real irritation—not only is he late, but when he comes in to give his excuse, he gets caught up in the yarn he’s inventing, and everyone gathers around...myself included, goddamnit...and we all get caught up in his powers of storytelling.”
Gibson laughed. “He’s one of a kind, all right. But couldn’t the gangster story be true?”
“Certainly it could. Orson has an apparent self-destructive need to throw himself in the path of danger—to associate with recklessness and risk.”
“Now you’re sounding melodramatic, Jack.”
“Perhaps I am. But we must always remember that what we have here is, essentially, a middle-class midwestern boy, steeped in art, music and literature, who craves the respect of sophisticated men. No matter how much he rages, he is gentle at heart—his storms tear up the countryside, but they do pass quickly.”
Showman that he was, Welles apparently knew this was his cue, because—in a cream-color suit and loose yellow bow tie—he ambled into the bar, lighted up like Christmas upon seeing them both, and deposited himself in the booth, putting Gibson in the middle.
Welles greeted them both warmly—as if he hadn’t seen Gibson for hours (as opposed to minutes) and as if he hadn’t been cruelly dismissive of Houseman the night before. He waved a waiter over, ordered himself a Bloody Mary, took credit for naming it, then listened patiently as Houseman brought him up to speed. This morning’s rehearsal had gone well, and Paul Stewart was assembling an effective gallery of sound effects; then Houseman read him script changes that the CBS censors had insisted upon for “War of the Worlds.”
“Thanks to your news bulletin approach,” Houseman said, “a script that earlier in the week was deemed by all concerned too ‘unbelievable’ has now been found, by the network, much too believable.”
Welles took a gulp of his Bloody Mary, which had just arrived. “What are the vultures requesting?”
“They request nothing. They demand that we remove our real place-names.”
“What!”
Houseman patted the air, gently. “Not geographic names—Grovers Mill is fine, as of course is New York and various New Jersey environs. Howard has made some good suggestions to fictionalize these place-names just enough to satisfy the Columbia Broadcasting System, but—”
“Not enough to alert the listener to what we’re up to. Good. Examples, please.”
Houseman looked at a sheet of paper tucked into the front of his script. “Langley Field, for example, is now ‘Langham.’ Columbia Broadcasting Building is now simply ‘Broadcasting Building.’ United States Weather Bureau is ‘Government Weather Bureau.’ ”
“Good, good,” Welles said, hands tented now, eyes almost glowing.
“New Jersey National Guard is now ‘State Militia.’ Princeton University Observatory is now ‘Princeton Observatory.’ ”
“Fine, fine.”
Houseman closed the script cover, ominously. “There is one that you won’t like, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t shield me, Housey.”
“They won’t let us use Roosevelt as a character.”
Welles sat up, alarmed and dismayed. “But that’s vital—a message from the president in a moment of national crisis!”
“They’ll allow another official—they’re suggesting Secretary of the Interior. This one appears to be nonnegotiable.”
Welles was thinking. “I may have a way around that...”
Houseman’s eyes hardened. “Orson—you know that I don’t approve of this approach...”
“I seem to recall something to that effect.”
“...but we have to keep CBS happy. Because if this backfires in any way, we dare not take all of the responsibility on our own shoulders.”
Welles drew in a deep breath. Finally he expelled it, and said ambiguously, “I won’t compromise the Mercury.”
Houseman frowned. “Artistically? Or financially?”
Welles leaned forward and patted Houseman’s hand. “I won’t let you down, Jack.” Then he turned to Gibson and said, “We only have a few hours left, before my rehearsal at the theater. Let’s get to work!”
They left a somewhat dejected-looking Houseman, who was ordering another Bloody Mary, to return to Welles’s suite.
For the next several hours, however, the subject of their collaborative Shadow film got sidetracked. Welles, on a passing mention of Hallowe’en in reference to their “War of the Worlds” prank, came to recall that Houdini had died on that day; this launched the showman into a lengthy discussion of magic.
Since this was Gibson’s own favorite subject, he found himself unable to resist the off-the-track journey.
“You know,” Welles said, seated in a chair next to his bed, getting a shave from a hotel barber, “as a child, I received magic lessons from Houdini.”
Gibson had pulled up a chair, his position similar to that of an interviewer. “Really? I saw him for the first time when I was seventeen—he asked me up on stage to examine his Chinese Water Torture Cell!”
“Wonderful! Details, man! Details!”
And Gibson provided