The one movie Orson Welles “hated making” the most: “Seldom have I been as unhappy”
You’d think that Orson Welles would’ve been happier considering that he was regarded as such a cinematic wunderkind following the release of his debut feature Citizen Kane, but he often seemed rather miserable.
Clearly, success isn’t the be-all-and-end-all, because Welles had Hollywood at his fingertips and he still took every chance he got to moan about it. Perhaps when you’re so embedded within the industry, the novelty wears off fast, especially when you’re surrounded by others who constantly find new ways to grind your gears, which led him to openly criticise many of his contemporaries, like the “arrogant” Charlie Chaplin and the “stupid” Laurence Olivier, refusing to lick anyone’s arse for the sake of a role.
What can also be frustrating is achieving such a level of acclaim, only to struggle to find more work, such that while he initially had no difficulties in landing roles in movies like The Lady from Shanghai, The Third Man, Macbeth, and Othello, there came a year when the offers simply dried up. Maybe he should’ve stopped slagging off the people who could’ve given him work, because you’re not going to get a job if you keep making enemies.
When asked by director Peter Bogdanovich, “What happened when you first got back to Hollywood?” the filmmaker replied, “Nothing; that was the trouble”. Interviewed for the book This Is Orson Welles, he revealed that he “had really a very unhappy time—the worst—getting no work. I went a year with almost nothing, just sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.”
In the end, though, his phone finally did miraculously ring; “Then I got a couple of jobs,” he said, although the first was one that left him feeling absolutely miserable. He was cast as Will Varner alongside Paul Newman in The Long, Hot Summer, Martin Ritt’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof-esque drama, which should have made him happy, for Newman was a great star, and the narrative was inspired by several William Faulkner stories, but he admitted that he “hated making” it.
The actor went as far as to say, “I’ve seldom been as unhappy in a picture”. It seems like Welles struggled to get on with his colleagues, unable to just suck up his feelings for his fellow stars and get on with his job. “What also made the shoot memorable was Orson Welles’s presence. He was pretty standoffish, and he seemed to feel uneasy around Actors Studio people,” Newman recalled in an article for Literary Hub.
In fact, he revealed some pretty telling information about why Welles might not have enjoyed his time filming The Long, Hot Summer, which is that Welles was intimidated.
Newman continued to explain, “Orson couldn’t understand screen generosity, where one actor allows another player in his scene to deservedly get the best camera shots. Screen generosity was not part of Orson’s vocabulary. After a number of retakes on a scene he did with me, Orson asked Marty if he could have a private word with him. They stepped away together and seemed to be discussing something rather serious. When they came back, we did another take, and afterwards, I asked Marty what was going on. ‘Orson thought you were submarining him’, he said; it was an actor’s way of saying someone was stealing his screen time.”
So, there you have it; Welles had a miserable time because he was simply jealous of Newman stealing his spotlight, even though he was the lead character, and not the Citizen Kane star. People are quick to call an array of female stars divas, but it seems like Welles was the biggest diva of them all.
