Hollywood (1942)

• / -? { 4? sr & & if 4 # V e> i ^m^y ■ The taxicab driver j^^P had pulled up to flfer the curb, announced, "Here you are, buddy." Instead of being unloaded at one of the many off-the-main-lot sound stages scattered all over Hollywood and environs, your reporter had been deposited in front of a cold storage plant — an ice house, if you must know. It was obviously a mistake. Or was it? The baffled one checked the address that had been given him. The destination was correct. There was merely the one alternative: Orson Welles had pulled a fast one. An indignant reporter was meditating murder when who should climb out of another cab but Herbert Drake, Mr. Welles' brilliant minion in charge of press relations. "Why tarry outside when wonders are happening within?" Mr. D. demanded. "In that ice house?" "In that very igloo. Come, let us enter. The earthshaker awaits." 18 m ^^/ Inside is another world. /Gone are the palm-tree vistas of Hollywood. Gone ife are the Pacific breezes. Gone X is the California sun. The whole shebang is out of Jack London's frozen North. The scene is a windswept, snow-banked road cutting across a bleak countryside. The air is biting cold. Teeth chatter an impromptu obligato to "Blues in the Night." "That's honest-to-goodness snow, brother," Mr. Drake explains proudly. "Anyone but my master would have been content with the standard Hollywood snow — borax and cornflakes. But you know what a stickler for realism is Welles. Or do you? For this particular scene he is demanding that the atmosphere be cold enough to register breaths for the camera." "He won't miss it very much," your chilled agent commented. Tim Holt and Anne Baxter are in a light, horse-drawn cutter, waiting for the signal to take off. They are dressed warmly, albeit in the fashion of the 1890's, which certainly doesn't do wrong by the Baxter lady who is all hills and dales. "Action!" booms a familiar voice from above. It is Orson Welles, himself, riding the giant crane and peering through the range-finder directly behind cameraman Stanley Cortez. "Giddap!" says Tim Holt, with an involuntary pressure at the knee, a natural reflex of a cinema cowboy. The cutter streaks across the snow, bells a-jingling and the camera in hot pursuit. All of a sudden it happens — the accident. The right runner of the sleigh hits a rock, catapulting Tim and Anne down a 15-foot embankment. "Be calm," says Mr. Drake, grabbing hold of a would-be rescuer, "it's all part of the script." "But maybe the lady's hurt!" "Anne, hurt? Perish the thought! This is take Number 15, and the little lady is bearing up wonderfully. Anything for art' — that's Anne's motto." Mr. Drake is right. A minute later and Anne is scrambling up the embankment, a little grim-looking but very brave about it all. "That take was strictly n. g.," Miss B. said, dusting the snow from her anatomy. "I feel it in my bones." "As a matter of fact, that was a perfect take and my compliments to you and Tim." It was the Great One, himself, descended from his eerie eminence and obviously in high spirits. It was the Great One, himself, all right, but in one respect merely a reasonable facsimile of the Welles of a year ago. Mr. Welles was no longer lissom. He was chubby, plump even. And he didn't like it one bit. You knew it from the way he came back at Mr. Drake who wanted to know if it would be okay for the photographers to point their cameras at him and Joan Fontaine when they met to do a radio broadcast later that evening. "Drake, my fine bucko," Mr. W. said, "I am not amused at the prospects of being confounded for a seal by the public. Besides, sheer gallantry toward Miss Fontaine would dictate my answer to so scandalous a suggestion. The answer is 'No!' " Mr. Drake said he thought he got the general drift and headed for the telephone to tell the boys "no dice." Was The Magnificent Ambersons going to be a killer-diller? "It's a Welles production," our host said, eyes a-twinkle. Was Welles starring in his picture, as usual? "Welles doesn't have so much as a walkon." Mmmmmmm. What was the picture about? "Oh, some people named the Ambersons." Could he elaborate? "Certainly. These magnificent Ambersons are rich, filthy rich, thanks to a certain Major Amberson — that would be Richard Bennett, in real life the sire of the three bouncing Bennetts — whose daughter, Isabel — that would be Dolores Costello — is being wooed more or less frantically by one Wilbur Minafer and one Eugene Morgan — that would be ... . ". . . me," piped up Joe Cotten, who had HOLLYWOOD