Free My Lunches with Orson by Peter Biskind Page A

von Stroheim would never have been ruined. D. W. Griffith did much crazier things. But he was in charge, because he was the director, and “D. W. Griffith.”

 
    3. “FDR used to say, ‘You and I are the two best actors in America.’”
    In which Orson recalls sabotaging David O. Selznick’s charades, claims that Carole Lombard’s plane was shot down by Nazis, and says FDR’s biggest regret was not having intervened in the Spanish Civil War.
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    H ENRY J AGLOM : You were trashing Thalberg the other day. It’s funny, because the myth gets handed down that Thalberg had great taste and culture.
    O RSON W ELLES : In his whole career he didn’t make a picture that will last fifty years from now, and still he’s revered. Romeo and Juliet , as produced by Thalberg, and directed by Cukor, was the cultural high point of his ten years of moviemaking. Now, you cannot sit through four minutes of it, it’s so terrible. Norma Shearer with those tiny eyes, and Leslie Howard, a Hungarian Jew, as Veronese teenagers?
    HJ: But he was so foppish, and so, so British. God, Hungarians made great Englishmen, didn’t they? I wonder why.
    OW: Well, there was a period during the Austro-Hungarian empire when the older aristocracy had all their clothes made in London. They spoke French with great chic, but their shoes were made in London; their hats were made in London; the nanny who raised their children was from London—and the greatest thing to be was an English gentleman. And I’m sure that’s why Lord Leslie Howard, as Sir Winston [Churchill] used to call him, trilling his r ’s, was such a good Englishman. And then to die in a plane crash, because of Churchill … Not killed by some angry Magyar peasant.
    HJ: That was the incident where Churchill couldn’t reveal that they’d broken the German code, so he let the Nazis shoot down the plane? Wasn’t that the same plane that Norma Shearer was on? Thalberg’s widow?
    OW: No, no. Norma Shearer wasn’t killed in a plane. That was another thing that is amazing. After Thalberg died, Norma Shearer—one of the most minimally talented ladies ever to appear on the silver screen, and who looked like nothing, with one eye crossed over the other—went right on being the queen of Hollywood, and getting one role after another.
    HJ: Marie Antoinette.
    OW: The biggest bust ever made, you know? And everybody used to say, “Miss Thalberg is coming,” “Miss Shearer is arriving,” and all that, as though they were talking about Sarah Bernhardt. You know, while there were Garbo and Dietrich and Lombard and all the good people. It was a continuation of the magic of this man.
    HJ: But Thalberg was also responsible for careers of people like David O. Selznick, who came after him and who managed to make some extraordinary films.
    OW: They would have been made by the directors, anyway—and better. The man was a simple pain in the ass! I knew him as well as I know you. He was a total monster, the worst of them all.
    HJ: He has the image of somehow being elegant and classy.
    OW: He wasn’t elegant. He was gross. Tremendous energy and very intelligent. And very bad taste. He thought he was the greatest thing since Jesus. His job, like Thalberg’s, was to efface the signature of the director. The man had a tremendous drive to be more than Thalberg. And he had no conscience. Selznick wanted to be the greatest producer in the world—and would have been happy to do anything to achieve it. It was unbelievable. Once I was on David’s yacht, and we were all gathered together after dinner. He said, “We can either go back to Miami tonight, or we can go to Havana. I’d like to see a show of hands. Who wants to go to Havana?” Everybody’s hands went up. We all went to bed, woke up in Miami.
    HJ: That’s what happens if you own the boat.
    OW: I was