The War of the Worlds Murder - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,40
Welles tossed his script in the air half a dozen times, and several actors did the same, albeit with less frequence. Doors slammed. Lines were rewritten on the fly in a frenzy of revision, Koch frequently emerging from the control booth for a quick line rewrite.
Miss Holliday showed up from the Mercury Theatre around two o’clock, with arms filled with bulging paperbags from which milkshakes and sandwiches were dispensed and gobbled, as if the passengers and crew of the Titanic were trying to get in one final meal just as the ship was going down.
By about three, as the show began really taking shape, a palpable sense of excitement pervaded the studio—as one of the participants would later say, it was like “a strange fever...part childish mischief, part professional zeal.”
Two more run-throughs were conducted by Welles—and “conducted” was the word—with little or no thought to timing, occasional bathroom and/or smoking breaks, and little one-on-one sessions between Welles and this or that actor or with Herrmann or Ora.
By six-fifteen the maestro of melodrama was ready to conduct the so-called “dress rehearsal,” though of course costumes for a radio show were not an issue. The timing of the piece, however, was, and at his post in the control booth, Paul Stewart was hunkered over his script with stopwatch in hand.
Jack Houseman, visible in the main control room window next to Howard Koch, waited until the end of the dress rehearsal had been reached—it was twenty-some past seven, with the broadcast looming at eight—before seeking Welles out on the studio floor.
Welles, lighting up a cigar, had met Gibson midway—they were actually in the MICROPHONE AREA—after finally reaching the end of the script. Gibson was telling his host how much he felt the piece had been improved, through the heightened realism of the news bulletins, when a grave-faced Houseman stepped up.
“Orson—surely you don’t intend to stretch out those musical interludes in such a fashion. The show is terribly slow in its opening third!”
“But it builds, Jack—it builds.”
Houseman’s eyes tightened. “Teasing through tedium?...I know what you’re up to—you’re hoping to take advantage of the naïveté of some listeners, to fool them into thinking a real broadcast is being interrupted.”
The boyish face turned more boyish, thanks to Welles’s scampish smile. “Housey, please—you’d think I was crying ‘fire’ in a crowded theater!”
“It may well prove to be the radio equivalent thereof. If you would not indulge yourself in these drawn-out musical passages, and the...pauses, the silences...and all of these real-sounding places, official-sounding institutions...”
“CBS is satisfied with our changes. I instituted all of Dave’s last-minute ones, too.”
“Such as removing Franklin Roosevelt, and substituting the Secretary of Interior? You know goddamned well you’re directing Kenny Delmar to do his FDR impression!”
The smile turned downright devilish. He whispered, “It’s dead-on, isn’t it, Housey? Talented boy, our Kenny.”
“Orson, I’m warning you—you may get that lesson you’ve been asking for....”
“Oh, Housey—I’m going to need more than one lesson, don’t you think?”
Houseman sighed. “I’ve made my point of view known—nothing more I can do. But for your knowledge, I have Paul’s stopwatch tally. We’re way over.”
Welles cocked his head. “Where are we, Jack? How much cutting do we need to do?”
“You’re a good seven minutes long. If you’re not willing to trim back those endless musical interludes, I’d say the last section—the narrative bit about the professor wandering in the city—that can and must be pruned.”
Welles put a hand on Houseman’s shoulder. “Well, let’s get to work, then. You have your copy of the script handy?”
Houseman nodded. “It’s in the control booth. And I’ve annotated it. I’ll get it.”
He went off to do that, and Welles said, “Jack’s a great editor. You up for helping out, Walter?”
“Of course.”
With the exception of a theater on the ground floor, the studios (Gibson learned in passing) were confined to the twentieth and twenty-first floors. Another large one, the identical twin of Studio One, was on the twenty-first, directly above them; right now the highly regarded Norman Corwin was rehearsing a drama that would go on at nine P.M., after the Mercury Theatre.
Welles led Houseman and Gibson down the hallway, away from the lobby and Studio One, deep into the building.
Walking alongside Houseman, the writer asked, “Are we heading to your offices?”
Without looking at Gibson, Houseman said dryly, “You were in our offices on Thursday. At the theater.”
“You have no office space here at CBS?”
“Of course not. They only have four or five floors of them. Why should they spare us any?... We tend to use Studio