Read Online Orson Welles: Hello Americans by Simon Callow - Free Book Online

instead the sort of width and depth of shot that he had deployed in Citizen Kane – but on location, which created major problems for lighting and for the camera itself, particularly in the matter of tracks. As it happens, the shoot, which was embarked on in such high spirits, was no fun at all.Despite the relatively luxurious twelve weeks allowed for principal photography, it turned out to be a punishing schedule, given the frequent shifts of location and the attendant difficulties of each.
    Welles had shot on location only once before, in Brazil for It’s All True , and though the world was no longer at war and communications were generally functioning, the hazards of shooting on thespot remained considerable. Surprisingly, Columbia seemed no better organised than RKO four years earlier. Dick Wilson insisted that they had sent too large a crew, which would only hamper them, and so it proved. They started shooting in mid-October, in Acapulco, at the worst possible time of the year, the height of the hot, humid rainy season. Both Welles and Hayworth succumbed straight away tohis old bugbear, sinusitis, a nearly incapacitating condition for an actor. More alarmingly, they were shooting in shark-infested waters; the Mexican swimming champion was hired to swim near Hayworth when she was shooting in the water, in order to ward off marauding barracudas. Hurricanes threatened and storms constantly blew up, impossible conditions in which to shoot and record sound; being on boardwas bad enough. On more than one occasion they managed to get no more than one or two shots a day.
    William Castle had been sent ahead to arrange the yacht. ‘Orson, an insomniac, refused to believe that anyone required sleep and picked the wee hours of the morning to call with any new idea he had at the moment. 6 “This is Orson,” his voice would boom. “I hope I didn’t wake you.” “No, Orson,” Iyawned. “I’m always up at four a.m.” “You’re leaving for Mexico,” he said. “Acapulco, at noon today.” I was now wide awake. He continued, “I want the Zaca .” “What’s a zaca?” I asked. “Not a – the Zaca ,” he replied, “Errol Flynn’s yacht. I want you to make a deal with him.” “Yes, Orson, but how do I find the Zaca and Errol Flynn?” “That’s your worry.’” Presumably Welles thought they could savemoney by hiring the yacht from Flynn, but before long it was clear that any savings were more than counterbalanced by the sheer obnoxiousness of the man – drunken, lascivious, racist, potentially violent – and by his preciousness with regard to the Zaca . ‘Flynn joked, cajoled, needled, threatened, blackmailed us about his boat,’ 7 reported Dick Wilson in an official report on the shoot. ‘He neverstopped expressing his misery about the fast deal he claims we put over on him.’ Inevitably repairs were needed; Flynn had them done by his own people at vast expense, at which point, catastrophically, it was discovered that the company had forgotten to take out insurance. Flynn himself had lied about his third-party insurance. Over and above the nefariousness of Errol Flynn, the impression givenby Dick Wilson – who, admittedly, was trying to shift blame for a massive budget over-run – is that ‘the organisation of the studio is inefficient for the Class “A” pictures’. The set dresser was ‘a 90% incompetent’; the production manager ‘reacted on our production in a manner which slowed it down rather than speeded it up’; the unit manager proved ‘disastrous rather than helpful’. The schedulestarted slipping from the first day, and it only slipped further and further.
    Very early on, actual disaster had struck when Don Corey, the assistant camera operator, suddenly keeled over and died. The production closed down out of respect, and deep gloom set in. Illness was rife throughout the company almost from the beginning: the crew were constantly going down with dysentery, which attackedboth Welles