{"id":1032,"date":"2005-01-31T11:38:47","date_gmt":"2005-01-31T19:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2005\/01\/the_greatest_cynic_of_all\/"},"modified":"2005-01-31T11:38:47","modified_gmt":"2005-01-31T19:38:47","slug":"the_greatest_cynic_of_all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2005\/01\/the_greatest_cynic_of_all.html","title":{"rendered":"THE GREATEST CYNIC OF ALL"},"content":{"rendered":"

As long as I’m posting messages from friends<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> and messages about movies<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, here’s
\none about another movie (more or less) from another friend, a guy who calls himself Mr. Cheer,
\nwhom I’d tipped to Christopher Bray’s
\nreview<\/B><\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/A> of Clinton Heylin’s new book, “Despite the System: Orson Welles versus the Hollywood
\nStudios,”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> in the Sunday (London) Times.
\n

<\/P>
\n

Jan — Read the review, and he’s right. Genius or not, the Big Boy was the engineer of
\nhis doom. I have an audiotape where his pals (John Houseman, notably, because he was the only
\nman who could control the boy wizard) reminisce about the early theatrical triumphs, when
\nWelles was dilatory and frequently drunk, but as magnetically inspirational as Jesus. In the sudden
\ndiscipline of live radio, where the clock was merciless, no escape, he would conduct gifted actors
\nin hastily improvised scripts, with few seconds to spare, and could inspire amazing compressed
\nperformances, all on time. He would mount a podium, baton in hand, Svengali eyes like the
\nsearching beam of a lighthouse, and guide something that existed only in his mind, making these
\nfolks his hypnotized puppets. Then he would collapse, drink a flagon of Scotch, and eat about five
\npheasants, feathers and all. An amazing character.<\/P>
\n

Thanks for re-opening the door to my Welles obsession. Thought I’d put it to sleep. My old
\nman took me to see “The Third
\nMan”<\/B><\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/A> in 1950, largely because he wanted to hear the zither
\nmusic of Anton Karras. (My old man’s mother played the instrument.) OK. But something
\nhappened in that theater — I saw the knowing, witty, corrupt grin of Harry
\nLime<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, and it’s never left me. A hideous introduction to the adult world. The
\ncat is at his feet, a car goes by, a window is opened, light is spilled — and there he is: Harry Lime.
\nThink about the name — that’s what they use to cover the disposable dead. Well sir, there is no
\ngreater moment in all of movies, and Welles’s career follows Lime’s, except that Welles was
\nessentially an innocent. Doom, man, Doom.<\/P>
\n

— Mr. Cheer<\/P>
\n

As Mr. Cheer has often reminded me, Welles improvised Limes’s most celebrated piece of
\ndialogue in the great Ferris wheel scene when he’s confronted by Holly Martins (played by Joseph
\nCotten) about his abhorrent criminal behavior (such as selling medicine on the black market, thus
\ndepriving sick children of medication and resulting in many deaths). “In Italy,” Lime replies, “for
\n30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — but they produced
\nMichelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love,
\n500 years of democracy and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As long as I’m posting messages from friends and messages about movies, here’s one about another movie (more or less) from another friend, a guy who calls himself Mr. Cheer, whom I’d tipped to Christopher Bray’s review of Clinton Heylin’s new book, “Despite the System: Orson Welles versus the Hollywood Studios,” in the Sunday (London) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-gE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}