The War of the Worlds Murder

Chapter TWO





BROADWAY MALADY OF 1938





THROUGH THE EARLY MORNING FOG came the brooding bray of a great liner—the Queen Mary—steaming through the Narrows, turning north toward the slender island of Manhattan. Elsewhere, chugging through darkness still shrouding New Jersey, a train carried sightseeing families (115,000 daily, even in this Depression) as well as hopeful youths seeking fortune and fame, while in the city, night workers were just starting home (some of them anyway), their steps as sharp as a tap dancer’s, though considerably less regular, on sidewalks otherwise uncharacteristically quiet. Nearby, the occasional automobile and water wagon haunted empty streets, and in perhaps half a dozen nightclubs around the big town, bands played on, mostly after-hours improv sessions by musicians seeking to use up the last shreds of a night long since turned to morning. In the next half hour, alarm clocks would begin to trill across the Upper East and Upper West Side alike, and in Hell’s Kitchen and the Gashouse, too, as well as Greenwich Village and Chelsea, their ringing ricocheting off mostly vacant streets.

And in a taxi, moving through skyscraper canyons that were still sporadically lit by neon, Walter Gibson was making his way from the St. Regis—an absurdly posh hotel at which the writer would never have stayed, off expense account—to a theater at 41st and Broadway that had once been called the Comedy. Now, as its still-burning neon insisted, visible from Sixth Avenue to Broadway, it was the

MERCURY

after the theater company that inhabited it.

Like the St. Regis, the Mercury had an Edwardian façade, though the former seemed to have frozen spectacularly in time around the turn of the century, while the latter with its glittering green-and-gold woodwork had a freshly painted, facelifted feel, more out of last week.

This impression continued as Gibson moved through a small lobby, quietly classy with its pearl-gray walls and crystal chandelier. A pretty, plump blonde of perhaps fifteen in a fuzzy pink sweater could be seen through the box-office window, where she was sleeping on her arms, like a schoolgirl taking a teacher-enforced nap.

Careful not to wake her, Gibson crept into the theater itself—no one, at 4:32 A.M., was taking tickets.

For Broadway, the auditorium was rather intimate, a rococo affair with two balconies and perhaps seven hundred seats. The licks of paint and the fancy touches (the gilt feathering on the façade, the chandelier in the lobby) appeared to represent the Mercury’s major investment in refurbishing the old house—the red aisle carpeting and the wine-color frayed seats had been sewn, though not with thread precisely matching the originals, and the walls and proscenium had the patchy look of plaster repairs and selective painting that were practical first, and cosmetic a distant second.

A showman of sorts himself, Gibson knew that the Mercury putting its money in the outside and outer lobby made sense: these imperfections would disappear in the dark, and anyway, the productions on stage would consume the eyes and dazzle the imaginations of playgoers.

This Gibson knew at a glance, as he took in the stunning, almost mind-boggling stage set of the Welles production about to open: Danton’s Death.

The play, while hardly a household word, happened to be one with which Gibson was familiar—he’d seen an elaborate Broadway production of it, about ten years before, directed by the legendary showman Max Reinhardt, who had filled the stage with mob scenes and grandeur. Written by Georg Buechner, a political activist who died at twenty-four in 1837, the play centered on a brief though pivotal episode in the French Revolution. Set in the spring of 1794, Danton’s Death reflected the full social and political upheaval of the Reign of Terror.

By ironic coincidence, Gibson had spent Thursday evening (on the Welles expense account) taking in a picture at the Astor starring Norma Shearer—Marie Antoinette. But the Mercury version of the French Revolution did not seem to have much in common with the MGM take on the same subject matter...though Gibson could see how the movie company currently courting the boy director, Warner Bros.—who after all gave birth to Little Caesar—might well be attracted to Welles’s expressionistic, melodramatic approach....

A dress rehearsal was in full swing, but it was the set that commanded Gibson’s immediate attention.

Dominating was a massive curved backdrop arrayed with hundreds of blank masks that, through shifting dramatic lighting (blood-red, steel-gray, garish purple) now might suggest the murderous mob, later invoke the skulls of the mob’s victims, or even the tribunal deciding life or death for the play’s characters.

In front of that wall of faces, just behind the forestage, rose a four-sided tower with steps on either side, so that actors could emerge from beneath—a pit had been carved out of the stage itself—and if that weren’t enough, the structure contained a working elevator that climbed a good twelve feet. The platform that rode the elevator was used in many ways—a rostrum, garret, salon, prison cell and, finally, at its full height, the scaffold of a guillotine.

Gibson watched, impressed but not quite getting the point of any of it, despite having seen that earlier production. Lighting effects seemed to shoot from every direction, performers appearing or disappearing as if from thin air, this lone actor orating to an unseen shouting multitude, that small group emerging from the darkness to discuss the effect of the Revolution on their lives and potential deaths. Occasionally music interrupted the drama, a revolutionary hymn, a macabre celebratory chorus chanting “Carmagnole,” with the actor playing Danton obviously speaking English as a second language, as he expressed his opposition to “pipple in welwet gowns.”

Welles and the Mercury had a reputation, from their informal Cradle Will Rock to their street-dress Julius Caesar, for making Highbrow Thea-tah accessible to the masses. But right now the resolutely middlebrow Walter Gibson was feeling pretty lowbrow....

One of the actors was not in costume, and after a while, Gibson recognized him: Bill Alland, the little big-voice guy who had sat in for Welles at the radio-show rehearsal yesterday afternoon. He seemed to be filling in for Welles again, so that the director did not have to be distracted by his own acting.

In fact, early on, Gibson—who’d tucked himself in a seat toward the back of the house—spotted Welles up in the seventh row, on the aisle, with his feet up on the seat in front of him. Now and then, in rolled-up shirtsleeves and suspenders and dark baggy trousers, the great man-boy would rise and pace that aisle—although on his return, that pacing would be backward, his eyes always on the stage.

During the forty or so minutes that Gibson watched, Welles at first was eating ice cream—pistachio?—with a spoon from a quart container, and then was smoking a cigar large enough for a relay-race baton, its sweetly fragrant smoke wafting all the way back to Gibson.

Though mostly the writer was viewing the director from the rear, Gibson did get glimpses of that famous baby face, always frowning, and could strongly sense that Welles was restraining himself. Gibson could not just sense that Welles wanted to interrupt; waves of that desire seemed to roll up the aisle.

However, as Howard Koch had told Gibson, Danton’s Death had been in previews already—with previews for last night and tonight and tomorrow night cancelled to make way for more rehearsal—and now the next preview loomed on Monday with real opening night on the following Wednesday.

According to both Paul Stewart and Koch, Welles was having fits with this play, and disaster had courted it: not long ago, the elevator had collapsed, hurling an actor into the basement, where the man had broken his leg (he had been replaced, and Stewart had wryly commented that the other actors considered him “the lucky one”).

Needing to function smoothly on a stage littered with perils, the actors—navigating a stage strewn with gaping holes, catwalks and scaffolding—had lobbied for several uninterrupted run-throughs (Orson normally did not wait till the end to give notes, but constantly called the proceedings to a halt, to provide a running commentary).

When the guillotine finally fell, Welles rose grandly from his aisle seat and roared, “All right, children—we’ve killed this thing! The question is, do we put it out of its misery, or try for resurrection?”

The cast had lined itself up as if waiting for a firing squad. They hung their heads; they looked bleary-eyed and exhausted.

Their condition did not appear wholly lost on Welles, whose voice modulated into a gruff warmth, though the volume continued to rumble the house seats.

“Here at the Mercury,” he said, “we are compelled to work under pressure—that is because we must make up in intensity and creativity what we lack in money! We can’t afford to take a show out on the road to whip it into shape. We have finally mastered the technical aspects of this production. Now, my children...”

Virtually every one of the haggard “children” on stage was older than Welles, some by a decade or two.

“...we must attempt to breathe life into this corpse.”

A hand tapped on Gibson’s shoulder, and he practically jumped from his seat. He looked back and up at the heart-shaped face of the sweetly pretty blonde in the fuzzy pink sweater who’d been slumbering in the box office booth. Her hair was a tumble of curls atop her head, and her blue eyes had an apologetic cast.

“Are you Mr. Gibson?” she asked, in a squeaky little voice that was at once comic and appealing. She had a womanly shape for a kid. “If you are, Mr. Houseman would like to see you...” Her voice lowered an octave. “...upstairs.”

Whether intended or not, the effect was comic and Gibson, standing in the aisle facing the girl, said, “That sounds almost as ominous as the French Revolution.”

“More ominous than that,” she squeaked, rolling her eyes.

Soon he was following her through the lobby—not an unpleasant task, as the movement of her backside beneath the tight dark woolen dress had a hypnotic effect—and then up several flights of stairs to the upper balcony. Welles’s booming voice, alternately furious at incompetence and lavish with praise, filled the house.

After a long, complicated climb, the shapely teenager led him to yet more steps, iron ones up into what had clearly been an electrician’s booth.

The girl stepped inside the narrow, stuffy room, Gibson poised in the doorway behind her. Welles’s voice, muffled, going over tiny details, leached through the twin holes in the wall that had once been used, presumably, for follow spots in the Comedy Theatre’s musical days.

“Mr. Gibson is here, Mr. Houseman,” the girl said, rather timidly.

Gibson took in the office with a few glances: an exposed paint-peeling radiator, hot enough to fry an egg on; a bulletin board with a much-annotated 1938 calendar courtesy of some bank, various reviews with sections underlined, and a sheet boldly labelled MERCURY THEATRE 1937–38 SUBSCRIBERS LIST; 8-by-10s of actors and production sketches taped haphazardly to the walls; and a couple battered secondhand-looking bookcases brimming with scripts and books and boxes of Mercury letterhead and envelopes, in stylish brown ink.

Nothing unexpected, really, with a single exception: on the wall, riding some nails, was a large sharp-looking hunting knife with a gleaming blade and a light-brown wooden handle bearing a bold ORSON WELLES autograph.

The space itself had been divided by a beaverboard partition into two even smaller offices—the nearer was a secretarial area, with a small gray metal desk and typewriter, unattended, a row of filing cabinets behind; the other side had a glorified card table with a chair behind it and several chairs in front of it, a daybed hugging the left wall. On the table were two telephones, and a small portable Victrola, and seated behind the table, hands folded like a school teacher patiently waiting to reprimand a wayward student, was a formidable fellow who projected various contradictory messages.

His yellow-and-black checkered sportcoat said casual, his black bow tie said formal; his dark slashes of eyebrow on an egg-shaped noggin (well on its way to being completely bald), sent signals of strength, while a languid weakness was implied by a feminine, sensuous-lipped mouth that seemed permanently formed in a mild condescending smile. Or was it a sneer?

And his eyes seemed at once drowsy and keenly alert.

“Thank you, Judy,” their host said, in a British-tinged voice—was the tone kind, or patronizing?—and rose, extending a soft hand across the table. “John Houseman, Mr. Gibson. Please call me Jack.”

“And I’m Walter,” the writer said, Houseman’s soft hand providing a firm handshake.

The stocky study in contrasts sat and gestured to the chair opposite for Gibson. In the background, Welles’s voice droned on and on about a hundred details, while Miss Holliday was frozen in the doorway, like Lot’s wife.

“Is that all, Mr. Houseman?” she quavered.

“It is not.” Houseman lifted his arm, slid back a sleeve, and gave a royal look to his wristwatch. “My sense is that our resident genius is winding down, and we’re expecting both Mr. Stewart and Mr. Koch within the next ten minutes. Would you be so kind, Miss Holliday, as to go next door to Longchamps and order Mr. Welles’s usual repast, and...is standard eggs and bacon and potatoes suitable, Mr. Gibson?”

“Sure.”

Houseman twitched a polite smile the writer’s way, and to Miss Holliday intoned, “Three standard breakfasts plus my usual lox, onion and scrambled eggs. Only a single baked potato for Mr. Welles—he informs us that he’s dieting.”

Miss Holliday was moving from shoe to shoe. Her hands were fig-leafed before her and she seemed clearly distraught. “But Mr. Houseman...I told you before—Longchamps won’t give us credit anymore. I had to pay cash myself for his ice cream tonight.”

“For which you will be reimbursed.”

Her eyes widened. “Mr. Houseman—Mr. Welles owes them over two hundred dollars.”

“Shit!” The word exploded from Houseman, as if trying to escape from the prissy prison of the man. “You tell those f*cking people that I will personally vouch for Mr. Welles.”

Tears were flowing down the girl’s apple cheeks. “But Mr. Houseman...”

“God-damn-it!” Houseman stood, fished a billfold from inside his jacket, and handed Gibson a twenty-dollar bill, which the stunned writer passed to the girl, who padded over for it.

Arm outstretched like the pope blessing the masses, Houseman said, “Pay the bastards in cash, and don’t mention Mr. Welles by name!”

“But Mr. Houseman,” she sobbed, “they’ll know it’s for him....”

“Order the steaks separately, my dear—as if for two people—and if they ask if the two meals are for Mr. Welles, lie through your delightful pretty teeth.”

“Oh, Mr. Houseman...”

“Do it.”

She swallowed, nodded, and disappeared, her footsteps on the metal stairs ringing like gunshots punctuating Welles’s ongoing harangue.

Gibson nodded toward where she’d stood. “Does she always cry like that?”

“Only when I swear.”

“Ah.”

“I do it for her own good—swear at her, that is.”

“Is that so?”

Houseman nodded sagely. “She’s a nice girl, from a respectable family, but...sad to say...she wants to be in show business. So I’m breaking her in, so to speak. If she wants to make it in this trade, she’ll need to acclimate herself to coarseness.”

Gibson was shaking his head. “A kid that nervous? You really think she could make it in show biz?”

“Don’t underestimate Judy, Walter. She’s smarter than either of us...and her sense of finance is admirable.” Houseman shifted in his chair. “That is, frankly, why I asked to see you, prior to our little Mercury on the Air staff meeting. Which I understand you’ve agreed to attend?”

“I have. I figure I’m on Orson’s dime, no matter how you look at it.”

An eyebrow arched. “Actually—you’re on the Mercury Theatre’s dime...which is how I look at it.”

“Not sure I understand, Jack.”

The permanent sneer twitched, and Houseman folded his hands on the table again. His head tilted to one side, and his eyes were hooded as he said, “My young partner has no sense of money. He throws it to the wind. You’ve seen the production he’s mounting, currently?”

“I have. It’s...”

“Impressive. And a bewildering exercise in pretention, as well...but he is the artistic director, not I. This theater, this old warhorse, needed renovation—one of the first things, first expenses, we undertook was to put in a new stage.”

“Ah. And Mr. Welles ripped much of that stage out, for this production, for that fancy tower he rigged.”

The drowsy eyes flared; the sneer took on a tinge of pleasure. “You are bright man, Mr. Gibson, and perceptive.”

“And you have called me here to request that I not abuse my expense account.”

Houseman nodded once; he exuded the wisdom of Buddha. Also the stature.

“Jack, it’s not in my nature to take advantage. Mr. Welles made the St. Regis reservation...”

Another nod. “For his own convenience, since he’s living there, more or less.”

“More or less?”

“He’s a married man, you know—with a baby girl, as well as a wife. They live on Sneden’s Landing, well out of the city. But Orson, while he’s working, has decided to stay mostly in town.”

“And he’s always working.”

“You already have a grasp of the situation, Walter.”

Gibson shrugged. “Don’t worry yourself, Jack—I am not by nature extravagant. I need to take cabs, because I don’t have my car here in the city; and I have to eat. But I won’t be running up any elaborate bills to stiff the Mercury.”

Houseman’s tiny smile seemed somehow huge. “You are a gentleman. And I understand Orson owes you much.”

“All I did was recommend him to the producers of the Shadow show, once upon a time.”

“Yes, but that was the Welles watershed—without his success as the Shadow, we’d have no radio program. I know he is very grateful to you.”

Gibson did not point out that Welles had waited until just a few days ago to thank him. For some reason, he glanced at the hunting knife, displayed on the wall, just to his left.

“You’ve noticed our little memento from Julius Caesar, I see,” Houseman said with a smile as sly as it was slight. “That’s our eternal reminder to our enthusiastic leader that even a genius must contain his enthusiasm.”

“How’s that?” Gibson asked.

“Well, all of the other conspirators in our production were satisfied with heavy rubber daggers, with aluminum-painted blades. Not good enough for Brutus, that is, Orson, who felt the final confrontation with the tyrant required the reality of a gleaming blade.”

Houseman gestured casually to the mounted hunting knife.

“For more than one hundred performances, Brutus held that sharp point against our Caesar’s chest; then as, actor Joe Holland clung to Orson, in beautifully performed death agonies, Brutus would make the final thrust, with a turn of his body.”

The producer tented his fingertips and continued.

“One spring night—without either Orson or Mr. Holland being aware of it—the blade went through the cloth and slipped...quite painlessly...into Joe Holland’s chest, and through an artery in the region of his heart. No one realized anything had gone awry, until Orson himself slipped in the blood.... In the blackout following Antony exclaiming, ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,’ we were able to cart Joe’s inert form from the stage. As the show continued, he was taken by taxi to the nearest hospital.”

“My God, but he survived?”

“After several days...and several transfusions. Orson initially experienced a brief spasm of guilt, but soon managed to convince himself it was Joe’s fault, for turning incorrectly and impaling himself.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t sued.”

“We paid Joe Holland’s bills. Our Caesar even wound up apologizing to Brutus...but I never saw it that way. So I mounted that dagger in an attempt to provide our gifted boy with a conscience of sorts.”

“How’s that working out?”

Houseman twitched a wry smile. “Not terribly well, so far. As you can see, his response was merely to sign the weapon....”

Footsteps on the iron stairs announced a new arrival—and it couldn’t be Welles, because his alternate scolding and praise continued from below—and then Paul Stewart, looking mournful and tired, his sunken cheeks blue with beard, stepped inside. An acetate recording in a brown-paper sleeve was tucked under his arm. His gray suit looked rumpled, his blue tie already loose at his collar.

“Mr. Gibson,” Stewart said with a nod, as the writer rose briefly, returning the nod. Stewart handed the shellac disc across to Houseman. “Here it is, Jack. Any chance Orson will finish that harangue by Sunday?”

Placing the disc neatly next to the record player on the table, Houseman said, “I believe he’ll release his prisoners, any moment now.”

Stewart deposited himself on the daybed, nearer Houseman than Gibson. “Breakfast on the way?”

With a nod that took about three seconds, Houseman replied, “Breakfast is indeed on the way. The mission is Miss Holliday’s.”

“We oughta put that kid on the Mercury program,” Stewart said. “I think she’s a natural comedienne.”

“Despite her constant tears,” Houseman said, “I tend to agree...ah. Here’s Howard.”

Koch had clanged up the stairs and was in the cubbyhole’s doorway. He, too, looked haggard and unshaven, his tan suit and yellow tie like clothes he’d removed from a hamper, after wadding.

The two writers exchanged warm greetings, and Koch dropped himself on the daybed next to Stewart. He eyed the transcription disc grimly.

“So,” Koch said to Stewart. “You’ve brought the evidence.”

Stewart smirked humorlessly. “Some is found at the scene of every crime.”

Welles’s voice had ceased. The sound of movement below indicated the cast had finally been dismissed. Everyone in the electrician’s booth office lighted up a cigarette and a swirl of blue smoke was waiting when Welles’s heavy trod could finally be heard coming up those iron stairs.

Gibson didn’t know what to expect—an exhausted tyrant, most likely.

And yet the figure framed in the doorway appeared energetic and strangely cherubic. His big body, both tall and bordering on heavyset, his arms limp at his sides, his head rather large for even this formidable frame, with a small mouth in the round face no less a baby’s for the cheeks needing a shave.

Most amazing were the vaguely Asian eyes which seemed to light with delight upon the sight of Gibson.

“My dear Walter,” he said, moving quickly to the writer, who got quickly to his feet. Welles’s expression might have been that of a man reunited with his oldest friend after a painful separation. “How kind of you to sit in with us on this postmortem.”

“Glad to help,” was all Gibson could think to say. The charm, the charisma of this twenty-three-year-old seemed to consume Gibson’s very air, his ability to think clearly.

Welles strode to the vacant chair next to Gibson, opposite the seated Houseman—whose expression seemed to define boredom—and said to everyone but Gibson, “Our poor friend has already put up with far too many indignities from me.”

Seeking out one face at a time, Welles continued his tale.

“I bring Walter in yesterday, out of his own busy schedule, and then have the wretched rudeness not even to show up at our rehearsal, much less seek him out at our mutual hotel!”

He deposited his weight on the chair next to Gibson, motioning for the writer to sit. Now Welles’s gaze was back on Gibson, and his tone was intimate as he said, “I’m afraid it was unavoidable. My current stage production is a train wreck, and my first responsibility was to be the engineer who got it back up on the tracks.”

Gibson swallowed, nodded.

Welles turned toward Houseman. “Now, Housey...please tell me that breakfast has been ordered.”

Houseman nodded once, a quicker one than before. “But Miss Holliday informs me that you have run up a personal tab at Longchamps in the sum of two hundred dollars.”

Welles waved that off. “I assume, after she stopped crying, that you gave her some money and sent her off like a good little girl.”

Again Houseman nodded. He was leaning back now, the hands folded over his belly.

Welles sighed grandly. “I suppose we must listen to this thing.... Does anyone have anything to say, first? How did it go in the studio?”

Stewart shrugged. “It’s not our finest hour, but I think it’s shaped up—thanks to Howard, here.”

Koch said, “Maybe we should have done ‘Lorna Doone,’ after all.”

Welles shook his head. “No, this will work. I know it will. The potential here is for our most important broadcast.”

This opinion seemed to amaze Stewart, whose eyes were unblinking marbles under the dark slashes of eyebrow. “Really?...Well, I was just hoping to get through the thing without any of our reputations suffering.... Now, of course, Orson, I won’t be refining the sound effects until Saturday. Ora has specifically requested that I tell you she will do her best to bring Mars to Earth, effectively...not to judge her by these preliminary, perfunctory efforts.”

“Dear Ora,” Welles said wistfully, looking ceilingward, as if contemplating his first love, “she is a wonder. The best sound man we could ever hope for, despite a lack of cock and balls.”

Gibson wondered if he’d actually heard that....

From the doorway, Judy Holliday said, “Oh Mr. Welles, that’s terrible,” and burst into tears.

Welles went to her, put an arm around her shoulder, and said, “There, there...you mustn’t let such boy talk upset you so. I had no idea a gentle flower had planted itself in this doorway.”

“Can I...can I have the food sent up?”

“I’ll fire your little ass if you don’t!”

She disappeared, her feet travelling down the iron steps sounding like a barrage of bullets, punctuating Welles’s roar of hearty laughter.

The other men were smiling and chuckling, except for Gibson, an Alice still trying to get used to Wonderland.

Within minutes, a skinny, put-upon waiter in a white shirt and dark pants brought up a picnic basket, and left without waiting for a tip that he seemed to already know wasn’t going to come. Houseman played host and opened the basket on his card-table desk, lifting the metal hats covering each plate, passing out the food to its intended recipient. Miss Holliday reappeared with a coffeepot and cups, and distributed those as well. Welles disappeared with his two plates—two large steaks, one in the company of a single sour-cream-and-butter-slathered baked potato—behind the partition, to sit at the secretary’s desk there and eat unobserved.

The table was a good height for both Houseman and Gibson to eat their breakfasts, while Koch and Stewart—still seated on the daybed—seemed at ease eating off the plates in their laps, old hands at this.

Welles did call over a complaint about the single potato, until Houseman reminded him: “Your diet—remember?” To which Welles mumbled an unintelligible answer, a pouting child responding to a firm parent.

Then Welles, from behind the partition, ordered: “Well, play the goddamned thing, Housey!”

And Houseman placed the record on the record player, turned up the volume and they all ate while they listened to the rehearsal recording.

Minus the excitement of the studio, Koch’s “War of the Worlds” adaptation played even less excitingly, seeming terribly flat and uncompelling to Gibson. They finished their breakfast about halfway through—Martians were killing people at Grovers Mill—and suddenly Miss Holliday materialized again, to gather the plates and put them into the picnic basket, and vanish once more.

Gibson hardly noticed that Welles had taken the chair next to him again. The boy genius showed no emotion as he listened, sitting with arms folded, his expression as distant as it was blank.

When the recording reached its conclusion, and Bill Alland was signing off pretending to be Welles, the listener’s “obedient servant,” Houseman lifted the tone arm and the needle scratched just a bit. Then their host returned the acetate to its sleeve and looked at Welles, arching an eyebrow as if to say, “Well?”

“It stinks,” Welles said.

From the corner of his eye, Gibson saw Koch essentially collapse into himself; and Stewart closed his eyes, as if he’d chosen to respond by going to sleep.

“It’s corny,” Welles went on, shrugging grandly. His voice was soft, no longer filling the room, making Koch and Stewart listen carefully to hear their work dismissed. “Unbelievable. Dull as dishwater. Also ghastly—no one’s going to believe a word of it.... Paul, what does the cast think?”

Stewart swallowed. “They think it’s pretty thin.”

“And John Dietz? He’s been a good judge.”

“Our esteemed sound engineer thinks it’s weak. One of our worst shows.”

Welles turned to Gibson. “What’s your opinion, Walter?”

“It starts well,” Gibson managed.

Welles exploded off the chair. “Exactly right! Precisely right!”

Then the big man somehow managed to move around the little area, waving his arms, his eyes wild.

“Goddamnit, Howard, how you could blow this opportunity! I give you the key to this thing, and you throw it away! Threw it out the window!”

“Orson,” Koch said, “I don’t know what you mean—”

“And you, Paul,” Welles said to the man who was doing his directing for him, “how you could betray me like this?”

Stewart didn’t seem hurt or impressed, merely asked, “How so?”

Welles’s tone shifted entirely, became genteel as he said to Gibson, “Walter, would you mind moving over for me?”

Gibson did.

“There’s a dear.” With a huge arm, Welles violently swept the chair Gibson had been sitting in and it clattered against the wall. Welles then filled the space the chair had inhabited, and loomed over the two men seated on the daybed, as if he were parent and they wayward children.

Voice booming, he said, “How many times have I told the two of you that the Mercury’s responsibility is to bring experimental techniques to this untapped medium.... Not to just treat our material like a ‘play’—the less a radio drama resembles a play, the better it’s going to be!”

Welles thrust a finger at Gibson, who jumped in his chair a bit. “This man, who does not work in our medium on a daily basis...though I might point out his instincts about that medium only gave me the part that put us all on the map...immediately honed in on what will separate this show from all the rest.”

Houseman, sitting back, hands folded on his belly, said in a voice that tried too hard to be nonchalant, “And what would that be, Orson?”

For the first time, Gibson realized that behind Houseman’s mask was something else—insecurity, even fear....

With a weight-of-the-world sigh, Orson Welles picked up the chair he’d tossed aside, righted it and sat, shaking his head slowly, a man devastated by disappointment.

“I suggested that we use news bulletins,” Welles said quietly...too quietly, “and eyewitness accounts.”

“We did,” Koch said, pain in his voice.

“You did...at the start—exactly twice.”

Koch nodded. “Right. To get us into the piece.”

Again Welles exploded, exasperated. “Howard—it is the piece! We need newscast simulations, absolutely believable.... We need that dance-band remote broadcast not to be interrupted once, like our recent ‘Sherlock Holmes’ broadcast was, but again and again.... We need real names, details, we need the illusion of up-to-the-second reality. Why do you think I had you change it from London to New Jersey? Why did I insist you do it modern-day, not in turn-of-the-century London?”

“Actually,” Koch said, raising a timid forefinger, “that was my idea...”

“Does it matter whose idea it is? Good God man, this is a collaboration! And the goal of this collaboration is to execute my vision!...Flash news bulletins, eyewitness accounts, as the Mars invasion is happening. Keep that going throughout the entire hour!”

Stewart said, “That’s impossible—the story covers months. It has to be resolved.”

“Fine, but keep it immediate as long as possible—for the first half of the thing, at the very least.”

Houseman sat forward. “Orson—don’t you realize that if we present...fake newscasts, for a half hour or more...”

“Up until the station break midway, precisely.”

Houseman swallowed and tried again. “Don’t you realize, Orson, that listeners are apt to misunderstand.”

Stewart snorted a laugh. “What, and think Martians are really invading?”

Welles was sitting with his arms folded now, his expression that of a pixie—a damn big pixie, but a pixie.

“And why not?” he asked.

Everyone sat forward, except Welles.

Houseman said, “Surely, you don’t mean to fool our listeners into...”

“If that’s all the more intelligent they are, why in hell not? Let me tell you where I got this idea. Back in 1926, a BBC broadcast out of Edinburgh, Scotland, presented a false news report about an unemployed mob in London sacking the National Gallery, blowing up Big Ben, hanging the Minister of Traffic to a tramway post, and blowing up the Houses of Parliament.”

Everyone but Welles sat open-mouthed.

Welles, eyes twinkling, continued, “The ‘newscast’ concluded with the destruction of the BBC’s flagship station.... After the broadcast, the BBC—and the police and the newspapers—were besieged with frantic citizens calling to see what was happening, and to find out what they could do in this terrible crisis.”

Then he laughed and laughed, patting his knees like a department-store Santa Claus.

“You see it was a period of unusual labor strife—days before a general strike—and...what’s wrong? You all look as if your best friend died.”

Houseman held out a hand in the fashion of a traffic cop. “Orson, you surely can’t be suggesting—”

“Oh, Housey, if a few loonies buy what we’re doing, what’s the harm? It’ll make a wonderful Hallowe’en prank, and we’ll have terrific publicity.”

Koch, thinking aloud, said, “Well, we certainly can’t go on the air cold....”

“No, of course not!” Welles blurted. “We’ll have a standard opening. And is it our fault...” Welles smiled with infinite innocence. “...if after Charlie McCarthy’s opening monologue, listeners just happen to check around their dial for something more lively than Chase and Sanborn’s weekly guest singer, and happen upon our little charade?”

Stewart was starting to smile. “Well, I don’t think it will work—I don’t think anyone will fall for this. But it’s a hell of a good way to bring some extra punch to this yarn.”

Koch was nodding. “It would be easy enough to rework it that way, too.”

But Houseman was shaking his head, gloomily. “I don’t approve. I do think people might well be fooled, just as those British listeners were. It’s irresponsible, and it’s cruel, not to mention a risky venture for the Mercury—I can envision lawsuits, and—”

“Ah, Housey,” Welles said, “don’t be a little girl!”

Houseman looked daggers across the desk. “Orson, you need to take more care. Or one day your comeuppance will come, and it will not be a pleasant thing to behold.”

Welles waved that off. “It’s the medium of radio that needs the comeuppance, that needs to get the starch taken out of it. It’s the voice of authority, nowadays—too much so. And maybe we’ll just give a little kick to the seat of the voice of authority’s pants. Anyway, what’s your alternative—any of you? To go on the air with this boring hour of hokum?”

Leaning forward, as if taking everyone into his confidence, which he was, Welles said, “My little hoax notion will save this show...but in case you’re right, Housey, and things do get a little out of hand, like in England that time—let’s just keep this to ourselves. After all, it’s like a magic trick—a prank only works if the pranksters don’t let anybody else in on the joke....”





SATURDAY





OCTOBER 29, 1938





BROADWAY BEGAN AS A COWPATH, only to be transformed by neon—chiefly red with dabs of yellow—into the blazing nighttime main stem of the world’s largest frontier town. But as garish as it was by night, Broadway by day was drab and even dreary. Around Times Square, a score of dance halls thrived (ten cents per “beautiful hostess”), and all along the Great White Way, sidewalk spielers offered health soap, hand-painted ties, reducing belts, hot buttery ears of corn, and Get Rich Quick real-estate booklets. Good-looking gals shilled bus rides to Chinatown, and a haberdashery shouted “Going Out of Business Sale” (in its tenth year). Bus terminals, with their foul-smelling, lumbering coaches, offered cheaper fare than the train, and adventurous tourists and locals alike were invited to partake of an array of theaters, movie palaces, hotels and cafes—also flea circuses, chop-suey parlors, burlesque houses, sideshows and clip joints. Millionaires mingled with panhandlers, youthful new stage stars brushed shoulders with aging burlesque comics, and current heavyweight champs bumped into derelicts who’d once been contenders or even champs themselves.

The current shabby state of Broadway could be traced to Prohibition—later aided and abetted by the Depression—when “nightclubs” first came into vogue. From the turn of the century, upper- and middle-class Americans had sought European-style amusement in the form of exhibitions and expositions, rooftop gardens and crystal palaces, while the working class sought out the sawdust-under-foot fun provided by beer halls and carnivals. But Prohibition had sent American nightlife down its own quirky, particular path....

A “nightclub” sought to circumvent the liquor laws by presenting itself as private, with members who dropped by for fine food, top entertainment, good conversation and, of course, their favorite soft drinks. That anyone who knocked three times might enter, and that the drinks were invariably hard, was the reality behind a fantasy kept alive by a casually law-breaking populace and their on-the-take law enforcement agencies.

By the time Prohibition was winding down, with the Depression kicking in, nightclub life was an American social tradition like baseball, circuses and the picture show. But the glittery clubs of the speakeasy era were an endangered species, saved from extinction by, as Fortune magazine put it, the “recent success of what is commonly known as the big Broadway joint, the gaudy bargain offer of fifty hot babies and a five-course dinner for $1.50 and no cover charge.”

Take the French Casino, a swooping, curving art-moderne exercise in scarlet and silver, their terraced rows of tables comfortably seating fifteen hundred. The same number of patrons could be welcomed by the International Casino (not a casino at all), in the heart of Times Square, a red and gold wonder with “curtains” that were mirrors riding on electric tracks, and a flooded, frozen stage accommodating the Ice Frolics. Billy Rose’s Casino de Paree—the remodeled New Yorker Theater on Broadway—offered a five-buck meal, gorgeous chorus girls, headliner Gypsy Rose Lee (America’s most famous striptease artiste) and the Benny Goodman orchestra.

An impressive new arrival—perched on the top floor of a building at Broadway and 48th Street—was actually an old standby, a relocated Cotton Club, the famed Harlem landmark that had (in 1936) found its white clientele increasingly reluctant to travel to a Depression-ravaged ghetto for their entertainment.

The Cotton Club began in the fall of 1923 in an old theater on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue, its primary owner one Owney Madden, who’d come from Liverpool as a child to New York’s fabled Hell’s Kitchen, where he developed from a banty rooster nicknamed “the Killer” into a dapper, sophisticated elder statesman of racketeers.

Despite the Harlem location, Madden ran the Cotton Club strictly for white patrons—Negroes were allowed solely on stage and/or in service capacities—in the manner of a posh downtown club, only showcasing exotic uptown talent. Cover charge was three dollars, beer a buck a bottle, the food prices (including neighborhood favorites like Southern fried chicken and Kansas City–style barbecue ribs) in line with the better Broadway clubs.

That the Cotton Club’s late show began after-hours—when the late shows of other clubs were over—attracted entertainers, making it an “in” spot for the likes of Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante and Milton Berle. On a big stage—invoking the antebellum South via white plantation-style columns and a stove-cabin backdrop—cavorted a chorus line of gorgeous “high-yallar” gals (light-skinned black beauties, “Tall, Tan and Terrific!”); all under twenty-one, these girls were among the best singers and dancers in New York, and the show they gave was as wild as it was scantily clad. Both Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington had reigned over Cotton Club house bands through the years, and Ethel Waters and Lena Horne made their mark there.

The new club on Broadway opened in the fall of ’36, and Calloway, Ellington and such other “colored” stars as Louis Armstrong, Steppin’ Fetchit and Dorothy Dandridge (with her sisters) made it the hottest nightspot in Manhattan, pulling in thirty thousand dollars a week (despite the Depression), a new dance called the Boogie Woogie creating a sensation. The stage shows featured choreography, music, costumes and sets challenging Broadway’s best.

Was it any wonder young Orson Welles was a frequent patron?