Screenland (Nov 1945-Oct 1946)

WELL, this is the time of year in Hollywood when everyone starts speculating on the next Academy Award winners. Who'll-get-an-Oscar comes March is good for two hours of heated arguments wherever movie folk have gathered together from Ocean Front Boulevard to Vine Street. The smart boys are betting that it will be a photo finish between Orson Welles for his Kessler in International's "Tomorrow Is Forever" and Ray Milland for his Don Birnam in Paramount^ "The Lost Weekend." And coming up on the rail is a lad named Bing Crosby who portrays Father O'Malley in RKO's "The Bells of St. Mary's." The way I look at it from where I'm sitting is that if Orson isn't given an Oscar the Academy is a bunch of stinkers. In "Tomorrow Is Forever" he gives such a moving, sympathetic, sincere performance that it fairly tears your heart out. (I must confess I haven't seen Ray's drunk and Bing's priest— but they just couldn't be much better). The Welles guy, who only a couple of years ago was called the deadliest thing in pictures, now seems to be hotter than a Van JohnsonFrank Sinatra parlay. Though most of them had never been nearer Missouri than the newsreels of President Truman, the producers went to see a pre-preview of Orson in "Tomorrow Is Forever" with a definite you gotta show me attitude. They left the projection room, when they had wiped a thick mist from their glasses —these low California fogs, you know— gasping. Gasping for the Welles phone number. (And this time it wasn't Rita they wanted at the Welles dovecote in Brentwood.) Sagacious producer William Goetz, who had the advantage of seeing the rushes of "Tomorrow Is Forever," had everything under control. And under contract. Orson was already as busy as a buzz-saw on the next Goetz picture, a psychological murder thriller called "The Stranger," in which he co-stars with Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. When "The Magnificent Ambersons" turned out to be a box office dud, though the critics raved, and "Jane Eyre" didn't do too well with our paying customers, though it was the biggest box office success of the year in England, Hollywood just decided that both as a producer and an actor Orson Welles was a greatly over-rated youn man. They decided that the only thing h did exceptionally well, better than the other bright young men on their payrolls, was spend money. A Wellesian talent that Orson would be the last to deny. But a snub from Hollywood was o little consequence to thirty-year-old Mr Welles. The war was going full blast public-spirited young citizen with ai eager desire to help people, Orson quick ly threw himself whole-heartedly into wai work. Turned down by the draft boarc after several efforts to enlist, he rented vacant lot in Hollywood and set up shop with a magic show. When he was tw( years old, a toddling infant prodigy wh talked like a college professor and lookec like The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, ac cording to his I-knew-him-when acquaint ances, his guardian, Dr. Bernstein, hac presented him with a magician's outfit. At two he could make a bird cage disappear at twenty-two he could make a million dollars disappear. "I'm working on a new disappearance act," he says today with z wicked gleam in his eyes. "When I per feet it I'll just give one wave— and Holly wood will disappear." Orson sunk $65,000 of his own mone in his magic show. (After a long run i Hollywood he took it on a tour of th Army camps.) Although civilians (suck ers, he called them) paid $5.50 for a seat and were nicked a buck for a bag of peanuts or a soda pop, he never seemed to make expenses. The show was a great success with the servicemen who paid nothing, and had a perfectly wonderful time watching the Maestro extract a rabbit from his hat, saw beautiful Rita Hayworth in half, and with the help of leggy Marlene Dietrich read the future in a crystal ball. When he wasn't doing magic tricks for servicemen Orson was appearing once a week on his own radio pro Orson with his two daughters: Rebecca, whose mother is Rita Hayworth, and ChristopherJ child of Orson's first marriage. At left, studies of Welles in action, bearded for his role j with Claudette Colbert (center) in "Tomorrow Is Forever," in which George Brent (topi also appears, and a new lad, Richard Long, receives the benefit of the Wellesian advice.