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 fucking people that I will personally vouch for Mr. Welles.”