Word: orson
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...Mankiewicz, the screenwriter of "Kane," had penned several "Campbell Playhouse" episodes, including "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" and "Huckleberry Finn." Houseman, who midwifed the "Kane" script, effectively produced the radio shows while Welles made mischief on Broadway or in Hollywood. Herrmann, the "Kane" composer, went way back with Orson. Much of the densely layered "Kane" sound track is an echo of effects and vo-cal tricks from "Mercury" and "Campbell." The first words to be seen in Welles? first feature film are "A Radio Picture"; and, as David Thomson notes in "Rose-bud," his lusciously cogent biography of Welles...
...higher form of public speaking. "With a vocal instrument of abnormal resonance and flexibility," writes Houseman in his autobiography "Run-Through," which is largely a memoir of the Mercury days, "he was capable of expressing an almost unlimited range of moods and emotions." (When, I won-der, did young Orson?s voice change? And was that the moment when he knew he?d be an actor?) Welles on radio was Homer or Aesop at a campfire, weaving worlds with words. "Everybody likes a good story," he said when "Campbell Playhouse" began, "and I think radio is just about the best...
...story goes that he was hired when the series was airing a piece on the newly-born Dionne quintuplets - Welles played all five babies. He impersonated kings and plutocrats, all the newsmakers of the period. And one new newsmaker. As he recalled for Peter Bogdanovich in "This Is Orson Welles," a kind of oral memoir: "One day they did as a news item on ?March of Time? the opening of my production of the black ?Macbeth,? and I played myself in it. And that to me was the apotheosis of my career - that I was on ?March of Time? acting...
...Valjean back to prison, his haggling with the inn-keeper to win Cosette?s freedom, the final confrontation with Javert and his last words to his adopted daughter - all are realized with an enthralling depth and immediacy. "Purely as a professional achievement, this is breathtaking," writes Simon Callow, in "Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu," a biography that contains the most detailed analysis I?ve found of the radio work. "Welles at twenty-two produced a show that could rival any by the most seasoned practitioner...
...were creating some-thing wonderful. "Shows were created week after week under conditions of soul - and health - destroying pressure," writes Houseman. "Two simultaneous dramas were infolded each week in the tense, stale air of CBS Studio One: the minor drama of the current show and the major drama of Orson?s titanic struggle to get it on." By Monday afternoon Houseman had written the adaptation and an introduc-tion about the author; Herrmann had composed a score; the actors had their scripts. Then Welles showed up for the dress rehearsal...