The War of the Worlds Murder (29 page)

I shook my head. “Funny—here Houseman is, quarter of a century later, having his greatest success as an old man...”

The 1973 film
The Paper Chase
had been a big hit with Houseman portraying crusty Professor Kingsfield, which had sparked a latter-day acting career for the producer.

Gibson picked up on it. “... while Welles had his greatest success as a
young
man, with the Mercury Theatre and
Kane
. Odd bookends to two careers, both of which would probably’ve been greater if they’d remained collaborators.”

We sipped beer.

I smiled at him in open admiration. “You know, for a fan like me? Boggles my mind to imagine a Shadow film written by you and directed by, and starring, Orson Welles!”

The jowly, avuncular face split in a bittersweet grin. “That would’ve been fun. But it’s not like I don’t have anything to show for it all.”

“How so?”

With a magician’s grace and showmanship, he removed the impressive gold ring with the fire opal, the replica of the Shadow’s ring that he said he always wore.

“I received this in the mail,” Gibson said, “about a month after that memorable weekend. There was no note, but the return address was the St. Regis Hotel.... Look at the inscription.”

Inside the ring were the words:
From Lamont Cranston
.

“You know,” Gibson said, “I sent Orson a package once myself, keeping an old promise....”

Again Gibson stared into the past.

“During the Second World War,” he said, “Orson put up a tent on Cahuenga Boulevard in L.A., and he and his Mercury players put on
The Mercury Wonder Show
, strictly for servicemen, and for free—sawing Rita Hayworth and Marlene Dietrich in half, Agnes Moorehead playing the calliope, Joe Cotten playing stooge, lots of pretty starlets of the Dolores Donovan variety, as magician’s assistants. He took his magic show to a lot of army camps, too.”

I had no idea where this was going, but I remained as hypnotized by this great pulp storyteller as the victims of the Shadow.

“Hearing about this magic show prompted me to keep my promise,” Gibson said. “I sent him the works on my Hindu wand routine...the one Houdini liked, but didn’t live to use? And Orson put it in his act—the night he got it.”

That seemed as good a curtain line as any, and I picked up the check. Then we walked out into the lobby, chatting, and at the elevators went our separate ways.

I talked to Gibson once more, casually, at another Bouchercon a few years later in New York, where he performed his magic act for an enthusiastic audience of mystery writers and fans. In his last years, Gibson enjoyed these fun encounters with his public (he, too, became a Bouchercon Guest of Honor), thanks to the efforts of enthusiasts like Otto Penzler, Anthony Tollin and J. Randolph Cox. The man who was “Maxwell Grant” finally had a little of the large fame he deserved.

He was still active as a freelance writer—and practicing magician—right up to his death in 1996.

Welles left us in October of 1985, at an ancient and yet so very young seventy. He had become the quintessential maverick of moviemakers, seeking money and shooting movies in every corner of the globe, funding his films with acting jobs that were often beneath him and, most famously, as a TV commercial pitchman for wine and other products; despite the legend that, after
Citizen Kane
, he had no real career as a director, his body of work—not counting scores of acting appearances, and projects finished by others or as yet unreleased—includes thirteen films, most of which are wonderful, every one of which is of interest.

He, too, was active up to the day he died: in a manner that would have suited Gibson, the Shadow actor departed at a desk, working on a screenplay.

At his typewriter.

A TIP OF THE SHADOW’S SLOUCH HAT

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE:
THE READER IS
advised not to peruse this bibliographic essay prior to finishing the novel.

The War of the Worlds Murder
—like previous books in my so-called “disaster” series—features a real-life crime-fiction writer as the amateur detective in a fact-based mystery. This is, however, the first time I have used a writer I actually met and spoke to at length.

That does not mean that the fictionalized memoirs that open and close this novel should be viewed as a verbatim account of my real meeting with Walter Gibson. I will say only that much of it did happen...just not all of it. I do not possess the gift of total recall, so conversations not only with Gibson but such writer friends as Robert J. Randisi, Percy Spurlark Parker and the late Chris Steinbrunner range from approximations to outright fabrications. The encounter with a Mickey Spillane–hating Mystery Writers of America icon (who appears here under a nom de plume) certainly did occur at Bouchercon Six. To this day people talk to me about it, and I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.

I choose not to reveal whether or not Walter Gibson told me of his adventures working with Orson Welles on a Shadow
project the weekend “The War of the Worlds” was aired. Certainly none of the official accounts note his presence; however, Gibson did know Welles through magic circles—several sources confirm this—and one source (mentioned below) insists that, so to speak, Gibson cast his own Shadow, recommending the young actor for the radio role of Lamont Cranston. It’s also true that Gibson wore an elaborate Shadow ring, inscribed to him by “Cranston.”

My longtime research associate, George Hagenauer, is a pulp-magazine enthusiast, and was typically helpful, including devising the “murder” herein, and generally aiding on the magic-oriented aspects of the story.

Leonard Maltin—to whom this book was dedicated prior to his coming to my aid here, I must add—responded to my cry for research help by connecting me with a man who was present that historic night, directing the CBS radio show that would go on right after “The War of the Worlds.”

Norman Corwin was in the studio above Studio One in the Columbia Broadcasting Building on October 30, 1938, and in 2004 he was graciously willing to share with me his memories about radio in general and the CBS Building in particular. Mr. Corwin—at 94, sharper than I have ever been—was warm, friendly, funny and patient. Only fans of the Golden Age of Radio will understand what it meant for me to talk to Norman Corwin, not just a pioneer in that medium, but one of the few greats of the form—it was like writing a movie book and being helped by Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin or John Ford. Thank you, Mr. Corwin. Thank you, Leonard.

That said, I must point out that any inaccuracies in this book are my own. A few are even intentional. Some of what Mr. Corwin told me about life and work in the Columbia
Broadcasting Building in the late 1930s did not suit my purposes as a mystery writer, and I ignored or revised the truth into fiction as needed; but while nothing that is wrong here is the fault of Mr. Corwin, or my other research associates, much that is right belongs to them.

In this vein, I will admit that the term “pulp” was not in widespread use in 1938—“character magazines” would seem to be the correct coinage for the market Walter Gibson mastered. I run into this from time to time—“art deco” is a designation that came along after the period it describes, for example—and, while I generally do my best to avoid anachronisms, I occasionally choose to use a “wrong” term (like “pulps”) because in the larger context of what I’m doing, it’s “right.”

Also, inconsistencies between sources were frequent here; a typical example: some say the police entered Studio One before the broadcast was over and stared threateningly at Welles through the control-room glass, while other accounts indicate the police rushed in right after the broadcast ended (one even says the police showed up several hours later). In such instances, I trust either my instincts or follow the needs of my narrative.

The connection between Welles and Gibson is not directly dealt with in Thomas J. Shimeld’s biography of the Shadow creator,
Walter B. Gibson and the Shadow
(2003). Still, it’s hard for me to imagine writing this novel without that vital resource, and any sense of the man that might be found in these pages results as much from Shimeld’s good book as my own meeting with Gibson. To date, the only other book-length work on Gibson is
Man of Magic and Mystery: A Guide to the Work of Walter B. Gibson
(1988) by J. Randolph Cox, a bibliographic work of limited but appreciated help to this novel. Other works consulted relating to Gibson include his own
The Shadow Scrapbook
(1979) (introduction by Chris Steinbrunner);
Walter Gibson’s Encyclopedia of Magic & Conjuring
(1976); and
The Shadow Knows
...(1977), Diana Cohen and Irene Burns Hoeflinger, a collection of radio scripts.

Anthony Tollin has contributed his expertise on the history of radio to numerous fact-filled booklets included with boxed sets of old radio shows on CD and cassette, often for the first-rate Radio Spirits. Such booklets on both the Shadow and Orson Welles were most helpful here.

The notion for this novel seemed a natural—that the sixth “disaster” novel would involve the world’s most famous
fake
disaster. And I frankly thought it would be a relatively easy book to write, compared to such major events as the Pearl Harbor attack and the sinking of the
Lusitania
. What George Hagenauer later reminded me—when I was drowning in research—was that when I wrote my Black Dahlia novel,
Angel in Black
(2001), the single Orson Welles chapter took as much research as the entire rest of the book, which covered a very complicated and convoluted murder case.

This novel took much longer to write than is usually my process, because I just could not stop reading about Welles and watching his films. In terms of the latter, the late Charlie Roberts of Darker Image Video provided numerous rare items, including the American Film Institute tribute to Welles, a BBC documentary on the filmmaker, and a vintage TV play, “The Night America Trembled.” I screened most of Welles’s films, including
Chimes at Midnight
(1966) and
The Immortal Story
(1968), criminally unavailable in the United States, and three documentaries: Gary Graver’s
Working with Orson Welles
(1995);
It’s All True
(1994), narrated by my pal Miguel Ferrer; and
The Dominici Affair
(2001), which explores a famous French murder
case (the latter two films attempt to assemble and complete unfinished Welles projects).

And Welles touches on “The War of the Worlds” in his wonderful free-form documentary,
F for Fake
(1973)—in which he wanders between shots in a Shadow cape and slouch hat, and all “excerpts” from the broadcast are bogus!

Books on this great American filmmaker/actor are not in short supply, and the ones I found most beneficial are
Citizen Welles
(1989), Frank Brady;
Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu
(1997), Simon Callow; the Welles-approved
Orson Welles: A Biography
(1995), Barbara Learning; and
Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles
(1996), David Thomson.

But I would like to single out
This Is Orson Welles
by Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, as a wonderful collection of interviews (edited and rewritten and shaped by Welles). The revised, expanded edition of 1998 is much preferred, as the additional autobiographical introductory essay (“My Orson”) by Bogdanovich is well worth the price of admission, and arguably the best glimpse into the real Welles available anywhere. No one writes about the important figures of classic Hollywood with more intelligence, candor, humor, warmth, insight and humanity than Bogdanovich.

Other Welles books consulted include:
Citizen Kane: The Fiftieth-Anniversary Album
(1990), Harlan Lebo;
The Making of Citizen Kane
(1985), Robert L. Carringer;
Orson Welles
(1971), Maurice Bessy; the controversial
Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius
(1985), Charles Higham;
Orson Welles: Actor and Director
(1977), Joseph McBride;
Orson Welles
(1986), John Russell Taylor;
Orson Welles Interviews
(2002), edited by Mark W. Estrin;
Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life
(2003), Peter Conrad; and
Orson Welles
(1972), Joseph McBride. Years ago I
read Pauline Kael’s
The Citizen Kane Book
(1971), but I find it unkind and poorly researched, and didn’t bother to dip back in.

A few magazines were of use: “The Man from Mercury” in the June, 1938,
Coronet
included many photos of the theater company at work; and
Photocrime
(a 1944 one-shot from “The editors of
LOOK
”) included a photospread mystery story starring magician Orson Welles—a George Hagenauer find.

My portrait of Welles is a “best guess” based upon all I’ve read and seen, but its roots are in the memoirs of his estranged ex-partner, John Houseman. Including Houseman as a character was a treat, if a challenge, as I loved Houseman’s Professor Kingsfield in the film and television series,
The Paper Chase
; his autobiographical
Entertainers and the Entertained
(1986) and
Run-through
(1972) are fascinating, frank, vividly written accounts.