Otis Guernsey Interviews Orson Welles
"Orson Welles does not consider himself especially busy at this point in his career. Not that he is out of work—he appears in “Tomorrow Is Forever,” now showing in the Winter Garden, and is directing a musical called “Around the World” in which he will also play a small part during the show's out-of-town tryout. He has just finished acting in and directing an International screen melodrama called “The Stranger,” and he has what he hopes will be a one-man independent movie stint planned for early summer. He will put his own production of a play about Galileo Galilei, starring Charles Coburn, into rehearsal on Aug. 1, and then he intends to do King Lear on Broadway. He also has a Sunday radio show with some ten-million listeners.”
Guernsey's interview with Welles ran on the first page of the arts and entertainment section of the Herald Tribune this Sunday. The writer ran through Welles' accomplishments to date, much of it with the involvement of The Mercury Theater, although Guernsey expressed some mystification over what constituted a Mercury Theater production and what did not. Not all of Welles' endeavors had that stamp, although “Around the World” did. And Welles was not directly involved in everything that the Mercury Theater did. “It seems to be a fraternity of artists who have worked under the Mercury masthead, an ever changing personnel held together by a spirit rather than a list of rules or annual dues,” Guernsey wrote.
Welles told the reporter that he was interested mostly in film because it was where one could experiment without limits. “The ideal way to make a movie, of course, is to do a one man job. The best ones are made that way—they have a “style” that comes out of an individual's personality. 'Citizen Kane' is the only picture over which I had complete control, and it was my most successful one,” he said. Welles expressed a preference for directing over acting.
Guernsey noted that “many observers visualize him as a rather eccentric and somewhat frantic artistic phenomenon.”
"Oh, they don't think anything of that kind about me," Welles countered. "They just think I'm nuts.'”
The actor thought the characterization was largely the invention of writers who attributed “every mildly crazy story circulated around Hollywood or Broadway” to him. “Now when I don't roll my eyes, quote Shakespeare and glow in the dark people are disappointed.”