There is a man. A certain man
Looking through the paper’s archives, I found this: If you know movies, you know exactly where this is from.
It’s the Inquirer set from “Citizen Kane.” You can tell by the ceiling! Really: movies didn’t always show the ceiling of a room, since – well, they didn’t have them. They were lit from above. “Citizen Kane” employed a remarkable range of innovations for set design and camera work, including building a false floor, putting the camera down in a pit, and shooting up. It’s one of the things that gives this scene a strange forced intimacy. Was there another shot? There is:
Again, it’s a still from a rehearsal, and with a movie as storied and celebrated as “Citizen Kane”, finding something like this is like a peek back into history. Well, actually, it is a peek back into history. I don’t know who these guys are.
This caught my eye:
What. The Hell. Is that?
The set was used for this scene below. “Citizen Kane” has been lauded as the BEST MOVIE EVER for so long many people delight in finding fault. It’s chilly. Its cinematic tricks are too self-conscious. XX is better, because, well, I like it better. I can think of movies I enjoy more, but I cannot think of a better movie movie – even if you divorce it from its time, strip away the story of Welles himself, see the cinematography for what it it is instead of considering the many innovations. As a piece of Art it is a remarkable thing, self-contained, full of unobtrusive details you don’t notice until you’ve seen it again, and again. If you haven’t seen it, watch it twice, the second time with Roger Ebert’s commentary track. He nails everything.
There are things in this scene that always amaze and amuse – :34 – 1:10 is the most delightful, and innovative. The dancing routine is cheesy and somewhat creepy – look how they light the fellow who sings the song at 3:12 – it’s like he’s dressed in a luminescent garment. (Pretty sure the fellow in the foreground is blocking a hella Klieg light. There’s Charlie’s old friend Jeddidiah at 3:47, finally giving into the moment, unable to contain his feelings for this magnificent scoundrel and the event he’s created, but also giving voice because he wants to fit in – and at the same time he’s still filled with doubt. At least that’s how I read it.
3:56 is one of those startling shots that presents merriment and is anything but. Right after that, all the menfolk drunkenly imitate the interstitial music – da da-da da da-da da-da da. Daaaaaah, and this has always made me wonder something. (I know I mentioned this when I wrote about “Kane” before. It’s unlikely they’d pick up this little melodic fillip right away; perhaps it was a cliche of the times, like “shave and a haircut.” (You also see the lights.)
It’s a grainy blurry version – imagine what you can see on a good print.
Oh, one more picture. It was covered with paint to isolate Welles. I removed the paint, and this is what emerged:
I’ve never seen that shot before. Wonder if this a first for the internet. By the way, the back of the photo says Welles “learned the dance routine, despite a sprained ankle! Oh, by the way, he asked Joseph Cotton to take the job, as he was originally scheduled to do. Cotten said no! Swing it, Orson!”
The ankle part’s true.
38 Responses to “There is a man. A certain man”
140 or less
- Leaving the Fair for last time this year with relief and a little weltschmertz. (I had it with kraut, deep-fried.) 1 hour ago
- XM radio has an "alternative comedy" show. So that would be . . . drama. 1 day ago
- One of the reasons "Dark Knight" is so good is b/c you believe Bruce Wayne & Harvey Dent love Rachel for something other than her looks. 1 day ago
- Ending the inauguration of Brown Liquor Season with a tumbler of Maker's Marky Mark. 1 day ago
- Next bourbon sampling: Pelagra Holler Kudzu Mash. Comes with an eyepatch and a white cane. 1 day ago
So You Said
- swschrad on Okay! Big arm movements
- KPage on Okay! Big arm movements
- Soozcat on Okay! Big arm movements
- fizzbin on Okay! Big arm movements
- GardenStater on Okay! Big arm movements
Click & Save!
Your host, elsewhere
This Month
Month by Month
Books I Like
Host with the Most
My great-aunt was one of those dancing girls. She says Wells was a lush and the set reeked of alcohol. But I suppose she had a good time. Later she married a saxophonist in Benny Goodman’s band; today she lives alone in an apartment in the seedy part of Hollywood, still a feisty old broad at 97.
@Poagao: “My great-aunt was one of those dancing girls.”
Funny you mention that. My wife and I were watching “Animal Crackers” the other night, and I commented how I always look at the background actors in those old movies and wonder who they were, and what became of them. Did they continue in the biz? If they were women, did they marry and then stop working (because “my wife will not work”)?
It must have been a fascinating time to be in Hollywood.
Loved the bonus trivia under the article about Tom Crachit’s start in the biz (that’d be the 1938 Reginald Owen version). From a Highland band to the judge in “Miracle on 34th” to Lassie’s grandfather by way of his daughter June.
“What is that?” It looks like part of a boom mike (you can see the wires in the full picture) that has been attached to the ceiling for the shot, since there was no room for the boom.
I bet the guy in the white shirt is the dance director, Arthur Appel. The fellow to his left, our right, in a suit is a familiar actor, but I can’t place the name – I’d have to watch the movie. I don’t see Mankiewicz or Toland anywhere in the shot.
Great photos. “Doctor Macro”’s wonderful hi-res scans site has more Kane photos (and much more other material). The page below includes a lengthy extract from the AFI catalog concerning Citizen Kane, with much interesting info:
http://www.doctormacro1.info/Movie%20Summaries/C/Citizen%20Kane.htm
The man in the suit appears in the clip. He is the drunken guy seated two places to the right of Welles at about 3:16. I know he appers elsewhere in the film.
I love the rehearsal photos. Band-aid on the knee of one of the ladies, and some extremely wide leg trousers on the others. Thanks for the links and photos.
I didn’t know Minneapolis was this close to Hollywood.
Wow. Just freakin’ wow. I wish my newspaper’s archives had shots like these.
Oh, yeah, I remember why. They outsourced the photography to a company that supplied them to all of the region’s newspapers (this is back in the ’30s, in case you think outsourcing’s new).
Then, a couple decades back, when it went out of business, they offered the archives to the newspaper. No, said the publisher, whayyda we want with old photos nobody cares about? So the state archives got ‘em.
Sorry. That sticks in my craw like nobody’s bidness.
Re: Kane. I liken it to any work that uses the capabilities of that media to its fullest. I suppose the contemporary equivalent would be song producers who use all the tools to create a song, or these Dutch filmmakers who made “What’s In The Box” a test reel using special effects created on their computer (total cost: 150 euros):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_reTt7Hj4
Sure, you know you’re watching a movie, but that’s the point. YOU’RE WATCHING A MOVIE! Why wouldn’t you use jump cuts, deep-focus, the moving camera? That’s like writing a short-story and refusing to use the letter “e”.
Excuse me. I seem especially grumpy together. Time to tell those kids to get off my lawn.
I was going to suggest what Rich suggested: A mike rig to compensate for the low ceiling. Since it’s a rehearsal the mike isn’t mounted.
I confess, I never saw the appeal of “Citizen Kane” as the Best Movie Ever, but then I’m not schooled in the aesthetics of the thing. My aversion is mostly to Orson Welles himself. He always struck me as your nondescript next door neighbor who’s also a serial killer.
i am sure I have said this before, on the other end of the spectrum, “Plan 9 from Outerspace” is not the worst film ever made.
I suppose it is convenient to pick one film as best /worst. Plan 9 is fun bad like Kane is good. Plan 9 has all the elements of a fun bad film, awkward acting, weird writing, cheesey effects, bad continuity, bad sets. . .despite all that it is fun to watch and you can sit through it several times to find more oddities.
The really worst films are unfunny comedies.
My choice for worst non-comedy is any of the Coleman Francis trilogy and leaning toward “Red Zone Cuba” as least watchable.
If you go by money spent versus results, “The Conqueror” with John Wayne is tough to beat.
Yes, I think Rich and Buzz are right: that looks like a suspension mount for an RCA 44-BX ribbon microphone. The cord and pulley rig are to remotely rotate the mounting fork, so that the microphone can be aimed to follow the action… very important, since that mic has a bi-directional pickup pattern. It appears to be a special rigging job that was required for the unusual ceiling design.
In more traditional studios (without ceilings in the shot) the mic would be suspended from a large crane-style boom that allowed the mic to be moved around over the action, with remote control of both rotation and vertical position. Once in a great while you will see shadows from the mic boom in a scene.
We used to have one of these rigs in our studio and used it mostly to pick up live bands (this should give you a hint how long I’ve worked here!). We stopped using the boom shortly after the kid operating it managed to run the mic right into a Kliegl scoop light with a tremendous clang, showering hot broken glass all over the musicians.
Our master control operator had the presence of mind to break away to a commercial immediately — the language that erupted would have gotten us a hefty fine from the FCC!
– Jeff
Then you might appreciate “The Stranger”
Kane Reel IX, 3:16 — And lo! they took the sled and they threw it into the furnance, for they knew not what they had done. And the varnish and the paint on the sled did bubble and blister, and the wood beneath it char.
When I first saw photo #1, I thought the guy on the far right was Cantinflas.
One of my favourite Welles quotes (among many) comes from one of his late 1930s radio broadcasts:
“We, the people at ‘Mercury Theatre on the Air’ believe in two things: Good Stories — and Good Soup. Campbell’s Chicken Soup. The soup that .. (etc etc etc)”
I smiled as you started dwelling on “Kane” minutiae: the lighting, the look of a character, the tiny things that pass by in the background. The urge to run your hands over that movie, slowly, is irresistible for anyone who really loves movies. That’s why Ebert’s commentary is so satisfying.
On the flipside of this urge: Reportedly, David Thompson, who has written extensively on film and at least one book on Welles, used to do a Master Class on “Kane,” shot by shot–until he grew to hate the picture and Welles enough to write a jaundiced biography of The Great Man. Too much of a good thing?
Welles was a popular radio guest, and he guest-hosted Jack Benny’s show for three weeks when Benny was hospitalized in Chicago with pneumonia. The interplay between Welles and Phil Harris was very funny, also his ideas to “improve” Grape Nuts Flakes. The first program in the sequence was on March 14, 1943 (430314_Jack_Benny on the following site):
http://www.archive.org/details/OrsonWelles-GuestStar
Aargh. Moderated again. Test:
http://www.archive.org/details/OrsonWelles-GuestStar
Hmm – that one worked. What my censored comment basically said was: check out Orson Welles substituting for Jack Benny, starting on March 14, 1943, at the above URL. He subbed for three weeks while jack was kaid up with pneumonia, and was very funny.
WOW. Two Citizen Kane references in just a few days. The 1934 Sears Catalog updates from last week featured the name “Marion Davies” on two of the sheet music that was being offered. She, of course, was a singer who was married to William Randolph Hearst. According to legend, Hearst’s pet name for Marion was “Rosebud,” which may why it was used in Citzen Kane.
“According to legend, Hearst’s pet name for Marion was “Rosebud,” which may why it was used in Citzen Kane.”
No, it was his pet name for her … lady’s part.
Manckiewitz slipped this tidbit to Welles, & the rest is history.
Wait..in that last photo, Orson looks like Bob Hope.
And, to tie all of these threads together, recall the scene in “Ed Wood” where a despondent Wood meets Orson Welles in a restaurant or bar, who manages to cheer him up a bit so that he can go back finish shooting “Plan Nine from Outer Space”.
@RebeccaH:
You ain’t the Lone Ranger. I missed that appeal as well. In film school it was required viewing, was a perrenial looming presence, and the curricular equivalent of scripture. “Be still in the presence of Citizen Kane, grasshopper.” <Yawn.> Today Citizen Kane just seems inauthentic. Fake. And depressingly sad. To what end?
OK, so Welles got a burr under his saddle and decided to kick William Randolph Hearst in the teeth and Citizen Kane was the result. Jeepers Orson, why so angry? I know, I blaspheme the holy work of American cinema, it’s a towering masterpiece to most, but I’ll take the redemption of Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe from the same year (1941) any day if you want a movie that rants about megalomania. But Meet John Doe is upbeat, and arguably somewhat sentimental, so of course by today’s standards it is automatically less worthwhile than a depressing hatchet job on Hearst like Citizen Kane. Yep, I’m totally with you about never seeing the appeal.
I’m also with you about dear old Orson being kinda creepy. It fairly oozes from the screen in The Lady from Shanghai, another alleged masterpiece.
@ Borderman & RebeccaH
Well, you2 & Louella Parsons should all do lunch sometime.
@MadCanada
well, I guess we can all be grateful that Hearst was creative in his pet names for body parts because a final scene with the workman throwing a cat into the furnace truly would have been disturbing.
Or a beaver.
“If you go by money spent versus results, “The Conqueror” with John Wayne is tough to beat.”
I dunno. Mister Bear. Cleopatra with Liz Taylor has to rank in there as well … “rank” being the operative word in its truest sense.
@John Robinson, never saw Cleopatra but, I would probably list it sight unseen. Just think, two hours were cut out!
How about “Battlefield Earth”?
@hpoulter, damn you, I had pretty much blocked that film from memory.
Or Gigli
Or Heaven’s Gate
Or Raintree County
Or …
“Cleopatra with Liz Taylor has to rank in there as well … “rank” being the operative word in its truest sense.”
But Cleopatra’s vacant sets and leftover wardrobe gave the world one of my favorite guilty pleasures… “Carry on Cleo.” For that, it was well worth the expense.
Julius Caesar is running from assassins. “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”
I had heard the story about “rosebud” being the nicknames for Ms. Davies’s private parts, but I’ve also heard that the story was “spiced up” to make it more salacious. The reference in the movie was well-known, at least around Hollywood. It seems unlikely, particularly at the time, that such intimate information would become so widely known, but “Rosebud” as a pet name would be the sort of thing that would be retold in the gossip pages. (Hearst was well known for throwing lavish parties for his Hollywood friends).
Another Marion Davies reference is a scene in “Citizen Kane” where Mrs. Kane is working on a jigsaw puzzle. Marion Davies had apparently stated her love of jigsaw puzzles to a gossip magazine.
The story may indeed have been “spiced up”. Welles was a consummate showman and borderline charlatin.
I’ve also heard that the “War of the Worlds” panic of ‘38 may have been grossly exaggerated, if not completely fabricated. ie. There was no panic — that too was part of Welles’ charade.
What. The Hell. Is that?
OK, maybe it is a microphone boom. I think it might be a cash railway — a turn-of-the-last-century doohickey used in stores to carry cash and bills from the clerk’s station on the sales floor to the cashier on the balcony, where she worked under the proprietor’s eye, and ship change and receipts back. One type is shown here:
http://www.ids.u-net.com/cash/dart.htm
(not the same as the one in the picture, but the similarity is evident.) Its utility in carrying copy around a newspaper city room should be evident. I remember being fascinated by this gadget in the Waverly, Iowa JCPenney store when I was small — and yes, I am older than dirt.
With others, I will say that the WTH is a cable for a microphone to run on. Especially as the cable is dark-colored and goes beyond the immediate equipment that has enough pulleys and halyards to run something out and bring it back. Running rigging on standing rigging – so to speak. Like a stay sail.
Now the first photo – I thought Bob Hope. Maybe it was ‘girls and a dancing scene, and the I-am-not-sure-about-this look’ that Bob could do.
Never saw Citizen Kane. I will put it on my list of things to do.