Hollywood (1940)

identify him as the bearded youth who climbed out of a radio loudspeaker and seized the sovereign state of New Jersey for the planet Mars. Tabloid newspaper readers know him as a conventional American who separated from his wife during his first season in Hollywood. Many grown-ups recognize him as a cannily perceptive editor of Shakespeare, as a daring innovator in stage direction and design, and as an actor whose stage and radio performances have ranged from stunningly good to all right. Hollywood knows him as a young squirt from back East who had the effrontery to get hired on a four-way contract by RKO-Radio Pictures at a fantastically high wage. Actor, author, producer, director are the dire designations on his contract. A Welles contract in any of these capacities would have been enough to stoke fires of envious rage in the bosoms of 21,000 Hollywoodites who learned about movies at Edison's knee and closed their minds on the subject in the fall of 1910. These crotchety standpatters of the cinema are the gentry who "ma-lioned" Orson on his arrival in California, to quote a word fabricated in the Welles study on company time. Unlike most visiting Elks, Four-Ply Orson did not enter Hollywood on a tidal wave of Scotch and honey calculated to predispose the natives in his favor. On the contrary, he arrived with a complete set of actors under his arm, selected shock troops from his own Mercury Theatre. In addition to the players there is a long personal Welles retinue. Quite the most frightful of these is the fabled Vakhtangov, whose function is to scare visitors to death. Welles tripped over this eerie creature in a theatre a couple of seasons ago and was "fascinated by his utter emptiness." At the time the fellow had a very ordinary name, something like Emil Grindstone. "A few trifling changes in your makeup, Grindstone, and you'd fit very nicely into my way of life," Welles suggested. "First, you must get rid of that very unimaginative name. I think I shall call you Vakhtangov in memory of a great Russian director. And that mouse-brown hair of yours must be dyed to a more provocative color. I give you your choice of Cabinet-Member Gray or Dynamite Yellow." Vakhtangov took dynamite yellow, with the result that he looks like the King of the Zombies as he goes about in Welles' wake. Every member of the cortege is richly individualistic as Vakhtangov, although all are not so pretty. From the outset of his Hollywood career, Orson let it be known that no local talent need apply. No Hollywood scripters were required, he also made clear, to prepare his yarns for the camera. His initial vehicle was already selected, a Joseph Conrad story called Heart of Darkness. The shooting script was to be prepared by the WellesMercury method, which operates like a [Continued on page 58] JEAN ARTHUR FRED MELVYN MacMURRAY • DOUGLAS Directed by WESLEY RU6GLES • Screen play by CLAUDE BINYON Based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham • A COLUMBIA PICTURE _____ 15 __l