| Orson Welles Asks and Answers:
► Who shot a critic after a screening? ► What drama critic enjoyed piss-laced tea? ► Where did Mussolini get the fascist salute? ► Why is Keaton funnier than Chaplin? ► When did von Sternberg make a decent film? ► How did FDR rationalize internment camps? ► Which Shakespearean actor is seriously stupid? ► Was Lombard's fatal flight the work of Nazis? ► At what age do men start looking like Jewish mothers? Those and more of Welles' answers contained below Description: Quotes by Orson Welles in conversation with Henry Jaglom, edited by Peter Biskind, and transcribed by Eugene Corey in the 2013 book My Lunches with Orson via Metropolitan Books. Focusing exclusively on the thoughts, sentiments and opinions of Welles during numerous lunch dates at WeHo's Ma Maison, the words below provide a glimpse into the mind of the famed auteur two years prior to his death Who? Orson Welles: The American stage actor, director, writer, columnist, film star, narrator, socialite and Hollywood studio pariah who worked in professional theater, broadcast radio and film for nearly five decades. What? Tape recorded conversations between Jaglom and Welles (occasionally with the latter's farting dog, Kiki, and unannounced table guests) made at Welles request with the sole proviso the recording device was never in sight. Where? All conversations were recorded at Welles' regular table in WeHo's Ma Maison Restaurant on Melrose Avenue. A couple weeks after Welles' death in October 1985, the establishment was closed when the property was sold for $2 million. When? Throughout the year 1983 and culled from the second such book of transcribed conversations with Welles. The first tome, 1992's This Is Orson Welles, was recorded between 1969-1975 by Welles' landlord/housemate, critic turned director, Peter Bogdanovich. Part 1: 1983? The book My Lunches with Orson is divided into two parts: This list; (Part 1: 1983) -and- Part 2; 1984-85. The list version of the latter will not be made public at present date for the following reasons:
See Also: ► Films Made and Not Made by Orson Welles by OneThink ► Peter Bogdanovich on Orson Welles on YouTube Afterword: It doesn't take the reader long to quickly discover Welles' outsized personality truly mirrored his enormous girth and intellect. He was a wealth of complexities and contradictions that both entertain and inform. Agree or disagree, its' nearly impossible to argue the man wasn't charming, yet curmudgeonly; intimidating, but compassionate; imperious, yet humble; loving, but cold; frank, yet deceptive; and a damn interesting conversationalist. Like him - or hate him? That's your call. As for me personally, Welles would be my 3rd invitee for that cliched junior high school 'Dinner for Five' essay question. |  |
| Woody Allen I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man. I can hardly bear to talk to him. He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge. Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited. Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant. He acts shy, but he is not. He's scared. He hates himself, and he loves himself, a very tense situation. It's people like me who have to carry on and pretend to be modest. To me it's the most embarrassing thing in the world - a man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs, in order to free himself from his hang-ups. Everything he does on the screen is therapeutic. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| John Barrymore When Laurence Olivier talks about Jack Barrymore, he says, "that ham." But Jack is wonderful! There's nothing remotely hammy about him. He was the greatest Hamlet of the century, and the greatest Richard the Third, without doubt. I can still hear it. And I've heard his records too. Jack never intended to be an actor. He began as a newspaper cartoonist, and he was just a guy around town. And Arthur Hopkins said, "You're it." Those were the great years of acting in the American theater. In order for Jack to play Richard III, Hopkins sent him to Margaret Carrington, who had been the first singer of Claude Debussy's songs and was a great authority on voice production. She was a millionaire, and the aunt of John Huston. Jack spent four months, summer months, every day, singing, "Mee, mee, mam, mum," and suddenly, this great organ was born. Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Samuel Beckett I agree Beckett probably is a great writer. But I don't understand it - the greatness. I believe people when they say he is great. But I cannot find it. I believe it because I suspect I am tone deaf to it. Just like I think there is music that I don't understand. I know when I sense something is wrong. I know when I think something is a fake. I know when the emperor has no clothes. But I don't see a naked emperor with Beckett. He's just opaque with me. I think Francis Bacon is a great painter, but I hate his paintings. I really don't question his reputation; I just keep walking rather than stopping and staring. I believe there is no law, and should be no law under the heavens, that tells an artist what he ought to be. My point of view, my idea of art - which I do not propose to be universal - is that it must be affirmative. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Ludwig van Beethoven One would think we can not question a Beethoven symphony. And I would personally die for Mozart, Bartók, Beethoven. I'm sure I'm right about them - and about Diego Velázquez, too - but what troubles me is when people accept the whole edifice - the movies, the books, the paintings, what's in, what's out - just because it's already been accepted. That arouses my suspicion. Even if it's right. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Edgar Bergen Edgar Bergen was an ice-cold fellow. I believe he never told his daughter, Candice Bergen, that he loved her. I knew him very well, because we were fellow magicians. We went every Thursday night to the same magic club. We were in a show - I was doing a run-through with him - he was up there with a dummy. And his two leading writers were sitting in front of me in the CBS Theater, which was empty. They didn't know that anybody was behind them. One of 'em turned to the other and said, "You know, to look at him, you'd swear the Bergen was real." Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Leonard Bernstein Lenny Bernstein is starting to look like his mother too. They don't look like their fathers, they look like their mothers. Lenny's really - I mean, he's developed a flourish with the baton, that started a couple years ago. His pinkie's way up all the time. And he can't jump as high anymore. It's as if he's announcing to the world that he can still jump, but he doesn't really leave the floor. He used to leave the floor! Bernstein's very emotional - genuinely. He knows he's going to choke back tears. He's a ham. I've known him since he started. He was a wonderful looking man now - Less so now. The last couple of years have been very cruel to him - really made him look like the old lady, you know. And, brashly, he's cut his hair shorter, hoping to look less like her. It doesn't work. Lenny looks more like Gertrude Stein. It's a terrible fate that comes to men - and particularly, very masculine men. And that's the cruelty, you see? You could see him in a dress, without any trouble at all. Chapter 14: Art Buchwald Drove It Up Ronnie's Ass And Broke It Off | |||
| Maurice Bessy I had to go to court in France this year to stop a book in which that old fellow - Maurice Bessy - who's always been kind of a professional friend of mine, wrote that I was an impotent latent homosexual. Turns out he's my intimate friend, you know? I never laid a hand on him! He's a mean, little crooked fairy. And he's one of those people who declares himself your friend, follows you everywhere saying, "I'm a devoted friend." So he's made himself your friend, and you can't say "No, you're not a friend." Maybe Bessy is a homosexual, it never occurred to me. What probably happened is that when I was making The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice [Othello], I was based in Paris for about six weeks, rehearsing with Micheál MacLiammóir. Bessy used to join us for meals. Well, when I am with a homosexual, I get a little homosexual. To make them feel at home, you see? Just to keep Micheál comfortable, I kind of camped a little. To bring him out. So he wouldn't feel he was with a terrible straight. Bessy may have seen that. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Karen Blixen I read the great biography of Isak Dinesen and the biography of Robert Graves - both brilliantly written and very sympathetic. Two of my gods, you see...These biographies have diminished those two people so much in my mind, I wish I had never read them. They deny me somebody who I've loved always. I like Dinesen a lot less now. In other words, Dinesen was brilliantly careful to present herself as the person I wanted to love. And if she was somebody else, really, I'm sorry to know it. And I suddenly think to myself, "You know, there's no such thing as a friendly biographer." With writers, they become my friends from the testimony of the pages that they have written. And anything else diminishes what I feel. If I'm enraptured by a writer's work, I don't want to know about them. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Humphrey Bogart Bogart, who was both a coward and a very bad fighter, was always picking fights in nightclubs, in sure knowledge that the waiters would stop him. Making fearless remarks to people in his cups, when he knew he was well covered by the busboys. Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America' | |||
| Peter Bogdanovich If Bogdanovich's Dorothy Stratten book ever comes out, I have a terrible fear it'll be a runaway best seller. Really, I have dread! He'll behave so badly. He'll become such a pompous ass again. Right after The Last Picture Show he came out to Arizona to play his part in The Other Side of the Wind - and sat for five hours at the table talking to me, with his back turned to my cinematographer, Gary Graver, whom he knew very well. I'll say hello to Peter - if I get a chance to say anything. He'll be telling me about himself, you know. He knows that I'll listen to it all. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Marlon Brando With Brando, it's that neck. Which is like a huge sausage, a shoe made of flesh. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Yul Brynner Max and Yul Brynner are the two leading Swiss actors. Brynner, however seems to have - let's say - gone out to the Caucasus for a few years after leaving Zurich. He was born on The Steppes. Half gypsy; half Mongol! He had too much to drink on this long trip he took with me through the snow in Yugoslavia, and late one night he blurted out to me that his hometown was Brenner, near Zurich, where everybody's name is Brenner. And he should have never said that, because there goes the whole biography. Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| Richard Burton Back Story: As noted in the list's description, Welles' was recorded over a two year period by Henry Jaglom at Ma Maison in West Hollywood. The following transpired as Richard Burton approached the two directors' regular table... Richard Burton: Orson, how good to see you. It's been too long. You're looking fine. Elizabeth is with me. She so much wants to meet you. Can I bring her over to your table? Welles: No. As you can see, I'm in the middle of my lunch. I'll stop by on my way out. Burton leaves the table... Jaglom: Orson, you're behaving like an asshole. That was so rude. He actually backed away like a whipped puppy. Do not kick me under the table. I hate that. I don't need you as my conscience, my Jewish Jiminy Cricket. Especially do not kick my boots. You know they protect my ankles. Richard Burton had great talent. He's ruined his great gifts. He's become a joke with a celebrity wife. Now he just works for money, does the worst shit. And I wasn't rude. To quote Carl Laemmle, "I gave him an evasive answer. I told him, 'Go fuck yourself.'" Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Frank Capra Capra may be the best living director, but he's the worst living television guest. He'll talk about how beautiful America is, and so on. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Johnny Carson Ken Tynan wrote a profile of Johnny Carson in the New Yorker, in which he quoted somebody on Johnny's show - one of the assistants - as saying there was only one guest that Johnny was visibly in awe of, and that was Orson Welles. Since then, I haven't been on the show. For five years. There goes two million copies of my autobiography when I publish it, because I can't even get on to plug it. In the days when there were four talk shows, and I was on Carson every other week, when I was approached for magazine interviews I used to say, "I don't give interviews. You want to know about me, tune in to Carson." Now I'm getting in a tough spot with this line. Today, tune into what? I better start getting nice to those cocksuckers with typewriters. Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Charlie Chaplin Charlie Chaplin didn't improvise much, but he wasn't the one who planned his jokes either. He had six gagmen. He was Johnny Carson! He did think up gags, but he also had gagmen. Think of what gags are. They're essentially in a slapstick comedy. A picture has to be full of them. Chaplin had a guy who wrote better gags than he himself did, you see? But still, he made the pictures you admire. With his sensibility, plus all the things he did around the gags. He wanted people to think he composed, directed, designed - everything. He didn't want to be directed in Monsieur Verdoux. He said, "I just want to buy it from you." I said, "Of course Charlie. I just want it to happen." I practically gave it to him. I said, "I'll leave the price to you." So a check came for $1,500 - something like that. Cheapest man who ever lived. You love him and I don't. And you wouldn't have loved him if you'd been through what I went through with him. It was really rough, and I have contempt for him, because I worked very hard. Offered him something out of my love for him. It was not a suggestion, it was a screenplay. Actually, Chaplin was deeply dumb in many ways. That's what's so strange, great hunks of sentimental dumbness with these shafts of genius. And he blew it too. He performed Monsieur Verdoux for two years in everybody's drawing room, so that there was nothing left when it came time to shoot it. He did the same thing with The Great Dictator. But he didn't get invited out that often. Because after a point, people didn't want their whole party taken over by one entertainer. They knew he'd come, and he'd totally dominate - if you had Chaplin, you had Chaplin performing. That limited his social life terribly. He wasn't some kind of genius - he was absolutely a genius...Chaplin is sheer poetry, if you want, but he's not real. There are two basic kinds of clown. In the classic circus, there's the white-faced, with the white cap, short trousers, and silk stockings. He has beautiful legs, and he is very elegant. Every move he makes is perfect. The other clown, who works with him, is called auguste, and he has baggy pants and big feet. What Chaplin did was to marry them, these two classic clowns, and create a new clown. That was his secret - that's my theory. Chaplin looked terrific as a woman. He wasn't effeminate, just totally female as a performer. There was no masculine element there. And he was like that as a man, too, terribly female as a man. It's that smile, that little female smile. He was so beautiful when he was young, and he didn't want any of us not to notice it. He beaded his eyelashes. You know how long that takes? He made himself up to be the most beautiful fellow in the world, and then put that little mustache on. Vanity is very much a part of that character. He didn't think he made himself look prissy. He thought he looked beautiful, and delicate, and sensitive, and so did all the world. They took it on his terms. I never thought he was funny. I thought he was wonderful - wonderful - but not funny. I thought he was sinister. That's why I thought of him for Monsieur Verdoux. Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Harry Cohn I got along well with even the worst of the old moguls, like Harry Cohn. They were all easier to deal with than those college-educated, market-conscious people. I never really suffered from the "bad old boys." I've only suffered from lawyers and agents. Wasn't it Norman Mailer who said that the great new art form in Hollywood is the deal? Everybody's energy goes into the deal. Forty-five years I've been doing business with agents, as a performer and a director. As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. They always say, "You don't like him? I've got somebody else." The thing about Harry Cohn was: He looked like such a villainous Hollywood producer, there was nothing he could do that would surprise you...He thought he was a great lover. He chased Rita around the desk all the years she was at Columbia. She was always going on suspension. Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | Chapter 4: I Fucked Around on Everyone | |||
| George Cukor George Cukor was gifted. He was a very competent stage director. But it's true, you couldn't tell a Cukor picture. Holiday and The Philadelphia Story were writers' pictures. Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Bette Davis I can't stand looking at Bette Davis, so I don't want to see her act. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Charles Dickens Biographies don't add another dimension. I know everybody thinks that way, but I don't believe it. I don't want to keep hearing that Charles Dickens was a lousy son-of-a-bitch. The hateful Dickens, you know. I'm very glad I don't know anything about Shakespeare as a man. I think it's all there in what he wrote. All that counts, anyway. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Marlene Dietrich Toward the end of the war, I went to the South Pacific, and Marlene went to Europe. She felt so lost being alone - "How can I go one without you?" and so on - so she began to sing, and that's how her cabaret act was born. Marlene Dietrich has gained so much weight that she won't let see anyone. She makes dates to see people and breaks them. I made six trips to Paris to see her, and ended up talking to her from a phone booth. Every time she said she was ill. Once she said she had typhus! Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| Fyodor Dostoyevsky I reject everything that is negative. You know, I just don't like Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy is my writer. Gogol is my writer. I'm not a Joyce guy, though I see that he's one of the great writers of this century. He's not affirmative, and that's why I don't like him. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Irene Dunne Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. You must stop trying to figure out why I have antipathies. Irene Dunne was so dry-toothed and such a good fucking Catholic that I wanted to kick her in the crotch. Such a goody-goody. And she was heading all the censorship groups, and all that. Conservative, in a terrible Catholic-Christian way that I found particularly offensive. To me, she was the non-singing Jeanette MacDonald, you know. And I hated her as an actress. She was so ladylike that I knew there wouldn't be any electricity between us. Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| Sergei Eisenstein I agree film is more musical than theater - and more literary. It's more narrative than drama. A real movie is narrative - it's a story. For Sergei Eisenstein, on the other hand, montage is the essence of cinema. But he is the most overrated great, great director of them all. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was asking to see Alexander Korda, who said, "My God, he's such a snob and bore." But his secretary says, "Please see Douglas. You know you've been refusing to see him and giving him evasive answers. And it's rude" So Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. comes in and sits down. There's a long silence, and then Douglas says, "Well, I think it's going to clear up." Or, "Even for England, it's been raining an awful lot. But still, when you see that green..." Another moment of silence. Suddenly Korda says, "Tell me, how's the Duke?" And Fairbanks replies, "Which Duke?" Korda says, "Any bloody Duke," to this famous snob. Chapter 12: DeMille Invented The Fascist Salute | |||
| Emilio Fernández Indio Fernández, the guy who posed naked for the Oscar statuette, was the only Mexican director worth anything. While cutting a movie, he once sent an invitation to the critics to see a rough cut. Told them, "Why should I only hear what you people have to say after it's too late to do anything about it? Come to the rough cut and tell me what you think, while there's stil time for me to do something about it, to improve the film." So Fernández ran through his rough cut for the critics. Asked them afterwards to tell him what they thought. They all liked it except one critic. This guy stood up and said, "It's no good." So Indio pulled out a gun and shot him. Chapter 8: Kane Is A Comedy | |||
| W.C. Fields Nobody who didn't see him in the theater will ever know how great W.C. Fields was. He was a shadow of himself in films. A shadow! A tenth as funny as he was on the stage. Al Jolson, too. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Joan Fontaine Joan Fontaine is no good in Jane Eyre. She's just a plain old bad actor. She's got four readings, and two expressions, and that's it. Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| John Ford John Ford and I were very good friends, and he always wanted to do a picture with me. He was a pretty mean son-of-a-bitch Irishman. But I loved him anyway. When I was shooting Citizen Kane, he came on the set the first day of shooting. He pointed to the assistant director, a fellow called Ed Donahue, who was in the pay of my enemies at RKO, and said, "I see you got snake-in-the-grass Donahue on the picture." And left. He came to warn me my assistant was a fink. Ford was never drunk when he was working. Not a drop. Just the last day of a picture. And he'd be drunk for weeks. Serious, serious drunk. But for him, drinking was fun. In other words, he wasn't an alcoholic. Went out with all the boys. Irishmen, get drunk and fight. Everybody gets beat up in the pub, you know? I've lived through all that, went to jail in Ireland for rowdyism. I have a beer bottle that was put together on Ford's yacht, with different Mexican and American beer labels signed by Ward Bond, John Wayne, and that gang of people, all dedicated to me. Now this was a time when I was a well-known Hollywood Red. I was in Peter's house one night, and he ran some John Ford picture. During the first reel I said, "Isn't it funny how incapable even Ford - and all American directors are - of making women look in period. You can always tell which decade a costume picture was made in - even if it's supposed to be the seventeenth century." I said, "Look at those two girls who are supposed to be out in the covered wagon." Their hairdos and their costumes are really what the actresses in the fifties thought was good taste. Otherwise, they're gonna say, 'I can't come out in this.' Peter flew into a rage, turned off the projector, and wouldn't let us see the rest of the movie because I didn't have enough respect for Ford. But Jack made some of the best ever. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Samuel Fuller Peter Bogdanovich gets furious with not expressing enthusiasm for Sam Fuller. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Greta Garbo I had another idea for Chaplin - with Greta Garbo - but neither of them would touch it. A farce. They're in a maze in Hampton Court, and he deliberately loses her. Garbo played comedy wonderfully. I wouldn't have made her ridiculous, but I would've made her herself. I would have made her the distinguished actress she was. Marlene Dietrich was my house guest, and for some unaccountable reason, had never met Garbo, and she was her hero. I arranged for Clifton Webb to give a party for Garbo, so I could bring Marlene. I was living with Rita at the time, and she didn't want to go. That was very much like her, she never wanted to go anywhere, just stay home. So Marlene and I went without her. Garbo was sitting on a raised platform in the middle of the living room, so that everybody had to stand up to look at her. I introduced them, I said, "Greta, it's unbelievable that you two have never met - Greta, Marlene. Marlene, Greta." Marlene started to gush, which was not like her at all. Looking up at Garbo she said, "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I'm humble in your presence." Garbo said, "Thank you very much. Next?" And turned away to somebody else. Marlene was crushed. Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Paulette Goddard I knew Paulette Goddard well. She's a lovely girl, but she's a living cash register, you know? Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Samuel Goldwyn I was offered Porgy and Bess - Samuel Goldwyn offered me two or three pictures. In his time, he was a classy producer. He never deliberately did anything that wasn't his idea of the best quality goods. I respected him for that. He was an honest merchant. He may have made a bad picture, but he didn't know it was a bad picture. And he was funny. He made me laugh. He once said to me, in that high voice of his, "Orson, for you I'd write a blank check." He was there for me all the time. But Gregg Toland, who shot so many Goldwyn pictures, told me that in Russia, if you didn't see every actor's face brilliantly, they had to go back and reshoot it. Sam was the same way. Whenever there wasn't bright light on a star's face for thirty seconds, he went nuts: "I'm paying for the face! I want to see the actor!' Long shots, all right, but no shadows. It was all too much for me. He was really a monster. The last night I ever spent with him turned me against him forever. He was a guest at my house. I had come back to Hollywood, after years away, and I invited all these old dinosaurs, who were still around, and some other people. Goldwyn left right after dessert, because there were a number of guests who weren't on the A list. You know, he wouldn't have done that before, he got old. Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Robert Graves Graves's biography is written by an adoring biographer, who was close to him for twenty-five years. But I learned a lot of things about him I didn't want to know. If you do the warts, the warts are gonna look bigger than they were in life. If these people were my friends, the warts wouldn't be as important to me as they seem in the book. We all have people that we know are drunks, or dopeheads or have bad tempers or whatever, and they're still our friends, you know? But in a biography, you focus on it. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Juliette Gréco Darryl Zanuck wanted to be a successful head of a studio, and he was, until he fell in love with that terrible Juliette Gréco. I made two pictures with her, Crack in the Mirror, and another one that I've forgotten. Zanuck lost everything over her, his power, left his wife - everything...To serve her. He'd take her little dog and walk it around the lot while we were shooting. So help me, it was awful. Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Rex Harrison Rex Harrison got the role in Anna and the King of Siam because I suggested him. Rex made pictures that only played in England, teacup comedies and things. The studio people had never heard of him. Sitting in the steam room at Twentieth, Rex Harrison, who's that? Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| Olivia de Havilland Neither Joan Fontaine, nor her sister, Olivia de Havilland, could act. I never understood their careers. Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Howard Hawks Peter Bogdanovich says Howard Hawks is the so-called greatest ever. Hawks is number one, and all the rest are scraps from his table. Yes, Bringing Up Baby, the greatest picture ever made? Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Rita Hayworth She was magnificent! And she thought she wasn't. And nobody in town would give her any credit for it. She was a really talented actress who never got a chance. The Lady From Shanghai was supposed to be my vengeance on her for leaving me. I made her character a killer and cut off her hair, and all that. That's pretty profound psychological work, isn't it? Why would I want vengeance? I fucked around on everyone. And that's hard on a girl, very hard. I loved her, yeah. Very much. But by that time, not sexually. I had to work myself up to fuck her. She had become so - such a figure of lust, and she just wanted to be a housewife. Marlene called her the perfect hausfrau. You know what Rita used to say: "They go to bed with Rita Hayworth and wake up with Margarita Carmen Cansino." When I almost died of hepatitis, she spent five months with me while I recovered. And she never did anything except take care of me. When I said to her, "I want to give up movies and theater. Will you do that with me?" She said, "Yes." Chapter 4: I Fucked Around on Everyone | |||
| Katharine Hepburn Katharine Hepburn was describing how she was fucked by Howard Hughes, using all four-letter words. Most people didn't talk like that then, except Carol Lombard. It came naturally to her, she couldn't talk any other way. With Katie though, who spoke in this high-class girl's finishing school accent, you thought that she had made the decision to talk that way. Grace Kelly also slept around, but she never said anything. Katie was different. She was a free woman when she was young. Very much what the girls are now. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Elmyr de Hory The great André Malraux, with tears coursing down his face in the Museum of Tokyo where there were five Modiglianis, came up to one of them and said, "At last the true essence of Modigliani has been revealed to me." All five of them were fakes, painted by Elmyr de Hory - who should go down in art history as a serious forger. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | Chapter 10: The Cannes People Are My Slaves | |||
| John Huston Huston's been campaigning for four years now for the AI Lifetime Achievement Award, and he's got it. What you don't understand is that he doesn't work with the studios. He just knows how to make a picture without directing it. He just sits and lets the choreographer or somebody else do it. He stays up and plays poker all night, and when he's shooting, that's when he's resting. Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Clifford Irving Clifford Irving is the unsympathetic fellow in Vérités et mensonges [F for Fake]. But he's kind of fascinating, sitting there and talking about what makes a poseur. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Burl Ives What I do like is when people come up to me and don't know who I am. I was in the airport in Las Vegas last year, and this man on crutches, an older man, looked at me with that finally-found-his-favorite-movie-star expression, and started limping toward me. Of course, I met him halfway, and he said, "Milton Berle! I'd know you anywhere." So I signed Milton Berle for him. True story, I swear. I finally figured out that he meant Burl Ives, who is a big fat bearded fellow...And it came out "Milton Berle." Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Emil Jannings Let me tell you the story of Emil Jannings. When the Allies got to Berlin in the last days of the war, he fled to his hometown. As the American troops entered the town with their tanks looking for collaborators, he stood in front of his little house waving his Oscar over his head, yelling, "Artiste, artiste!" Chapter 14: Art Buchwald Drove It Up Ronnie's Ass And Broke It Off | |||
| Van Johnson I was responsible for Van Johnson coming to Hollywood. I never told him that, so he doesn't know. He was a chorus boy in Pal Joey, and was such a terrific personality I sent a wire to George Schaefer at RKO and said, "Get this guy Van Johnson," and they sent for him. They didn't like him, and didn't use him. And then he went to MGM. He's pitiable now. Most men get better looking when they get old. Johnson's the kind of queen that doesn't. He had to be young to be attractive. Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| James Joyce I also don't believe, in literature, that anybody can have taste so catholic that he genuinely likes Joyce and Eliot - and Céline. And yet, many people accept all of them. I say there's a point where somebody can't really dig that other fellow if they dig this one. Our eyes, our sensibilities, are only so wide. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Elia Kazan When I saw Gadge, it made me sick. I still can't forgive him [for his 1952 HUAC testimony]. The people I got most mad at were people from my side who gave names. And he was one of the biggest sellers of people up the river in the whole bunch. I am not a vengeful person, but Kazan is one of the people I that feel really badiy about. I was - in fact, in a terrible way, I'm still fond of him - I like Gadge. But I think he behaved so badly that it's just inexcusable. I cannot honor him. Or sit with him. You know, Gadge has begun to look like a minor figure in a Dostoyevsky novel. His face has become long, like a junior inquisitor. And he was standing on that stage [at the Kennedy Center] like some terrible bird. The face he deserves, with a beak - it's a beak. A face that turns into a beak. Chapter 14: Art Buchwald Drove It Up Ronnie's Ass And Broke It Off | |||
| Buster Keaton Charlie Chaplin had too much beauty. He drenched his pictures with it. That's why Buster Keaton is finally giving him the bath, and will, historically, forever. Oh, yes, he's so much greater. He was better - more versatile, more, finally, original. Some of the things that Keaton thought up to do are incredible. To my great sorrow, I've got to the age now where all my minority opinions are ceasing to be minority. I spent all my life saying, "You're all crazy - it's Keaton!" And now I've got nothing to argue about! Now Keaton is coming in. Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Oja Kodar Oja Kodar won't go to the movies with me; she says that if I stay, I'm making groans, these awful noises. Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| Alexander Korda Here's the Hungarian recipe for making an omelet: First steal two eggs. Alexander told me that. I liked Korda...I love Hungarians to the point of sex! I almost get a hard-on when I hear a Hungarian accent, I'm so crazy about them. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Fritz Lang Peter Bogdanovich thinks he's great. Lang, whose mother was Jewish, told me that Goebbels, who was trying to head up the Nazi movie industry, offered to make him an honorary Aryan, of which there were only a handful. Lang said, "But I'm Jewish," and Goebbels replied, "I decide who is Jewish!" That was when Lang knew it was time to leave Germany. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Irving Paul Lazar Back Story: As noted in the list's description, Welles' was recorded over a two year period by Henry Jaglom at Ma Maison in West Hollywood. The following transpired as Hollywood agent Irving Paul Lazar approached the two directors' regular table... Swifty Lazar: Just wanted to say, 'Hello.' Welles: You look wonderful. Lazar: I feel good. I'm good. Orson, see you Wednesday. Take care of yourself. Welles: What, Do you think I look badly? Lazar: No. You look great. Lazar leaves the table... I don't like people to say, "Take care of yourself." He hasn't changed in thirty years. Lives in a hotel. Orders a whole lot of towels and when he goes to the bathroom to his bed, he lays down a path of towels. If he wants to go to the closet, then he makes another path. I've seen it. With my own eyes. Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Jack Lemmon Back Story: Like Swifty Lazar (and Richard Burton) above, the following transpired as Jack Lemmon approached the two directors' regular table... Lemmon: You know, if I had to pick a single moment of any performance - let alone just a reading - of anything that Shakespeare ever wrote, that was you one night on the Johnny Carson Show, a number of years ago. Now, you take an average goddamn audience of the Tonight Show, and you have a knowledge of Shakespeare that is that of a newt. But you were reading, and, bang! The fucking place gave you an ovation! And I was sitting at home applauding. It was brilliant - it was fucking brilliant. And I don't remember what you were reading. Following an exchange of stories about Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, Richard Pryor, et al... Lemmon: I've always been fascinated by the phrases that we all used, that are so destructive, like "I killed them." Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Jerry Lewis Jerry Lewis plays a spastic. And he will die to make you laugh. He will do anything! Cut off his head if he needs to, you know. Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Harold Lloyd The only one who didn't have gagmen was Harold Lloyd, who was the greatest gagman in the history of movies. If you look at his movies, the gags are the more inventive - the most original, the most visual - of any of the silent comics. We're not talking about Chaplin's genius, we're not talking about his art, or whether Lloyd is better than Chaplin. We're talking about gags. The joke. You've got to separate jokes from beauty and all that. Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Carole Lombard I adored her. She was a very close friend of mine My God, she was earthy. She looked like a great beauty, but she behaved like a waitress in a hash house. That was her type of acting too, and it had great allure. She wasn't vulgar. Very bright. Brighter than any director she ever worked with. She had all the ideas. John Barrymore told me the same thing. He said, "I've never played with so intelligent an actress in my life." You know why her plane went down? It was full of big time American physicists, shot down by the Nazis. She was one of the only civilians on the plane. The plane was filled with bullet holes. Nazi agents in America shot the plane down. It's a real thriller story. The people who know it, know it. It was greatly hushed up. The official story was they ran into the mountain. In those days, the planes couldn't get up that high. They'd just clear the mountains. One person can shoot a plane down, and if they had five or six people there, they couldn't miss. Now, I cannot swear it's true. I've been told this by people who swear it was true, who I happen to believe. But that's the closest you can get, without having some kind of security clearance. I didn't like screwball comedies, at all, with the exception of Carole Lombard. Anything with her - that was fine. Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America' | Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| Micheál MacLiammóir All I can say is what Micheál Mac Liammóir said when we were making The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice [Othello], and I asked him, "Describe the Irish in one word." He said, "Malice." Look, I love Ireland, I love Irish literature, I love everything they do, you know. But Irish-Americans have invented an imitation Ireland which is unspeakable. The wearin' o' the green. Oh, my God, to vomit! Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Norman Mailer All old people either look Jewish or Irish - you have your choice. It has nothing to do with the nose. It's an expression that happens to people when they get past sixty - they usually look like their Jewish or Irish mother. Like Mailer, who looks exactly like his Jewish mother. He never looked Jewish before at all!He looked like an Irishman, if anything. If you met him and his name had been Reilly, you would have said, "Sure, that's Reilly." Chapter 14: Art Buchwald Drove It Up Ronnie's Ass And Broke It Off | |||
| André Malraux Charles de Gaulle made Malraux Minister of Cultural Affairs. The limousine met him in the morning and took him to work. And then he ended up a stooge. There was a photo in Paris Match magazine at the height of the '68 "troubles" - as we called them in Dublin - in which there was a right-wing demonstration in Paris where they filled the Champs-Élysées right up to the Arc de Triomphe. And there was de Gaulle, standing by the Unknown Soldier, with a flame coming out. And there was Malraux, with his head leaning over onto de Gaulle, with tears running down his cheeks. That's what can happen to intellectuals, you know? They are the biggest pushovers. They love power. They cluster around whatever golden boy, or man, is in power and begin to justify it. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | Chapter 10: The Cannes People Are My Slaves | |||
| Louis B. Mayer Louis B. Mayer offered me his studio! He was madly in love with me, because I wouldn't have anything to do with him, you know? Twice he brought me over - spent all day wooing me. He called me "Orse." Whenever he sent for me, he burst into tears, and once he fainted. To get his way. It was fake, absolutely fake. The deal was, I'd have the studio but I'd have to stop acting, directing and writing - making pictures. Louis B. Mayer was the worst of them all, worse than Harry Cohn. He was self-righteous, smarmy, waving the flag, doing deals with the Purple Gang in Detroit. No one called it the Mafia. They controlled all the blue-collar guys who projected the movies, pushed the dollies, swept the floors. They controlled the Teamsters. I wouldn't put it past him to have people killed. He liked to think of himself as a founding father and capo of the Mafia. Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Zubin Mehta The Jewish people left art in Europe. They get to Israel, and they sort of go into retirement. You know, the only time they make good music is when Zubin Mehta, a Hindu, comes to conduct. Every fiddler who ever lived was Jewish. It was a total Russian-Jewish, Polish-Jewish monopoly. Now they're all Japanese and Orientals. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Adolphe Menjou Menjou was so fighting mad that you couldn't talk to him. But Noël Coward took care of him wonderfully. Menjou was heading a USO troupe. Coward was heading the equivalent of the USO - whatever it was called in England - you know, entertaining the troops. And they met in Casablanca, eating in the mess. Menjou was talking about how terrible it was in England, that those "nigger" soldiers were fucking all the English girls, and you didn't know kind of what race it was gonna be. "Isn't it true Noël?" Noël said, "Well, I think it's perfectly marvelous...At least there'll be a race of Englishmen with good teeth." No, with Menjou you couldn't talk. He was a raving maniac. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe was a girlfriend of mine. I used to take her to parties before she was a star. I wanted to try and promote her career. Nobody even glanced at Marilyn. You'd see these beautiful girls, the most chic girls in town, who spent a fortune at the beauty parlor and on their clothes, and everybody said, "Darling, you're looking wonderful." And then they'd ignore them. The men, not the women. The men would gather in the corner and start telling jokes or talking deals. The only time they talked about the girls was to say whether they scored with them. I would point Marilyn out to Darryl, and say, "What a sensational girl." He would answer, "She's just another stock player. We've got a hundred of them. Stop trying to push these cunts on me. We've got her on for $125 a week." And then, about six months later, Darryl was paying Marilyn $400,000, and the men were looking at her - because some stamp had been put on her. Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart I used to say, "What are they doing all that Wagner for?" Why don't they do Don Giovanni?" Now everybody's doing it. Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Benito Mussolini Every dictatorship has always adopted the gestures and costumes of an ancient nation. That's the kind of thing I would like to do on TV, to take people through all these kind of connections. Including when you go into the Caesarism of Mussolini, there is the fascist salute. Cecil B. DeMille invented it. He had come up with something for the crowd, all those extras, to do, and Mussolini picked it up from there. Then it went to Hitler. And everybody has been doing it ever since. Oh, you'll get historians who will scream about it and say it isn't true, but I've never been able to find one who could disprove it. And I've had some arguments in Rome with historians. I said, "Come back to me when you can show me that everybody always saluted like that." They weren't doing this at the beginning of the fascist era; it only started after the movie came out. They took up Caesarism, because it was the era, in both Italy and America, of big Roman spectacles. Chapter 12: DeMille Invented The Fascist Salute | |||
| J. Carrol Naish We'd go down to the Paramount, where they had a double-bill, an see a B picture, and go laugh at the bad acting in the Bs. You know, childish, stupid things. There was an actor called J. Carrol Naish. Anything he did, we'd laugh at. Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| George Jean Nathan One complaint per table is all, unless you want them to spit in the food... Let me tell you a story about George Jean Nathan, America’s great drama critic. Nathan was the tightest man who ever lived, even tighter than Charlie Chaplin. And he lived for 40 years in the Hotel Royalton, which is across from the Algonquin. He fancied himself a great bon vivant - ladies' man and everything. I heard him say to a girl - as he was dancing by me in the old Cub Room at the Stork Club a thousand years ago - after she laughed at something he said, "I can be just as funny in German and French." And away he went, you know? He never tipped anybody in the Royalton, not even when they brought the breakfast, and not at Christmastime. After about ten years of never getting tipped, the room-service waiter peed slightly in his tea. Everybody in New York knew it but him. The waiters hurried across the street and told the waiters at Algonquin, who were waiting to see when it would finally dawn on him what he was drinking! And as the years went by, there got to be more and more urine and less and less tea. And it was a great pleasure for us in the theater to look at a leading critic and know that he was full of piss. And I, with my own ears, heard him at the 21 complaining, saying, "Why can’t I get tea here as good as it is at the Royalton?" That’s when I fell on the floor, you know. It'd be a wonderful thing to tell somebody you hated, when it isn't true. To say, "Don't you know that the waiters are doing that to your tea?" Then you don't have to even do it! You could drive a man mad! A real Iago thing to do. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Merle Oberon There are a lot of bad actors. But Merle Oberon is very beautiful. She was mainly wonderful in one movie, but wonderful because she was not asked to do any acting. It was a very strange French movie. She played a Japanese-before she ever came to Hollywood. I've forgotten what it was called. [The Battle [Hara-Kiri]] Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| John O'Hara In Newsweek, John O'Hara was the movie critic. You'd be amazed how many novelists wanted to be movie critics. He wrote the greatest review of Citizen Kane that anybody ever had. He said, 'This is not only the best picture that has ever been made, it is the best picture that will ever be made.' After that, I should have retired. Chapter 8: Kane Is A Comedy | |||
| Laurence Olivier Most great actors aren't very bright. Laurence Olivier is very - I mean, seriously - stupid. I believe that intelligence is a handicap in an actor. Because it means you're not naturally emotive, but rather cerebral. The cerebral fellow can be a great actor, but it's harder. Of performing artists, actors and musicians are about equally bright. We first met when he was playing The Green Bay Tree, in New York, and I had just finished playing Mercurio in Romeo and Juliet. It was a very nice gathering of people, and we were sitting talking together. The hostess was Margaret Carrington, who was my voice coach as well as Jack's. That's why I can imitate Barrymore, because I took lessons from her. She charged neither Barrymore nor me, and ruined me and made Barrymore. But anyway, she came up to use and according to me, said, "Mr. Olivier, you must stop boring Mr. Welles." And according to Larry, she said, "Mr. Welles, you must stop boring Mr. Olivier." To this day, I honestly don't know who's right. Lately, I hear all kinds of stories about his his health, none of them cheerful. He has three kinds of cancer. It's particularly a shame, because Larry wanted to be so beautiful. I caught him once, when I came backstage to his dressing room after a performance, he was staring at himself with such love, such ardor. He saw me over his shoulder, embarrassed at my catching him in such an intimate moment. Without losing a beat, though, and without taking his eyes off himself, he told me that when he looked at himself in the mirror, he was so in love with the image it was terribly hard for him to resist going down on himself. That was his great regret, not to be able to go down on himself! Olivier was supposed to be in this last movie I was in, and he couldn't make it. And he's supposed to be in another movie they want me in, and they guess he won't be able to do that either. And that's rough on him, because he has to act. He doesn't care if it''s a bad movie or a bad play. He has to work. Which is admirable. That's why he went so far beyond me as an actor. I envied him that so much, but that was the great difference between us. he was - and is - a professional, whereas I don't see acting as a profession, as a job, never have. I am an amateur. An amateur is a lover - amateur, the word, comes from "love" - with all the difficulties of love. I don't feel compelled to work, and Larry does. A professional turns up on Wednesday afternoons. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Roman Polański Polański's performance in the Paris production of Amadeus is terrible. He's a bad actor. He was all right in Chinatown, because he did nothing but stand still, you know. Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Ronald Reagan The Kennedy Center tribute on TV the other night was a riot. Art Buchwald came on, and for seven minutes drove it up Ronnie's ass and broke it off. He didn't have one joke that Ronnie could even laugh at. He said, "And Mr. Reagan, we have to be careful. We ought not treat the arts the way you treat Central America." Then he said, "Because if the Kennedy Center goes Communist, the next thing is the Hollywood Bowl!" You could see the audience wondering whether they'd be photographed by the FBI on their way out if they laughed too hard. They cut to Reagan at the beginning, doing a kind of wince, and then never again. The whole dressed-up audience had these frozen smiles. Art was the licensed jester. They couldn't cut. I wanted to see how Old Blue Eyes was taking it. But we didn't even get to see that. It was a great group. Besides Sinatra - Kazan, Katherine Dunham, James Stewart, and Virgil Thomson. First we had a speech by Reagan, from the White House, instead of speaking from his box or coming on the stage. They'd written a very short, gracious speech, which he read with that Reagan skill, which can be very good. Followed by Warren Beatty, who introduced Kazan, calling him "our greatest living director." A very bad speech. And badly delivered. He looked terrible. Any thought that Warren Beatty's going to be president was written off last night. Katherine Dunham is a fake dancer if ever there was one. And Virgil Thomson introduced John Houseman. They roomed together - they were lovers. Why shouldn't he introduce them? Chapter 14: Art Buchwald Drove It Up Ronnie's Ass And Broke It Off | |||
| Oliver Reed When we made Ten Little Indians [And Then There Were None], Towers stuck Oliver Reed with the hotel bill. Oliver went down to the nightclub at the Hilton, which was in the basement, and broke it up. All the mirrors, chandeliers; wrecked the whole place. Destroyed the whole nightclub. Everyone was in such awe of the violence that we all just stood back in horror, including the police. And he just walked out-and went to the airport. Nobody ever laid a hand on him! I admire him greatly. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Jean Renoir Jean Renoir actually made bad movies. When he isn't on pitch, Renoir comes off as an amateur. It's always mystified me. I have nothing to explain it. I don't talk about it, because it just irritates people. Chapter 8: Kane Is A Comedy | |||
| Joan Rivers I did go on the Tonight Show once with "John Rivers," as she ought to be called, when she was replacing Carson. After four and a half years. Obviously, just so that I couldn't go around Beverly Hills saying I was blackballed of was visibly in awe of, and that was Orson Welles. Since then, I haven't been on the show. For five years. There goes two million copies of my autobiography when I publish it, because I can't even get on to plug it. And I knew she was all set for me; I knew. Before I even sat down I began telling her how my wife thought she was the best-dressed woman in show business. And so one. Cut her right off at the knees. She couldn't do a fat joke to save her life. She had to be on her best behavior. How could she sail into me? Joan Rivers is bright and talented, I'm sorry to say. In her terrible way, she's very talented. With jokes like, "Brooke Shields is so dumb, she flunked her Pap test," she has a sense - she senses that it's gold! That's the trick. Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Franklin D. Roosevelt The First World War had only happened some twenty-odd years before the outbreak of World War II. Roosevelt had seen the riots against Germans. No one would play Wagner - or Beethoven, even. Germans weren't safe on the street. They were getting lynched. And he was very anxious for nothing like that to be repeated. He was really scared about what would happen to the Japanese if all the rednecks got started. Especially in California, with its coastline on the Pacific. That was the motivation for the camps. But it was a ghastly mistake. Now other people - the Pentagon types - thought we were riddled with spies. But Roosevelt's concern was the safety of the Japanese who lived here. Of course, they didn't know that. They're rightly indignant. They would never agree that it was a good thing. Missy Lehand hated it when I visited the Roosevelt White House because I kept him up too late. He liked to stay up and talk, you see? He was free with me. I didn't need to be manipulated . He didn't need my vote. I was a release for him, and he enjoyed my company. He used to say, "You and I are the Two Best Actors in America." He was very bright...We were talking about mistakes that other people had made - that Wilson and Georges Clemenceau had made. The neutrality with Spain was a big mistake, "That comes back to me all the time," he said. Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America' | |||
| Artur Rubinstein Rubinstein is gone, I knew him for forty years. I was with him in Royal Albert Hall, and I had no seat, so I listened to the concert in the wings. He finished. Wild applause. And as he walked into the wings to mop his face off, he said to me, "You know, they applauded just as loudly last Thursday, when I played well." He had a full life. He was the greatest cocksman of the nineteenth century. Of the twentieth century. The greatest charmer, linguist, socialite, raconteur. Never practiced. He always used to say, "You know, I am not nearly as good a pianist technically, as many of my rivals, because I am too lazy to practice. I just don't like to. Horowitz can do more than I can. He sits there and works. I like to enjoy life. I play clinkers all the time." But, he says, "I play it better with the clinkers." Rubinstein walked through life as though it was one big party. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Robert Ryan Robert Ryan's a wonderful actor. I don't think of him as Irish; he just has an Irish name. He must be fourth-generation. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Alexander Salkind Alexander Salkind and Mikhail Salkind produced Le procès [The Trial], that I directed. I ended up paying the actors out of my own pocket to stop them from walking off the set all the time. About seventy-thousand bucks. The Salkind's were broke. They had nothing. To this day, I can not go to the Meurice, in Paris. I can't go to Zagreb because the Salkind's never paid my hotel bill for Le procès [The Trial]. I was in Belgrade, making a terrible version of La fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo [Marco the Magnificent]. There was a big sonowstorm. And word came that the manager of the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb was on his way to Belgrade to get me for my hotel bill on Le procès [The Trial]. But he was stuck in the snow. And I managed to finish the picture and fly out before he arrived. After Superman, they didn't retroactively take care of those things. And when they did those all-star The Three Musketeers, I was the only star from Le procès [The Trial] not in those. They could've given me a job at least, for all the money I'd put into it. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Jean-Paul Sartre When Sartre wasn't being a German philosopher, which he was good at - late Heidegger - most of what he wrote as a critic of the modern scene, political or otherwise, was full of shit. He was very overrated as a playwright. But he was such a god at that time. My friends forbade me to go into Café Philippe, where he used to hang out. They said it would be unpleasant. "Go across the street to Le Dôme, where your people are, the Americans." Most Frenchmen are anti-American, especially the brighter ones, so Sartre's were more carefully worked out. He thought up a lot of reasons. Chapter 8: Kane Is A Comedy | |||
| Maximilian Schell Too Serious. Too Swiss. He's a Swiss. Not a Kraut. Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| David O. Selznick Selznick's extraordinary films would've been made by the directors, anyway - and better. The man was a simple pain in the ass! I knew him as well as I know you. He was a total monster, the worst of them all. He wasn't elegant. He was gross. Tremendous energy and very intelligent. And very bad taste. He thought he was the greatest thing since Jesus. His job, like Thalberg's, was to efface the signature of the director. The man had a tremendous drive to be more than Thalberg. And he had no conscience. Selznick wanted to be the greatest producer in the world - and would have been happy to do anything to achieve it. It was unbelievable. I was close to David because friends of mine liked him. I used to go to his house on Sunday nights. Everybody in Hollywood would be there, and we'd play "The Game," which was really just charades. But Selznick played to win. Week after week after week. If our team lost, he would follow us in our cars down the driveway, screaming insults at us for having been such idiots, with his voice echoing through the canyons as we drove away. He would become so violent that it was worth it. It was funny just to watch him. And then he had us back the next week, "Now we're gonna win." Once Selznick wanted to have a fight with me. This was at Walter Wagner's house. He said how disappointed he was not to have Ronald Colman in Rebecca. Because he had this fellow Olivier. That infuriated me. I said, "What's wrong with Olivier?' He said, "He's no gentleman." And I said, "David, what kind of shit is this? What are you talking about?" "Well, he just isn't. You can tell that. But with Ronnie you know right away." And I said, "You pious old fart." So David stood up, took off his glasses, and assumed the fighting position. We went out into the backyard, and everyone held us back. We used to do that all the time in Hollywood, always stepping out into the garden and fighting. While everybody held you and nothing happened. Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America' | |||
| William Shakespeare Shakespeare wrote all the plays that we need. And he knew it. He knew it. He wrote a short verse in which he said that nobody would match him. He was apparently an enormously charming man. Nobody ever spoke against him. Everybody loved him. And what's interesting are the new discoveries about his acting career, that he probably played a much bigger parts than we heretofore thought. It's now almost certain that he played Iago. The mystery surrounding Shakespeare is greatly exaggerated. We now a lot about his financial dealings, for example. He was brilliant in arranging his finances, you see. He died a very rich from real-estate investments. The son-of-a-bitch did everything! And finally he got what his father had always wanted - a coat of arms. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Norma Shearer After Thalberg died, Norma Shearer - one of the most minimally talented ladies to ever appear on the silver screen, and who looked like nothing, with one eye crossed over the other - went right on being the queen of Hollywood, and getting one role after another. Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America | |||
| Leo Slezak Leo Slezak was the greatest Wagnerian tenor of his era. And the king - the uncrowned king - of Vienna. He was singing Lohengrin - if you're a Wagnerian you know that he enters standing on a swan that floats on the river, onto the stage. He gets off, sings, and at the end of his last aria, is supposed to get back on the swan boat and float off. But one night the swan just went off by itself before he could get on it. Without missing a beat, he turned to the audience and ad-libbed, "What time does the next swan leave?" Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Malcolm St. Clair There was a fellow who later became a director, called Mal St. Clair, and he was one of Charlie Chaplin's gagmen. This was a day when Rebecca West, Aldous Huxley and H.G. Wells were coming to watch the shooting of City Lights. And Chaplin had the chairs out, ready for them, and they sit down. He starts his scene, something they had been shooting the night before and hadn't finished. He has a brick and he's going to throw it through the window of a shop and take something - because he's hungry or whatever it is - and then he realizes a policeman is standing behind him. They start to roll. Mal comes into the studio and says, "Charlie, I've got it! None of us could figure out what to do in that scene you were shooting last night, but I've got —" Chaplin says, "Go away." Mal says, "Charlie, I'm telling you, I've got it. What you do with the brick —" Chaplin says, "Get out, please. I told you not to come in." Mal says, "But we were all trying to find a kicker for this scene last night, and I've got it!" Chaplin, really angry now, says, "Listen, will you get out?" So Mal says, "As you start to raise the brick —" Chaplin yells, "Get out of my studio! I never want to see you again!!" So Mal says, "Yes, I'm going," Just as he reaches the exit, Mal turns around and adds, "You are nothing but a no-good quidnunc." Now, Charlie, every day after lunch, went to the can, his private can. And there he had the short Oxford dictionary, and he read a page of it to improve his mind. On this day, he turns to Q. He sees that it's circled, and Mal has written, "I knew you'd look it up." Charlie was uneducated, you see, and embarrassed about his vocabulary. And he didn't want anybody to know he had gagmen, that's why he fired St. Clair. Never allowed him on the set again! Because he was blowing it in front of these highbrow, grand people, who thought he was the genius of comedy. Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Lee Strasberg In The Godfather: Part II, Lee Strasberg's Hyman Roth was much better than the real thing. Meyer Lansky was a boring man. Hyman Roth is who he should have been. Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Irving Thalberg Thalberg was the biggest single villain in the history of Hollywood. Before him, a producer made the least contribution. The producer didn't direct, he didn't act, he didn't write - so, therefore, all he could do was either (A) mess it up, which he didn't do very often, or (B) tenderly caress it. Support it. Producers would only go to the set to see that you were on budget, and that you didn't burn down the scenery. The director became the fellow whose only job was to say, "action" and "cut." Suddenly, you were "just a director" on a "Thalberg production." Don't you see? A role had been created in the world. Just as there used to be no conductor of symphonies. Thalberg was creative. That's my definition of "villain." He obviously had this power. He convinced Mayer that without him, his movies wouldn't have any class. Remember that quote Mayer gave? All the other moguls were "dirty kikes making nickelodeon movies." He used to say that to me all the time. Thalberg used to manipulate everybody, brilliantly. Not only Mayer, but actors, directors, writers. He used his [rheumatic fever] death sentence, his beauty, everything. Enormously charming and persuasive. Thalberg was Satan! You know, the classic Satan. And, of course, he worked around the clock...The result was he negated the personal motion picture in favor of the manufactured movie. He was responsible for the bad product at Metro, and the style which continued afterwards: The Thalberg Style. Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Harry Alan Towers Harry Alan Towers is a famous crook. I worked for him for years. He always took the money and ran. He once fled to Tehran, leaving a mountain of unpaid bills. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Spencer Tracy No charm. To me, he was a hateful, hateful man. Tracy hated me, but he hated everybody. Once I picked him up in London, in a bar, to take him out to Nuttley Abbey, which was Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh's place in the country. Everybody came up to me and asked for autographs and didn't notice him at all. I was The Third Man, for God's sake, and he had white hair. What did he expect? And then he sat there at the table saying, "Everybody looks at you, and nobody looks at me." All day long, he was just raging. Because he was the big movie star, you know. When he was on the set it was, "Why is that actor distracting everyone while I'm talking?" I hate him so, because he's one of those bitch Irishmen. I know them, you don't. They hate themselves. I lived for years in Ireland. The majority of intelligent Irishmen dislike Irishmen, and they're right. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Harry S. Truman Roosevelt really wanted Wallace in '44 to run as his vice president again, and it was the reactionary Southern Democrats who forced Truman on him. He would have loved to have William O. Douglas...and he didn't give Truman any kind of break. Roosevelt didn't think much of him. None of us did. Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America | |||
| Erich von Stroheim I loved Von Stroheim. He was a terribly nice fellow. A French script girl who worked on La grande illusion [Grand Illusion] told me he was the greatest prop actor she'd ever known. Because he'd have a newspaper, a swagger stick, a monocle, a cigarette - all these things. And he would do a scene, where he would put them down and pick them up on certain lines. You couldn't have that number of props and get it all right. But every time Renoir would shoot a take, he'd do it right, on the syllable. Thalberg destroyed Erich von Stroheim, as a man and as an artist. Literally destroyed him. And Von Stroheim at that moment was, I think, demonstrably the most gifted director in Hollywood. Von Stroheim was the greatest argument against the the producer. He was so clearly a genius, and so clearly he should have been left alone - no matter what crazy thing he did. They had to make him into a monster. I had a very interesting experience when I was making Touch of Evil. I had a scene in a police archive, and they let me shoot in in the real archive of Universal. And while they were setting the lights, I looked up Von Stroheim, the budgets of his movies. They weren't that high. The idea that he was so extravagant was nonsense. He did some crazy things, but he didn't do anything as crazy as the young directors of the fifty-million-dollar pictures of today. Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Josef von Sternberg Peter Bogdanovich also thinks Von Sternberg is great. Von Sternberg never made a good picture. Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Henry Wallace I thought Henry Wallace's 1948 presidential bid was just fatal. He was a prisoner of the Communist Party. He would never do anything to upset them. Not that I thought that in itself would make him a bad president. But it showed his weakness. I was very, very passionately against him. The left thought I was a real traitor. Had he won, I think we would have had a much bigger reaction after him. More dangerous, more venomous, and more long-lived than McCarthyism. Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America' | |||
| John Wayne John Wayne's reactionary politics came from being Irish. The Irish were taught, "Kill the kikes," you know. I really loved him. He had some of the best manners of almost any actor I've ever met in Hollywood. Why would I speak to him about politics? I'm not gonna set John Wayne straight. I never had any trouble with extreme right-wingers. I've found them to be tremendously likeable in every respect, except their politics. They're usually nicer people than left-wingers. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Tennessee Williams Kenneth Tynan and Tennessee Williams went to Cuba together as guests of Fidel Castro. They were in the massimo leader's office. And there were several other people there, people close to El Jefe, including Che Guevara. Tynan spoke a little fractured Spanish, and Castro spoke quite good English, and they were in deep conversation. But Tennessee had gotten a little bored. He was sitting off, kind of by himself. And he motioned over to Guevara, and said (in a southern accent), "Would you mind running out and getting me a couple of tamales?" Did I ever tell you about the play of his I lost, like a fool, to Elia Kazan? Eddie Dowling, who used to be a producer on Broadway, sent me a play by a writer called Tennessee Williams. I didn't even read it. I said, I can't do this; I just can't consider a play right now." It was called The Glass Menagerie. If I had done The Glass Menagerie, I would have done all those others. A big dumb mistake. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| William Butler Yeats I do have prejudice, I do have it. Particularly against Irish-Americans. I much prefer Irishmen from Ireland. If you have to have an Irishman, I'll take one of those. And Irishmen in England are quite good. All the great Irish writers mostly left and went to England, except for George William Russell and and Yeats. Yeats makes me shiver. I was in Dublin at the time when he was still at every party, and you could see him walking in the park. And Lady Gregory. All those people were still around - the famous Gaelic nationalists. I got to know them all. And you know, some of my best friends are Irishmen. Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Darryl F. Zanuck It's terrible for older people to say things were better in the old days, because they always say things were better. What was so good about it was just the quantity of movies that were made. If you were Darryl Zanuck, and you were producing eighty moving pictures a year under your direct supervision, how much attention you could pay to any one picture? Somebody was gonna slip something in that's good. Zanuck was the greatest editor who ever lived. But only for his kind of pictures. In other words, he was at a loss if a picture got too good. But he could save any standard picture. He would automatically make it better. He was awfully good at making the corniest pictures - which I didn't like, for the most part. I think the musicals were awful. But if he knew he had an art film on his hands, he left it alone. Including pictures we don't think are art films. Zanuck was a great polo player. When I first came out here, he was using the old polo grounds by the Palisades. It was funny, the head of the studio playing polo. I had the usual New York sneer. You know that for years, on the drive to work and back, he had a French teacher with him. Imagine a movie head wanting to learn something! He wanted to be a successful head of a studio, and he was...Twentieth was the only Christian studio. It was the worst studio in town. Zanuck is Czech, from Nebraska. He had begun his career by publishing, at his own cost, a novel. And putting it on the desks of various producers. At nineteen he became the white-haired boy by writing Rin-Tin-Tin movies, which of course made a fortune. Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Richard D. Zanuck In France, Darryl Zanuck heard about Twentieth's terrible trouble with Cleopatra, so he rolled up his sleeves and made The Longest Day, which got them out from under - like that, you see. It made a fortune, and brought him back as president of Fox, because he had become a great figure of fun. Then his son, Richard Zanuck, and another group maneuvered him out. He was the front man for those who were trying to get rid of his father. Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)I don't think A Streetcar Named Desire is a good film. I think Gadge did it better in the theater. I don't think he's a very good filmmaker compared to his work in the theater.Chapter 14: Art Buchwald Drove It Up Ronnie's Ass And Broke It Off | |||
| All That Jazz (1979)I don't like that therapeutic movie. I'm pretty catholic in my taste, but there are some things I can't stand.Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Anna and the King of Siam (1946)I didn't want to do Anna and the King of Siam because I couldn't stand Irene Dunne, who had already been cast.Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| Annie (1982)Annie is really bad. On every level, I think. I thought it missed all over the place.Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| The Big Brass Ring (1999)I expected studios to turn me down. Why wouldn't they? I've never made any money for them.Introduction | |||
| Der blaue Engel [The Blue Angel] (1930)Der blaue Engel [The Blue Angel] is a big piece of schlock. Painted on velvet. Like you buy in Honolulu. Peter Bogdanovich stopped talking to me for several days when I said Von Sternberg was no good.Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Captains Courageous (1937)I was never a fan of Spencer Tracy. When I was a young man, I got up and made a fuss at 'Captains Outrageous' - uh Courageous. I stood up in the Paramount Theater and said, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" when he was doing the Portuguese accent. The usher told me to get out because I was making such fun of his performance. With the curled hair!Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| Campanadas a medianoche [Falstaff] (1965)Campanadas a medianoche [Falstaff] was nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1966, and it was the picture that year because the competition was so weak. All my old French friends were on the jury: Marcel Achard, Marcel Pagnol, somebody else, I've forgotten. And it was that thing by Claude Lelouch, his first movie, Un homme et une femme [A Man and a Woman], that got it.When I got word that I was being given a special prize, I said, "I don't want to come to the ceremony." Because it's very undignified. But then I thought, 'If I don't show up, I'll look like I'm a sorehead.' So I went. And it was the greatest triumph of my life. Because when they announced that Un homme et une femme [A Man and a Woman] had won the Palme d'Or, the audience stood up, booed and yelled for ten minutes. Then they said, "We're giving a special prize to Orson Welles," and there was a fifteen minute ovation. So it was clear what everybody thought - except the jury. It was a French thing. To promote their industry. I hadn't figured on that. I should have insisted Campanadas a medianoche [Falstaff] be shown out of competition. Instead of enduring the humiliation. The year you make your masterpiece, the Romanians will get it. I was in Cannes the year of the revolution. In '68. When all the leading directors withdrew from the festival. And I joined them. It was "to the barricades!" They all said to me, "We don't even think of you as an American." But I'm very American! My pictures are very American! All they mean is that they like them. I'm content to let them think my pictures are un-American. I'm a hypocrite. A sellout. Chapter 10: The Cannes People Are My Slaves | |||
| Chinatown (1974)I hated Chinatown. That's John Huston at his worst.Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Citizen Kane (1941)Citizen Kane only got to be a famous picture later. And then a lot of people really hated it. Americans got it, but not Europe. The first thing they heard about it was the violent attack by Jean-Paul Sartre. Wrote a long piece, forty thousand words on it or something. I think it was because Citizen Kane was a comedy - in the classic sense of the word. Not a fall-in-the-aisles laughing comedy, but because the tragic trappings are parodied. The film is moving, but so can comedies be moving. There is a slight camp to all the great Xanadu business. And Sartre, who has no sense of humor, couldn't react to it at all.Citizen Kane was not gigantically big in England. Auden didn't like it. Nor The Magnificent Ambersons. Some people called it warmed over Borges, and attacked it. I always knew that Borges himself hadn't like it. He said that it was pedantic, which is a very strange thing to say about it, and that it was a labyrinth. And the worst thing about a labyrinth is when there's no way out. And this is a labyrinth of a movie with no way out. Borges is half-blind. Never forget that. But you know, I could take it that he and Sartre simply hated Citizen Kane. In their minds, they were seeing - and attacking - something else. It's them, not my work. I'm more upset by the regular, average, just-plain critics. For a couple years after Citizen Kane, every time I walked in the streets of New York they shouted at me, "Hey! What the hell is that movie of yours about? What does it mean?" Not, 'What is Rosebud?' but always 'What does it mean?' The Archie Bunkers. It was Antonioni to them. All those mixtures of things - 'What kind of thing is that?' Nobody says that now. Everybody understands. Chapter 8: Kane Is A Comedy | |||
| City Lights (1931)The visual difference between City Lights and Modern Times is extraordinary. City Lights is still the greatest Chaplin film, no question.Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Don Quijote de Orson Welles (1992)I was thinking of making Don Quixote into an essay film. That was the way I wanted to finally get it done, with the title When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?. That would be the name of the movie. And it would be all about Spain, a country I've known since I was a boy. What's happened to it, and why Quixote is still important. That film would be much more expensive than Vérités et mensonges [F for Fake], because I'd need to shoot footage in modern Spain. You know, de-Francoed Spain. But how to sell Quixote without having sold Vérités et mensonges [F for Fake]? It's hard if you haven't got in the door with your first Fuller brush.Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| The Entertainer (1976)I loved The Entertainer. But it's an overrated play. You would be astonished at what a rattle trap piece of crap it is. It does not hold up at all! It's all vehicle. Whether or not it was Americanized isn't important - it was essentially the same play. Fakey and off pitch. Like Laurence Olivier. The thing that was better about Jack Lemmon's performance, and the great mistake that Larry made - You see, Larry can't bear to fail, even if he's supposed to. So when he played the comic onstage, he played for real laughs from the paying audience, instead of giving the feeling that he was in a half-empty theater where nobody was laughing. He did not play a failed comedian. Success to Larry demanded being an effective comedian, even though it made no sense! Because if he was that good, what was he doing in a Brighton theater? What was his problem? But Jack played it like the theater was empty and nobody was laughing. A couple guys with raincoats on, and that was it.Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Vérités et mensonges [F for Fake] (1973)Vérités et mensonges [F for Fake] is a fake confessional. I'm not really confessing. The fact that I confess to be a fraud is a fraud. It is just as deliberate and manipulative as that. No, I think I'm absolutely genuine - that's a lie. I never tell the truth.I don't want to know the hang-ups of the writers or movie people. I'm not interested in the artist; I'm interested in his work. And the more he reveals, the less I like it. I don't know how to explain it. Here's a way to put it: I do not mind seeing the artist naked, but I hate to see him undressing. Show me your cock. That's all right with me. But don't striptease. The tragedy of my life is I can't get Americans to like Vérités et mensonges [F for Fake]. Outside of New York, the critics hated it. In Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis - they were furious with it. They seemed to think I was attacking critics. Which I wasn't, but why not? It did make fools of them. In France, for instance, all the art critics denounced it. That's what happens when you show a Kees Van Dongen that Van Dongen didn't paint, and the art critics say that he did. Anyway, I think Vérités et mensonges [F for Fake] is the only really original movie I've made since Citizen Kane. You see, everything else is only carrying movies a little further along the same path. I believe that the movies - I'll say a terrible thing - have never gone beyond Citizen Kane. That doesn't mean there haven't been good movies, or great movies. But everything has been done now in movies, to the point of fatigue. You can do it better, but it's always going to be the same grammar, you know? Every artistic form - the blank-verse drama, the Greek plays, the novel - has only so many possibilities and only so long a life. And I have a feeling that in movies, until we break completely, we are only increasing out library of good works. I know that as a director of movie actors in front of the camera, I have nowhere to move forward. I can only make another good work. I had hoped Vérités et mensonges [F for Fake] would be the beginning of a new language that other people would take up. I wish I had done more films in that format. Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Gaslight (1944)I couldn't stand Irene Dunne, that's why I turned down Gaslight, too. She was going to do it. And then after I turned it down, they got Ingrid Bergman and I was out.Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| The General (1926)There's nothing Chaplin ever did that was as good as The General. I think The General is almost the greatest movie ever made. The most poetic movie I've ever seen.Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Grand Hotel (1932)I was always a wild Garbo fan. But when I saw her in Grand Hotel, at first I thought it was somebody else making fun of her, like somebody taking off on Garbo. She was totally miscast as a ballerina. She's a big-boned cow. She did everything that you would do if you were a drag queen doing an imitation of Garbo.Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| The Godfather (1972)The Godfather was the glorification of a bunch of bums who never existed. The best of them were the kind of people you'd expect to drive a beer truck. They had no class. The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention. The classy gangster was the ideal of every real gangster, who then started to dress like George Raft, and tried to behave like George Raft, and so on.Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| La grande illusion [Grand Illusion] (1937)Probably one of the three or four best ever. I burst into tears at La grande illusion [Grand Illusion] every time. When they stand up and sing "The Marseillaise." And Fresnay is so wonderful - All the performances are divine.Chapter 8: Kane Is A Comedy | |||
| The Horse Soldiers (1959)I recently saw what I've always been told was Jack Ford's greatest movie, and it's terrible.Chapter 7: The Blue Angel Is A Big Piece Of Schlock | |||
| Иван Грозный I [Ivan the Terrible, Part 1] (1944)Sergei Eisenstein doesn't value performers (and said as much in) my unflattering review in the New York Post, that Иван Грозный I [Ivan the Terrible, Part 1] didn't bring the hands together. And he then wrote me letters month after month. Hundreds of hundred of words each time. Until he went into hiding.Following Иван Грозный II [Ivan the Terrible, Part 2], Eisenstein was hiding in phone booths at the end, and he was very badly off. He was not allowed to release the third part of Ivan the Terrible because it suddenly occurred to Stalin, who though he was going to be glorified, that in Ivan the Terrible you couldn't help but see that he was terrible. So, of course, Stalin's displeasure then moved to Eisenstein, who should have anticipated that at the beginning. If he was so good at dialectical materialism, he should have looked around, and said, "I think I'm going to do a pastoral story of a happy collective farm," you know? Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| It's a Wonderful Life (1946)Hokey. It is sheer Norman Rockwell, from the beginning to the end. But you can not resist it! There is no hating that movie.Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Jane Eyre (1943)I put on a nose because I was so baby-faced. I looked sixteen years old. How was I gonna be Mr. Rochester with this baby face? Joan Fontaine was busy being the the humble governess - so fucking humble. Which is a great mistake. She's supposed to be a proud little woman who, in spite of her position, stands up for herself. That's why she interests this bastard of a man.The trick of the story is that she is, by virtue of the nature of society as it was then, doomed to a position of servility. But because of her tremendous independence of spirit, she causes the man to become interested in her. Even though she's not a beauty. It's her character that makes the impression on him. And that's why he loves her, finally. Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)I'm having a hard time trying to think of a great Tracy performance. Well, he was gigantic in Judgment at Nuremberg, although it was not a great picture, but I couldn't stand him in those romantic things with Hepburn.Chapter 1: Everybody Should Be Bigoted | |||
| King Lear (1983)I saw Laurence Olivier's King Lear on the BBC. The first two scenes are the worst things I have ever seen in my life, bar none. Remember, this is the man who, when he played Hamlet, began the movie saying, "This is a story of a man who could not make up his mind." He plays Lear as senile in the first scene - and he mustn't! He has to fall from grace, you see. Such a vulgar conception. You know, Larry is in competition even with the people who were doing Shakespeare before he was doing it.Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| The Kingfisher (1983)Rex Harrison looks like he's been on cortisone for eight years.Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| The Lady From Shanghai (1947)Rita Hayworth always thought it was the best picture of her life. Defended me, at it. I was gonna make a nice little B picture with a girl I brought over from Paris - and get out, you know, in twenty days. I wasn't gonna get any money for it. So Rita came and cried, begged to do it. Of course, I said, "Yes." So suddenly, I'm stuck with the studio's bread-and-butter girl, from whom I've been separated for a year. I was dragged back into the marriage and the movie.Chapter 4: I Fucked Around on Everyone | |||
| Limelight (1952)Chaplin showed me the rushes of the original Limelight scene with Keaton, before it was cut. Not only did Keaton have more to do, but he gave the bath to Chaplin! Washed him right off the screen. You saw who was best. Just no argument. Chaplin cut it 'cause he was jealous. I can't blame him, because it was almost embarrassing.Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Lost Horizon (1937)The Orient is the graveyard of American directors. The only really bad Capra picture I've ever seen is this Lost Horizon. It's terrible - terrible. Absurd! I screamed with laughter! Shangri-La, where they were kept, was this sort of Oriental country club. Still, I was a great Capra fan.Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)Being non-affirmative doesn't bother me, because it comes out of me. My films are as black as a black hole. The Magnificent Ambersons. Oh boy, was that dark. I break all my rules.Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| The Maltese Falcon (1941)Huston's first picture, The Maltese Falcon, was totally borrowed from Citizen Kane. For three or four years, everybody was doing that lighting, the angles, setups...Chapter 12: Comics Are Frightening People | |||
| Marie Antoinette (1938)Marie Antoinette was the biggest bust ever made, you know? And everybody used to say "Miss Thalberg is coming," "Miss Shearer is arriving," and all that, as if they were talking about Sarah Bernhardt. While there were Garbo and Dietrich and Lombard and all the good people.Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America' | |||
| Marlene (1984)I'm sure Max Schell will never speak to me again. I'm going to have him as an enemy forever. He's doing a documentary about Marlene, and he has got all this audio of her on tape. But then, when it came time to photograph her, she stalled and finally refused. It's all about him - the director - in an empty apartment in Paris, with her voice piped in. And then I'm supposed to come in as some kind of apparition - I think a double exposure. When I heard that, I suddenly got awfully busy in another movie, you know? He'll know that I was just pretending, But this movie can't be any good. It's a terrible idea for a picture. I admire him very much. But he's making a big mistake. It's not like him to be that nutty.Chapter 5: Such A Good Catholic That I Wanted To Kick Her | |||
| Modern Times (1936)Modern Times is bad. From that time on, Chaplin went down do fast that he's almost unrecognizable. I saw it again just six weeks ago. It doesn't have a good moment in it. It is so course, it is so vulgar.Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Monsieur Verdoux (1947)The day Chaplin ran Monsieur Verdoux for me - you know I wrote it - the credits read, "Charles Chaplin presents Monsieur Verdoux, produced by Charles Chaplin, directed by Charles Chaplin, executive producer Charles Chaplin." And then it said, "Screenplay - Orson Welles." Story and screenplay. And he said, "Don't you find it monotonous, my name all those times?" Not thinking he's being funny. My name had to stay, it was in the contract. He was already being sued for plagiarism by Konrad Bercovici over The Great Dictator - and he did steal. So he came to me and he said, "I have to, for my defense, say that I've written everything I've ever did. And if I put in the credits that you wrote the story and the screenplay, there goes my case. I'll put you back in the moment the case is over." He never meant to, but I said, "Okay," and it opened in New York without my name at all. And all the papers said, as their chief criticism of Monsieur Verdoux, "Whoever put into Chaplin's head to do such a thing?" - To make such a dark movie about a bluebeard. So one day later, the credits say, "Based on a suggestion by Orson Welles." Or "A story suggested...," something like that. "Suggest" is in it. In other words, something I said to him one night over dinner. And it has said that ever since! But I wrote the whole script. I had the script, and I was going to direct him in it. For two years. And he kept stalling, and finally saying, "I can't. I have to do it myself."Do you know why I thought of Chaplin? There used to be an ad in the subways for something called Eau de Pinot. Which was the sort of things barbers put on, that smelled a little, and was supposed to stop dandruff. French. And they had a fellow with a little mustache saying, "Avez-vous scurf?" Flaky skin. And I looked at that, and I said, Chaplin has got to play Henri Désiré Landru," you know, the real Bluebeard, eleven killings, all women except one, during World War I. Of course, Chaplin changed the script. Mine was called "The Lady-Killer." Based on Lundru, and I called the character Lundru. He called him Verdoux. And he had to make it socially conscious, have Hitler, and so he changed the period. I've told you about the great sequence in the Alps that Chaplin cut out. Landrau finally finds a woman, whose profession is killing her husbands. His equal. And they go on a honeymoon together, a walking trip in the Alps. And each one wants to kill the other. And he cut it out, 'cause it was too good a part for the woman. Even those that loved him, and were close to him, have said, 'You know Charlie will never let another actor be good on the screen with him, not for one minute.' So he changed the script and came up with what was a very funny scene, but nothing like mine. His was the scene in the rowboat, in the Bois de Boulogne. If you listen carefully, you will hear yodeling in the distance. Because in my script, I accompanied this scene in the mountains with yodeling, and he never stopped to wonder, 'why the yodeling?' That's how dumb he was! Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| On the Waterfront (1954)I'll give nothing to On the Waterfront because it's so immoral. I wish I could forget the politics for a moment. But that was made at a time when I was very sensitive on those subjects, and it was an excuse for all those people who gave names. All those collabos with McCarthy, of which Kazan was one. And this film was to show that the hero is the man who tells.Chapter 14: Art Buchwald Drove It Up Ronnie's Ass And Broke It Off | |||
| The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice [Othello] (1952)The cultural importance of the Cannes festival vanished years ago. It's now ceased to be anything except a market. But if you get one of the top prizes, it helps your business. You know, the Cannes people are my slaves, pretty much.It's a disadvantage to be an American in Cannes. They don't like to give the Palme d'Or to Americans. I experienced that several times. The most notable was with The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice [Othello] in 1952. I didn't know whether I was getting the prize of not. Because they never tell you, you see, that you've won it, until the very last minute. And the way I learned it was when they came to my room in the Carlton, desperate, and said, "We can't find anyone who knows the national anthem of Morocco." I had entered the picture as a Moroccan picture! The Moor of Venice, you know? All the things I've entered in Cannes for prizes have always been as Italian or Spanish - or Moroccan. Chapter 10: The Cannes People Are My Slaves | |||
| The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)The western that was considered very high art at the time. With Henry Fonda and a lot of other good actors, standing around kind of projecting gloom.Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Parnell (1937)I remember when Gable made a picture called Parnell, a costume picture. Nineteen thirty-seven, with Myrna Loy. They released it to empty theaters! Proving that there's no such thing as the star who can't empty the theater. I think it was the only MGM film that lost money. Not that it mattered to Mayer. Money was almost no object to Metro, 'cause they couldn't lose money.When I learned to fly, I flew with Carole Lombard over Metro, at lunchtime. We buzzed the commissary, just as everyone was coming out, and she dropped leaflets that read, "Remember Parnell!" That's the kind of girl she was. Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America' | |||
| Rembrandt (1936)They hate movies about geniuses. Rembrandt, the only one I ever liked, emptied the theaters. A total failure.Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| The River (1951)Very bad picture. It's considered on of the great monuments of film. Greatly overpraised.Chapter 8: Kane Is A Comedy | |||
| Romeo and Juliet (1936)In his whole career, Thalberg didn't make a picture that will last fifty years from now, and he's still revered. Romeo and Juliet, as produced by Thalberg, and directed by Cukor, was the high cultural point of his ten years of movie-making. Now, you cannot sit through four minutes of it, it's so terrible. Norma Shearer with those tiny eyes, and Leslie Howard, a Hungarian Jew, as Veronese teenagers?Chapter 3: FDR Used to Say, 'You and I are the Two Best Actors in America' | |||
| La règle du jeu [The Rules of the Game] (1939)I love La règle du jeu [The Rules of the Game] too - but to me, it's a lesser work, just by a tiny bit. I think La règle du jeu [The Rules of the Game] is a better picture. It's like listening to Mozart. Nothing can be better than that. But I don't like the love story. And La grande illusion [Grand Illusion] just grabs me.Chapter 8: Kane Is A Comedy | |||
| Sayonara (1957)Now there's a bad picture for you. Anybody who was trapped in that movie would have been at a loss. Yet, it was nominated for several Academy Awards. The picture was, on every level, an abomination. It looked like a musical that didn't have any numbers in it.Chapter 7: Nobody Even Glanced at Marilyn | |||
| Sun Valley Serenade (1941)The Russians have terrible taste. I saw it at its worst when they came here to buy films while the war was still on in the Pacific. I was talking to them about Eisenstein and all that. So certain was I that my work would be taken back to Russia that I took the commissar, who'd been given the job, to all the Hollywood parties, and to Romanoff's, and poured champagne down his throat. He went home with a list that began with Sun Valley Serenade, a bunch of pictures like that, mostly with Don Ameche. Crummy musicals. Not even the good ones. Just dumb. Peasant dumb. Idiots that I wasted my time on.Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Sunset Blvd. (1950)The success of Sunset Blvd. meant nothing to Erich von Stroheim, because it was Swanson's and Wilder's picture.Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Touch of Evil (1958)Touch of Evil is not affirmative. None of my reactions about art have anything to do with what I do. I'm the exception!Chapter 9: There's No Such Thing As A Friendly Biographer | |||
| Two-Faced Woman (1941)Garbo stopped acting after Two-Faced Woman. I think she was getting older, and I think she hated to act. And I think she was waiting for the flop to go out with.Chapter 13: Avez-vous Scurf? | |||
| Wuthering Heights (1939)I was just not constituted to deal with Samuel Goldwyn - and was never tempted. To go through what Willie Wyler went through with him? Life is too short. Charlie MacArthur and Ben Hecht wrote Wuthering Heights in my house at Sneden's landing, and Goldwyn was with 'em all the time. I was trying to sleep in the afternoon, before my radio show. And I heard the way Sam behaved with them. And I thought, "Never will I put myself through that."Chapter 2: Thalberg Was Satan! | |||
| Viva Zapata! (1952)In Viva Zapata! Anthony Quinn played Zapat's brother. He was quite good. Above all, not a good movie. Zapata is so important to me, and I have such a clear picture of what the story is, that I was profoundly offended by the movie.Chapter 14: Art Buchwald Drove It Up Ronnie's Ass And Broke It Off Orson Welles on Welles On Hollywood: I really shouldn't have stayed in the business. We live in a snake pit here. I've been keeping a secret from myself for forty years - from myself, not the world - Which is that I hate it. I don't read books on film or theater. I keep telling people that and they don't believe me. I genuinely am not interested. For me, it's only interesting to do. I'm not interested in other filmmakers - and that's a terribly arrogant thing to say - or in the medium. Film is the least interesting art medium to watch, except ballet, that's the only thing that's less interesting. I just like to make movies, you know? And that's the truth. Wait till I die. They'll write all kinds of things about me. They'll pick my bones dry. You won't recognize me and if I came back to llfe and read them, I wouldn't recognize me myself. Fat men shouldn't laugh on screen. It's very unattractive. On the Opposite Sex: Women are another race. They're like the moon, always changing. You can only win big be being the cool center of their being. You have to represent something solid and loving. The anchor - Even if you're not. You can't tell them the truth. You have to lie and play games. I've never in my entire life been with someone with whom I didn't have to play a game. I've never in my entire life been with someone with whom I could be exactly who I am. On Success: I think most people here are bothered by the fact that in America we are incredibly fortunate. There are lots who have a bad conscience. A romantic conscience, depending on the person. How can I sit at the table here with lunch and say, "I was talking to Henry at Ma Maison about these people that are starving in Africa, and thinking about how I ought to be in Africa helping out." The answer is, "Go to Africa and shut up!" Nobody is going to sympathize with you when you say that your problem is that you aren't going. On Biographies: I don't read the books about myself. Either because they're too nice, or not nice enough. I'm terribly thin-skinned. I believe everything bad I read about myself. And even if I reject it, it remains in my mind as probably true. So I protect myself by reading as little about myself as I can, out of cowardice. On Forthrightness: You can't trust me when I say favorable things. Or unfavorable things, for that matter. You have to ask me to repeat it. I never lie twice about the same thing. What I hate is when filmmakers ask my opinion, saying to me, "We know you wouldn't say anything but the truth, that's why we're asking." At that moment, I'm preparing the biggest lie in the world, you know. They're going to ask about some piece of merde - always. I've come up with one good answer at least, which is this: "There are no words..." I never lie with a laugh. It's much easier to lie about an intense tragedy than about a comedy. It's very hard to sit and go, "Ha, ha, ha, ha." It's easier to say, "It's too touching, isn't it?" On Art: And, really, what is art? It's a very interesting question, you know? One that has never been sufficiently answered. I'm deeply suspicious of the unanimity that people have about the whole range of art and music. Because I don't think it's humanly possible for everybody to have the right opinion about something. Therefore, some of it must be wrong I wish some critics would say, "You know, this is all trash!" But nobody has. The reputations of Beethoven and Picasso should be challenged. Why are we admiring some painters now, like Bartolomé Murillo, who are going to disappear? Conversely, nobody took El Greco seriously until seventy-five years ago. Why is there this absolute unanimity and certainty that everybody has not only about painting, but about everything - movies, anything you want to name. Everyone agrees on what is classic and what is not. On Film vs. Theater: Films are either superior or inferior to the theater. That battle between the two will always exist. The lack of live actors will always be to the advantage of movies and to its disadvantage. There are things you can do in movies that require the absence of live actors. But theater, which requires live actors, can achieve things that films can never reach, because what's up on the screen is dead. It's only an image - there are no people there. The making of a film is secondary to the performance. When you speak about the performing arts, the most important thing is the performer, even if he is the result of the director. What you are looking at is a performance. I don't say that the filmmaker can't be the most important thing. But, basically, in the great mass of films, it is the performance in the film as photographed that we see. That performance may be the result of the director or may not. And when it's at its best, it's both. On Formal Education: I finished high school in two years and had a scholarship to Harvard. I hated school! Hated school! The trouble with school is that it's very good for some minds, and very bad for others. It's giving you opinions. All the time, opinions about history, opinions about people, opinions about everything. Schools are opinion factories. So I went into the theater so as not to go to Harvard. On an Actor's Memory: I can read any detective story a year later with perfect pleasure, because I totally forget the plot. So I never have to buy another book. I don't even remember the names of characters in my own scripts, you know? I say "the girl," or whoever is playing the part. I have a terrible time with fictitious names. I have a selective memory with real people - It's usually the one I know best whose name I can't remember. That's really what drove me out of the theater, because you're trapped in the dressing room. People come backstage - and they come from every period of your life and they're all gathered together. There's dear old Pete - or whatever his name is - and his wife, standing there waiting to be introduced to the celebrity who's next to them. And waiting to be shown that you're a snob and won't introduce them. I've perfected the mumbling now. "You know each other" - and all that. Introduction | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 12 |
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