On April 26, Heritage Auctions will sell more than 70 items once owned by the late Orson Welles.
The items include film memorabilia, clothing and personal accoutrements, including script pages and black and white film stills from Citizen Kane, scripts and still photos from The Magnificent Ambersons, a pair of personal scrapbooks relating to The War of the Worlds, Welles’ ‘Bell & Howard 240’ 16mm movie camera, his Smith-Corona 2200 electric typewriter, a humidor gifted to him from director Michael Winner, documents from Welles’ famous Mercury Theatre, and a host of other material related to Welles’ career.
The items have been in the keep of his youngest daughter Beatrice Welles. Many of them were in trunks shipped to the late filmmaker by Hazel Bernstein, widow of his guardian Maurice “Dadda” Bernstein, and left unopened for decades.
In this two-part interview, Beatrice Welles discussed the auction, life with her famous father, misconceptions and some tantalizing unreleased treasures she plans to make public.
Why did you wait so long to put all of these items up for sale?
My father was a gypsy. We were gypsies. He didn’t believe in materialistic things. He didn’t save anything thing at all. He would just leave everything behind… It’s amazing anything is left.
I didn’t know what was in there. I really didn’t. There were two main trunks and quite a few boxes. The two trunks arrived in Spain at some point, probably 1965 or ’66. It came from “Dadda” Bernstein who was my father’s guardian. They were sent by his wife, Hazel, after “Dadda” died. I don’t think anybody ever opened them and they were put into storage in Italy – God knows why. And then they went back to Spain to the big house we had bought. And that’s the house Robert Shaw burnt down one wing of with a bunch of my father’s papers in there. My father actually had a screenplay there he was working on. Why he left it in his studio office while he was renting the house out, I have no idea.
(A subsequent group of renters) destroyed the house. They ripped wallpaper off the walls. They tore basins in a bathroom off the wall and there was water damage. We had a lot of stuff in storage in the basement… In the basement were all the things we cared about, including these two trunks and his Movieolas. The trunks went back to Italy (laughs). They have a story of their own. And from Italy to America. They went into storage in Las Vegas and were never opened.
My parents died within a very short period of time of each other. I could not look at any of it. I had friends put everything in boxes. I didn’t want to get rid of anything but I just couldn’t see it. Basically, they stayed in storage for 20 or whatever years. At one point, I had forgotten about them. After five or six years, I did open some of the more recent boxes and kept the things I wanted and gave some clothes or whatever to friends. The rest again stayed in storage. And last year, I thought maybe I should look at what is in there.
I found things I cherish in my heart that I did not know still existed from my childhood. But there were so many things, what to do with them, what to do with them. More than anything, he would have loved for people to have them. He wasn’t a very museum kind of person, and that would be the only thing else … I have picked out things I think other people would like – people who appreciated his work.
There were a lot of scrapbooks done by a professional service. We’ve got radio (and) a Citizen Kane one. There’s a camera I remember vividly. He used to take home movies, where those home movies went, God knows. He also shot In the Land of Don Quixote on that. What am I going to do with a camera? I actually kept suits of his and I had my tailor make them so I can fit into them. I did that. The things that matter to me – not his camera, not his typewriter.
There are two scripts for The Magnificent Ambersons. Each one has a different ending and, of course, it is not the one we see in the (studio re-cut version of the) film. So there are three endings of The Magnificent Ambersons we know of.
You live in Sedona, Arizona. Did you father live in Sedona?
Oh yes. We were in Sedona from early 1977 until the beginning of 1979. He loved it… But it was so far away for him because he was always in L.A. working – or trying to. Then, in those days, you had to fly into Phoenix and it was a two-hour drive. He would stay two or three days and he was exhausted. So we moved from Sedona to Las Vegas.
What was he like at home?
Quiet. Doors were closed and there was no other world. It was us. He was very anti-social, if you want to put it that way. I guess that is where I get my reclusiveness from. He never stopped working and that was the honest to God truth. That typewriter, I don’t think I ever saw him not working on that typewriter. He had the most insane schedule. He would be up all night. Have lunch or something, work a bit and crash for two hours and work again. It was bizarre. Growing up, I thought it was normal.
I ask what he was like because of the portrait painted of him in the recent book My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles.
I was livid when it came out, absolutely livid. I expected him to do that. I was livid at all the people who knew about it and did nothing about it. I wanted to and there was a misunderstanding between the person who works for me on the Estate and myself. I don’t really want to go into it. I am so angry I could scream.
He was so devastated by (the taping) that he actually called me to tell me about it. And that was not the kind of thing he would usually call me about, nasty things or unpleasant things. He still treated me as a little girl. I hadn’t seen him that upset ever in my life, apart from other tragedies. He was just… to break someone’s trust… It was so awful. I was beside myself (when the book was published last year). Miss Recluse here was ready to explode.
And I was even more angry with the people who knew about this and did nothing and had the opportunity to say something and didn’t. And I don’t know why. Who the hell is Henry Jaglom?
Who knew about the book and did not say something?
I mean the woman I hate to talk about – Palinkas (Oja Kodar). She and I discussed it even and I thought she of all people would stand up.
My father would never had said all those things. Never, never, never. The fact that he calls himself a friend… How can you do something like that? You call him your mentor and what else. It is the lowest of low. And he knew my father was going to die. My father was not well in the last two years of his life. It is sick… I am sure he had no idea that I knew (my father was upset about the taping)…
I guess I will save it for my book. I finally realize I am forced to write one. There is so much I have to say and so much crap written about him – and by people who knew him. I have yet to read something from someone, and it does not matter who it is, who really knew him. I am not trying to say I am the only one, but I did spend a huge amount of my life with him… My parents were everything to me. They were my best friends. I had no friends my own age. None. My friends were my parents. I do know a side of him that no one else knows and it is a wonderful side. I am so tired of hearing the wrong things.
(Editor’s note: Henry Jaglom has maintained he taped Welles with his blessing and the tapes were to be used in a planned autobiography).
On the Wellesnet Message Board, there is discussion – and a hope – that you are in possession of an edit of Don Quixote done by your father?
No. There is (an edit of Don Quixote) and it is in Italy… (Welles’ former editor Mauro Bonanni) got in touch with me and asked, ‘Do you know I have this.’ I actually met with him in Rome (in 1992) and there were so many complications legally that I couldn’t do anything unless I had a ton of money. First of all, he wants money, which everyone does – and rightfully so. But there were so many loopholes and this and that. It was so complicated.
And I had just seen this terrible thing that whatever his name had done, oh, my God. (Editor’s note: She is referring to Jess Franco’s 1992 Don Quixote de Orson Welles, which was sanctioned by Kodar).
Like It’s All True, I was invited to the premiere in New York and I walked out. I cannot watch his work done by others.
You didn’t like It’s All True?
Oh my God, no. There were scenes where you could see what he was trying to do and they just didn’t get it… I burst into tears. I was so upset.
Is this why you objected to the re-edit of Touch of Evil in 1998?
I didn’t have objections and this is the terrible thing that happens when you do not speak and people put two-and-two together. (Othello restoration) producer Julian Schlossberg contacted me and said ‘Did you know they are restoring Touch of Evil. You should take a look.’ So, we tried to contact Universal and they just ignored us completely. When I say us, I mean me and Thomas White, who has helped me enormously with the Estate and legal matters. All I was trying to do was to see and find out what they were doing. They absolutely flatly refused to talk to me, write me a letter or send me an email and explain what they were doing. It was like I didn’t exist. It kind of pissed me off (laughs) because it was like they were hiding something. I wasn’t asking for anything. I was just asking ‘What are you doing to my father’s film.’
The only way to stop them was to contact the Cannes Film Festival and say, ‘Do you know this is not sanctioned by the Estate?’ That is all we said. It was the Cannes Film Festival’s decision to stop the premiere and that is the truth. I had nothing to do with it. We left it up to them.
I saw it later at it was wonderful. I thought they did an amazing job and it was very well done. It was what he wanted and it made much more sense than that chopped up nightmare there was before. It was fine and it was his. If they had told me that from the very beginning, none of that would have happened.
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