Staging Orson Welles
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STAGING ORSON WELLES Matthew Christopher Gretzinger A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2010 Committee: Dr. Jonathan Chambers, Advisor Dr. Stephannie Gearhart Graduate Faculty Representative Dr. Scott Magelssen Dr. Cynthia Baron ii ABSTRACT Dr. Jonathan Chambers, Advisor In this study I consider the legacy of Orson Welles as a stage figure puppeted in a collective theatre of memory. The study builds on Jonathan Rosenbaum's observation that Welles remains a "mythical and ideological creature" and a "site for the acting out of various fantasies." Referencing Marvin Carlson's The Haunted Stage and Joseph Roach's Cities of the Dead, I apply their insights to three plays that feature Welles as a pivotal character: Jason Sherman's It's All True, Austin Pendleton's Orson's Shadow, and the Naomi Iizuka-Anne Bogart collaboration, War of the Worlds. My central concern is to consider the ways we remember and stage Welles and, in light of Rosenbaum's insight, to also question the myths and ideologies those stagings act out. A corollary to my interrogation of Welles's stage figure as a site of memory is my conviction that the collective memory of Welles's life and work might be staged more usefully. The plays considered approach Welles from different perspectives. However, all – to varying degrees – assess negative judgments. Welles's legacy has been subject to conflicting interpretations, and the arbitration of his historical and remembered significance is a process with important consequences. I raise these consequences and read the plays as evidence in the debate over what Orson Welles's figure signifies. The introduction reviews the "Battle Over Orson Welles" and considers the source-texts that inform Wellesian stagings. The three middle chapters involve readings of each play, analyzing the playwrights and each script's source material in light of the scholarship of Carlson iii and Roach. The final chapter is a meditation on Welles's legacy. In it, I suggest alternative approaches to staging Welles's figure. On balance, my study finds that Welles's is a crucial figure in the staging of collective and cultural memory. I end by considering Welles's as an anxious figure – an American artist incapable of compromise whose genius was rebuked in a culture dominated by marketplace values – and by suggesting that his troubled surrogation on our stages may owe, in part, to a collective urge to repress the knowledge that we have somehow failed him. iv This work is dedicated to my mother, Carolyn Lee Miller Gretzinger. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A great many people have helped me on the long road I followed to complete this manuscript. I am grateful to everyone who offered advice, guidance, criticism and friendship while I was working. If I neglect to mention someone on whose help I relied, I hope he or she will forgive the omission and accept my thanks. I wish to thank the members of my original doctoral cohort: Christine Woodworth, John Sebestyen, Dyrk Ashton, Dale Young, and Jim Davis. As the last of us to finish, I was fortunate to have each of you as an inspiration. For friendship, advice, and emotional support I want to thank my fellow students and friends Stephen Harrick, Cynthia Stroud, Chanelle Vigue, and J. L. Murdoch. I am grateful to my best friend, Roark Littlefield, whose vast knowledge of Orson Welles was a extremely helpful. Our conversations about Welles were invaluable, and many insights that found their way into my chapters were born while talking with him. I owe thanks to actor Robert Machray, whose beautiful performance of Orson Welles (which I frequently listened to on the L. A. Theatre Works audio recording, in between stints of writing) inspired me. I am indebted to Ron Shields for more than a decade of patience and guidance. It was his invitation that led me to consider an academic career. My decision to accept his invitation led me to many challenges. Facing and overcoming them has been deeply rewarding. Lisa Wolford Wylam helped me to see myself as a scholar and professional writer, and remained at my side through some very difficult trials. I owe her thanks for convincing me to pursue this career path, and for being a good friend. I want to thank my father, Paul Gretzinger. My father was, in many ways, the strongest inspiration for this study. He was my first role model as a teacher. Losing him was a trauma vi that has prompted much of my interest in memory and ghosts. I think he would have enjoyed reading my thoughts on Orson Welles, whose magic and movies he also admired. I want to thank my mother, Carolyn Gretzinger, who supported and encouraged me throughout this long process. I owe her a greater debt of thanks than I have words to express. I am indebted to each member of my committee: Stephannie Gearhart, Cynthia Baron, Scott Magelssen, and my advisor, Jonathan Chambers. I would never have finished this project without Jonathan's constant support and patience. He has been an invaluable source of support and wisdom throughout this process. I am especially grateful for his willingness to push me back on the path whenever I have wandered off. My study has benefited greatly from the help and guidance of all of these friends, colleagues, and mentors, and I owe each of them a profound debt of gratitude. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. A KING OF SHREDS AND PATCHES ....................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 The Battle Over Orson Welles ................................................................................ 22 Sources of the Study .................................................................................................. 35 CHAPTER II. NO MORE EXALTED KINGS ....................................................................... 43 Rocking Cradles and Grand Recits: Remembering The Cradle Myth ................... 57 Jason Sherman's Marc Blitzstein: The Figure of the Writer .............................................. 60 Jason Sherman's Orson Welles: What a Little Moonlight Can Do .................................... 72 CHAPTER III. HE THAT PLAYS THE KING ................................................................... 86 Casting Shadows ..................................................................................................... 94 Austin Pendleton's Haunted Stage .......................................................................... 105 Austin's Shadow ...................................................................................................... 109 CHAPTER IV. A THING OF NOTHING ........................................................................... 117 Worlds at War ............................................................................................................ 125 Anne Bogart's Orson Welles: The Figure of the Director ...................................... 131 Naomi Iizuka's Orson Welles: Adapting Alien Worlds .......................................... 135 Closing the Frame / Exit the King .......................................................................... 142 CHAPTER V. A DESTITUTE KING .................................................................................. 146 Me and Orson Welles .............................................................................................. 151 Towards a "Useful" Staging of Orson Welles: Ambiguity, the Storyteller, and the Marketplace ................................................................................................ 159 viii BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................ 165 1 CHAPTER ONE: A KING OF SHREDS AND PATCHES HAMLET. A king of shreds and patches – Save me and hover o'er me with your wings, You heavenly guards! – What would your gracious figure? (Hamlet, Act 3, scene 4, 102-104)1 INTRODUCTION Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has written that, more than two decades after his death, Orson Welles remains a "mythical and ideological creature," a "site for the acting out of various fantasies" (Rosenbaum 2007, 239). In a critical overview of three biographies of Welles – Simon Callow's The Road to Xanadu (1995) , David Thomson's Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles (1996), and Joseph McBride's Orson Welles (1996) – Rosenbaum discerns "[two] prevailing and diametrically opposed attitudes [dictating] the way most people currently think about Orson Welles" (236). The first attitude, according to Rosenbaum, corresponds to a greater or lesser degree with the two former titles (greater in the case of Thomson, lesser in the case of Callow), and is characterized by an understanding of Welles's "life and career in terms of failure and regards the key question to be why he never lived up to his promise." The second attitude Rosenbaum finds expressed in McBride's book and in Barbara Leaming's Orson Welles: A Biography (1985), Frank Brady's Citizen Welles (1989), and James Naremore's The Magic World of Orson Welles (1978; revised 1989), and regards Welles's "life and career more 1 All cuttings from Hamlet cited in my study are taken from the Cambridge School Shakespeare text, edited by Richard Andrews and Rex Gibson, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994 (161). 2 sympathetically and inquisitively." Rosenbaum neatly analogizes the first position with that of the editor in