fully cooperate over the coming days, but that the network would not stand for the browbeating of its staff in this atmosphere.”
Houseman said, “Really, unless they’re prepared to arrest us, we have every right to go.”
The exec nodded. “So it’s the reporters who are the threat, now. Orson, they’ll make you their whipping boy, given half a chance—the papers have been looking for a way to give radio a black eye, and this may be it.”
Herrmann was sent back to Studio One, to leave the building with the other musicians, actors and staff. The reporters would be after bigger fish than the man who conducted that sluggish “Stardust” tonight.
Through the rabbit’s warren of hallways, Davidson Taylor led Welles, Houseman and Gibson to the service elevator. What no one had counted on was Ben Gross’s familiarity with the building.
The Daily News reporter had anticipated the backdoor route, and he—and half a dozen other reporters, who knew enough to follow Gross’s lead—were waiting armed and ready with questions.
As they waited for the elevator to arrive, Gross used his lead position to get out the first query: “How many deaths have been reported to CBS? We hear thousands....”
Welles said nothing, swallowing, eyes darting from unfriendly face to unfriendly face.
Another reporter shouted, “How about traffic deaths? We have reports of the Jersey and upstate New York ditches teeming with corpses.”
Gibson felt a sudden surge of claustrophobia as the faces and waving pencils and the sea of fedoras with press passes stuck in the hatbands surged forward....
Another voice: “What word about rioting? How about that fatal stampede in Jersey...?”
Hands up in surrender, Welles said, “Please...”
And another: “How about suicides? Have you heard about the one on Riverside Drive?”
Taylor said, “Call my office tomorrow for a statement, gentlemen.”
Gross asked, “Don’t you have any statement to make tonight, to the reading public, Mr. Welles?”
“None whatsoever!”
The elevator, thankfully, was there, and they stepped aboard and shut the gate on the hungry newshound horde.
Within minutes, Taylor had ushered the trio through the alley to the cab waiting out front, and they were en route to the Mercury Theatre. After all that fuss, life seemed to be going on as usual in late-night Manhattan—cars stopping for traffic, pedestrians out strolling, no riots, no stampedes to speak of....
At the theater, the company had gone ahead and started rehearsing under the direction of one of Welles’s assistants—Danton’s Death would open shortly, and life (and the show) went on, whether their director deigned to drop by or not. The company was used to their leader being absent in battle, due to this radio show or that romantic rendezvous or just a restaurant meal that had gotten out of hand.
So no otherworldly sense of drama seized the auditorium—other than the cast half-falling downstairs as they were singing “Carmagnole”—and the only sign that something special was up were the several resourceful newspaper photographers who’d figured out that this was where Orson Welles would wind up, tonight.
The cast froze in the midst of their song as Welles climbed to the stage and asked them to take a break and take seats at the front of the auditorium.
When they had, he stood with the expressionistic sets as a bold backdrop, with its blankly staring and accusatory array of masks, and told them what had happened this evening. He told the story briefly but melodramatically, and Gibson could not tell whether the contrition in his voice and manner were sincere—particularly when he seemed to be posing for the photographers below, eyes raised to heaven, arms outstretched in crucifixion mode, an early Christian saint in need of a shave...and as Welles’s beard tended to grow in most heavily in the goatee area, a paradoxical satanic aspect cast its shadow.
On the other hand, Gibson had no doubt that all the talk of deaths—with the threat of multiple murder charges hovering—had made both Welles and Houseman genuinely remorseful, not to mention confused and frightened.
Finally, the boy-genius smiled a little, shrugged, and said, “Well, let’s just say I don’t think we’ll choose anything quite like ‘War of the Worlds’ again.”
Standing next to Houseman in the aisle, Gibson had been watching the actors. He whispered to the producer, “Why is the company taking this so...so lightly?”
“They don’t believe him,” Houseman said.
“Why not?”
“He’s the boy who cried wolf—this is simply the most outrageous of his many outrageous excuses for keeping them waiting.”
Gibson chuckled. “Well, I can see that, actually.”
Houseman turned his head, raised an eyebrow. “You can, my boy?”
“Yes—you see, Jack, those three ‘thugs’