Lunch with Orson Welles
The waiter arrives.
Waiter: Would you wish the salad with grapefruit and orange?
Orson Welles: That’s a terrible idea. It’s awful—typically German.
Henry Jaglom: They ruined the chicken salad when they started using that mustard. It’s a whole different chicken salad.
O.W.: They have a new chef.
Waiter: Roast pork?
O.W.: Oh my God. On a hot day, roast pork? I can’t eat pork. But I’ll order it, just to smell pork.
The waiter departs.
H.J.: Isn’t it terrible about Tennessee Williams? Did you hear how he died?
O.W.: Only that he died last night. How did he die?
H.J.: There was a special kind of pipe that he used to inhale something.
O.W.: Some dope? Or maybe a roast-beef sandwich. I’d like to be somebody who died alone in a hotel room—just keel over, the way people used to.
Ken Tynan had the funniest story about Tennessee he never printed. He and Tennessee went to Cuba together as guests of Castro. And they were in the massimo leader’s office, and there are several other people there, people close to El Jefe, including Che Guevara. Tynan spoke a little fractured Spanish, and Castro spoke quite good English, and they were deep in conversation. But Tennessee had gotten a little bored. He was sitting off, by himself. And he motioned over to Guevara and said (in a southern accent), “Would you mind running out and getting me a couple of tamales?”
H.J.: Do you think Tynan made it up?
O.W.: Tynan wasn’t a fantasist. Tennessee certainly said it to somebody. But I’ve suspected that he improved it, maybe, by making it Guevara.
Agent Swifty Lazar enters.
Swifty Lazar: Just wanted to say “Hello.”
O.W.: You look wonderful.
S.L.: I feel good. Orson, you take care of yourself.
O.W.: What, do you think I look badly?
S.L.: No, you look great.
Lazar exits.
O.W.: I don’t like people to say, “Take care of yourself.” He hasn’t changed in 30 years. Lives in a hotel. Orders a whole lot of towels, and when he goes from the bathroom to his bed, he lays down a path of towels.
H.J.: He’s that nuts about germs?
O.W.: I’ve seen it. With my own eyes.
H.J.: What does he think he’ll get through his feet?
O.W.: Hookworm. From the Ritz, you know? Mania.
H.J.: By the way, I was just reading Garson Kanin’s book on Tracy and Hepburn.
O.W.: Hoo boy! I sat in makeup during Kane, and she was next to me, being made up for A Bill of Divorcement. And she was describing how she was fucked by Howard Hughes, using all the four-letter words. Most people didn’t talk like that then. Except Carole Lombard. It came naturally to her. She couldn’t talk any other way. With Katie, though, who spoke in this high-class, girl’s-finishing-school accent, you thought that she had made a decision to talk that way. Grace Kelly also slept around, in the dressing room when nobody was looking, but she never said anything. Katie was different. She was a free woman when she was young. Very much what the girls are now.
