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006 - Orson Go Bragh (1931-1932)
30 Plays9 months ago
“To stay out of school, I went on the stage. I only fell in love with it afterwards.”
We finally got Orson to Ireland! And while Welles is lost in Eire, Hope and Stephen discuss new resources, Orson's thoughts on Chaplain and Dracula, and a recently-released (at the time of recording, anyway) ranking of Orson's 13 films.
Gold Derby’s 13-film Welles ranking: https://www.goldderby.com/gallery/best-orson-welles-movies-ranked/citizen-kane/
Follow us on our (admittedly limited) socials to keep up with assignments and other exciting Welles-related news:
- @wellesupod on Bluesky and YouTube
- Email us at wellesupod@gmail.com to let us know how we’re doing!
- Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify!
- Read Hope’s blog at highimhope.com
- Listen to Hope’s other podcasts - High on Cartoons Presents DuckTakes!, The Matrix Reclamations, and The Lanes Between
- Follow Stephen at @chewywalrus on Bluesky and Letterboxd
- Listen to Stephen’s other podcasts - Disenfranchised Podcast and The Pod and the Pendulum
- Check out Stephen’s novel - Check In, Check Out - on Amazon, now available in paperback or ebook: https://amzn.to/44idk8y
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Wells University' Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction... I don't think any words can explain a man's life. The broadcasting system and its affiliated station presents... Columbia Network takes pride in presenting... Rogue Spud.
00:00:12
Speaker
We take you now to Grover Mills, New Jersey. Ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theater and star of these broadcasts... There's a voice. Just a voice. I never really saw him.
00:00:26
Speaker
He was only the hero, horseson well a great lover, horsesonwell and a dirty dog. Good morning, this is Orson Welles speaking. How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? This is Orson Welles. This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen. This is Orson Welles speaking.
00:00:42
Speaker
well Here it if anybody wants to see it. All right, that's the bell. Everyone come on in, take your seats. Class is in session. Welcome back to Wells University, ah the show where we talk about everyone's favorite filmmaker, and if he's not, reevaluate your life choices, Orson Welles.
Life Choices and Orson Welles' Influence
00:01:01
Speaker
I had... No, go ahead, please.
00:01:05
Speaker
I had to stop and think, is he actually my favorite filmmaker? Yeah. Well, it looks like one of us needs to reevaluate her life choices. of of As she pours tequila. As she pours tequila.
00:01:17
Speaker
I mean, that just seems like some really great life choice evaluation you've got going is last of my wedding tequila. Oh, that's... Yeah, yeah. we're i I feel honored that we're using the last of the the wedding tequila. I think you cracked open the wedding tequila on, what was it, our last episode or the episode before?
00:01:38
Speaker
No, I've been slamming at this thing for a few months now. Have you? Okay. Yeah. Then I am misremembering things, as I am want to do. He says, while holding a gin and tonic that is at least two-thirds gin.
00:01:50
Speaker
Cheers, my friend. We should probably say our names. Yeah, we probably should. i was i was getting there, and then we we immediately derailed ourselves, because that is who we fundamentally are as people.
00:02:01
Speaker
I'm one of your TAs, Stephen Foxworthy. ah Pronouns he, him. And I'm the one that stops the momentum of the show entirely. Hope, uh, Stow, she, her, almost used my old last name.
00:02:13
Speaker
Nope. Married, bitch. well Married, bitch. There it is. I did drop my dead name in a intentional, uh, way of, um, it was a punchline. I just used it as a punchline. Okay. mean, you're allowed, but like... I almost got a spit take out of Bex. They were, they were doing a long pull in their water bottle.
00:02:35
Speaker
I dropped it. oh One of these days. I'll get a spit take. Well, at least at least the two of you continue to keep things interesting. that's that's that Apparently, that's what a successful marriage is about. i you know I've never met anyone.
00:02:52
Speaker
When you're four and a half months into ah a marriage, you've really got to strive to keep things interesting. Oh, God. At four months?
00:03:01
Speaker
Four months or 18 years, depending on however you're counting. I was going to say that there there are a couple different ways you could probably reckon that. i'm So that's who we are. What is this show? This is Wells University. Again, you're the show all about everyone's favorite filmmaker. And if he's not, you need to reevaluate your life choices. You did introduce us. God damn mother. Okay.
00:03:21
Speaker
that and That was our first derail of the evening. You wouldn't dare call me drunk if I was sober. ah What are we covering tonight with the esteemed life and times of Orson Welles? We've worked our way across these past five episodes to year 16 of Orson's life.
Excitement Over New Orson Welles Resources
00:03:40
Speaker
And so far we've been covering kind of annual chunks, like big chunks of of of annual. Tonight we're covering seven months. Seven months of his life. The seven months that he spent in Ireland at the age of 16 where he became a ah I struggle to use the word internationally renowned, but at least nationally renowned in Ireland.
00:04:00
Speaker
Um, theater star, uh, we'll talk all about it, but first hope there's an item of business that we need to discuss. Oh, yes.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yes. I'm excited. i i got excited thinking it was my turn um to talk like any good podcaster does all of the time. No, it's your turn to talk about your new books.
00:04:24
Speaker
Yes, I'm monopolizing the conversation once again in a way that only I can do. I have purchased not one, not two. But three new pieces of Wells resource that will be put to use in this podcast. Will I write them off on my tax returns? I will not.
00:04:42
Speaker
Because I do not make money from this. I am doing this for the love of the game. ah But the first one that I got is part three of Simon Callow's three-part Wells biography, which is still not finished, by the way. He's still working. Wait, wait.
00:04:59
Speaker
Hang on. it's It's the third part of a three-part series. So far. Oh, oh okay okay. This is the the third and as of yet most recent.
00:05:11
Speaker
Okay, that makes more a sense. I thought you it was supposed to be a trilogy from the get-go. It was supposed to be two books originally, and then he realized he had too much material in the second one. i so can't relate to that at all as somebody who's going to spend 10 years of the ah her life talking about this bitch. Right. the It's called Orson Welles, Volume 3, One Man Band.
00:05:32
Speaker
um A thing we will cover 20 years from now when we finally get to the end of his life. um But there you go. So this is like him covering...
Orson Welles on Chaplin and Dracula
00:05:43
Speaker
him making Othello and Mr. Arcadon, uh, touch of evil, things like that. So kind of in that, in that frame, um speaking of Othello, I also got, um, one of the biographies from ah topic of tonight's conversation, Michael MacLeomore, um, put money in thy purse, which is a series of his diary entries from the period of time he was making Othello with Orson Welles.
00:06:09
Speaker
Huh? So that'll be a resource that we get to in about five to seven years. ah A joy. And of course, finally, last but certainly not least, ah what's his name? David Thompson's ah biography of Orson Welles, Rosebud, colon, the story of Orson Welles. So those are the three. And of course, yes, I am displaying all of these to hope like I'm not on an auditory medium and like everyone can see the things that I'm holding in my hand.
00:06:36
Speaker
Well, they're gorgeous additions, I have to say. They do look very nice. None of these people sponsor us, I should point out. Yeah. We have no sponsors. we if Is that product placement? I know it's our sources, but because they're books that are mostly, I mean, like Dead Air by William Elliott Hazelgrove. I'm not wearing my glasses, and the book is two and a half feet away. Yeah.
00:07:01
Speaker
that's a new printing yes that's a brand new book that came out in between recordings episode hazel grove get at us yeah get at us yeah um this is also the first episode we're recording post release of the first episode of this show hope we did it we did it we we successfully released this motherfucking podcast Not sure how, not sure why, but we did it. christen thee Wells University.
00:07:29
Speaker
And um tell all your friends, even if they don't like Orson Welles, they will probably like Orson Welles by the end of our second episode, mainly because we don't talk about Orson Welles in the first episode at all. As you've gotten to this point, you know that already.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yes, if you've gotten to this point, you know I already low-key hate Orson Welles. Correct. Come on, come on, let's humble the bastard a little bit. He needs a he needs to get caned in the shins. Look, literally we're going to get to some racist bullshit.
00:07:58
Speaker
Not literally caned in the shins, he needs to get citizen caned in the shins. There it is. Okay. There it is Okay, I had the pun in my head. Now I had to articulate it properly. I had to circle back around to it. It's fine. to Figure it out in the end. Tucker will fix it in editing.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, Tucker, make me look make me sound smart, Tucker. ah We've not really mentioned him in the last few episodes, mainly because we didn't know for sure when we were recording them if he was going to do it or not.
00:08:24
Speaker
um But we have outro music from Tucker, who is also the editor and, let's be honest, probably producer of this podcast. ah So mad thanks to mad props to Tucker. We'll do it at the top of the episode because we've been failing to do it at the bottom.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yes. There it is. Good. Okay. Good. There it is. Okay, good. Nope, sorry. You said top and bottom, and I immediately had like flashbacks to a conversation we had five minutes before recording, so it's fine.
00:08:53
Speaker
Which is to say 15 minutes ago. We're back in the present. We are. We're talking about your sources yeah and how excited we are about that. yeah um you um You've not really, other than just kind of mentioning, I don't know if you've really spotlighted Dead Air yet.
00:09:10
Speaker
ah Well, I mean, because it's so hyper specific to ah the War of the Worlds broadcast, there's no particular reason for me to bring it. that I mean, I'm sure I've talked about it in the past, but fine, I'll spotlight the book again.
00:09:25
Speaker
um ah William Elliot Hazelgrove wrote a beautiful biography. ah really just capturing specifically ah the War of the Worlds broadcast from 1938.
00:09:39
Speaker
And it's it's a fascinating read so far. But at the same time, I'm like trying not to read too far ahead because we haven't gotten to that point. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to get spoiled for the life events that happened to a man a real man that was alive and I'm doing a podcast about and died nearly 40 years ago.
00:09:59
Speaker
um I don't know if I want to get spoiled for what happens next. i wonder Maybe i want to keep it fresh. okay um But I'm super excited about this book because of the War of the Worlds is probably my biggest obsession with Orson Welles. right And it pains me that we're going to be covering it so relatively early in our tenure of this podcast.
00:10:16
Speaker
But at the same time, I'm sure I will find a way to bring it up every goddamn year because Halloween happens every year. and It's so much fun. Is Halloween when you do the pilgrimage every year?
00:10:32
Speaker
ah We aim for, if not on the day, then the week is closest to October 30th, which is the anniversary of the broadcast itself. Okay. I have... I've been making that pilgrimage up to Grover's Mill every year now since... Oh, gosh, 20...
00:10:50
Speaker
Oh, 2018. Okay. 2018 sounds 2017 was the first time I ever visited. 2018 was when I started the pilgrimage regularly. i was going to say that's when it became a pilgrimage.
00:11:03
Speaker
Well, that was also the 80th anniversary of the broadcast. So, oh there you go. Just became an annual thing for me at that point. Right. Um, God, it's one of my favorite places in the world. It's this rinky-dink little park in an unincorporated town in in New Jersey, but I absolutely adore the place.
00:11:22
Speaker
We are absolutely going to be doing, because I think we're going to have to, multiple episodes on the War of the Worlds broadcast. I'm okay with this. I'm more than okay with this. I think the major so much of these episodes. full episodes ah You commit so much to these episodes in terms of the seven pages of notes we have to barrel through on this episode, which again, thank you for that. Still a step down from last week or in the week before where we were splitting like 12 pages. Yeah.
00:11:49
Speaker
I literally, i i I knowingly set myself this ah up to be an academic-based podcast, at least in theme and and execution, I guess, ah forgetting that I was a horrible student that hates academia and...
00:12:07
Speaker
Seven pages of notes on today's episode. So let's. And the person you asked to join this podcast with you was a former educator. So i it's not what you know. It's who you know. So it is. oh this I'm glad I know you.
00:12:20
Speaker
I'm glad I know you too. i'm glad that we are friends same same so on this well on this year this is i'm getting this from on this day.com uh the year is 1931 uh major world events in 1931 february 3rd new zealand's worst natural disaster the hawks bay earthquake kills 256 and injures thousands devastating the napier and the hawks bay region uh off to a great start.
00:12:50
Speaker
Uh, May 1st, the empire state building opens in New York city as the world's tallest building until the notes are getting fuzzy. The, uh, world trad center trade center. Huh? I guess I forgot.
00:13:05
Speaker
Surpasses it in 1970. Um, June 12th, Al Capone is indicted on 5,000 counts of prohibition and perjury. See our last episode for Weld's thoughts on Al Capone.
00:13:18
Speaker
five fucking thousand i'm gonna skip down a little ways because the next one's kind of interesting october 18th gangster al capone is convicted on five of the 23 counts of tax evasion against him later find fifty thousand dollars which i did the math on earlier is something like over a million dollars in today's money find 50 grand and sentenced to 11 years in jail
00:13:43
Speaker
Let's see. Mao Zedong and Zhu Di, if I'm saying that at all correctly, probably not. Zhu Dei are proclaimed leaders of the Chinese Soviet Republic, covering parts of 18 provinces in four countries under the Communist Party control.
00:14:04
Speaker
Oh, God. more more Along with other parts of Asia, Wells' is constant obsession. oh boy. we'll We'll get there. We'll get there later this episode. Great.
Contextualizing 1931: Welles' Teenage Years
00:14:14
Speaker
I'm so excited about that. and I can tell. ah More importantly, in 1931, City Lights premieres on January 30th, directed by Charlie Chaplin.
00:14:25
Speaker
ah Let's see. February 14th, the original Dracula film starring Bela Lugosi is released. ah vam of Vampire's Day. there's a There's a Freudian slip for you. Valentine's Day.
00:14:40
Speaker
so as ah as she holds her Twilight sippy cup. ah Bing Crosby makes a solo radio debut on September 2nd on his 15 minutes with Bing Crosby program broadcast on the CBS network.
00:14:54
Speaker
How'd you like that? Just, I know we're going to get to it because Orson had one later on, but just like, that's, that's your, that's your, what you got to do this week. yeah You got to be on the radio for 15 minutes. Correct. Oh, how am I going to fill that time?
00:15:06
Speaker
I'm Bing Crosby.
00:15:09
Speaker
Uh, May 3rd, the star spangled banner officially becomes the U S national anthem by congressional resolution. Uh, hot take, uh, the star spangled banner sucks ass. We should be using the battle hymn of the Republic. like Um, it's a way better song. It's about a P it's about the people, not a fucking flag.
00:15:28
Speaker
I don't give a shit about the flag. I like the people and also the geography devil's tower is pretty cool. Oh, God. Do we want to talk about people born in 1931? Like Boris Yeltsin, Tony Morrison, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jim Jones.
00:15:45
Speaker
Uh-oh. Indiana's own Jim Jones. He and I from the second from the same city. I got into a conversation about Flavor Aid with a co-worker just today. Absolutely wild.
00:15:57
Speaker
Oh, actors born in 1931. James Dean, Rupert Murdoch. He's not an actor. Fuck off. William Shatner, also debatably not an actor.
00:16:07
Speaker
ah Barbara Eden, Anne Bancroft, Rita Moreno. Oh, yeah. Fucking fight me, Shatner. I think Pine is the better. ah Kirk, fucking come at me. He's a better actor at the very least. I mean, i will i will give you that. However...
00:16:23
Speaker
Shatner's breadth of breadth of work should not be understated. ah No, it should not be. He's definitely our most Shatnerian actor and he should be studied in in laboratories.
00:16:34
Speaker
um Sam Cooke was born in 1931. Some athletes were also born in 1931, but that's not important. Let's see. ah People who died in 1931. People that aren't related to our podcast at all.
00:16:51
Speaker
I love that there's, sorry, there's a section on here called Famous Divorces. ah Gloria Swanson divorces aristocrat Henry de la Fralise after six years of a marriage. Gloria Swanson from ah my Sunset Boulevard.
00:17:07
Speaker
Well, there you go then. She's ready for the pickup, Mr. DeMille.
00:17:12
Speaker
Uh, let's pretend I'm not that well-versed and I'm just faking this to seem intelligent. Lionel Barrymore, uh, won the Academy Award for Best Actor this year, which brings me on to the Academy Awards, which I opened up in a separate tab and I'm now just vamping.
00:17:28
Speaker
The fourth Academy Awards were held on November 10th, 1931, uh, awarding films released between August 1st, 1930 1931, because, uh,
00:17:37
Speaker
because Years don't have any needing time. We can just pick our own arbitrary bullshit. Simran, if I'm saying that correctly, was the first Western to win Best Picture and would remain the only to do so until Dances with Wolves in 1990. Yeah,
00:17:56
Speaker
ah yeah pretty good times. Pretty good times. that's that's Speaking of people who are barely an actor, Kevin Costner. a
00:18:09
Speaker
I should probably just sit down and watch Waterworld at some point. I mean, the you it's your funeral.
Orson Welles in Ireland: Travels and Theater
00:18:15
Speaker
I mean, it it would stop me from throwing on Predator or Prey just again, ah because I will throw on those movies without really thinking about it.
00:18:29
Speaker
ah But hey, Stephen, hey what was Orson Welles up to in 1931? Well, let me let me ask you a question first, because i've got know I've got This is Orson Welles by right Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum.
00:18:42
Speaker
um And you mentioned two names. I'm going to let you choose. I'm going to give you a choice. Would you like to hear Welles' thoughts on Charlie Chaplin or Dracula? Oh, oh, yeah i don't think there's a wrong answer here. Let me hear Chaplin first. Okay.
00:18:59
Speaker
All right. So Chaplin, and he speaks about Chaplin at length, does in fact eventually work with Chaplin, but there are many entries for Chaplin here. Let me let me pick Chaplin Charlie. Let me go the longest one, page 134 to 137.
00:19:17
Speaker
ah This thing is fucking massive. This tome that I have here in front of me. um Here we go. ah Talking about the the film, ah what would be eventually become the film Monsieur Vadu.
00:19:31
Speaker
Bogdanovich says, I thought you didn't like Chaplin. And Wells very di or diplomatically says, Chaplin's a great artist. There can't be any argument about that. It's just that he seldom makes the corners of my mouth move up.
00:19:43
Speaker
fuck up him I find him easy to admire and hard to laugh at. Here we go. Even in City Lights, the movie that comes out in 1931. At the situations. At the drunk, yes.
00:19:55
Speaker
Not at Charlie. But you had a couple of projects you wanted to do with Chaplin, didn't you? Well, says, yes, I had an inspiration in the subway, one of those real eureka kind of things. I saw an advertisement for an anti-dandruff remedy, which had a picture of a bright-faced little hairdresser type making that gesture ah the stage frenchman which indicate of the stage Frenchman, which indicates that something or other is simply too exquisite for human speech.
00:20:22
Speaker
Avez-vous scruff, he was asking us? It made you think of Chaplin? Chaplin as Landru. i'd gotten to know him by then that through Aldous Huxley and King Vidor.
00:20:33
Speaker
So I went and told him about it. He said, wonderful. I went away, wrote a script, and showed it to him. He said, wonderful. I'm going to act it for you. But then at the last moment, he said, no, i can't. I've never had anybody else direct me. Let me buy it.
00:20:46
Speaker
So I did, and he made it as Monsieur Védu. My title was The Lady Killer. This was to be a Mercury production at RKO. Yes, his first non-quote little man role.
00:20:57
Speaker
I had one scene in which the Chaplin character meets up with a lady whose profession is to murder husbands. They go on a walking trip in the Alps and each one tries to push the other one off the mountain.
00:21:08
Speaker
Come and see the lovely view, says one. Come pick the Edelweiss, says the other. And off scene in the distance, you can hear people yodeling. But Chaplin couldn't stand that scene because the woman's part would have been equal to his own.
00:21:21
Speaker
So he changed it can't have that so he changed it to what was in fact the funniest sequence in Verdue with Martha Ray where he tries to but can't kill her. He changed it from a professional like himself to just somebody he couldn't kill.
00:21:36
Speaker
But there are still people yodeling in that sequence because it's left over from the other scene. You wrote a complete screenplay? He says no, but I've still got a copy of it. Did he retain a lot of of your work?
00:21:48
Speaker
An awful lot was his, Wells says. He, quote, brought it up to date. My period was the first world war with Zeppelin raids to escape which the lady killer takes his victims to the safety of the suburbs.
00:22:00
Speaker
He moved it ahead, gave us shots of Hitler and goose-stepping Nazis. You know, social significance. The opening was from my version, the the neat little bourgeois in the garden of his little villa, briskly, neatly, delicately clipping his hedge, while in the background, thick black crematory smoke pours up out of the chimney.
00:22:18
Speaker
At least Chaplin didn't change that.
00:22:22
Speaker
And he goes on. There's there's more there, but I'll i'll you'll leave you with that. I believe He's even less complimentary to Chaplin in My Lunches with Orson. I believe it. Yeah. I absolutely believe it.
00:22:35
Speaker
It's just that first line there, like hit seldom made the ah the corners of my mouth turn up. Could we have gotten Orson, like, if time were shifted a little bit, if you took time and scrunched it together a little bit, could Orson Welles have played John Nada in They Live? Because I think he would have given us some buck wild takes on insults like, I have come here to kick ass and chew bubble gum.
00:23:04
Speaker
i I think... like If you take that character but make him literary, I think you have Orson Welles as as John Nada. It's completely contrary to what Carpenter is trying to do in that movie, but I think you may be on to something.
00:23:19
Speaker
Look, sometimes you just want to see the giant lizard punch the giant monkey. Like, this is Which one is Welles in this scenario? since we Oh, he's the big lizard. um i would i I could have sworn giant monkey, but okay.
00:23:33
Speaker
Oh, God, no. Who's the giant monkey? Fuck. Is that bug? No. Hmm.
00:23:40
Speaker
I'd have to think about that. Oh, which reminds me, before we get to Dracula and then our copious pages of notes. um Yeah, I love we're just killing much time at the beginning. we've gone Yeah, this is important. Let's get the bullshit out of the way before we actually get to the the meat of the sandwich.
00:23:54
Speaker
Um... ah So this is like, you're just layering on, this is the lettuce slices right here. This is the lettuce slices. So, you know, that chart that I had last time where it was like a, ah just picture it in my head of um ah directors that are ah good with actors, but get bad results, yeah get ah bad with actors, get good grace results.
00:24:17
Speaker
but So bad with actors, good results is Kubrick. Yeah. Bad with actors, bad results is George Lucas. lucas Good with actors, good results is Steven Spielberg.
00:24:29
Speaker
I've cracked the fourth one. Good with actors, bad results is Ed Wood. So you've got all four of those right on that. You can put whatever directors you want where... like wherever they fit in, but like that's, those are the examples that I've come up with. So good.
00:24:43
Speaker
Now tell me about Orson's thoughts on Dracula. Dracula. So he's talking about the Mercury theater ah production of Dracula. I was the first Mercury Theater on the Air production, I believe. I think you're right.
00:24:57
Speaker
I'm recalling my knowledge about the Mercury Theater on the Air. um Bogdanovich asks Orson, which would you say were some of the best Mercury shows? Orson says Dracula was a good one.
00:25:09
Speaker
Bogdanovich says it would have made it would make a good movie. To which Wells says, Dracula would make a marvelous movie. In fact, nobody has ever made it. They've never paid attention any attention to the book, which is the most hair-raising, marvelous book in the world.
00:25:24
Speaker
It's told by four people and must be done with four narrations as we did it on the radio. There's one scene in London where he throws a heavy bag into the corner of the cellar and it's full of screaming babies.
00:25:37
Speaker
They can go that far out now. Bram Stoker was the stage manager of Henry Irving and Dracula was based on him. It was Stoker's vengeance on Henry Irving. He was a very considerable writer. Stoker, an old drunk Irishman wrote some very good books and he offered Dracula to Irving to make a play of it, but he didn't do it. And the two and two fellows named Dean and Balderson did.
00:26:00
Speaker
wrote this corny, terrible play with two sets. It's awful, and it became one of the biggest moneymakers of all time. It works terribly well in the theater. I did it once, played Dracula, and enjoyed doing it.
00:26:12
Speaker
And all the movies are based on the play, not the book. Nobody has ever gone back to the book. Do you think he would have appreciated Francis Ford Coppola's, sorry, that's not the title of the picture.
00:26:24
Speaker
The title of the picture is Columbia TriStar Entertainment's Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula. I didn't think anyone could make that name more drawn out than I do, which is just by adding Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, but you've managed to do it, to which I say, bravo. You have to follow the joke through, my friend. Thank you very Your metaphorical hat is off to you and your brilliance. No, my my my tequila on the rocks is almost gone, and we're not even started with our notes yet. This shall not stand.
00:26:53
Speaker
We've got a good episode ahead of us. Yes, good. The timeline. the year is August 1931. August 1931. So when we last saw Orson, he was boarding a ship to Ireland.
00:27:08
Speaker
In 1931, that would have generally taken somewhere between 10 days and two weeks. A fortnight, if you will. ah depending on the weather conditions.
00:27:20
Speaker
Orson Wilde away the long hours, reading voraciously and writing long and expansive letters back home, both to Maurice Bernstein and the Hills, which would then, of course, be typed out and circulated amongst various interested parties throughout the Chicagoland area, I'm sure.
00:27:38
Speaker
Well, I should silence my phone. Uh-oh. Yeah, I was going to mine just vibrated and probably got caught picked up on mic, so... Oops. ah Though he originally had planned to travel to the town of Cobb in Cork Harbor, Orson was too excited to remain on board the ship and disembarked without paying his fare a in Galway instead. So he's he's supposed to go all the way to the east side of the country, of the island, but is so excited to be near Ireland at all that he just runs off at Galway, which is the first stop in Ireland, basically. So he's on, he's supposed to be up in the north
00:28:14
Speaker
eastern part of the country he's in the southwestern part of the country if the maps that i looked at earlier are accurate please don't ask me i'm worse at geography than i am at orson wells um so after a few days in galway and and this is i i had conspired at one point to try to make a map of orson's travels and i gave that up instantly yeah I was just like, this is a very silly thing to try to do. so hey you already You already do all of the homework. If someone wants to do that for us, bi um we'll put it up on our social media and yeah credit you.
00:28:53
Speaker
Yeah. it's if My request is you make it look like the map from either Casablanca or Raiders of the Lost Ark. And the difference between those two is one has color and the other other does not. My condition is that you make Orson's movements on that map look like a little Billy's dotted line from family circus. Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh. um ah That would probably be more accurate considering he was walking. ah And and i I love that he just carries around his his his oil paints.
00:29:27
Speaker
Yeah. hes um and So during this phase of his life, and he talks about this and in interviews later, during this phase of his life, he's trying to be a painter. Like painting, according to Orson, painting was his first love, but he was really fucking bad at it And so he eventually went into the theater as a way of trying to, um, Oh, trying to like make money because it was something he knew he could do. Um, it's, it's insane to consider that. Yeah. Orson Welles, uh,
00:30:00
Speaker
he didn't want to act, but man, he, he just had to, in an attempt to get money. How many people like have to do other things in order to support acting? Meanwhile, he has to act in order to support painting.
00:30:12
Speaker
And the, I mean, I don't believe it for a second, given the last five episodes of this podcast where he's been essentially like crafting a theater program at the Todd school for essentially himself, um,
00:30:26
Speaker
Like, and before that, he was even like, you know, putting on little plays and shows for like the kids in Grand Detour and things like everything we've seen about him up to this point kind of veers away from that, which again, leads us back to this kind of central conceit that we've talked about since the early days, early days, like we've been out for so long. It's our sixth fucking episode.
00:30:47
Speaker
um We've been talking about it since the beginning, this idea that Orson himself is an unreliable narrator. And so incredibly, so I don't trust the goddamn thing that comes out of that man's face. I mean, this even in like this section of his life, he gets to where he is by lying his head off about what he's done and where he's from.
00:31:09
Speaker
And I don't think he's fooling anybody that he meets because he's still 16 and hasn't quite figured it out yet. But he it gets him where he wants to go. It gets his foot in the door. Right.
00:31:20
Speaker
Not to mention, like, I should probably pull up a picture of of him around this time. But like the dude had chronic baby face. Yes. So there's no way he looks like he could looks convincing as yes, I'm 18. No, you're fucking not. but No, you're fucking not. Sir.
00:31:37
Speaker
this is This is kid in The Matrix Reloaded, except for in reverse. I'm totally 16. sixteen you're You're at least 30, friend. I mean, once upon a time, teenagers were played by 30-year-olds.
00:31:50
Speaker
It's called Dawson casting. Exhibit a Beverly Hills 90210. Yeah. yeah I was going to say Cordelia Charisma Carpenter was 28 when she was playing a 16-year-old in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
00:32:04
Speaker
yeah There's a lot of examples, particularly from the 90s, which is the era of our youth. but yeah My favorite is when they do flashbacks in It's Always Sunny ah to like ah Frank in his youth, and then you flashback and it's just a individual in a Beatles wig. It's the fucking greatest thing. the best thing.
00:32:23
Speaker
Oh, God. But yes, ah in 16 short, very full years of living, nothing comparable to Galway as ah a Galway after a few days in a city that is not his hometown or the Orient.
00:32:37
Speaker
Whoops. He's the Orient in quotes. ah He's seeing something brand new and therefore it's the greatest thing he's ever seen at 16. Right. Right. Like most 16 year olds, anything that's not the status quo is, ah is an automatically cool.
00:32:52
Speaker
I need to see. There is a, a thing that happens in movies, specifically any movies that take a character through Times Square in New York city for the first time, there's always that shot shot from a very low angle, looking up at the character who is looking up at the lights and billboards of Times Square, a.k.a. Capitalist Hellscape.
00:33:13
Speaker
And it's got this big like, oh, kind of feeling to it. And it spins around the characters. They're looking. I feel like it's that, but on a very low budget. And all of the buildings are no more than like two or three stories tall at the time.
00:33:27
Speaker
um But that's that's that's Orson orson in Galway. immediately falls in love with Ireland. Absolutely. What a shock. these eyes he He, he heads north to Clifton, which is two miles north of Galway. Uh, and, or is it, it's more than two miles, but he doesn't make it more than two miles.
00:33:47
Speaker
um ah ah To quote McGilligan, two miles revealed to me the impossibility or to quote Orson as quoted by McGilligan, two miles revealed to me the impossibility of combining art, hiking and pleasure.
00:33:58
Speaker
And the third proved too much on the rucksack. With a despairing scream, it vomited forth my pigments and succumbed to total physical collapse. So basically he doesn't make it two miles outside of Galway before his bag just disintegrates on him.
00:34:12
Speaker
That's incredible. Right. And this will not be the first time he has a bag explode on him. Spoilers for the end of this episode.
00:34:23
Speaker
Oh, no. no Oh, no. ah He decides to buy a donkey cart as a means of reenacting the book by Gaelic language author. yeah You put accent marks on it, Stephen. This is cheating.
00:34:38
Speaker
Patrick O'Connor, basically. Thank you. ah Field and Fair, ah Travels with a Doggy in Ireland.
00:34:48
Speaker
Little on the Nose, that title. Right. I mean, you know, in those days, you you just, none of the titles were taken, so you could just literally call it whatever you want.
00:35:01
Speaker
You know, you know, you're not wrong. ah Sorry, I'm opening the notes app that I'm taking. you week Make notes for Tucker. ah The nearest cart manufacturer, as it happened, ah was owned by a man named McDonough, who was a relative of the recently departed O'Connor.
00:35:21
Speaker
um Again, i don't know how accurate this is, but this may be one of the – because, again, there's a lot of coincidences in Wells' storytelling and a lot of run-ins with famous people. I think we talked a couple weeks ago about how he went to Europe and could have sworn he heard Hitler giving a speech in a German beer hall. Like, really, buddy?
00:35:40
Speaker
like a really buddy Like, Really? i'm I'm at least 70% sure I've made the joke that he was forest gumping his way through life. You've at least made that at least once, yes. At least the once.
00:35:52
Speaker
um We'll make it five more times. It's okay. Great. I love this for while. ah He lived in their houses, danced with their daughters, and swam with their sons.
00:36:03
Speaker
ah They, of course, being more of... I'm skipping lines. What is wrong with this? You're just jumping big old sections. There's seven pages of this. There is, which is why it's going to get confusing if you keep skipping things.
00:36:17
Speaker
Okay, so then he made Citizen Kane. Wait, no, hang on. Hold on, hold on. Okay. ah McDonough introduces him to more ah relations of O'Connor's, including ah his brother, Isaac Conroy, and cousin Michael O'Connor.
00:36:31
Speaker
ah would And Wells would stay with basically the entire family while in Galway. So as long as he was in Galway, he was hanging out with the family of this author that inspired him to go there and buy a donkey cart.
00:36:46
Speaker
Wait, now hang on. Is Orson Welles making himself a self-insert? it You... all you You were mentioning earlier about how like commitment to the bit is something that like both of us have in common.
00:37:00
Speaker
Yeah. um Orson seems to be committed to his own bit throughout his life. Like his entire life seems commitment to the bit. And the bit is Orson Welles has had the most interesting life in the world.
00:37:13
Speaker
He would be the spokesman for Dos Equis these days. Correct. you would also you we were talking about earlier kind of like what would Orson be doing? I'm 100% convinced that if Orson Welles were alive around the turn of the century, he would have been one of the talking heads on those I love the blank shows.
00:37:29
Speaker
Oh. my God, you're not fucking wrong. And he would do that exclusively for the paycheck. I mean, that was essentially the Dean Martin roasts of the of the early aughts, right? like And he did a lot of those fucking Dean Martin roasts.
00:37:46
Speaker
That's, I think, the most fun thing about Orson Welles, just in terms of like him being a character. You can plug him into any low-rent thing, and it makes perfect sense. and like and it becomes funnier as a was yeah Yeah.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah. but no like Because the man, the man did anything he possibly could to make money. um And we'll, we will talk about as many of those things as time permits. We we have an entire episode planned called Orson Welles colon pitch man, where
Welles' Theater Career and Personal Development
00:38:19
Speaker
it's just him like selling his good name and his deep sonorous voice ah in, in pursuit of capitalism. Oh God. Love you Orson.
00:38:28
Speaker
Love you, buddy. Love you. The greatest. one One of the great. Everyone will always owe him everything. um ah So he named the donkey, and thank you for including the pronunciation in the ah in the parentheses, Shiaug, which is spelled Sidihogehe.
00:38:44
Speaker
S-I-D-H-E-O-G-H-E. That's the Gaelic spelling. That's too many letters. ah Gaelic for a certain species. I think you meant to say species of fairy. I'm pretty sure McGilligan says species.
00:39:03
Speaker
Well, you put in spicy, so it's a type of spicy fairy. ah What is prohib... Jesus. What prohibition... edited a God, that's not the fucking word, asshole. I actually typed this one correctly. You did.
00:39:17
Speaker
you did i'm going to increase the font size. There you go. Why why didn't you think of that? No, I'm not... I'm the burnout. We all have our roles. ah But he was prohibited from leaving when the annual Galway races started up, giving the young Wells an excuse to stay and participate in the revelry. Of course, he stayed for the party. Right. yeah Why wouldn't Orson Welles stay for the party? Right. The man of enormous appetite staying for a thing.
00:39:44
Speaker
Brought about by harmless appetites. Go figure. For those unaware, the Galway races are, at the time, a two-day horse race that was had been established in 1869. It still runs to this day.
00:39:57
Speaker
It actually is now much longer than two days, ah but it is one of the longest horse races in Ireland. Well, you know, inflation. Touche.
00:40:09
Speaker
Oh, God in heaven. Eventually, Wells would take his leave of Galway after eating through it, ah heading to Clifton with Shog. And thank you for including the pronunciation version later on the notes.
00:40:22
Speaker
I really appreciate that. I got you. Yeah, yeah. yeah Now, real quick, did you do that real fast as I was bullshitting? No. Not looking in the doctor. OK, good. You had forethought for that. Thank you for taking my. That's also how he is referred to by that. That's also how the donkey is referred to by every one who writes up is by Shiog, not as the full name, because I fucking get why. Time to type that out.
00:40:49
Speaker
But he was, ah he went to Clifton ah with Shehagat Hoogdehe and the cart. Often sleeping on the roadside, he would occasionally stay with locals along the way, paying for lodgings with his oil paintings of the Irish countryside.
00:41:02
Speaker
Uh-huh. Very quick to abandon his endeavors of painting Irish landscapes, saying, quote, Ireland is really a watercolor country. The most unearthly quality of the countryside and the mountains in the West and North completely stumped me, which is to say again, Orson, not great at painting.
00:41:22
Speaker
Oh, boy. or we'll get We'll get into this here in another page or so. Poor craftsman blames his tools, Orson. I don't think he blamed his tools so much as he just didn't know how to paint with what he had.
00:41:36
Speaker
um I think he was like, yeah, if I had watercolors, I could probably do it better. But even then, I don't think he would have done it. Uh-huh. So he can he can he can ah buy a donkey cart, but he can't buy watercolors.
00:41:48
Speaker
I mean, he spent all his money on the donkey cart. What do you want? i mean you know what? That's yeah. Yeah, that's incredibly fair. ah But then he ditched the donkey cart because he sold a Shiog for 10 pounds sterling with an assist from our innkeeper PK Joyce.
00:42:04
Speaker
Not sure if any relation to James. But he might as well throw it in because Orson would claim that anyway. Probably would. well um One thing I will say is that I read in McGilligan that the person that bought Shiog would once Orson kind of gain some notoriety in the Irish stage, ah like claim like and that was his claim to fame. I bought Orson Welles' donkey.
00:42:30
Speaker
um So which I find really fucking funny. That is, i can confirm, pretty fucking funny. ah So taking a bus back to Galway, Will sought out Ireland's first Gaelic-speaking theater.
00:42:44
Speaker
ah The name I'm about to butcher, Tybe Herrick, well, fuck, let's go with it, which had been established in 1928 by Michael Macleomore with his Gaelic language play Dermid Agus Grein.
00:43:00
Speaker
I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. I'm confident I'm not. Okay. If there's one thing we're sure of, it's that we're not saying any of these words correctly. i I am Irish by heritage, but I know nothing of the country. I have never been, nor have I bothered to learn Gaelic, which I think after Welsh might be one of the most ah difficult for my brain to comprehend languages in Europe.
00:43:28
Speaker
um And that's saying a lot because there's a lot of fucking languages in Europe.
00:43:35
Speaker
I was talking with a friend earlier. I'm pretty sure my problem is exclusively that I was a reader growing up. and So I know a lot of words. I just don't know how to pronounce God damned any of them.
00:43:46
Speaker
No, totally, totally. Yeah. Yeah. It sucks. Uh, which is why I'm struggling to put off reading this next line. because I'm afraid of saying the words at this point.
00:43:58
Speaker
Uh, thank you. Had left the trip like a hurdle for the gate theater in Dublin where he and Wells would later meet. And as one might imagine, there's little use for Wells in a Gaelic language theater, being as he is American and does not speak Gaelic.
00:44:14
Speaker
ah So he moves on. Christ alive, Orson. ah But then he is inspired by the writings of J.M. Singe and the art of Sean Keating.
00:44:26
Speaker
Orson resolved to visit the Aran Islands, three tiny isles 23 miles west of Galway Bay. He stayed for a time on the smallest island Ishir, in which he called the most primitive spot in Europe, as it has been for many centuries.
00:44:42
Speaker
ah So he sets up there. Once he gets to Innisher, he sets up a small portrait studio on the in a little seaside cottage and sketched and painted the various people that he observed, ah finding this endeavor far more rewarding than the landscapes, at which point I have noted that I need to read a letter from Orson that he wrote, which means I need to dig up the book that I need to read it from, which is currently sitting underneath three other books and a giant bottle of gin.
00:45:11
Speaker
There is a quality in the Aaron men, or I'm sorry, let me start over. There is a quality in the Aaron eye a thousand times more elusive than the blue in the Connemara Hills.
00:45:21
Speaker
A something in the clean, naive smile that plays on the Aaron mouth. A twinkle that dances in the Aaron eye. An intelligent candor, this those two words underlined, and something more.
00:45:35
Speaker
To paint that is to paint God. Okay.
00:45:42
Speaker
which i I'm glad you had fun, Orson. Yeah. So, yeah, he he likes that significantly more than landscapes. However, despite all of that, Orson even considered these a flop, probably because no one bought them.
00:45:59
Speaker
um That would certainly be a hindrance on the concept of selling landscapes.
Welles' Financial Irresponsibility and Charm
00:46:05
Speaker
portraits. Right. If that is what one decides to do. Basically, he sets up a caricaturist stand and ah draws caricatures completely unbidden and then tries to probably sell them to the people he's drawing or others, ah ah most of whom have no interest in what he's selling.
00:46:23
Speaker
So.
00:46:26
Speaker
Gosh, if only he had some sort of natural talent that he could trade him for money. I'm going let you read this next one because I figured you were going to get a fine. After about three weeks or so of initial year, our resident trust fund weeaboo shit.
00:46:41
Speaker
I'm gonna spell check that. It's weeaboo shit, not weeaboo. Finds himself without money. What a fucking shock, Orson. This is financial or irresponsibility. Orson invokes his brother.
00:46:55
Speaker
The same blood that flows in Richard's veins flows also in mine. That's... It feels mean spirit. That's exactly why I included it. um Like neither Orson nor his brother, it is known, are very good with their money.
00:47:10
Speaker
But again, I don't I mean, Dick Wells was, but it doesn't feel like he was as involved in his kid's life enough to really instill in them the virtue of money. so And we'll see this later when Orson goes on his party spree in Dublin.
00:47:23
Speaker
He's the guy who's picking up the checks at the end of the night. There's a ah great story from the documentary, um The Battle for Citizen Kane, where there's an old man who was like a part of Orson's – I think he was part of the Mercury Theater, the actual WPA theater in New York, who's like – he He gets very serious about how Orson tipped a waiter $50.
00:47:52
Speaker
And he's like, I saw him tip $50 bill. i saw it. I'm not making up stories. Like he gets very indignant that Orson would leave a $50 tip. But like, if you know anything about the man, and particularly his later efforts to try to fund his films, it shouldn't come as any surprise that he is terrible with money.
00:48:13
Speaker
but Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah, it really doesn't surprise me. And those we start to see those habits forming here at age 16 in Ireland. Again, this shit is is cyclical. It it all ends up coming back.
00:48:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. um God damn it. ah
00:48:33
Speaker
Still, Orson does not let his failures with money deter him from a good time with the local ladies. Yeah. These great, marvelous girls in their white petticoats, they'd grab me.
00:48:47
Speaker
It was as close, you're gonna love this, it was as close to male rape as you could imagine. I think I texted you this with the with the caption, Jesus, Orson. You absolutely did. Christ alive. And all with their husbands out in their skin-covered canoes.
00:49:02
Speaker
All day, while I had nothing to do. Nothing but fuck their wives. ah The girls would then, per Orson, go and confess to the Catholic priest who would make rounds among the Aran Islands.
00:49:16
Speaker
It was this priest who then convinced Orson it would probably be a good move to leave Innishere. Later, that priest was sainted as the man who drove Orson Welles out of Innishere.
00:49:29
Speaker
ah He had a similar similar effect on Innishir that St. Patrick had on on the all of Ireland with the snakes. This priest, though, just drove one snake off of one island. All of that fucking rules. God damn it. um Leaving Innishir and returning to Galway, Wells was soon back at it again.
00:49:50
Speaker
Per-anthetical, one presumes he managed to find some money somewhere. Traveling south and east to Limerick, Cary, Killarney, Blarney, Tipperary, Wicklow, and then back to Limerick again.
00:50:01
Speaker
that's a i mean That's a song lyric right there. i don't i just In those cities, in that order, that's that's there's something lyrical about that. I don't know what it is. ah From there, he purchased a bicycle, which he named Ulysses, a nod to both Homer and Ireland's own James Joyce.
00:50:18
Speaker
Oh, boy. And then met up with Michael Conroy, the cousin of Patrick O'Connor from Galway. The two men would then travel by bike or hitch a ride on beer barges heading up the Shannon River, which basically is a river that runs right up the center of Ireland.
00:50:32
Speaker
ah For those who do not know the geography of Ireland, like I didn't. Convenient. And now we come to the section of this, the one month out of the seven month stretch that will take up the bulk of our time today, because it is the most prolific month of Orson's time here in Ireland, October 1931.
00:50:53
Speaker
team thirty one
00:50:57
Speaker
Finding himself, finding himself, what, like, what what are we on right now? We're at the bottom of page two and we don't leave October, uh, until, uh, the bottom of page five.
00:51:11
Speaker
So, and we are at minute 51 of recording. Yep. Bottom of a page two. So near the end of his cache, again, Orson finds himself in Athlone,
00:51:24
Speaker
athlone a small town on Shannon about midway between Galway and Dublin. and From there, he hops on a bus and makes the 75-mile trek to Dublin, hoping to receive a cache infusion from his guardian, Dr. Maurice Bernstein wants bernstein sorry once he arrives.
00:51:42
Speaker
Or Bernstein, it is Bernstein. Mr. Bernstein? It's Berenstein Bears. ah However, there was no wire waiting for him in Dublin, so Orson decided to blow the last of his money on good dinner and a fine cigar. it Nothing if not in character.
00:51:56
Speaker
ah He had taken up smoking cigars while in Ireland, thinking that it would make him look older. Uh-huh. It would be a habit that would continue for the rest of his life, despite protestations from his physicians.
00:52:08
Speaker
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. In fact, there are several pictures, including the one on the cover of both One Man Band and My Lunches with Orson, where the man's just got a cigar.
00:52:19
Speaker
gotta say, ah you were showing off the ah the cover of One Man Band. That is one of my favorite pictures of Orson, just him in that dramatic beam of light. Oh, it's so good. It's very, very good.
00:52:31
Speaker
I will say as someone who used to smoke before the first heart attack, um I got to say, um I do occasionally miss smoking a good cigar. Well, that's a bit of a shame. I'm sorry to hear about it. And you know what?
00:52:47
Speaker
I'll smoke to Orson. I was going to say, is it time to time to do that bong rip we've been promising?
00:52:54
Speaker
On Mike bong rips. I have a feeling Tucker's going to edit this out.
00:52:59
Speaker
52.50, Tucker. Market. Market eight, dude. Next frame. Good. All right. Smoke for Orson using the last of his cash or Orson purchases a ticket to the millions, a tragedy of imperialism at the gate theater, uh, which is ostensibly the reason that he had traveled to Dublin at all to make the acquaintance of Michael MacLeomore, which brings us to the two key figures that Orson meets two more, uh, patriarchal figures in Orson's life. But,
00:53:31
Speaker
This is a bit of a weirder one because these are older men, but they're also there's this I don't know. it's it's It's a father son thing, but it's also kind of a potentially maybe friendly and or romantic thing.
00:53:46
Speaker
um It's in in the parlance of our times. It's complicated. is what it is. So let's talk a little bit about Michael McLeomore and Hilton Edwards, the two founders of the gate theaters. I'm going to let you read this next section because I think you're going to love that third, fourth, fifth, and sixth word there.
00:54:06
Speaker
The so-called stately homos of Ireland. ah Yeah, I'll take the bullet. I'll read all the queer slurs on the show. Yeah, fuck it. I can say it. i was going to say, it you're you're the queer one. I'm the cishet asshole over here. I am a stately homo of of northern Philadelphia. yeah ah Met in the nineteen twenty s as members of the intimate... shape the intimate Shakespearean company.
00:54:31
Speaker
Okay. Led by, uh, MacLeod Moore is brother-in-law slash mentor slash possible former lover, uh, a new McMaster. This but that's, that's, that's too many slashes brother-in-law.
00:54:45
Speaker
That's brother-in-law mentor, possible former lover. We don't know for sure if they were lovers, but given MacLeod Moore's, proclivity for, um, ah for basically affairs with other gentlemen, uh, very possibly, um, this, and again, despite occasional affairs and dalliances on both sides, both, uh, Macleomore and Edwards would remain a couple throughout their lives.
00:55:11
Speaker
Okay. So they're poly. That's cute. Right. And Edwards is effectively bisexual as well. So Edwards will occasionally sleep with women where Macleomore is not. He's that's fine.
00:55:22
Speaker
From what I see, it is, it's, it's all get what you get. There it is. Like what you like. i just, you know, for the sake of posterity, want to just put, put that down.
00:55:33
Speaker
Understandable. And, and Wells would, would go on to refer to Edwards as quote, born hetero. um He says um Edwards was born hetero, which again, no.
00:55:46
Speaker
but yeah Yeah. There's a couple of things wrong with that. Very obviously no. but yeah It is funny how that we're trying to avoid bi erasure on the Chex Notes Orson Welles podcast.
00:56:01
Speaker
Shame. They founded the Gate Theater in honor of McMaster in 1928, and the two would take turns directing and starring in Gate Productions. ah Edwards was a master lighting stylist with a preference for subtle performance, and MacLeomore, a skilled designer known to write and translate plays from English to Gaelic.
00:56:19
Speaker
Despite being an Englishman himself, he is a poser, and he should get the hell out. Hmm. ah Orson was unimpressed, probably because he was a poser with the play, but managed to work his way backstage where he met Edwards and in most accounts, MacLeomore. Who you believe, Orson or anybody else. That's kind of what ah what a lot of these stories come down to because both men have been, both Orson and MacLeomore are raconteurs who are very good at propagating their own myth. MacLeomore, only own one of them.
00:56:52
Speaker
The aforementioned put money in thy purse, but MacLeah Moore published a lot of diary entries. And a lot of the early ones do mention Orson specifically. In fact, Callow's account leans very heavily on MacLeah Moore's diaries as ah as a point of reference for this time period ah in Orson's life in The Road to Xanadu.
00:57:14
Speaker
Um, so there's just, you know, something worth, I think, mentioning, uh, is that he tended to lean, I think a lot more on MacLeomore's accounts than on Orson's, where I think McGilligan tends to prefer, but again, both men are raconteurs. So I don't think I, I feel like it's a, I feel like it's a Hegelian thing where there's the one side and the other, there's the thesis and the antithesis and somewhere in the middle is the synthesis. And that's probably where the truth is.
00:57:44
Speaker
Yeah. I was a philosophy major in college. Couldn't tell. Good job. I'm proud of you. You get a gold star for today's class. going put it right here on my forehead. There you go. Good. Collect all. yeah um Orson would basically embellish his acting resume to Edwards and Macleomore. No. To hear MacLeod Moore tell it, though, the two men were more taken by Wells' quote, ageless and superb inner confidence that no one could blow out.
00:58:13
Speaker
Yeah, no, I get that. ah This kid is lying like crazy, but it's so engaging. ah Edwards offered Orson an audition for the Gates' next production, an adaptation of the 1925...
00:58:25
Speaker
ah Leon. Was the dude's name ah literally... ah man, I was really hoping his name was Lion. ah Leon Fektwagner? Fektwagner.
00:58:37
Speaker
Fektwagner, thank you. On his novel... God damn it, why do I keep taking these lines? ah Judsus. Thank you Which they would call...
00:58:49
Speaker
Jusus. There you go. All right. There it is. ah We're going to say that a lot. So good. Yay. Jusus was the story of Joseph Sus Oppenheimer, a Jewish businessman who became the top advisor for Duke Carl Alexander of Württemberg in the 1770s.
00:59:09
Speaker
um And knowing that the Oppenheimer role had essentially been earmarked for Edwards directly, Wells focused his attention on the role of the Duke, which he called, quote, meaty from first to fifth acts.
00:59:21
Speaker
Basically something he could just ham his way through and really sink his teeth into. Nothing if not a ham. Correct. Speaking of. Uh-oh.
00:59:33
Speaker
Do you just have a ham off screen? I'm terrified. Here's the ham. No, I'm pulling out a book to read another part.
00:59:42
Speaker
I mean, that would be insane if I just had a whole ass ham as a prop for an auditory medium. That would be amazing. It would be appropriate on an Orson Welles podcast, if nothing else. If nothing else.
00:59:55
Speaker
what If days may like y'all do it but did makes noise, I would have a bag of Fritos off screen. so yeah Well, I mean, if it's not cheating on your diet if no one sees you. And three pineapples.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:10
Speaker
And two-fifths of scotch. Orson's audition for the Committee of Gate members, including both Macleomore and Edwards, was chaos incarnate. Macleomore recalls him throwing furniture and destroying a floral display.
01:00:24
Speaker
I will read this accounting ah from one of Macleomore's diaries. um Is this all the light you can give me? He said in a voice like a regretful oboe, which holy shit, like way to paint a fucking picture, man.
01:00:38
Speaker
um We hadn't given him any yet at all, or we haven't given him any at all yet. So that was settled. And he began, it was an astonishing performance wrong from beginning to end, but with all the qualities of fine acting, tearing their way through a chaos of inexperience.
01:00:54
Speaker
His diction was practically perfect. His personality, in spite of his fantastic circus antics, was real and varied. His sense of passion, of evil, of drunkenness, of tyranny, of a sort of demoniac authority was arresting.
01:01:09
Speaker
A preposterous energy pulsated through everything he did. One wanted to bellow with laughter, yet the laughter died on one's lips. One wanted to say, now, now, really, you know?
01:01:21
Speaker
But something stopped the words from coming. And that was because he was real to himself because it was something more to him than a show, more than the mere inflated exhibitionism. One might've suspected from his previous talk, something much more.
01:01:38
Speaker
How do you like them apples? Hope.
01:01:45
Speaker
We're entering into, I mean, we've been there cause it's a show about fucking Orson Welles. Right. Uh, uh, uh,
01:01:53
Speaker
But like you get all of these people who are these very, very intelligent ah theatrical people and you interview them and that person sees a microphone and their eyes bug out of their skull and they're like, I have to sound the most loquacious.
01:02:13
Speaker
ah yeah just out of the gate, smartest, intelligent, witty person possible. And we're going to commit that to paper in a biography about Orson Welles. And you're just like, it's just ego after ego.
01:02:28
Speaker
Considering the subject though, it I know that's what I mean. It's like, it's, it's, it's, if, if Orson Welles is our, ah let's, you know, let's say now, Hmm. If only Orson Welles played a planet sometime now. Okay. I want you to picture Orson Welles, the size of a planet to say he, uh, maybe a robot planet.
01:02:48
Speaker
That's an interesting concept. And we'll put that on the back burner for now, but, but, but Let's say that he needs to eat other planets. And you know what? Let's make a clean.
01:02:58
Speaker
i know. i know exactly what it is. Ego, the living planet and um from um from ah Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. What if he a planet was so far up its own ass that it ate other planets egos for power?
01:03:11
Speaker
So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And what if you needed to get rid of the first generation of toys for the planet's... Hmm. No, let's circle back to that robot idea. like I like where that's going. Okay. it needs to eat these first generation robots so you can introduce a whole new generation of robots to sell toys. Rodimus Prime.
01:03:35
Speaker
Hmm. That's a good name. Write that down. i like that. You're pulling this out of the ether, I assume. Yeah. I don't know. i don't know anything about ah movies that came out in 2007 directed by Michael Bay.
01:03:49
Speaker
Uh, he's auditioned for a committee of gate members, including we did that. We did that son of a whore. We're onto the second bullet point under that backstage. Uh, Edwards would call Wells quote, the greatest over actor he'd seen eons calling the boy all flash and finish.
01:04:06
Speaker
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Uh, in spite of this, Edwards invited Orson back to audition the next day, leaving him with powerful advice. which i Another notation. Yep.
01:04:17
Speaker
I should have been reading ahead and had that my book open to that, but alas, I am a fucking slacker. which i know You're the slacker. slacker. you're the slacker
01:04:31
Speaker
um You go back to your hotel and practice acting like a man and not an actor. He said, you expend a great deal of energy on throwing weight and strength into characterization. Forget it.
01:04:46
Speaker
Despite your youth, you have all the strength you need. Drop affectation, overstudied grace. Try and make over what you've been doing all your life tonight. Learn that art can see learn that art.
01:05:00
Speaker
Learn that art that conceals art. woo There we go. Learn restraint and above all, sincerity. It may take you years, but come around tomorrow and I'll see how you're coming along.
01:05:15
Speaker
Wells would go on to call Hilton Edwards wall the greatest acting teacher he ever had.
01:05:22
Speaker
I get why. Did Orson ever do anything with that advice? And did, ah well, I guess we'll stick around and see if Orson ever made it big as an actor. Right. ah But he put, ah he, Edwards, put Wells through repeated auditions over the following days.
01:05:37
Speaker
But at the end of it all, Wells ended the process being cast as Carl Alexander, the first Bill's role in the show. So basically the second lead good of the Christ Alive. At 16, he's playing the Duke of Württemberg.
01:05:51
Speaker
so Yeah. um when bernstein finally and get around to sending oron money including a check made out to trinity college where orson had said he would enroll upon leaving for ireland in august ah wells had all but abandoned school focusing all his time and attention on the gate
01:06:13
Speaker
Edwards managed to keep Orson on task, fighting against the young man's more boisterous instincts. Really? Orson? Boisterous? Reminding him constantly the virtue of ref restraint.
01:06:24
Speaker
Though Orson often balked, he towed the line, submitting to Edwards' direction and ultimately learning lessons that he would later impart to actors himself. However, the role of Carl Alexander, which was that of a man in his 50s, afforded Orson the opportunity to have fun with makeup, a thing that Orson would do throughout his career, both theatrical and cinematic career.
01:06:46
Speaker
um He would have fun with makeup, wigs, costuming, and again, something as ah of a hallmark. but I don't think there is a role that Orson played perhaps outside of...
01:06:57
Speaker
That of Harry Lime in The Third Man, where he doesn't use some kind of nose putty to give himself a different looking nose. I absolutely lore adore that about the man. He hated his little tiny button nose. He had this tiny button nose. It is so fucking cute.
01:07:15
Speaker
And he fucking hated it so badly that he would always put nose putty on his face. Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh. he's He's probably one of the few people that wanted to make his nose bigger. so Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing, though. People in the era since would kill for a tiny little nose like that. He was trying to do everything. he He founded, I think, his weakest feature. So he did everything he could to try to cover it.
01:07:40
Speaker
Right. And not say his ah inability to handle money. Right. I guess we're talking about physical attributes, ah but the role also required Orson to master accent work in order to make himself understood by a Dublin born audience.
01:07:57
Speaker
And I love this. That'll come back when we get to the radio in ah six years time in our podcast. Um, as part of his duties with the gate, Orson was placed in charge of publicity, pumping out puffery to the local papers.
01:08:12
Speaker
That's fun. You had fun with that sentence, uh, charge of publicity, pumping out puffery to the local papers, even going so far as to write a column in the tabloid under the name, under the pseudonym, Knowles Noel Shane.
01:08:27
Speaker
ah McGilligan notes that Knowles, Knowles, Shane is an acronym of Wells, Kenosha, and Non, N-O-N. ah However, it's also a rather obvious homophone for Knowles, Knowles, Shame, ah which is itself relatively telling, I would say. Wow, Orson.
01:08:44
Speaker
God damn it. well I mean, you can't you can't deny the kid was clever. No, he was. Clever little asshole. it's we You know what? We watched the ah ah film... ah Big Lebowski a few weeks ago. What a great movie.
01:08:59
Speaker
It's a great movie. It was Bex's first time. But there's that line. There's that line, though. Yeah, excellent stoner movie. We smoked every time ah the dude smokes. It was a good night. I was going to say, you guys had a blast, I'm sure. Very good.
01:09:13
Speaker
I definitely didn't buy a bunch of hair clips because of the way the dude uses them as roach holders. so Certainly not. But there's that line that the dude says to ah Walter at some point, you're not wrong.
01:09:24
Speaker
You're just an asshole. Correct. And that applies. It does. Orson made himself out to be a young, up-and-coming American talent, including credits and venues he had never actually performed.
01:09:36
Speaker
That's one of my favorite factoids about Orson. He just lied his ass off. I mean, he he did it to get as his foot in the door at the gate, and then he did it again to promote his first show at the gate, and the Irish papers fucking ate it up. They would quote back his own materials in their reviews as though they were somewhat factual, when in fact he had just made all that shit up in order to make himself seem more important.
01:10:00
Speaker
Incredible. See, this is the problem. This is the whole double-bladed sword of the internet. Yes. Blade 1, we get to make a podcast about Orson Welles and be friends, despite living in different time zones. Correct.
01:10:14
Speaker
The other side is Orson Welles would not have existed with the internet. Like, he wouldn't have been able to get his foot in the door anywhere with internet. and that's... i was I was watching a video earlier today about Mad Men and a central conceit in Mad Men is the fact that this main character is just not who he says he is. And as a result, like that's where a good chunk of the drama comes from. And it's predicated on this notion that you could just lie about who you were and someone would believe you and give you a job based on that.
01:10:49
Speaker
And that's 100% how Orson gets his foot in the door acting, despite, you know, oh, I fell into acting, he would say. But it no one lies this much about their acting resume in order to get to book a gig if they didn't want to do acting, right?
01:11:06
Speaker
It would be incredible. I think he just liked the attention hot take. Yeah, not not that hot. that that tape it That take is tepid and lukewarm at best. that that that That take is room temperature and should probably be smelled from a fair distance. Check the date on that take because it might be time to chuck it. Go get a new date from the grocery store.
01:11:31
Speaker
Also pick up some eggs. Here's $75 for the eggs. ah He was also tasked with painting flats for the sets of not just ah Jew Sus, but the local Gaelic theaters as well.
01:11:43
Speaker
His perchance for embellishment and improvisation, though, often got him into trouble with stage managers. You don't say he would paint these sets in ways where they wouldn't line up and they wouldn't match. And again, there were kind of these exacting standards.
01:11:57
Speaker
that they would set. MacLeomore again, himself was a very meticulous set designer. um And Wells himself would go on to be a great designer. We'll see kind of his evolution later on in this episode.
01:12:09
Speaker
ah But he was known throughout the Mercury Theater in particular, like he always credited himself as set designer and gets his foot in the door here. not Not with these, but as he moves on, he gets to be more creative as he gets more notoriety in the theater community um and gets to do more with set design and have a little more fun with it. But um he's one of those guys who's not really comfortable with coloring inside the lines if he's not able to express himself in the way that he chooses to and unfortunately because he's designing these sets that have been meticulously designed by someone else he has to color inside the lines and it fucks him up when he has to yeah that doesn't really surprise me right nor should like at all honestly at all yeah uh but on october o we fight for it
01:13:04
Speaker
On October 13th, 1931, Juicus premieres. Opening night, a young Wells eager to please his Irish audience is momentarily rattled when he was mildly heckled by a patron.
01:13:18
Speaker
I think his line is something he's leering at the daughter of ah the main character, the the titular Juicus, and says something like... um So something to the effect of a wife fit for Solomon and he had over a thousand of them to which someone in the back of the house yells, it's a black, dirty, I, or ah a black, dirty Protestant lie.
01:13:40
Speaker
And Wells just does not know how to fucking handle that. And so he gets rattled and um is unable to pull his sword from his scabbard to deliver his final line.
01:13:52
Speaker
um And so he fucks up the line. It's supposed to be something like ring the bells and charge the horses. And he says, like, ring the horses and charge the bells or so. No, it's ring the bells and fire the cannons. He says, ring the cannons and fire the bells is what he says. Good.
01:14:05
Speaker
um And then. um Look out. He's got a bell. And after after fucking up the line, he can't pull his sword out, so he decides to just fall headlong down a short series of stairs and ends it in a backflip, which is a major fuck-up, but the crowd fucking eats it up like candy.
01:14:26
Speaker
ah They fucking love that shit. So thunderous applause. um He would go on to, like, I mean, you know multiple curtain calls he would write home. Like, six curtain calls tonight, like, just bragging about.
01:14:38
Speaker
And again, Were there that many? Hard to say. ah he is the the the number one purveyor of his own myth. um But Orson would go on to call the performance, quote, my finest work till then, despite being aware of his shortcomings, particularly in that role.
01:14:58
Speaker
I mean, chucking yourself down some stairs is for some pretty solid improv. you're You're committed, to say the least. Absolutely. ah
01:15:08
Speaker
Oh, gosh. ah
01:15:13
Speaker
JJ. JJ Hayes. Thank you. The New York Times string correspondent in Dublin called Ju-Sus a somewhat unpleasant play, which I think is hysterical, but noted a naturalist in ease about Wells' acting.
Orson Welles' Expertise in Makeup
01:15:27
Speaker
Yeah. No. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. But this weirdo 16-year-old who's definitely not 18 is actually totally a baby-faced 16-year-old. But under that sea of makeup, who can tell? he's Yeah, that's very fair. He's not a 50-year-old. very fair.
01:15:44
Speaker
And that's an area where Wells tended to excel. I mean, there are pictures of him even at Todd where he's like caked in in various kinds of makeup. You can see his makeup yeah you know brilliance and stuff like Hearts of Age or even Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, where he's like probably in charge of applying a lot of his own makeup.
01:16:05
Speaker
Uh, something that I noted about touch of evil and we'll talk about it when we get to touch of evil is that I adore how he's yeah. and In, in, in 35 years, um, he's never afraid to make himself look absolutely horrific. Right.
01:16:17
Speaker
And he is just not looking good in that movie, which is the whole point of that character. So well done. I think there's a part of him that really relishes the ability to do that.
01:16:29
Speaker
Like knowing kind of his, his, uh,
01:16:34
Speaker
as like a heartthrob or like a baby-faced leading man, the the fact that he can sometimes make himself look borderline grotesque is, i think, a ah ah feature, not a bug for him.
Welles' Early Performance Successes
01:16:47
Speaker
Makes perfect sense. i My heart breaks that we never got a ah an Orson Welles-Rick Baker crossover.
01:16:54
Speaker
Oh, my God. Well, first of Welles could not afford Rick Baker, but... Let's just be real honest lets with right out the gate. That's very valid. That's upsettingly valid.
01:17:07
Speaker
um An American Wells Wolf in London. there Even the Dublin critics, not always the most forgiving, were effusive on the subject of Orson's performance. Uh, McGilligan notes that later in life, Wells would often and half jokingly call call his opening night performance.
01:17:24
Speaker
He's only pure triumph. And the rest of his career was downhill. No, Orson, the downhill is a few years later. Um, and this is Orson Wells. Um, Wells says to Bogdanovich, that's how I began right at the top.
01:17:39
Speaker
I've been working my way down ever since. He's upsettingly not wrong. Again, just shifted shifted over about nine years-ish. Give or take.
01:17:50
Speaker
ah Or 10, 9, 10, somewhere in there. Right. Yes. It'll be 10 years. Yeah. Because Kane was 41. Correct. This is 31. Yeah. Right. Okay.
01:18:02
Speaker
For some bizarre reason, I thought Kane was 40 therefore Casablanca was 41. Nope. Casablanca is set in 41. It's released in 42. This is the only way I can differentiate. Wings the Oscar in 43. Hell yeah. Yeah.
01:18:15
Speaker
hell yeah um But given his success at the gate, Orson became the life of the party, quite literally taking up, carousing and merriment. I can't just got me. Son of a bitch.
01:18:27
Speaker
um Blaming the mispronunciation on the cat, staying out late and often reaching for the check at the end of the night. Again, that irresponsibility with money rearing its head like he becomes popular, wants to be liked. Yep.
01:18:42
Speaker
Again, all about the attention. And that becomes, again, kind of some, he's barely got any money to begin with, but he's always kind of the first one to try to pick up the check again. $50 bill. I'm not making up stories.
01:18:55
Speaker
Um, I love that guy. I don't know who that guy is. he is my favorite. That is my favorite part of that documentary. And I love that. document We'll talk about that documentary. One of these days when we get to citizen Kane, we'll talk about that documentary.
Social Interactions with Notable Figures
01:19:09
Speaker
Um, And so as a result of these parties, Wells would often find himself, Wells would eventually find himself arrested for, quote, rowdyism, but also find himself meeting famed artists like William Butler Yates and aha Lady Gregory, who was the founder of the Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland.
01:19:30
Speaker
Christ. Like, again, it's just, you know, he's he's carousing. ah he He said that he was not a fan of Yates. Like, Yates was kind of one of these guys that you would always just kind of see around and, like, show up at every party.
01:19:42
Speaker
So apparently he was not a big fan of Yates as a person, to say nothing of his art. But yeah.
01:19:49
Speaker
Oh, gosh. He would develop a crush on his Jusas. I keep putting a soft J on it. ah Co-star Betty Chancellor, who played Seuss's daughter, sa motherfucker, i played the daughter, whatever, words, pronunciation.
01:20:04
Speaker
Seeing him for the inexperienced boy he was, though, she often rebuffed his advances, charmed ah charming though she knew him to be. And she was taken with him. Again, he's, a he's a as we said, a charming figure, but... yeah You know, it's, she's probably a few years older than him and just like knows that he's kind of a lot of bluster.
01:20:25
Speaker
And he apparently, she said that in every scene he was in character, in character until it came to the scene where he had to assault her. Uh-huh.
01:20:36
Speaker
And, um, and in which case he was just kind of this like fumbling boy. And that was when she knew she's like, okay, this, this kid's, this This kid is unexperienced. He's a kid, basically. Yeah. Yeah.
Welles' Roles in Various Productions
01:20:50
Speaker
Oh, boy, Orson. Which brings us to November of 1931. After sitting out and made a Dalek language production of Moliere's Skafin, Wells would mount a thriller written by Dublin journalist David Sears called The Dead Rides Fast.
01:21:06
Speaker
in which an elderly American millionaire, played by Wells, who got to use his own accent for once, and his daughter weather a storm in a gloomy mansion while traveling in Ireland only to find the place haunted by, quote, a stranger from another world, played by Hilton Edwards.
01:21:23
Speaker
Okay, that sounds like a pretty good time. i want I want to see, ah I want to see Wells in a haunted house movie. That sounds great. It does sound great. i There's not a lot of Wells horror ah outside of like theater and radio.
01:21:37
Speaker
um i Look, I'm just saying we've got the formula already. Orson Welles in They Live. dad Directed by John Carpenter. We can do this. John Carpenter. um Despite receiving good reviews, Wells was openly critical of the script. But it has to also still be ah Keith David. Sorry.
01:21:54
Speaker
ah Back to the notes. um especially what he referred to as bogus American dialogue, speaking ill of it while it was still running to a journalist, I think a a Dublin transplant for the Chicago Tribune.
01:22:09
Speaker
ah This angered a lot of people at the gate, including McCleomore, who saw it as a sign of Wells' obvious immaturity.
01:22:19
Speaker
ah Later that month, Wells would star opposite both Edwards and McCleomore in The Arc Dupe. Am I reading that correctly? Archdupe. Archdupe. Archdupe. Sorry. It's a play on the word Archduke.
01:22:33
Speaker
Okay. Okay. ah By Percy Robinson about Napoleon's puppet governor in Mexico, Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Wells delivered an outsized performance, which was not without controversy, given the subtlety the gate was usually known for.
01:22:50
Speaker
Whoops. But again, the the implication, at least by McGilligan, is that Edwards, who is directing the piece, is giving Wells a little bit of a longer leash than he might otherwise, which again, kind of fuels the rumors that there is something else going on potentially between Wells and Edwards, though Wells would always deny it.
01:23:13
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Great. Good. Am I taking this next line? Fuck it. Orson likes to adopt a flirtatious presence with homosexual men, but in this case, it may have backfired, spiking McLeomore's jealousy and resentment.
01:23:26
Speaker
Right. So the part you you skipped there is that during this time, Wells began to moonlight at other theaters throughout Dublin. God damn it. I skipped another paragraph. other than the gate.
01:23:36
Speaker
And Wells would later in life basically blame this on Macleomore's jealousy, ah both personal and professional. And again, Wells was developing, as we just mentioned, a very close relationship with Edwards, who was at the time, and till their deaths, Macleomore's partner.
01:23:53
Speaker
ah So again, this idea that Wells is kind of developing this kind of flirtatious relationship. I mean, Macleomore himself would go on to call Wells the third great love of his life. So like...
01:24:05
Speaker
I mean, again, we're we're kind of looking at at this from the outside going, the fuck are these guys doing? but Yeah, yeah. First off, he's 16. ah But yes, ah Orson liked to be flirty with the other gays.
01:24:21
Speaker
Uh-oh, MacLeah Moore is a jealous bitch. Whoops. Whether a result of jealous lover or not, or no, sorry, I'm trying to stay true to your notes, Orson was relegated to smaller and smaller roles at the gate after Jusus, prompting him to seek work elsewhere, including the legendary Abbey Theater, a.k.a. the National Theater of Ireland, where he played a sexagenarian in Somerset Magom's... Magom's? Magom's.
01:24:49
Speaker
Magom's. The Circle. ah So yeah, basically Wells becomes known for playing older roles as a result of his you know triumphant performance in JuSus.
01:24:59
Speaker
And as a result, basically gets asked to perform this kind of week-long benefit performance of the circle um to benefit Irish youth hostels.
01:25:12
Speaker
ah None of the other actors in the show were regulars at the Abbey because, ah which i this I find this in incredibly hilarious. All of the regular ah repertory players at the Abbey were on tour in Canada and America the entire time Wells was in Dublin.
01:25:29
Speaker
That's incredible. Right. So he, in fact, at this time, they were probably just about getting ready to open in Wells's hometown of Chicago. That's hysterical. Right.
01:25:42
Speaker
Uh, so he probably could have actually seen them all perform. Had he just stayed in America like his guardians wanted, instead he went to Dublin and, would peace out on the gate, a thing he felt kind of guilty about leaving gate and the gate and Edwards in particular in a lurch, uh,
01:26:01
Speaker
Edwards seemed more than forgiving, ah basically giving Orson an excused leave, ah looking the other way as he went to perform this this piece at the Abbey.
01:26:11
Speaker
um Again, kind of probably continuing to fuel Macleomore's jealousy, such as it was.
01:26:19
Speaker
ah Edwards would even go so far as to ask Wells with task Wells with launching a side project called the Peacock Repertory Players, who would perform at the 102 seat Peacock Theater adjoining the Abbey.
01:26:34
Speaker
And so his first project here would be the moon rides high again, something writing something else like the dead rides. What was it? The dead rides was one he did earlier. The dead rides fast.
01:26:47
Speaker
The dead rides fast. Spirit of vengeance. And that was a play by Herman old, an old friend of George Bernard Shaw, one of Wells's heroes ah that opened mid November and played for a week.
01:27:00
Speaker
ah The co-founder of the Peacock Rep was William Sherwood, another of the performers at the gate. ah He would direct every play that that was performed by Peacock Rep except one, which was directed by Wells himself.
01:27:14
Speaker
old Scholars can't seem to agree on which one he actually directed, but they've narrowed it down to two, either Mr. Wu or The Chinese Bungalow.
01:27:25
Speaker
ah We don't know much about those shows, but one thing we do know is that Wells both directed and starred, and he starred as an Asian man with a ponytail. ah One of the most, again, just playing on those ah very real stereotypes that Orson seemed to to to just kind of trade in around this time. God damn it. In any case, in December of 1931, the PRP mounts a production where Jerome K. Jerome a great name.
01:27:58
Speaker
ah His farce, The Celebrity, followed by an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. ah Both productions were praised for Orson's stage designs. ah Orson, of course, played Alice as a ponytailed Asian man.
01:28:12
Speaker
ah Other plays performed in early 1932 included a pairing of August Streinberg's The Stronger with Jules Romaine's medical spoof Dr. Knock.
01:28:27
Speaker
Strindberg, not Strindberg. What did I say? Strindberg, sorry. No worries. I put the wrong emphasis on the incorrect syllable. As one does. um Wells would ultimately return to the gate for their Christmas play, Mogu of the Desert, ah by Patrick Collum.
01:28:44
Speaker
ah The play was, quote, an extravagant oriental saga set in mythical Persia, wherein Orson played Chosroes, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, the last king of Persia, which he played with his typical grace and sensitivity, decked out in nose putty, a massive white turban, and, quote, three-inch fingernails of peacock blue and silver.
01:29:09
Speaker
Yeah, I got into like the last time we were gearing up to record an episode, like the day or two before I had a dinner with my parents and I made mention that like, yeah, we're going to have to talk about.
01:29:22
Speaker
all this horrifyingly non PC shit that Orson did. um and like my dad kept saying, well, you know, it was, it was appropriate at the time. And it took me all I had in me to not just lunge across the table.
01:29:35
Speaker
Yeah. It was appropriate for white men at the time. It wasn't appropriate for literally any other human being on the planet. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It was fine if you were a white dude. Exactly. it's It's kind of one of those, well, you know, it was a different time in a different place. Doesn't excuse it.
01:29:51
Speaker
Yeah. As the as the the the lead-ins to the Looney Tunes cartoons like to say, it was wrong then and it's wrong now. Yeah.
01:29:59
Speaker
ah so Hope we're on the last page. We're on the final page of notes. We're done. Orson's almost out of Ireland. Oh my God. Let's get this bitch out of Ireland. We got three months left.
01:30:12
Speaker
Into January and February. Two for one. of ah Wow, January only has one line. Orson plays Duke Lamberto in Death Takes a Holiday. Loved death in his plays. Mm-hmm.
01:30:25
Speaker
an English translation of the Italian romance, uh, la, la morte in vacanza. La morte in vacanza. Thank you. In that one, Duke Lamberto is essentially a um, you know, a, a, a Duke. He's a Duke who, uh, uh, death, uh,
01:30:44
Speaker
played by ah Michael McLiamore, falls in love with his daughter, played by Betty Chancellor, um which I find very funny. And he's very upset at the fact that his that death has a crush on his daughter.
01:30:56
Speaker
This would, of course, later be remade by Martin Brest in a little film called Meet Joe Black. ah Well, the plot Death Takes a Holiday is also similar to the plot of Mort by Terry Pratchett.
01:31:07
Speaker
There you go. so you know, it's there are no good ideas, new ideas anymore. Good artists borrow, great artists steal. Well, Terry Pratchett filed the serial numbers off and had it under his coat before anybody saw what was happening. There it is. ah In February of 1932, leaving January in the dust, the gate stages Wells' first foray into professional Shakespeare, Hamlet, with MacLeomore as the titular danus prince Danish prince, and Edwards both directing and playing the role of Claudius.
01:31:38
Speaker
ah Wells would double as both Fortinbras and the ghost of Hamlet's father. ah Years later, Macleomore would call Wells, quote, one of the best ghosts I've ever seen.
01:31:49
Speaker
I mean, that just fits for most of Orson Welles's life. Yes. Yeah. And in his documentary film Filming Othello, Wells would say of Macleomore's Hamlet, by general consensus, one of the finest in living memory, surely the best I've ever seen.
01:32:05
Speaker
Definitely no hero worship or found father syndrome happening here. Nope. Uh, definitely not. Uh, uh, while rumors began to circulate of Wells playing a Shakespearean lead like Othello or, uh,
01:32:18
Speaker
Coralinas, Corio, Coralinas, thank you. I'm a reader, not a talker. You're good. Despite audio medium, nothing ever came of them. ah Betty Chancellor mused that Wells was so remarkably good that the management was jealous.
01:32:33
Speaker
ah Meanwhile, Orson began to grow dissatisfied, as one does, with his typecasting as villains and elderly characters, though he was usually pacified by flattery from Hilton Edwards, who called Wells, quote, the best heavy and character actor in the company.
01:32:48
Speaker
which as a fellow heavy and character actor, ah there are a few compliments better. I mean, hell yeah. It's a great, it's a great archetype. I would, I said rehearsal for a play that will have been closed by a month for a month. By the time this episode comes out.
01:33:04
Speaker
And it's the first time I've ever actually been cast as a lead. And it's weird not to be able to just go full ham. um But like you can, when you're a character actor,
01:33:15
Speaker
that Well, yeah, that's the benefit of it of being a character actor. I'll tell you this. I'm in the process of working on another podcast because I don't have enough podcasts. What are you up to now? Four?
01:33:26
Speaker
ah This is the fourth one. Yeah, by pure accident. It kind of came out of nothing at about a week and a half ago. So I'm the narrator for this new audio book. ah fan fiction nonsense so podcast.
01:33:39
Speaker
And ah it's been a while since I've done properly scripted content that I didn't write myself or aren't notes, bullet points about Orson. well Right. Touche. Right. Right. So I got what I call the anti George Lucas direction, um which you'll know ah George Lucas on the set of Star Wars was infamous for telling actors to be faster and more intense. Right.
01:34:04
Speaker
Um, but I was told to slower and more romantic, which I thought was hysterical. That is great. Um, because I am supposed to be narrating these two fucking lesbians falling in love with one another again and again and again. i can't, I can't George Lucas my way through this shit.
01:34:24
Speaker
No, I certainly not. I will say, um That is great. First of all, I love that. But if only George Lucas had given the slower and more romantic, well, maybe not slower, ah but definitely the more romantic note to Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman on the set of ah Attack of the Clones, then i dont know maybe that movie could have been something.
01:34:46
Speaker
You know what? I'm not going to blame Hayden. I'm not going to blame the actors anymore. I'm done blaming Hayden Christensen for that. um it's It's entirely, I think, the fact that it was George Lucas, who is famously terrible with actors. It was shot mostly on blue screens, which is insane.
01:35:05
Speaker
And it's the first all fully shot digital movie, ah which insane. Also a highly experimental form at that point. And I think poor Hayden got caught in the crossfire on that one.
01:35:17
Speaker
ah hunter I mean, in the same way that Jake Lloyd did on the previous film. um I mean, these these people are literally just doing what their director tells them to do. Like, here's how I know George Lucas is not a great actor.
01:35:28
Speaker
Sam Jackson is bad in those movies. You really don't get much out of Jackson. It's, you know what? i've been How do you make Sam Jackson bad in a movie? Here's what would have made Attack of the Clones as a sidebar, because we are just about on the final page.
01:35:43
Speaker
No, we are on the final page. oh we are on the final page. Yeah, we can take a three-minute side tangent about, we just had some technical difficulties, fuck it. um It could have elevated Attack of the Clones from a shitty movie to one of the greatest, like, midnight movies of all time.
01:36:01
Speaker
Just one... tiny little edit where it's it's mace windu played by samuel jackson holding a purple lightsaber to the throat of count dooku christopher lee there's so much talent there's so much talent there's so much talent we squandered it we ruined it we had a scene with christopher lee and samuel jackson together and samuel jackson never said the line well he says the line this party's over It should have been. This party's over, motherfucker.
01:36:34
Speaker
It 100% should have been.
Departure from Dublin and Return to the US
01:36:37
Speaker
Instantly would have gotten the movie so much more respect. Correct. At local repertory theaters. For all of us, really. From all of us.
01:36:47
Speaker
We were so close. <unk> Speaking of so close, Orson's last performance with The Gate would be Hamlet and the young actor after a wild and carousing party in Dublin sets his sights on a much larger venue, London, which is where he is as of March 1932. He arrives in London, but has difficulty finding work even with his successes in Dublin.
01:37:11
Speaker
ah considering the fact that a lot of British actors were out of work at the time. ah There didn't really seem to be anything for any American, regardless of age whatsoever. And so Wells, out of work, decides that he's going to take a train out to Ayotte St. Lawrence to visit the home of his one of his heroes, the great George Bernard Shaw, writer of Pygmalion, which was itself the... um What's the... What's the to word I'm looking for?
01:37:39
Speaker
ah Basis for My Fair Lady. Good. Lerner and Loeb musical. um Wells apparently had a very easy and memorable conversation ranging on such topics as theater to Dublin gossip because Shaw himself was a native Dubliner.
01:37:55
Speaker
Good. Good. What didn't happen? Who's to say? Yeah. Always meet your heroes. Yep. well Always go great. Just like it did for Orson Welles. ah Welles then went on to Paris, which would later inspire the song by Jimmy Buffett, where he slipped easily back into the partying lifestyle he'd adopted in Dublin.
01:38:14
Speaker
After too many months away, though, Wells began to feel somewhat homesick, though for where exactly he could not say. Not for Kenosha or Chicago or Highland Park or even Grand Detour, ah but possibly for Little Woodstock, Illinois, home of the Todd School for Boys.
01:38:32
Speaker
ah Wells even went so far as to write letters home to Roger Hill, hinting that he finally felt as though he could be ready to teach theater should Wells or should Hill rather be open to uh, offering such a position to him at Todd.
01:38:49
Speaker
Uh, yeah, it makes sense. Like make sure you get a job before you go to the place. It's a, it's a sound strategy. And I will tell you, this is a strategy that I myself once employed after, uh, spending four years in college, uh, studying religion.
01:39:05
Speaker
um I actually reached out to my old high school principal, uh, at the Christian school that I attended and was like, Hey, do you need a Bible teacher? um And he told me no. And then two years later, called me up and said, hey, were you serious about that Bible teacher thing? And I did that for eight years.
01:39:23
Speaker
Well, dang. All right. That works out. It works.
01:39:28
Speaker
ah let's ah We got got two more sections here. i'll I'll take the penultimate one. March 15th, the Ides, as they say. Orson arrives in New York City by ocean liner, stabs an emperor to death. His seven months... No, he does that later. Much as that later. We'll get to that.
01:39:47
Speaker
Right. He hasn't yet melt... um ah Charles Foster Kane is the fictional one. Fuck, what's the real dude? William Randolph Hearst. That's the one.
01:39:58
Speaker
Uh, when in New York, take a shit on the doorstep of the Hearst building. His seven month stint in Ireland, having come to a close, he spent some time peddling his resume to agents and producers in Broadway.
01:40:09
Speaker
But the name Orson Welles carried far more weight in Dublin than it did in New York. So finally, on March 18th, three days after arriving in New York, he arrives back home in Chicago by train to much fanfare, thanks in large part to his guardian, Dr. Bernstein, who basically let all the papers know that he was returning the favored son, having made a name for himself in Ireland.
01:40:32
Speaker
ah His return was heralded by the Chicago Tribune, and despite Wells' luggage exploding on the platform at the station... Aw, buddy. There's that thread i I put down at the beginning. budy ah He returned a conquering hero who had made a name for himself in the world of theater and still more of that to come.
01:40:52
Speaker
Our sources for today's episode, Simon Callow's Orson Welles, Volume 1, The Road to Xanadu, Patrick McGilligan's Young Orson Welles, The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane, and Welles and Bogdanovich's This is Orson Welles, as well as the documentary filming Othello.
01:41:11
Speaker
Good times. There it is. Good times. We made it through Ireland. We made it through seven months yeah in, uh, in under two hours. Not bad for us. Not for us. Not at
Reflections on Welles' Film Rankings
01:41:22
Speaker
all.
01:41:22
Speaker
Um, there is one more piece of business that we need to discuss, which is to say there was a piece of Wells news that has happened in the interim between last recording and this recording, which is to say, it actually, um, yes, would have, uh, on May uh,
01:41:39
Speaker
ah Gold Derby, which is, a I believe, a betting site um known for like um various um betting predictions, um has ah ranked a its list of 13, Wells' 13 films ranked from worst to best. Hope, would you like to take a stab at where some of Wells' films land on this list.
01:42:07
Speaker
Oh, gosh. Okay, so let's start with Kane. I feel like putting Kane at one would be too easy. Hmm.
01:42:19
Speaker
Now, let me ask you this. Are they writing this list from a viewpoint of ah being Wells' fanboys? Hmm. Or are they writing it from being just the film in general, like film historian ah standpoint?
01:42:36
Speaker
I would say it's probably somewhere in the middle, but closer to Fanboy. Fanboy. Okay. Okay. So it's not Kane first. It's going to be one of the weirder ones. I'm going to say Magnificent Ambersons is number one because that's got the whole... Ah, it's number two. Sons of bitches. I was close.
01:42:55
Speaker
Magnificent Ambersons comes in at number two, which I feel is high for Ambersons. Ambersons is great, but... Oh, no, I'm sorry. Ambersons comes in at number three. My apologies. Ah. Ambersons is great, but flawed. I would probably put it in my own rankings at four or five.
01:43:09
Speaker
The little that I know of Magnificent Ambersons is that it was taken away from him, recut. His original version was destroyed. Yes. I...
01:43:18
Speaker
I am in a fandom where I'm like, no, man, but you've got to read the script that was written for episode nine before Carrie Fisher died, man. That's the real story.
01:43:28
Speaker
like you You are that type of fangirl, 100%. I'm trying to get into the head game of a fanboy here for Orson as ah as a slightly uneducated fangirl myself of Orson, which is why I'm doing this podcast. So I can learn about Orson Welles.
01:43:42
Speaker
um Yeah, you're learning right along everyone else. You might as well just read them off. All right. You want to start at the bottom and work our way up? Yes, absolutely. Unless it's F for fake at the bottom. Don't break my heart like that.
01:43:54
Speaker
ah Number 13 is actually his last ah film, his only posthumous release, The Other Side of the Wind, which came out in 2018. Really? That was bad The movie that you could never get funding to complete?
01:44:07
Speaker
That was bad? We already have a guest lined up for that episode, and it is his favorite Wells film. Gosh, I hope there's no line in 38 years. that in 20 years we get to that. ah In 12th place, Macbeth, the ah the um what's the Poverty Row film that he made of Macbeth coming in at number 12.
01:44:28
Speaker
um In 11th place, The Stranger, which is kind of his Cold War thriller, his proof that I can make a i can make us film on time and under budget.
01:44:40
Speaker
uh the stranger with uh him and edward g robinson fucking great great movie um in 10th place the only wells film i've never seen the immortal story ah with him and gene moreau uh in ninth place mr arcadon um another one that I very much enjoy, but I would definitely include that in the lesser Wells echelon myself, uh, in eighth place. Uh, and this is where we start to get into just like wall to wall bangers from, from end to beginning, ah lady from Shanghai, a movie that I think is amazing. I fucking love lady from Shanghai. Um, Wells and his, um,
01:45:24
Speaker
I think at the time they were separated, but his wife, Rita Hayworth and a citizen Kane star, Everett Sloan as the villain who is phenomenal ah in seventh place. The trial based on the film by Franz Kafka, starring Tony Perkins as K Jean Moroz in that one as well. Wells himself plays the prosecutor in sixth place. His ah Palm door winning film, Othello from 1951.
01:45:53
Speaker
ah In fifth place, here you go, Hope. At the bottom of the top five, it's f for Fake. Okay. All right. Make it into the five. Make it into the top five. And I would absolutely put F for Fake in Orson's top five, personally.
01:46:07
Speaker
god it's It's good. It's fucking great. It's a hypnotically weird movie that I adore. Yeah, it's it's amazing. It is absolutely incredible. In fourth place, and I think this one is is just tragically low, ah Chimes at Midnight.
01:46:23
Speaker
um okay I put that at number two or three easy. and okay Easy. We're going to have to do a ranking at the end of all of this. Oh, absolutely. yeah At least of the films, if not of ah fucking everything. we'll We'll do two separate lists, films and everything.
01:46:40
Speaker
ah Number three is the aforementioned Magnificent Ambersons. Okay. All right. um Which is, it's again, great film. now Now, hang on. Let me guess. Is Kane... One or two?
01:46:51
Speaker
it's It's one of them. Motherfuckers, it's gotta to be one of them. Make a call. I'm saying it's two. i'm still I'm going i'm going like Dark Horse favorite here.
01:47:01
Speaker
In second place, Touch of Evil. God damn it. Put Kane number one. Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh. Everybody does that. Marlena Dietrich, Akeem Tamarov, Jaja Gabor, Joseph Kiella, uh, Kiella, sorry.
01:47:19
Speaker
And then at number one, What is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, Citizen Kane. I get it. It's my favorite Wells film too. I put Kane at number one.
01:47:31
Speaker
it is It's my favorite movie of all time. I fucking love the film. And I don't say that to sound like a pretentious art school boy, but just because I do legitimately love the movie.
01:47:42
Speaker
Every time I watch it, I get something new out of it. it is ah It is an absolute masterclass. The way he like changed the form in ways that we're still commenting on.
01:47:53
Speaker
um Absolutely unbelievable. I'm really excited to talk about his ah picnic on Skull Island. ah But that's really just something I like to to keep an eye out for in that movie.
01:48:05
Speaker
Sure. um Yeah, okay. Kane is number one. I guess I have to respect that because it is... true, I guess. But though that's Gold Derby's list. Again, I completely disagree with some of those rankings.
Podcast Closing Comments and Future Topics
01:48:22
Speaker
I think the top five is pretty solid. There are maybe one or two that I would shuffle around and maybe one that I would move out of there entirely. But it's it's a solid list. It's kind of hard to argue with some of those. But what what do you think? Let us know how you would rank Orson's 13 films.
01:48:38
Speaker
ah Shoot us an email at wellsupod at gmail.com. Let us know how you would rank those. And we might read... your letter here on the podcast uh if i so choose to do so there's a bat hanging above the doors wow steven is giving me a look i that's not a fan my you are welcome my dear yikes a rooney um Yeah, there's a bat above the door that says we have the right to refuse service.
01:49:11
Speaker
And it's just pointed at the mailbag at all times. There it is. um Gosh, is that's that right is that everything we have to do today? That's our episode. we We checked off all the boxes. We got some social medias, I guess. We got a Tumblr, Wells U, or Wells University, I think is the full Tumblr.
01:49:30
Speaker
Uh, let's see if I've done anything with that besides i showed our first episode. i was going say, I should probably put that on the show notes going forward. Probably. Which means I'm going need you to send me a link to that so can that notes. and i shall, I shall do so once we hang up.
01:49:45
Speaker
But I believe we have other socials as well. We do. We're also on Blue Sky and YouTube at Well's You Pod. And you can you can follow me on social media if you and and if you want.
01:49:58
Speaker
I'm at Chewy Walrus on Blue Sky and Letterboxd. And that's it. And i hate social media. So you can find me at hiimhope.com. That's H-I-G-H, I'm hope.com. Side note, that's the title I've been using on Discord for the lesbian server.
01:50:16
Speaker
I'm just calling it a lesbian server. They won't take offense. It's accurate. um They're lesbians. They're fine with it Despite the title effectively being me introducing myself as, you know, hi, I'm hope. so It's a dumb pun.
01:50:29
Speaker
Everybody keeps calling me hi, which is still accurate. i was going to say not incorrect. Yeah. I did a bong rip in the middle of this episode. That's to be fair. Tucker, I hope you edited that out. I have the show notes ah that I will screenshot to you, ah which side note, thank you to ah ah Tucker for um making a sound. Okay.
01:50:52
Speaker
I am now no longer living in a wooden cavern in Philadelphia. Something we are all grateful for. Yes, I apologize for that greatly. My new place has carpeting and um and heating.
01:51:06
Speaker
It's pretty nice. that You know what? Coming from a place very much like yours with no carpeting and no heating, it fucking rips. Something about it. The first month I lived there, I had no hot water, so I was taking cold showers for a month.
01:51:21
Speaker
That sucks. I'm gearing up to leave a scathing review. Tell us about some of your other podcast projects that you're working on. I have several, ah two of which are on hiatus as of sorts right now. One of which is high on cartoons, which I do with my partner, Bex.
01:51:37
Speaker
ah Spouse, I guess I can say. I was going to say spouse now, yeah. ah We should be coming back with season three of Duck Takes. any time now i think he had to do i think can't wait to guest on that dark wing duck episode oh god that's a two-parter that's we're gonna do six hours on that one yes we will but then i've also got uh uh with my good good friend and uh uh bridesmaid ella chesery i've got uh the matrix reclamations where two trans girls talk about the matrix from a trans perspective that's also been on hiatus because ella is the
01:52:09
Speaker
busiest human being alive but and you just you just couldn't take taking time off so you called me up and said bitch let's talk and i said hell yeah i need a creative output where i can info dump about my favorite things god to ah And now, and I'm going to say this title, as far as I know, it's still a working title, but it's called The Lanes Between.
01:52:32
Speaker
And the goal is to have a ah biweekly reading of ah various fanfics in the arcane Kate Vi shipping fandom. So that's a niche.
01:52:44
Speaker
niche podcast. so like That's a bunch of words you said that I do not understand. Cherish your ignorance, my friend. I shall. I have read Stephen King length novels about these assholes falling in love over and over again that people have written for free. Did I mention I love fan fiction? It's entirely a passion project and I adore it. It's the best.
01:53:07
Speaker
And then are you are you doing some work with the ah the Philly Roller Derby that you want to run? I am not presently at this time, no. i am What about in July when this episode drops?
01:53:18
Speaker
ah Probably also still no. Okay. Because I'm still suffering from... Burnout from living in today's society. I mean fair. Very, very fair.
01:53:31
Speaker
Aggressively fair. Yeah. yeah It's existing as a queer person, a trans woman in modern America is... it's It's energy consuming, I'll say.
01:53:42
Speaker
I can only fucking imagine. Yeah, why do you think I hurl myself into the lesbian group chat so hard? i Touche. I don't know. I'm not a part of that group chat, so I can't No, you're not Be thankful.
01:53:54
Speaker
What do you got going on, Stephen? I am, well, like I mentioned earlier, I'm in a play right now that will have ah completely closed a full month, maybe a month and a half ago by the time this episode drops.
01:54:06
Speaker
It's okay. You're fine. I'm sure we had a great turnout and I'm sure everything went well. ah But I am also the host of the Disenfranchise podcast with my friend Tucker and sometimes my friend Brett.
01:54:17
Speaker
And we talk about movies that were supposed to have gotten Hollywood franchises That for one reason or another didn't. It's usually money.
01:54:27
Speaker
Yeah. And then I'm also. Usually or often bad. Yeah. ah could Could also be but bad. um and And oftentimes it's both. um And then I'm also a frequent contributor to the Pod and the Pendulum podcast, a movie that covers horror franchise, horror movie franchises.
01:54:47
Speaker
Horror franchise. Horror movie franchises. Horror franchise. One episode and one movie at a time. i think as of the time of this release, we're probably working our way through.
01:55:01
Speaker
It's the summer of George. So we're working our way through the Romero Living Dead films. Oh, hell yeah. Those movies rule. those movie They don't, but they're fun as hell. Yeah, they are. At least the first three are.
01:55:11
Speaker
ah The last three, jury's out. um You can also check out the novel that I co-wrote with my partner, Mandy Gossage, called Check In, Check Out, available on Amazon in either paperback or e-book.
01:55:25
Speaker
ah Please read it. I had a lot of fun writing it, and it's like goofy as shit. I saw it when I was unpacking, and I don't know where it got to. Put that one on the desk with the Wells books. Yeah, I'm going to have to. Yeah, yeah.
01:55:40
Speaker
ah But that's... Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. and Oh, no, I was going to say, but there's so much fan fiction. I know. um but Just think of this as ah fan fiction about characters you've never you don't know yet.
01:55:53
Speaker
Well, no, you have to introduce them to me as your OCs, and then I will be interested, because that's how my Tumblr brain works. Okay. I don't know what any of that means, but I'm ah i'm sure I will figure it out.
01:56:05
Speaker
um doing again a visual gag where I shake my head emphatically after I that. Cherish your ignorance, my friend. Cherishing. Every minute of every day I cherish. Yeah, it's that that place you dare not go, ah you will look there and see me staring back at you.
01:56:21
Speaker
ah
01:56:24
Speaker
And that is episode six of Wells university. Orson go bras, what we're calling it because I think that is fucking hilarious. Terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible.
01:56:36
Speaker
Sometimes comes are funny. um Next week, we're going to be talking about at least the years, 1932 to 1933, during which time Wells returns to Todd and along with his mentor, Roger Hill,
01:56:52
Speaker
ah begins a new and exciting project that will consume at least a significant portion of the men's time ah during the course of that year. So that is what we're covering next week, or at least that's the plan. We'll see we'll see where life takes us.
01:57:07
Speaker
We'll see what actually happens. Yeah. But until then, i am one of your hosts, Stephen Foxworthy. I'm Hope Stow. and until next time, class dismissed.
01:57:22
Speaker
Yeah, we don't have a sign-off phrase for this show. We don't. I feel like, I mean, class dismissed fits the theme, but it's not very Orson. It does. Do we want to say class dismissed as Orson Welles together? Ooh, that could be fun. I'm going to push the mic away from my face a little bit.
01:57:39
Speaker
All right, so um it's the the line is class dismissed. Right. And do you do you want to do... Do you want to do your serious Orson and all do comedy Orson? Or do you both want to do comedy or both serious? or i i I can do, I can go either way.
01:57:57
Speaker
Okay. I'm trying to think of how I would do. i think i'm i'm going channel. Weirdly, I'm going a channel Unicron for this. Oh boy. Great. I'm excited for it.
01:58:08
Speaker
All right. On three? three. right. Three, two, one. Class dismissed. Class dismissed. I don't know what the fuck I just did there, but it wasn't Orson Welles. Good night, to everybody!