My Lunches with Orson (27 page)

OW:
Not a chance.

HJ:
All right, good. I like clear answers. They make things very simple. I don't have to tell you all about her, and what she did and didn't do, and what she said and didn't say.

OW:
Too bad about Steve Martin. The Tennants controlled the English theater for forty years. They had the whole West End by the short hairs. When there was a West End, that is—it was totally Tennant. But very hard to get a job there if you weren't homosexual. Really. A real Mafia working against the few straights who were around. Even Donald Wolfit couldn't get on the West End stage. Everybody, unfairly, made fun of him because he was the only non-queer actor alive in the golden age of acting.

HJ:
Wolfit was Sir in
The Dresser
, [Ronald] Harwood's play. But Harwood was actually his dresser.

OW:
You'd have to pretend to be homosexual to get ahead. Either be queer or act like you were queer. Larry kind of did that.

HJ:
And you think it was a political move.

OW:
Absolutely.

HJ:
Richardson was certainly not homosexual.

OW:
Well, you see, they didn't really take to him until his old age. Not when he was at the Old Vic. Not until he did his great hit,
Dangerous Corner
, written by [J. B.] Priestley. He was one of the very few straight actors flying the flag for the heteros. As was Jack Hawkins. I wanted Hawkins to play Iago for me in the theater.

HJ:
That was in '51? When you were Othello?

OW:
Yeah. And I would have had him. Jack would have loved to do Iago, as anybody would. But Larry didn't want him.

HJ:
Because he was straight?

OW:
It was Larry's theater, and the leading actors had to be approved by him. So I had to use [Peter] Finch.

HJ:
He was straight.

OW:
But he was fucking Vivien.

HJ:
Did Larry know that?

OW:
He knew it, sure. He wanted to go away on a yachting trip with Vivie, and keep Finch busy on the London stage. And Finch was a wonderful Iago. But not as good as Hawkins would have been. He played him as eaten up with bitterness. I'd rather play Iago than any part in Shakespeare, but I'm not built for Iago. That's the part, though. Not Othello. You know, everything Iago says is in prose, and everything Othello says is in poetry. Now, look at the advantage that gives the actor right there. And—did I tell you this? [Henry] Irving and [Edwin] Booth played Othello on alternate nights in London. One night Iago, one night Othello. Booth was famous for his Iago. So they expected him to steal it. Then Irving did the same thing. Each of them stole the play as Iago. Stole it, no matter which one played it. But you need great, big actors like that.

HJ:
I saw the film version of the
The Dresser
last night. At one point, Wolfit or Sir, says, “Lear is the greatest tragic part of all time.”

OW:
Of course.
The Dresser
is a parody of
Lear
. The dresser is the fool—

HJ:
Oh, my God. You know, I never even got that. I feel stupid.

OW:
It's a little clumsy, but that's what it is. The writer, Harwood, is trying to say a lot more than he needed to say to make a very good vehicle play. You mustn't look too closely at it. But that's what it is.

HJ:
Albert Finney is magnificent.

OW:
Stick a dagger in me! I tried so hard to get the rights to that play. You've ruined my lunch.

HJ:
You'll be even more upset when you see it, because you'll think about what you could have done with it.

OW:
I have no intention of seeing it. I know it'll be good, and I know Finney will be great in it—that's why I won't see it. Why should I make myself sick? If I had any hope that it was bad, I'd go. Do you know how I screwed it up? I had the idea of having the dresser played by Michael Caine, not Tom Courtenay. I thought Michael would be something. Instead of Courtenay's flagrant queen performance. But Courtenay had a kind of lock on the property. And that's how come I lost it.

HJ:
The money guy who put it together was a friend of mine. I remember, he said, “It has to be Courtenay.” Because he played the role on the stage.

OW:
If only I had said, “Courtenay is all right with me,” I might have got it. Courtenay was a friend of mine. But I was so keen on it being Michael Caine, because I don't think anybody had
any
idea how good that play would be if it were
not
played the way Courtenay plays it. If it had the kind of richness and comedy and warmth, furious tenderness mixed with bitchiness that Michael would have brought to it. Because he's maybe the best actor on the screen now, he's so good. I'm sure Finney is great as Sir, but that part should have been done by any one of a number of actors who are the right age, and don't have to act it. It would have been wonderful with Richardson. Can you imagine Michael Caine and Richardson in that thing? And it would have been a great way for Richardson to go out, you know. Because he never made it in Shakespeare, except as Falstaff, which is written in prose. It would have blown the roof off. It would have broken your heart! There wouldn't have been that slightly mean feeling that you get.

HJ:
I thought you didn't see it. Oh, you've seen clips from it, you said.

OW:
Long clips.

HJ:
What I thought was wrong with the movie was that Finney was too good playing Sir playing Lear. He couldn't resist grabbing you, when he's supposed to be the epitome of every bad actor's need for the audience.

OW:
Just like Larry was too good as
The Entertainer
. But, you see, I didn't read it as a play about a bad actor. Sir had to go on tour because he wasn't queer, you know. But
The Dresser
absolutely annihilates any possibility of my doing my movie, which is about a very different kind of actor. They wouldn't like it as much.

HJ:
It doesn't annihilate it, Orson. As you say, it's completely different. Yours is an Ameri—

OW:
No, in mine, Sir is not American. He's Irish. It was based on [Anew] McMaster, who was the most beautiful man who ever lived. He looked like a god! He had blond hair, and he had the most marvelous voice you ever heard in your life! McMaster really was gay. So I couldn't play him. I could only direct it. And when he was about twenty-three years old, he got panned in the West End, went back to Ireland, and played pinups—little platforms built in church halls, and so on—for the rest of his life.

HJ:
So he didn't tour because he was straight, he toured because his feelings had been hurt on the stage in Lon—

OW:
And each year he could go to fewer and fewer places, because he would have fucked more and more choirboys. So his tour was increasingly reduced. And then he would play four or six weeks in Dublin. He played Othello with nothing but a little G-string. Mac Liammóir, who was his brother-in-law—

HJ:
Mac Liammóir was married to his sister?

OW:
His sister was a bull dyke. And these two wild queens were known in Dublin as Sodom and Gomorrah. I beg your pardon, I ruined that joke. Sodom and Begorra.

HJ:
I've heard about Mac Liammóir all my life. I never heard of McMaster.

OW:
Nobody heard of McMaster, nobody, 'cause he stayed in the smalls of Ireland. And he had all these famous people who worked with him at one time or another, including [Harold] Pinter, who was his stage manager. And when he died, Pinter wrote a book about him. I would love to get a copy. I've never met Pinter. I saw him at the guild hall this last time when I was speaking. And he was near, and I wanted to go up to him, but no way could I push my way past His Royal Highness and say, “Mr. Pinter, how can I get a copy of your book?”

 

19. “Gary Cooper turns me right into a girl!”

In which Orson argues that Cooper and Humphrey Bogart are stars, not actors, and goes on to explain the difference. Bogart thought
Casablanca
was the worst picture he ever did while it was in production.

*   *   *

H
ENRY
J
AGLOM
:
Is Bogart as good as I think he is?

O
RSON
W
ELLES
:
No. Not nearly as good as you believe. Bogart was a second-rate actor.
Really
a second-rate actor. He was a fascinating personality who captured the imagination of the world, but he never gave a good performance in his life. Only satisfactory. Just listen to a reading of any line of his.

HJ:
What about
The Caine Mutiny
?

OW:
I saw Lloyd Nolan play it on the stage. He was hair-raising. He made Bogart look sick. There's no comparison. Bogart in the thirties did the worst thing with Bette Davis, when he had that Irish accent, that I've ever seen anybody do.

HJ:
I think that was
Dark Victory
. To me, he gives the perfect performance in
Casablanca
. And he was good in
In a Lonely Place
.

OW:
Oh, come on, he had that little lisp. Bogart was a well-educated, upper-class American trying to be tough. You didn't believe him as a tough guy. Anybody who knew him as I did …

HJ:
Do you always have to add “as I did”?

OW:
I knew him in the theater, before he went to Hollywood as just another out-of-work leading man. We were so glad he got a job, you know.

HJ:
You didn't like him in
The Petrified Forest
?

OW:
Well, I didn't hate him. I was glad he got by with it, but Warner Brothers had five tough-guy actors who could've done it just as well.

HJ:
They had that horrible guy they offered
Casablanca
to. George Raft.

OW:
Yeah, he was a terrible actor, too. What's interesting is that George Raft knew he was the world's worst actor. He told me that all the time. He'd say, “I'm just lucky, you know. I can't say a line.”

HJ:
I know you love Gary Cooper, but to me, he was just a very pretty George Raft. All I see is a man stumbling over his lines, trying to remember what's going on. But you're queer for him.

OW:
I am. Gary Cooper turns me right into a girl! And you love Bogie. Neither one of them were much good. But we're in love with 'em.

HJ:
And yet, you tell me Gary Cooper is great, and …

OW:
Well, no, just that he's a great movie star, a great movie creation. That's the thing about a movie star. We really don't judge them as actors. They're the creatures that we fell in love with at a certain time. And that has to do with who we want to have as our heroes. It's absolutely impossible to have a serious critical discussion about enthusiasms for movie stars. Because a movie star is an animal separate from acting. Sometimes, he or she is a great actor. Sometimes a third-rate one. But the star is something that you fall in love with …

HJ:
We don't have movie stars like that these days. I agree Bogart was lousy in
Dark Victory
.

OW:
Dark Victory
was the first Broadway play that I lit.

HJ:
Lit? I didn't know you did lighting. You were a lighting director?

OW:
That's why Gregg Toland wanted to do
Kane
, because he had seen my lighting and—

HJ:
You always gave Toland the credit for lighting
Kane
, for being the greatest lighting director ever.

OW:
Yes. But I lit it.

HJ:
All right, but you have to admit Bogart is phenomenally good in
The Maltese Falcon
.

OW:
Somehow we always get back to Bogart. No, for me, [Sydney] Greenstreet is the great performance. I had seen Greenstreet all my life in the theater. He was the most extraordinary supporting actor in the Theatre Guild. A short, little tubby man just right for small drama. Then, in
The Maltese Falcon
I suddenly saw this gigantic screen-filling personality, and from then on, for the rest of his career, he was wonderful in every part he did. I adored him as a person. Adorable. Adorable man.

HJ:
What about that movie with [Lauren] Bacall, her first movie?
To Have and Have Not
?

OW:
It's a wonderful Hemingway story that they screwed up badly. So ridiculous compared to the story.

HJ:
The hurricane one was
Key Largo
, wasn't it?

OW:
I like that movie better.

HJ:
Do you have that in the theater, too, stars who don't necessarily act?

OW:
Oh, yes. The Lunts. The last play they did was so embarrassing I didn't know where to look. When they were good, they were—you saw
The Visit
?

HJ:
Yes.

OW:
They were among the greatest actors I've ever seen in my life. Truly, truly. They were unbelievable.

HJ:
In what way? I wish I could understand.

OW:
It was like having roses thrown at you. But the Lunts got too old. They were sour toward the end. They got bad. Actors either get better or worse as they get old.