Orson Welles: The Hollywood Years Quiz

Answer: Heart of Darkness

The Hollywood press openly questioned the time that Welles was taking to start work on his first film. Welles was not being idle; "That year [1939] I was busy preparing to make 'Heart of Darkness'. I wrote the script, we designed the sets and we were all ready to go. But we couldn't get $50,000 off the budget so they wouldn't let me make it."

Though Welles had complete artistic freedom, as agreed in his contract, he did not have an unlimited budget. The outbreak of war in Europe in late 1939 meant that a lucrative part of any film's market had become inaccessible and budgets were cut accordingly. "Heart of Darkness" was one victim of the cuts.

Answer: Stagecoach

"Stagecoach" (1939) is the story of a stagecoach journey across Apache territory. On board are a doctor (Thomas Mitchell), a prostitute (Claire Trevor), a bank manager and a marshal seeking the fugitive, Ringo Kid (John Wayne). Wayne is captured along the way but when the stage is attacked by the Apaches, he is released from his bounds to help defend all on board.

Welles explained that, "I had learned how to make movies by running 'Stagecoach' every night for a month." The film had taught him some bad habits; talking of the way that the Apache attack scenes are shot from different directions, Welles said, "every rule is broken in the picture." Welles' naivete and lack of knowledge about the rules of film making helped him to attract some of the best people in the business to assist him in the making of "Citizen Kane" (1941). One such person was the premier cameraman in Hollywood, Gregg Toland. It was Welles' inexperience that appealed to Toland. He told Welles, "I think if you are left alone as much as possible we're going to have a film that looks different. I'm tired of working with people who know all about [film making]."

Answer: Newspaper publishers

"Citizen Kane" (1941) a.k.a. Charles Foster Kane, was the man who had everything but, on his death bed, yearned for one treasured possession from his childhood, the one time when he was truly happy. The film traces his life from his early childhood in poverty, his rise to a position of power through his newspaper business and his eventual fall from grace. The character was written as an amalgamation of several powerful business people of the day. Chief among them was Hearst, a giant in the world of newspaper and magazine publishing. Other lives that had provided inspiration for Kane included that of Samuel Insull, a major player in US railroads and electricity networks, and Orson Welles himself.

Both Hearst and Kane indulged in a form of yellow journalism, sensationalising stories without doing any research to back up their claims. One of Hearst's campaigns, that was clearly alluded to in the film, was about the Spanish-American war. When, in the film, Kane's reporter called from Cuba, he reported that he could write prose poems about the country but there was no war to report on. Kane's reply, "You provide the prose poems, I'll supply the war" was a clear echo of Hearst's famous line, "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war." Hearst was accused, along with his rival, Joseph Pulitzer, of creating this war unnecessarily, through their sensational coverage of the events that preceded it.

After hearing reports on the film from one of his columnists, Hearst attempted to have "Kane" shut down. Hearst's people negotiated with all the major studios in Hollywood to act together to destroy the film. Welles explained, "they had producers in Hollywood ready all together to pay RKO to burn the negative. It was nip and tuck as to whether the negative would be burned and the picture never shown."

The only time that Welles ever met Hearst was in an elevator on the night of the premiere of "Citizen Kane" in San Francisco. He offered Hearst a pair of tickets to the film but Hearst did not respond to him. Welles remarked that, "I got off the elevator, thinking, as I still do, that if he had been Charles Foster Kane, he would have taken the tickets and gone [to see the film]."

Answer: Best Original Screenplay

In the 1971 article, "Raising Kane", the great film critic, Pauline Kael, had contended that Welles had not written a single word of the screenplay himself. She argued that the screenplay was the work of Herman Mankiewicz alone. Therefore it was a great irony that it should be the Original Screenplay prize that would be the only one that Welles ever won, especially considering that, in her words, Welles "should have got the awards he deserved as director and actor".

This contention was strongly refuted by Welles' biographer, Peter Bogdanovich, and film historian, Robert Carringer. These two refutations appear to have greater credibility than Kael's polemic, for the simple reason that Bogdanovich and Carringer had taken the trouble to talk about the development of the screenplay with Welles and Welles' secretary (to whom Welles dictated his scenes and his amendments to those Mankiewicz had written), whereas Kael had not. Carringer also had access to the various shooting scripts for the film and contemporary memos and letters, which clearly demonstrated the extent of the contribution that Welles made to the final script.

Answer: Robert Wise

"The Magnficent Ambersons" (1942) was a story of how an old way of life had been destroyed by the age of the machine. Welles knew the story well; he had already adapted it for the radio; and he believed that the character of Eugene, played by Joseph Cotten, was based on his own father, a friend of Tarkington. To convince RKO studio head, George Schaeffer, of its worth as his next project, he played a recording of the radio production to him. Schaeffer, according to Welles, fell asleep after five minutes and woke just before the end and announced, "Fine. Do it!"

More attention was paid when the film received some very poor reviews at a preview screening in Pasadena. Robert Wise, who had been editor on "Citizen Kane" as well as "Ambersons", recalled that "the audience just wouldn't sit still for it, they laughed at it and walked out in droves. It was as disastrous a preview as you could possibly imagine." As Welles had signed a new contract that, crucially, no longer included control over the final cut of his movies, the response to these reviews was out of his hands.

Welles' biographer and friend, Peter Bogdanovich saw the review cards that had prompted RKO's action; "Five to ten to twenty said it was only the greatest movie they had ever seen. I think they were probably close to the truth. It is the greatest artistic tragedy in the movies that that particular film was so mutilated."

More than 45 minutes was cut from Welles original edit and Wise shot "two or three or four bridge scenes to tie it together," along with a new ending. Wise defended his role in the 'mutilation'; "I can only say that all of us did the very best job we could with the problem... the fact that the [final] film has come down through the years in its own right as a minor, if not more than that, classic means that we didn't [ruin] it completely."

Answer: Jane Eyre

Welles starred as Edward Rochester in "Jane Eyre" (1944) based on the novel by Charlotte Brontė. Starring alongside him were Joan Fontaine in the title role and a young, uncredited Elizabeth Taylor as Jane's friend, Helen Burns. The screenplay was co-written by his Mercury Theatre co-founder, John Houseman, along with director Robert Stevenson and Aldous Huxley. It was based on a script written for the 1938 radio production for "The Mercury Theatre Presents..." show, eschewing much of the social commentary to present the story as a gothic romance.

"Jane Eyre" follows the life of its protagonist from her difficult childhood through her early adulthood, when she meets and falls in love with Rochester, to her marriage and birth of her first child. Welles makes a grand entrance as Rochester, thrown from his horse on the misty Yorkshire Moors. His angry, brooding arrogance towards Jane on their first meeting sets the tone for the remainder of the movie, which shows signs of his presence behind the camera as well as in front of it.

Answer: The Stranger

Welles described his decision to direct "The Stranger" as being motivated by the desire "to show people that I didn't glow in the dark. I could say action and cut just like all the other fellas." The film is his least showy in terms of direction. It follows Mr. Wilson, played by Robinson, as he searches for Franz Kindler, a high ranking Nazi. He follows one of Kindler's close associates, after his release from prison, and is led to Charles Rankin, a teacher at a school in Connecticut. Once he arrives in town, Wilson has to prove that Rankin is really Kindler.

Welles wanted the central part of Wilson to be played by a woman, ideally Agnes Moorehead, as he felt it would have been a more interesting story to have his character tracked down by a female Nazi hunter. The studio, however, refused and cast Edward G Robinson in the role.

"Journey Into Fear" (1943) was a thriller directed by Norman Foster in which Orson Welles starred with Mercury contemporary, Joseph Cotten. Many writers have suggested that Welles was an uncredited director of the film. However Welles said that these rumours were wrong; "It really is Norman Foster's movie and he deserves any credit going."

Answer: Rita Hayworth

A cultural meme existed in Hollywood that Welles had devised "The Lady From Shanghai" (1948) as a vehicle to exact revenge on his former wife. It was an accusation that Welles always refuted vehemently, The film contained some spectacular scenes, including the famous shoot-out scene set in a hall of mirrors, but suffered from some inarticulate plotting. Harry Cohn was believed to have hated the movie. He found it so confusing that he offered $1,000 to anyone who could explain the plot. The prize was never claimed, not even by Welles.

To put it in the most simple terms, the plot concerns Grisby, a lawyer, who asks a sailor to pretend to murder him, so that he can claim on his life insurance. His real motive, however, is that he wants to murder his partner, Bannister, and frame the sailor for the crime. The sailor agrees to the plan so that he can raise the funds to run off with Bannister's wife. The plot gets complicated when Grisby is murdered and the sailor is arrested for the crime.

In his defence, Welles claimed that the plot was the same as that in the book from which it was adapted. How Welles came to adapt that book was, according to the man himself, pure chance. He had left Hollywood after "The Stranger" (1946) to put on a stage version of "Around the World in Eighty Days" in New York. When that production ran out of money for its costumes, Welles called Harry Cohn and offered him a deal; if Cohn wired him the money for the costumes immediately, Welles would make a film for Columbia Pictures of this great new book that he had found. When asked what the book was, Welles looked over to the woman working in the box office of the theatre and spied the book she was reading: "If I Die Before I Wake" by Sherwood King. That book would become, "The Lady From Shanghai".

Answer: She was Orson's daughter.

Yes, Orson Welles gave his daughter the usually male name of Christopher. Chris Welles Feder, as she chose to be known in adulthood, claims that her father chose such an unusual name in order to be able to send an eye-catching telegram with the wording, "Christopher. She is born." Not only was she given a boy's name but her father sent her to his old school, The Todd School for Boys, where she was the only female pupil.

Welles' "Macbeth" (1948) is a faithful edit of Shakespeare's original tale of a Scottish nobleman who usurps the throne of his former master, Duncan. The role of Macduff's son is a brief one. He shares one scene with his mother, disputing her claim that his father is dead, before being slaughtered by Macbeth's henchmen as a traitor.

Republic Pictures, at the time of "Macbeth", was primarily known for its output of westerns and B-movies. The founder, Herbert Yates, had decided in the mid-1940s that he wanted to raise the profile of his company. Welles, who had been looking to make a Shakespeare film for a couple of years without finding financial support, managed to convince Yates that a production of "Macbeth" would bring prestige to the Republic brand. The resulting film, constrained by a small budget and a tight shooting schedule, failed to deliver on its promise. It was a critical flop, although it did make a small profit.

Answer: Touch of Evil

The film that Welles initially signed up for was entitled "Badge of Evil", after the novel by Whit Masterton on which the script was based. Heston described it as "a fairly routine police story" that would require a good director to lift it above the hundreds of similar types of movie. Heston asked the producers, "'Who's going to direct it?' They answered: 'We haven't picked a director yet. We have Orson Welles to do the heavy though.' So I said, 'Why don't you have him direct it, he's a pretty good director you know?'"

After initially falling silent following Heston's request, the producers decided to ask Welles if he would agree to direct, as long as he did not ask for any more money for doing so. Welles responded, "I'll direct it but if I also get to write it. Every word of it. An entirely new script." The producers agreed.

Welles re-wrote the screenplay without ever reading the novel that the original script was based on. The result was a superior thriller examining the nature of justice, corruption and betrayal in a dark and morally ambiguous setting. Though it includes some of Welles finest directorial work, including the rightly legendary opening crane shot, when it came to the final edit of the film Welles was cut out of the post-production process, as he had been in so many of his films. Fortunately, unlike the lost reels of "The Magnificent Ambersons", not all of the excised parts of Welles' film were destroyed. In 1998, a restored version of the movie based on Welles production notes was released, using some of the cut footage.