Max Collins: The War of the Worlds Murder

“…Have you ever directed before, Orson? I mean, a moving picture?”

Welles did not miss a beat: “Actually, my dear fellow, I have taken a few experimental steps-I made a short film as a student, and recently I dabbled in the art for a stage production we did of Gillette’s farce, Too Much Johnson , with the Mercury players.”

“Ah,” Gibson said noncomittally.

“But the point is I have been staging plays with a cinema director’s eye from the beginning-you’ve heard of my voodoo Macbeth , and my Nazi-ified Julius Caesar , no doubt?”

Gibson had; he followed the radio Shadow’s career with a certain proprietary interest…and anyway, the Time magazine article had covered all of that and more.

“Where would I come in?” Gibson asked.

“I’m told there’s nothing you can’t write.”

Smiling to himself again, Gibson thought: he knows this secondhand; he doesn’t read the magazine featuring “our” character, apparently ….

“Well, that’s true,” Gibson said. Welles wasn’t the only one who could afford to be immodest. “But where did you hear it, Orson?”

“Our mutual friends among the magic community, of course.”

“Ah,” Gibson said again. Nothing noncommital about it, this time.

“I believe,” Welles said, with the richness of voice and surety of a revival-tent preacher, “that only the creator of my famous character can help me properly conceive it… re conceive it…for the screen. Are you willing to try?”

“I’m…interested.”

“And your schedule, Walter?”

“I’ll be done for the year, with my Shadow work, within days.”

“How is next week, then?”

“Feasible.”

“I would of course be paying for first-class travel and hotel accommodations-you’ll be here at the St. Regis, where I’m living currently. Full expense account. How…‘feasible’ is that, Walter?”

“Entirely.”

Hanging up the phone, Gibson had the feeling that he’d just spoken to a man of wisdom and experience far beyond the author’s own. And yet he knew that Orson Welles was almost ten years younger than himself….

The cab drew up to 485 Madison Avenue, and Gibson-typewriter handle in one bandaged hand, valise in the other-was deposited (for an outrageous fifty cents including tip-he mentally noted that for his expense account) on the sidewalk above which loomed the massive overhang of the marquee that boldly stated CBS RADIO THEATRE. The Welles program, though, received no boost, as the side panels touted:

THE CHRYSLER CORPORATION PRESENTS MAJOR BOWES ORIGINAL AMATEUR HOUR.

By craning his neck like any other rube of a tourist, he could see the vertical sign stretching nine or ten stories above:

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but he could also see that lower floors of the impressive building had windows bearing less grandiose imprimaturs, such as CARLOS TAP AND BALLET and MIDTOWN TAX SERVICE.

The uniformed guard in the lobby found Gibson’s name on a list, had him sign in, and sent him over to an elevator, where he and the elevator operator rode up to the twentieth floor. Mildly disappointed by the lack of show biz trappings-he might have been inside any nameless office building, to get a tooth drilled or have a wife followed-Gibson found nothing to get excited about at his destination, either: the twentieth-floor lobby was an unimpressive, sterile world of walls covered in a light-green industrial paint broken up by the occasional potted plant and some art-moderne chairs and sofas out of the latest Sears and Roebuck catalogue.

Next to a bulletin board-covered in schedules and lists that might just as easily have referred to bus-station not radio-station timetables-sat an attractive strawberry-blonde receptionist of perhaps twenty-five. In her smart white blouse with navy buttons and a navy scarf with white polka dots knotted at her throat, and with her heart-shaped face and light-blue eyes and fair lightly freckled complexion, she was a heart-stopper, even to a married man. Or was that, especially to a married man? Candy-apple red lipstick made her guardedly professional smile as dazzling as one you might see in a Sunday supplement toothpaste ad.

“Walter Gibson to see Mr. Welles.”

She checked a clipboard and said, “Your name is here, Mr. Gibson…but I’m afraid Mr. Welles isn’t.”

“He said to meet him in Studio One at one-thirty. I’m a tad early.”

“Ah. Well, it’s right through there.” With a tapering finger whose scarlet nail polish matched the lush lipstick, she pointed toward a doorless doorway just to Gibson’s left. “Studio One is the first door down…. If the ‘On the Air’ light is on, don’t go in.”

Gibson frowned. “My understanding is the show isn’t broadcast till Sunday night.”

“It isn’t-but every week, Mr. Welles makes an acetate recording of the Thursday afternoon rehearsal. To review the week’s program.”

“Is everyone around here as knowledgeable as you, miss?”

“It’s Miss Donovan, Mr. Gibson. Probably not-but like every receptionist or secretary you’re likely to meet in this building, I’m an aspiring actress.”

“Ah. Any luck?”

“I fill in on several of the soaps, as needed, and I’ve had some bits with the The Mercury Theatre , too, and even The Columbia Workshop . Guess you’d say I’m kind of an understudy.”

“An understudy in radio. That’s a new one on me.”

“Well, you have to understand that the voice actors in this town have to bicycle all over the place-NBC’s over at Sixth Avenue and Fiftieth, and Mutual’s on the other side of the world-Broadway and Fortieth. You know, Orson…Mr. Welles…he sometimes travels by ambulance.”

Gibson grinned. “Sounds like Mr. Welles is as big a character as they say?”

“Oh, he’s wonderful. You’ll fall in love with him.”

Something in the girl’s expression made Gibson wonder if she might be speaking from experience.

Miss Donovan allowed the author to leave his valise and typewriter with her, behind her desk, and was kind enough to inquire about how he’d hurt his “poor fingers.” To prevent this from dominating every other conversation of the day, Gibson ducked into the men’s room and removed the bandages from his fingertips, which looked reddish but nearly healed.

The ON THE AIR sign over the Studio One door was not alighted, so Gibson moved on through a vestibule that separated the hallway from the studio, apparently for soundproofing purposes. He pushed open a door whose window was round, like a porthole, and found himself on a small landing, with a chrome banister, five steps above the floor of a large noisy chamber bustling with men who mostly had their suitcoats off-a sea of suspenders, rolled-up sleeves and puffing cigarettes.

Gibson was no stranger to radio: well over ten years ago, the writer had appeared on station WIP in Philly, presenting puzzles and their solutions. And he’d written and helped produce a series for magician Howard Thurston early in the decade.

But an operation of this scale was beyond his experience, and he felt a bit like Dorothy having her first look at Oz.

The walls of the big, high-ceilinged room were light gray, and the few doors sky-blue with those porthole-style windows. The far left wall and the facing one alternated dark drapes with sound-baffling panels the color of caramel. To Gibson’s left was a plywood, carpeted podium a little larger than a cardtable with a microphone and a music stand. The podium faced the short end of a twelve-foot by twenty-four-foot space marked off with white words on the dark-painted cement floor saying, on all four sides, MICROPHONE AREA. Within this carpeted rectangle resided four well-spaced microphones on stands (every mike in the room wore either a little metal CBS hat or dickey).