wanted, without checking into permissions. But Gibson immediately answered his own question: Welles was a child, a fun, bright, enthusiastic one...also spoiled. Like all spoiled children, he wasn’t much on asking permission....
“I can tell you, though, Walter, playing with this film, seeing how you can tell a story through pictures, little jigsaw-puzzle pieces, well, I get a real charge out of it.”
“So this Warners interest means a lot to you.”
“It does. It does indeed. I have so many ideas about making films—Walter, I can barely contain myself.”
“Such as?”
“You’ve seen the German films? Caligari, for instance? Fritz Lang’s Metropolis?”
“Sure. Judging by their crime pictures, I think the guys at Warner Bros. have, too.”
“Precisely! But they haven’t taken it far enough.” Welles sat forward, his eyes alive and twinkling, his palms open and outstretched, like Jolson on his knees. “I want to make radio...for the screen.”
Gibson winced in thought. “You mean, do more heightened, sophisticated sound work?”
Welles waved a dismissive hand. “Well, that, too, but...Walter, do the images you produce in your own mind, when you listen to a radio show—do the motion pictures you see in your local movie house match up to that?”
“To my own imagination? Hell no!”
“Ha! Precisely. It was better back in the silent days, when the cameras weren’t so bulky—think of the images von Stroheim achieved, and Griffith, and even DeMille. It was as if you were witnessing your own dreams coming to life...and that’s what I intend to make happen again, but even more so. Low angles, high angles, lighting effects, backgrounds as carefully art-directed as one of my Mercury stage productions.”
“And you think the Shadow would lend itself to this?”
A small smile twitched. “Well...if I may be frank...”
“Well, Housey’s checkbook is.... My goal would be to do on screen the kinds of things I’m attempting on stage. Nobody’s seriously tried to do Shakespeare, for example, since Mickey Rooney was Puck in that MGM fiasco.”
“I liked that movie.”
“You have to strip these classics down, reimagine them, for the masses. I did Hamlet in an hour on the radio!”
And left out the ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ speech, Gibson thought, but said nothing.
“I intend to do Conrad’s Heart of Darkness...Lear...The Life of Christ!”
“If you have these...” The writer almost said “pretensions,” but substituted: “...goals—why the Shadow?”
Welles’s expression seem to melt into a mask of chagrin. “I’ve insulted you...”
“No. No!”
“... Please don’t think I undervalue your contribution to either my career or the medium of radio.”
“I didn’t think—”
“I am no snob.” Then, in a tone so arch it undercut everything he said, Welles continued: “In fact, I am so resolutely middlebrow as to want to bring the highbrow down to my meager level.”
“Some would call the Shadow lowbrow.”
“Not Orson Welles. I kept myself alive, in Spain, back in ’33, plying your trade—writing pulp detective yarns! And you know of my love for magic—for the carnival-like