Orson Welles

Shame. He always spoke well of you.

He was very sexy, & hot as fuck in "The Third Man". But it's a black and white film, so you may not be interested. Your loss.

Even the movies he directed that were removed from his control and butchered by studios are better or at least more interesting than a lot of what's out now.

He was amazing. I am a boomer and we remember him most for his voice. He’s probably best known to Gen X as the Brain, who recorded a frozen peas commercial. He wrote & illustrated a series about Shakespeare when he was, I think, still in his teens. He traveled the world with his father & by himself after his father died. He won a scholarship to Harvard but his mentor wanted him to go to college in Iowa, so he decided to skip college and at 16, he toured Ireland by donkey cart & got a job as an actor in Dublin.

By age 20 he was one of the highest paid actors in radio, getting $1500 a week. At 23 he was on the cover of Time Magazine. He worked all over the world making movies and staging productions.South America, Europe. He made a shitload of money & spent it all, married Delores DelRio & Rita Hayworth, won Oscars, won best actor & festival grand prize at Cannes, won Grammys, a Peabody, Hugos. He did magic tricks & got the only non-farcical interview Andy Kaufman ever gave. His voice makes me feel safe because I heard it throughout the cozy 1970s when I no longer feared the atomic holocaust of the 60s and America was leaving Vietnam, starting the EPA, getting consumer affairs bureaus and investigative journalism that exposed big business, and Paul Masson would sell no wine before its time. Though he died in 1985, I associate him with pre-Reagan times.

In 1956, he was shilling his schtick on I Love Lucy.

At least he sold no wine before its time.

His real name was George. Not so sexy.

He was a huge (I mean really huge) democrat who despised fascism and always identified himself as a progressive. He almost ran for senator from Wisconsin, but decided not to and Joseph McCarthy won the seat. Imagine if he’d run and won the seat. We might never have heard of Roy Cohn…..which means we might never have ended up with Donald Trump as president and 600,000 people might not have died of covid,

He knew Shakespeare backwards at 4, forwards at 5 and personally at 6.

Orson was a fabulous wunderkind who peaked too early. I’m reading a bio of Peter Sellers—now there’s an egomaniac-narcissist for you. Sellers co-starred with Welles in Casino Royale and was so accustomed to being the center of attention that when Welles had more and higher profile on-set visitors than he—including Princess Margaret—it so enraged Sellers that he walked off the picture for several weeks and had to be cajoled back on—with the promise that he and Welles would work alternate days. The remaining scenes they shared were edited together.

He was controversial, to say the least, and didn't have the best reputation for people who worked for him.

Is that a quote, R9, or are you really that witty?

I agree with R2. If you're turned on by a guy whose gaze shows a major brain at work, Welles was the bomb in The Third Man. It was a pity that his indisputable intelligence was unable to compensate for whatever his demons did to him as his life went on.

Orson Welles persuaded Charlton Heston to star in Touch Of Evil. But as the shooting of the film went on Heston noticed that his part was getting smaller and Welles role was getting bigger. He had a heart to heart talk with Welles and basically told him to cut out the bullshit and quit reducing his role.

R12 It’s all me…I do my best work after midnight.

Sometimes brilliant, sometimes hammy, sometimes brilliantly hammy. His genius faded, but, for me, there was always something likable about his showmanship. Even on dumb talk shows and in crappy movies he had a redeeming zest that couldn't be faked. This book is a testament to his skill as an effortless raconteur.

Ugly and overrated.

A genius. Every frame of Citizen Kane is a film masterclass. Seriously. I loved his films and he seemed like an incredibly interesting, progressive guy who, like all geniuses, had his demons. Wish I could've met him and had just one lunch with him to ask questions.

NO ONE in the history of caftans wore it better

He was cute for 3 years.

I reckon De Caprio will get fat like Welles.

He's like Vivien Leigh, he's a genius who burnt himself out in 5 minutes.

^ That picture was taken in 1951 when he was attempting to do plays for Olivier's production company in London but he messed everything up due to his manic, ill-disciplined manias.

R21 thanks, this picture shows how INCREDIBLY beautiful Vivien looked in 1951. Johnny Gielgud wrote that he couldn't understand why she would damage herself that badly onscreen in Streetcar, when IRL, she had never looked more beautiful, and It's obviously true.

R22 I do not share your convictions. Two years after that picture was taken Welles' gut has increased to 275 pounds. He was permanently obese after 1960 when he was too busy eating to finish his movies.

But I certainly agree with Johnny thinking it was a crime to permit the hateful Kazan make herself look unnecessarily ugly.

R23 Fat Orson is sexy, I know I would take the dick . also I know, I'm a WHORE but then again, so was Vivien

[quote] He was controversial, to say the least, and didn't have the best reputation for people who worked for him.

But he was respected by many fellow actors & directors who worked with him, described him as generous & remained loyal to him. Norman Lloyd, who died last month, was the oldest continually active actor in Hollywood (and an executive producer of Alfred Hitchcock Presents) adored him.

Welles’ spendthrift ways led to him doing ads & making talk show rounds throughout the 70s to pay for his lifestyle of food, drink & globe trotting, he was like by talk hosts because he was a storyteller. His whole life was about story telling in one way another.

He wasn’t much of a family man. The first time his children met each other was at his funeral. He was definitely on the spectrum. He pioneered what became routine in modern theater, but hit a wall due to lack funding for theater projects. So he turned to film, where he was highly successful and pioneered techniques now routine in filmmaking. He cajoled backers into funding him, concocting fantasies of what he was going to shoot, then shot what he wanted. It didn’t do his reputation any good as he continually ran out of film funding and had to scrabble to find new resources.

He was highly influential & though he could be tiresome I think he was less tiresome than Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is a rock em-sock em-robots type of director, doing garish live action, violent cartoons which led American cinema to depths of comic book superheroes & elevated writers of simple-minded noir trash. Welles was an international raconteur who partook of & admired cultures around the world, especially Mexico, Spain & Brazil. He didn’t get along with people he felt didn’t take their jobs seriously while he himself took jobs solely to make money. He like everyone else - flawed & not always on best behavior, only bigger than everyone else in his successes & failures. He was cynical about Hollywood, but he was also effusive when he felt someone new had real talent. He tried to be good, but his imagination got in the way of being realistic.

He went on crash diets & took diet pills, which further added to his crankiness. His addiction to food & drink was perhaps to fill the hole where his family had existed …or not existed, as his parents broke up when he was four; his younger brother institutionalized for learning disabilities. Orson lived with his mother until age nine, when she went into the hospital & died. He was sent to live with a family he barely knew, then returned to his father, who’d become a severely depressed alcoholic and seemed to have suffered a series of breakdowns. Then his father died alone in a hotel room when Welles was 15 — after Orson had broken with him in an attempt to force him to stop drinking. Welles felt guilty about his death afterwards. His father left him money & stipulating that Orson could choose whomever he wished as caretaker. Orson asked an admired schoolteacher & mentor to fill the role and was turned down.

He was an atheist but didn’t really deride other people’s religion. He made an observation I find true - it’s often non-religious people who are the most superstitious.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho borrowed much from A Touch of Evil, which must’ve grated on Welles, since Psycho became canonical midcentury film history, while most moviegoers never saw or heard of A Touch of Evil & believed Welles had been insignificant in film since the 1940s. Hitchcock was the fat, funny success who continued making television series & films while Orson was the fat failure who did Dean Martin roasts. But in the end, Welles told us much about inside Hollywood’s Golden Age, which is interesting from a historical perspective (even if he did cotton to the conspiracy theory that Carole Lombard’s plane was shot down by the Nazis).

He really was the Brain, trying to explain the world rather than take it over, and like the Brain, he couldn’t do it.

Alfred Hitchcock was just as fat but he could finish his movies.

I wish I were that witty. I believe it was Moss Hart who said it.

[quote]He really was the Brain, trying to explain the world rather than take it over, and like the Brain, he couldn’t do it.

If he was the Brain, then who was Pinky?

R9 No. it was Noel who said it.

Thank you.

[quote] He was very sexy, & hot as fuck in "The Third Man"

Robert Krasker photographed him in severe lighting with shadows covering those two bags of flesh hanging on Welles' cheeks.

Orson Welles' jowls got bigger in the coming decades so that eventually he looked as though he had a naked baby clinging to his face.

My favorite Welles quote is “my doctor told me to stop have intimate dinners for four unless there were three others present”

When he lived on Long Island, he was driven in a limousine to his commuter yacht which took him into the city every morning.

[quote] Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho borrowed much from A Touch of Evil, which must’ve grated on Welles, since Psycho became canonical midcentury film history, while most moviegoers never saw or heard of A Touch of Evil & believed Welles had been insignificant in film since the 1940s.

Welles made it known on a number of occasions that he didn't care for Hitchcock's movies. He trashed Vertigo and Rear Window.

Vastly overrated!

Welles once said, "I don't like cinema unless I shoot it," but in the early 50s made a list of some of his favorite movies, all of which are a world away from Hitchcock:

City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)

Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)

Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)

Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922)

Shoe Shine (Vittorio De Sica, 1946)

The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

La Femme du Boulanger (Marcel Pagnol, 1938)

Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)

Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)

Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934)

[quotte] If he was the Brain, then who was Pinky?

We are.

R36, R34 Welles only liked black and white movies and he trashed those two Hitchcock movies because they were in colour..

Welles couldn't afford colour. Production for all his movies after 1950 shut down every 4 months because he couldn't afford the celluloid film stock.

my favorite Welles quote : " another donut , please"

It’s slightly unfair to accuse Welles of not finishing his films, considering that he completed 14 features in his lifetime (and shot all of the footage for two posthumously completed films). It’s also an unfair charge since it’s become clear that Welles was essentially blacklisted as a Commie for his left wing/progressive politics in the late 40s (he exiled himself abroad before it became a big news story, but Welles’ declassified giant FBI file makes it clear what was in store for him). His lack of access to Hollywood studio $$$ is why he spent the last 35 years of his life hustling for money to shoot & edit the films that he managed to finish, as well as an array of stillborn projects. The man literally died sitting on the floor with his typewriter on his lap, working on yet another script.

Yeah, he was fat, he was a self-promoter, had an ego, all that. But he was a genius, a born showman, and he was an unwavering humanist. Those who mock him, discount him, or don’t take him seriously are saying much more about themselves than about Welles, whose place in the pantheon of the greatest 20th century artists is quite secure.

[quote] The man literally died sitting on the floor with his typewriter

...in his mouth

[quote] The man literally died sitting on the floor with his typewriter on his lap, working on yet another script.

And he was a great screenwriter, too. I purchased the screenplay The Big Brass Ring a decade ago, and I enjoyed every page of it. It's a shame he didn't get a chance to make it. He offered the lead role to Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, and Clint Eastwood, and they all turned it down, despite loving the script. His reputation was so poisoned in the industry that no major backer or star wanted to work with him.

What a tragic end to one of the few Hollywood people who deserve the label "genius."

ROSEBUD!!!!!!!

It's his sled.

There, I just saved you two long boobless hours.

Oh well he’s dead now anyway

When he was on Broadway in the 1930's he used to receive gay producers and other important gentlemen with just a towel around his waist (which would stray now and then)......John Houseman was one of those treated to the show and claimed that Welles was one of the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen - at the time.

Obssessed with Rita Hayworth and magic ? = guy was GAY

Was he taking advantage of her mental weakness?

Nobody wore a caftan as well as Orson

Well, Mr. Arkadin @ R35, I thought your cartoon-film was full of freaks.

There was just one handsome man and one busty woman but everything else was endless freaks, heavy makeup and carnival grotesquery.

Even handsome Michael Redgrave was masked-up into ineptitude. You hired Akim Tamiroff and seemed to take on his persona in so many subsequent films.

Very young Orson Welles.

Wanna Orson Welles T-shirt?

R48 I went to bed with Gilda, and woke up with Rita

[quote] The Big Brass Ring … It's a shame he didn't get a chance to make it. He offered the lead role to Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, and Clint Eastwood, and they all turned it down, despite loving the script.

R42 They turned it down because they knew Welles would run out of money half way through. Another Welles movie was shot over 6 years and was eventually canned.

[quote] Sellers co-starred with Welles in Casino Royale and was so accustomed to being the center of attention —it so enraged Sellers that he walked off the picture for several weeks.

You can't have two egomaniacs on the same set. They movie had 5 directors and it was still a groaning mess.

How much of the budgets of his movies usually went towards catering?

Hmmm… I'm assuming post R25 was lifted from another source.

It seems as though it was composed by a thoughtful man. Whereas most contributions to Datalounge are utterly slapdash.

He metaphorically slapped Peter Sellers right off the set he was so superior to him in Casino Royale. He should have been a villain in a straight Bond film.

R56: Erudite analysis capped off with a cartoon reference? Sounds about par for the course to me.

It is astonishing that with stars that big a major studio wouldn't put up the money for a Welles film in the 70s or 80s considering all the junk they were constantly dishing up. Maybe they thought Wells would lose interest and not finish it. There was so much crap that was flopping big time.

Orson Welles introduced us to DL fave Agnes Moorehead.

[quote]It is astonishing that with stars that big a major studio wouldn't put up the money for a Welles film in the 70s or 80s considering all the junk they were constantly dishing up. Maybe they thought Wells would lose interest and not finish it. There was so much crap that was flopping big time.

It may have been crap but it got finished.

Welles wasn’t interested in making the intimate Woody Allen type films with a few character actors spouting about love, sex and neurosis. He wanted bigger themes & bigger acting. If he’d been able to keep things small, like Woody did, he could’ve been funded more consistently.

[quote] Hmmm… I'm assuming post [R25] was lifted from another source.

Nah. I cut the length and wound up making tons of editing errors. Whenever I write such a rambling post Prime Time kicks in, so I was in a hurry.

Chimes at Midnight is def worth seeing.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your host speaking. I have brought you here to charge you with the following crimes..."

Oh the French...

This one is stellar as well... Who doesn't love an extended remix? Vaguely reminiscent of Talking Heads...

Funny thing about those Masson spots, Welles had it in his contract that two bottles of Champagne were to be included with his "dinner". Many involved were keen to note how very odd it was that he was ordering multi course dinners at lunch time, however when they realised he showed to set already primed, they were glad of him eating full-on dinners for lunch. Poor drunken sod he was later in life.

Something of the glutton and epicurean in me respects his demands; I just wish he could have held it all together better. Was Paul Masson really so top notch?

Everybody gets swag

I'll forgive him for that R60. Barely.

His version as Falstaff wasn't as tedious as his very cheap, bleak versions of Macbeth and Othello where he surrounded himself with second-raters.

Can anyone speak to the quality of the Paul Masson wines? I'm curious after watching vintage adverts on YT. It would seem they were positioning the brand as something rather special.

R20, R21 Welles as Othello and Peter Finch as Iago at Olivier's St. James Theatre in 1951.

John Gielgud wrote "Welles has had a certain amount of success though I have not been able to see it myself.

I gather he promises better than he can perform and the thunder grumbles but never breaks, and he is ill-disciplined, they say, in the theatre and something of a terror to his company and management. Still the enfant terrible of Hollywood.

He amused me when I met him, but he was rather stupidly touchy and lacked humility, must have the floor all the time or he fears he is not noticed. A pity, for he is obviously extremely intelligent and full of (rather disorderly) talent in many directions.

Oh Johnny was just a bitch

Johnny and Vivien were pals.

R20, R73 I bet Welles would have loved to have had Vivien (and Peter Finch) in his film version of Othello. I’m sure she could have handled the role of the Venetian heiress Desdemona even though she was 37.

And because she was a box office drawer she could've secured funding to finish it where as welles’ sloppiness meant the filming was delayed over 3 years.

He had a unknown fat-faced person as his Desdemona; she was nobody who happened to be married to Peter Ustinov.

His "Othello" has 5 credited cinematographers , but the restored version is all of a piece, visually. Gorgeous movie.

Worst I Love Lucy guest star ever.

I reckon he stole compositional ideas from Sergei Eisenstein.

Lots of long shots with the camera looking up to the sky with spear holders ranged across the landscape holding their spears pointing upwards.

I'd like to rewatch The Trial.

It's got interesting stars but the film is tediously alienating.

^ [quote] alienating

I know it's supposed to be but why should I spend money for that?

[quote] They turned it down because they knew Welles would run out of money half way through.

R54, according to Jonathan Rosenbaum, who was close friends to Orson Welles: Nicholson demanded more than his usual asking price, Hoffman showed interest but was flaky, and Eastwood wanted to have final cut of the film, which Welles absolutely rejected.

Methinks Eastwood was worried because Welles' character was openly gay and a mentor to the lead. And since this was set in the Reagan era and dealt with politics, I suspect Eastwood got cold feet about Welles' flamboyant character and the story's critique on conservatism.

My mistake, he never offered the role to Dustin Hoffman, and it was Warren Beatty who wanted final cut.

[quote] Welles, estimated that he needed six million to shoot the film — figuring on location work in Spain, filming the yacht scenes near Los Angeles, and a limited amount of studio work (possibly in Rome) for the hotel interiors — so it was decided that the remaining two million plus ten per cent of the profits would be used to lure the male star. To Milchan and Jaglom, the strategy seemed foolproof, and with Welles a list of six possible actors was drawn up: Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford and Burt Reynolds. (At earlier stages, before the ‘bankable” star strategy was hatched, Welles contemplated using a real-life couple to play Blake and Diana Pellarin — John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands at one point, Cliff Robertson and Dina Merrill somewhat later; James Caan was also considered, but never approached.) But over the next year or so, they made the unhappy discovery that none of the six actors was willing to accept the offer unconditionally. Eastwood, Newman, Redford and Reynolds all simply declined, each giving a separate reason. Nicholson, who was Welles’s first choice, asked for a larger sum, arguing that, after working hard for years to raise his asking price, he could not settle for two million without reducing his future fees. Beatty, Welles’s second choice, fresh from having just shot REDS, agreed to play the part if he could produce the film and have final cut — a condition that he realized that Welles would find impossible. By late 1982, the project was effectively dead.

[quote] Welles' character was openly gay

Which character? Was this in one of Welles' aborted films?

Yeah... I couldn't raise a shilling for my own movie version of Macbeth, but they'd given me millions to be in Orson's movie... Life on DL.. Pass the gin please

Why Orson wasn't Black in Othello ?

R75 until I read his diaries... Bitch trashed me for days

Johnny's diaries were only released publicly 20 years after sweet Vivien's passing.

He could only do so to much support her in troubled years. He gave her the lead in this production and gave a role in it to Jack Merivale.

R88 I read it in my spirit form. He gave me my start as Lady Anne in Oxford, he gave me my last in Ivanov, but did you SEE what he wrote about my performance in TWELFTH NIGHT ??? Also, because of that fairy, they've published the only picture known to man of FAT ME. In a benefit performance of THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. And believe you me, FAT VIVIEN is not a pretty sight. FAT VIVIEN, unlike FAT ELVIS or FAT LIZ, doesn't sell. Seeing FAT me is like seeing your grandmother naked.

R88, Hon, Vivien was MANY things, but ' sweet' was not one of them

[quote] Which character? Was this in one of Welles' aborted films?

Yes. The Big Brass Ring. Orson Welles would've played the supportive character who was gay and the former mentor to the lead.

And much like Touch of Evil, Welles' character had the best lines in the film.

Orson looks very handsome here, again with Viv as Anna Karenina in the late 40's, they saw an awful lot of each other it seems

More Orson+Vivien (= hot sex) . larry despised Orson BTW

Here, Viv defends Orso against Goldwyn and Tynan, who trash him as a producer

Part 2

Part III...Tynan tells Vivien to her face that she was bad in Streetcar, she has a great comeback at his cuntiness

It's official, they totally dated

[quote] When in 1951 she won the Oscar for her performance as Blanche DuBois in the film of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, the legendary actor and director immediately sent a telegram from Monte Carlo: "Of course they gave it to you they had to love and kisses from Orson".

What a couple...was he rumored to be big dicked ?

When Johnny went through that awful ordeal of being found soliciting in a men's room in London and gave his correct name which you never did his career should have been finished. Leigh came to his defense unlike the self absorbed Olivier who dished him.

Alec Guinness was arrested doing the same thing but gave a phony name and avoided the scandal.

𝙏𝙝𝙖𝙩 opening shot...

R100 what did she say ? ' your honour, he was only sampling them for me ? '

Can you imagine the proportion of the epic trainwreck of a Leigh-Welles marriage ? Makes me drool

[quote] Leigh came to his defense unlike the self absorbed Olivier who dished him.

In what trashy American gossip magazine did you find this stinking anecdote?

[quote] Can you imagine the proportion of the epic trainwreck of a Leigh-Welles marriage ? Makes me drool

Could it have been worse than the Welles Hayworth marriage? At any rate, he was at least fucking other women when married to Hayworth as opposed to Olivier, who was fucking men. There’s no way for a woman to compete with other men.

[quote] Olivier, who was fucking men.

In what trashy American gossip magazine did you find this inaccurate anecdote?

There are persisting rumours that both Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten played unacknowledged courtiers for a day or so in 'Othello'.

^ Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten (and the blind Françoise Rosay) were filming at the Isle of Capri, Naples, Campania for 'September Affair'.

Bosley Crowther described this movie as 'rambling and banal with beautiful scenery'.

[quote] There are persisting rumours that both Joan Fontaine and Joseph Cotten played unacknowledged courtiers for a day or so in 'Othello'.

In what trashy American gossip magazine did you find this inaccurate anecdote?

Joan (see below) would have made a satisfactory Desdemona.

Most of here early roles were like Desdemona— one-note, naive and passive.

Bosley Crowther was rambling and banal.

[quote] Could it have been worse than the Welles Hayworth marriage?

OH IT COULD, BELIEVE YOU ME

Just for the record, Olivier WAS fucking women. Simmons, Bloom, Tutin, Plowright, Miles, tons of lesser known actresses. Women are attracted to men who love beautiful women, and Bloom admitted that they were lining up to be fucked by him, just to take a stab at 'the most beautiful woman in the world' and that it was a disgusting experience, and she quite regretted it upon meeting and knowing Vivien And Vivien COULD compete with men anyway. The Olivier-Finch-Leigh situation in the 50's was a constant source of conjecture in the biz back in the day. Sidenote Orson would have been the perfect Vronsky to Leigh's Anna, instead of the pale, wholesome Kieron Moore and it's a shame that they didn't think of that. It goes in my imaginary filmotheque right next to SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH again with Vivien, and Tab Hunter as Chance.

r113 Just stop it.

[quote] the pale, wholesome Kieron Moore

Sir Alexander Korda wanted Olivier as Vronsky— after all he claimed he brought Larry and Vic together back in '37.

But something intervened— perhaps Larry couldn't get his hair colour right after bleaching it for 'Hamlet'.

Weird name.

Olivier was as bisexual as they come. Bisexuals, like Libras, can be seen from space.

R117 is love-blind and/or smitten with wishful-thinking

Olivier didn't want to appear on screen with Vivien at that time, especially as a romantic duo, because A) he knew she would blew him off the water (see Lady Hamilton) B) he coudn't stand her anymore.

R118 is insistently very dim not to know Olivier was bi. There are many anecdotes. Far too many to say it's just fantasy.

I'm not R118 but it's always anecdotes of random people saying he was bi. No man ever actually said "I had an affair with Olivier".

Joan Plowright said a man was having an affair with Olivier & she should know since she was his wife.

R122 she NEVER said that

All the men who had affairs with Olivier were in the closet and this was when in England it was against the law and the penalties were harsh. Is it really so difficult to believe that a man with his multitudes of talents in the theater would also have had affairs with men as well as women?

R124 he lived well into the 80's even 90's. There hasn't been one man who was not closeted, in his hundreds of homosexual affairs ?

[quote] All the men who had affairs with Olivier were in the closet

Well, that must have been a wooden closet of 3 x 4 inches.

Larry may have been extravagant and used terms of endearment which confuse 21st century Americans but that doesn't mean he was sucking cocks.

He probably didn't want share with Ralph and Vivien in 'Karenina' because it's inevitable he would overwhelm his dear friends Ralph and Vivien. (And the idea of Orson Welles playing Vronsky would also throw out the balance.)

Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina' is like Gone With The Wind'. Anna HAS to dominate the story.

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R125 stop being so determined in your stupidity. Nobody said he had hundreds of male lovers. Even his own wife said he had affairs with men which has been pointed out above and for some reason you refuse to even acknowledge. Even his relationship with Danny Kaye was known well before the 80s.

And what exactly is so wrong with sucking cocks? People do it all the time.

[quote] relationship with Danny Kaye

There was no relationship. They were rehearsing for this cabaret show.

And obviously Olivier used his time with the rubber-faced American getting material for his later role as the tawdry, vulgarian.

[quote] Bosley Crowther was rambling and banal.

Crowther was analytical and made judgements which are still sound fifty years later.

He was right about Cleopatra. It's a terrific film. But it was used to show he was out of step. Also he panned Bonnie and Clyde because he was an adult when the couple was on their killing sprees. He was offended that the film glamorized their lives when they were nothing but a pair of depraved murderers who should have in no way been exalted. The youth audiences of the time wanted to see them as if they were a pair of counterculture rebels. That was another nail in his coffin.

They still die at the end.

Yes but don't their spirits walk into the clouds holding hands?

Pauline Kael never missed the chance taking shots at Bosley Crowther. Her takes on him were often funny and accurate.

Shockingly, despite Pauline Kael's Raising Kane, a hitjob that called into question Orson Welles' contribution to the screenplay, Welles had respect for Kael. He liked how she focused on actors and performances in her criticism.

Again, R128. She NEVER said that. I repeat. She NEVER said that. Or link us to the great revelation please. It's not that it would be a problem, it's stupid people repeating baseless stories as if they were verified facts. It doesn't matter in general, but Olivier, Leigh, Welles are geniuses and shouldn't be discussed by stupid people like yourself. Also I strongly suspect that you are a frau.

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Well, that’s poor form!

Poor Joan. Blind, grumpy and gaga.

Biting the hand that fed her.

If it wasn’t for Larry she would have ended up like her fellows—

Mary Ure, drunk. Rachel Roberts, drunk. Jill Bennett, bitter and twisted. Vivien Merchant, suicide. Judi Dench, obliged to work for Weinstein.

Genuine artists of the top rank, like Larry and like Orson Welles put in the hard work, often appearing on trash below their true talent in order to supply an income.

Poor Joan took that income and, as I say, bites the hand of the man who fed her.

I wonder?

Who dumped whom?

R136 is frothing at the mouth in his demented state that one can say an actor is bi when word has been out for half a century and was probably known as early as the late 20s or even early 30s when he was Noel's lover. You really think Noel would allow a tasty dish to have a major role in what he knew would most probably be a major hit without a roll in the hay? Of course you would think this is absolutely impossible that a playwright/ director would even dream of such a thing.

Now this will kill you. I hope. Noel slept with James Cagney.

'Poor Joan took that income and, as I say, bites the hand of the man who fed her.'

Oh the shame! The shame! To say a man slept with another man!

r136 must be either David Ehrenstein or else Cheryl. I have never heard anyone else on DL so hysterically denounce someone for claiming a celebrity fucked men.

[quote] in his hundreds of homosexual affairs ?

Nobody said “hundreds”, dear. Do calm down.

Btw, you know who else never came out and said they had affairs with men? Alan Bates, Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Rock Hudson, Jim Nabors, Anthony Perkins, Robert Reed, Michael Redgrave, Freddie Mercury, Raymond Burr, Paul Lynde, Liberace, Danny Kaye, Roddy McDowell, Laurence Harvey, Tim Curry, Ed Koch, Roy Cohn, Cary Grant, Montgomery Clift.

R141 I am not "frothing at the mouth" it's just, these people shouldn't be discussed on datalounge.com by the likes of you. You are a basic, uneducated, stupid frau, and should stick to "meryl is the best actress" or "liz COULD act". It's sad that you're allowed to talk about them and not be hurt badly.. BTW, Larry disinherited Joan before his death. She was left with a big fat NOTHING; He would be found crying in front of vivien 's old movies on the telly.

Dame Joan, herself an acclaimed actress, who was married to Olivier for 28 years, responded calmly to Lawley's references to allegations of homosexual liaisons in the great actor's life.

"If a man is touched by genius, he is not an ordinary person," said Plowright. "He doesn't lead an ordinary life. He has extremes of behaviour which you understand and you just find a way not to be swept overboard by his demons. You kind of stand apart. You continue your own work and your absorption in the family. And those other things finally don't matter."

She said it.

R143 again see R142. All these men may not have "come out" (lol, like we needed them to, to know, you americans are SO stupid) but hundreds of their lovers can show proof . It's not the case with olivier. Please stick to subjects that are within your intellectual grasp

R145 lol I knew the quote, and you prove my point, she NEVER said it. I'm sure there's a meryl thread where your knowledge of cinema will thrill DL, soewhere, go find it, luv

[quote] in his hundreds of homosexual affairs ?

Contain yourself, dear. You can be consoled by the fact that nobody ever said Larry had 100s of “homosexual affairs.” And anyway….I know you’re the Fake Frau troll. You go into threads about closeted gay & bi men and pretend to be a frau who won’t believe said man was gay or bi. But just to play along, let’s mention some men who were gay or bi and never admitted to sleeping with another man

Ed Koch

Freddie Mercury

Tim Curry

Laurence Harvey

Dirk Bogarde

Alan Bates

Michael Redgrave

Anthony Perkins

Rock Hudson

Montgomery Clift

Liberace

Paul Lynde

Raymond Burr

Roddy McDowall

Robert Reed

Danny Kaye

Randolph Scott

Roy Cohn

John Travolta

And that’s all we have on Lawrence Olivier, kids, who wasn’t 1/3 as interesting as Orson “Ah the French” Welles,

[quote] Who dumped whom?

Rita dumped Orson because of his affairs…with women. Which were well documented

I've never really seen a Rita H. movie, only clips from Gilda, and perhaps the lady from shangai when I was a kid, but recently I was worshipping Tab in THEY CAME TO CORDURA and I must say the gal had class

Yes R144 you are indeed frothing at the mouth and so rabid you need to be put down for everyone's safety.

HAHAHA R152 are you crying ?

The Fake Frau troll and the Fake AntiFake Frau troll are arguing with each other to derail the thread. Take it to a playground, girl

(Which means it’s the same person pretending to be 2 arguing cunts)

Only on DL can I be accused of being a cunt because I say an actor is bi. An actor of all people!

Laurence Olivier was a homely guy.....Orson Welles was very handsome in his youth and into his twenties.....even though he was always a bit doughy.

But that voice! Can you imagine being fucked by him and hearing that voice say: "I'm coming, dammit.....I'M COMING!!!!!"

[quote] Laurence Olivier was a homely guy.

So homely!

Put a bag over this homely face!

Laurence Olivier was a genius of narrow range, a hot dish when young, and a rancid cunt. Orson was more sexual, hotter and had that AURA; I would take orson, given the choice

Yes homely except in maybe a couple of posed and carefully lit photos.

Rita’s daughter tried to pass *all* of her mother’s years of drunken behavior off as Alzheimer’s. Rita was diagnosed as Alzheimer’s in the 1979 & Yasmin claimed her mother had been suffering with it for 2 decades.. Nuh uh. People who developed Alzheimer’s in the 1950s were certainly dead by 1980 and didn’t live until 1987. Rita was a heavy drinker and by the 1960s she had what was known as “wet brain.” Anyone who has worked with Alzheimer’s patients knows they don’t go along being dementing for 27, 30 years to the extent Rita was. They can’t appear on tv talk shows and in movies, which she did. She would invite someone to dinner, then when they arrived she’d chase them with a knife. The next days she’d ask why they hadn’t come to dinner. In the 1960s. That wasn’t Alzheimer’s. It was being a blackout drunk.

Sure, she had Alzheimer’s by 1987 when she died . But that didn’t explain her behavior in the 1950s & 60s. She was sexually abused by her father and drank because of it. No shame in saying she was an alcoholic. Back in those days Sigmund Freud had convinced the world that women who said they’d been abused by their fathers were delusional and had an Electra complex. So it’s not like she could’ve told a therapist and been believed. She drank as self medication, and she was a severe alcoholic because of incest.

R162 = ghost of judy garland

OP, you're a fucking idiot. Where's your Citizen Kane?

"Anyone who has worked with Alzheimer’s patients knows they don’t go along being dementing"

Oh dear, R162.

[quote] Lawrence Olivier

Another misspeller @ R149.

[quote] Rita dumped Orson because of his affairs…with women. Which were well documented.

R150 I hope the documentation on Welles' affairs is better than the dizzy wishful-thinking from those ditzy queens fantasizing on Olivier's private life.

Someone claims he was hounded out of the USA during the height of the Red Scare.

But he doesn't seem like a socialist to me because most of his roles were playing kings or other powerful men.

No. Welles wasn’t hounded out of the US during the Red Scare. His father and mother divorced when he was 4. His mother played piano she & Orson traveled in the Midwest so she could play at presentations,. His mother died when he was 8 or 9 years old.

Dad was a drinker who hired hookers and lived in hotels. In fact, his father - who made a fortune as an inventor - bought a hotel to live in. They traveled every summer and when the hotel burned down they took off for the Far East & Jamaica. When his father died, Orson took off to travel Ireland by donkey and after completing school and writing a series of books in Shakespeare, he traveled to North Africa. So Welles was used to traveling and once said he barely considered himself to have had a hometown.

In the 1940s he was appointed goodwill ambassador to Latin America , which was basically an intelligence gathering operation as well as a cultural exchange and involved Nelson Rockefeller. Welles traveled throughout Central & South America. He was supposed to make a film but there was a shakeup at RKO and several Welles supporters left the studio. RKO withheld funds to finish the cultural exchange film and wouldn’t let Welles have final say on MagnificentAmbersons.

The Wikipedia version says: Later in 1942, when RKO Pictures began promoting its new corporate motto, "Showmanship In Place of Genius: A New Deal at RKO,” Welles understood it as a reference to him.

So Welles had been a world traveler since he was 9 years old and continued traveling throughout his life. He clashed with just about everyone and would then pick up and leave. He filmed in various countries & looked for backers while living large — a habit that started long before the Red Scare

He particularly liked Mexico, Spain & Italy.

I'm not surprised he left the studios because he obviously didn't fit into their rigid systems.

And the studio system was about to be broken up in the early 50s and almost everyone was filming in Europe.

I wonder if Welles pissed off the rightwingers in the OSS (later CIA) when he was in Latin America. As far as they were concerned it was an intelligence gathering operation with a cultural exchange/film thrown in there. As far as Welles was concerned, it was a cultural/film operation where he had to do some mild propagandizing on behalf of the US and make the Latin American leaders feel important that Hollywood was interested in them.

[quote]It's sad that you're allowed to talk about them and not be hurt badly

This is psychotic.

R167 is still holding onto his cherished dream(Why? Who the fuck knows? ) that Larry was as straight as a flagpole on the 4th of July when the fact is he bent every which way the wind blew. In fact the only major actor that the wasn't a hint of the gay about him was Ralph Richardson. The rest were queens on coronation day.

Somebody at R26 in the link says Orson Welles and Jack Benny indulged in "homo minstrelsy" in the 30s.

Straights doing 'eye-rolling, mincing queeniness'.

Who else knows about this?

It was hilarious watching him whore himself on that Nostradamus special.

There was an amusing interview with Dick Cavett where Orson talked about his brief stint as a fortune teller.

He also gave an amusing "un-roast" of Jimmy Stewart.

"It was hilarious watching him whore himself on that Nostradamus special."

Always hilarious watching a genius sell himself to make money in order to do his work.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Jack Benny did act gay quite a bit, it was part of his whole act, r174. Limp wrist and everything. I don't honestly know if people knew enough in those days to identify his mannerisms as stereotypically gay, or if they just thought he came across as a wimp or a wuss or some such thing.

Character actors who played openly gay before the Production Code were able to keep working in comedies by playing the effete prisspot who always had a girlfriend, just to keep things straight, as it were.

R176 Sounds like you liked the sound of his voice almost as much as he did.

He was a hot piece in his day.

R174 Where there is “Homo Minstrelry” there is fire. Jack Benny always pings.

Orson Welles’ F IS FOR FAKE (1973) is one of my personal favorites. It’s a film I watch again and again, just for the cool Euro-Hippy vibe of the late Sixties. On one hand, it’s a choppy mess of sequences from various failed projects, but it somehow comes together as a coherent film by the end. Best of all, it offers glimpses of Welles’ real-life exotic travels and fascinating friends of the day... like hoax biographer Clifford Irving, debonair art forger Elmyr DeHory (and his cute twink assistant) and Welles’ longtime companion Oja Kodak. Even eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes and artist Pablo Picasso are part of the great hoax that the film is at its core.

^ Euro-Hippie

^ Oja Kodar

Damned Spellcheck…

[quote] He was controversial, to say the least, and didn't have the best reputation for people who worked for him.

Absolutely false. Nobody disliked Orson Welles. They may have been exasperated by him, but he was enormously (figuratively & literally) likeable. He’s delighted by so much that his delight is infectious. I’ll put in a link to an interview he did at a university in 1981 & he was very kind to most of the questioners except for one guy who declares fantasy films “BS” to which Welles enthusiastically declares his love for fantasy films.

I watched his film “The stranger” today & it wasn’t very good, Hitchcock did suspense better. Hitchcock also does coziness better, highlighting the banality of evil in little middle class and working class lives, whereas I think Welles is kind of painfully strident about evil. The Stranger also lays out its plot pretty clearly in the beginning, so there really aren’t any surprises. You know who are the good guys, the bad guys and what’s going to happen. I guess the film was trying to make people pay attention to the Holocaust since it was made in I think 1947 when people were still being repatriated and their stories about their families were coming out. It doesn’t help that Loretta Young keeps saying “Nat-see.” It doesn’t help that Loretta Young was Loretta Young.

In this interview he claims he uses black and white vim because he doesn’t believe color film has depth of field.

[quote] painfully strident

Yes, too often painfully strident. Too often insisting on playing powerful people, kings, magicians belittling his minions. But I guess his big physique forced him into those roles.

But brilliant as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's "The Third Man", musing in the Ferris wheel, "Look down there. Tell me would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped?"

^ It's Carol Reed's direction and Graham Greene's writing that makes it brilliant.

Graham Greene's mentions Harry Lime's "ultimate power" over those "dots" with the suggestion that it's conversely similar to the beneficent power that God has over us. Greene is saying that Lime is evil.

The film studios were horrified when Welles filmed Carnival in Rio when he went to Brazil as a “goodwill ambassador” for the United States. His footage showed tons of brown & black people dancing. This was1942 America. The last thing they wanted was, as one RKO exec said “a bunch of jigaboos jumping up and down.” Yet another reason for WR Hearst, J Edgar Hoover and other powerful racists to undermine Welles’ career.

I've seen some snippets from his Carnival in Rio footage.

The footage contains Brazilian males and females dancing the samba in VERY erotic, provocative way which delighted me but would have outraged RKO.

Bogdanovitch talks about how, the first time he met Welles for drinks he admitted he didn’t like The Trial. “Neither did I!” said Welles. After Bogdanovitch & Welles got to know each other, Bogdanovitch said a few disparaging things about The Trial and Welles said, “I wish you wouldn’t say those things about my film.” Bogdanovitch said, “I thought you said you didn’t like it?”

“I only said it so you would like me,” said Welles. Later on, whenever referring to The Trial he would say to Bogdanovitch “That movie [italic] you hate so much! [/italic]”