“There are three intolerable things in life—cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.”
Orson Welles is considered by many critics and historians to be the greatest director of all time. His first feature, Citizen Kane (1941), is also widely considered the greatest film ever. Still, Welles fell far short of industry expectations. As he would himself admit, “I started at the top and worked my way down.” In 1937, Welles formed the Mercury Theatre with John Houseman, thereby establishing a stable of performers he’d return to again and again in years to come. His Julius Caesar (1937) set in fascist Italy was wildly successful. His sensational Halloween radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds (1938) drew the attention of Hollywood. Welles teamed with writer Herman J. Mankiewicz on the story that would become RKO’s Citizen Kane, which was nominated for nine Oscars and won for Best Original Screenplay. His brilliant second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), was significantly altered while Welles was in South America shooting his third directorial effort, the documentary It’s All True. He directed three movies as a freelancer, with mixed box-office results but great artistry: The Stranger (1946); The Lady from Shanghai (1947), starring his wife at the time, Rita Hayworth; and Macbeth (1948). Welles left for Europe in 1947 and remained there for the majority of the next twenty years, hiring himself out as an actor—most notably in The Third Man (1949)—as a means of financing his own projects. But most of these projects failed to match the director’s vision, either due to editorial interference (Mr. Arkadian, Touch of Evil) or Welles’s self-sabotaging perfectionism (Don Quixote, The Other Side of the Wind). His last completed work, the cinematic essay F for Fake (1973), turned out to be a final artistic triumph to a newer generation who knew him best as the Paul Masson wine spokesman.
AN EFFECTIVE BIT OF THEATER, that’s all it was. In December 1939 Orson Welles was the toast of Hollywood, a boy genius from New York hard at work on his first masterpiece. John Houseman from Welles’s point of view, was just his producer, along for the ride. For the last hour they’d been at each other’s throats in the private dining room at Chasen’s, surrounded by six members of the Mercury Players who weren’t really sure how to diffuse the situation.
Welles was pretty lit. He’d been drinking since they sat down and getting more and more agitated, but he wasn’t a violent man. He simply wanted nothing more to do with Houseman. And soon enough, Houseman also wanted little to do with Welles. Then, thunk.
A flaming can of Sterno flew past Houseman’s head (wide left), struck the wall, and landed on the carpet. Houseman turned toward Welles. Thunk. Another Sterno, wide right this time—and now the curtains were on fire.
The argument had been concerning some developments earlier in the day: RKO president George Schaefer had informed the Mercury players that, in less than two weeks, they would no longer receive salaries from the studio. The original deal Welles had signed (the famous nobody-ever-gets-this-kind-of-freedom-and-nobody-ever-will-again Citizen Kane deal) stipulated that he complete the first of his three pictures by January 1, 1940. Now it was almost Christmas, 1939, and Welles still didn’t have anything ready to shoot.
Despite such dire straits, Welles assured everyone he would continue paying them with income from the Mercury’s weekly radio show. But Houseman knew the money wasn’t there. And he knew Welles knew it. That’s when things blew up.
The tension between Welles and Houseman had been building for some time. (This would prove to be something of a pattern between Welles and his collaborators.) Though he and Houseman had been successful partners for years—first on the WPA productions, then with the Mercury Theater—their dynamic shifted after War of the Worlds. If you asked Welles, it was a matter of jealousy. Houseman had become more of an employee than a collaborator and he resented it. If you asked Houseman, the problem was ego—Welles’s ego. He’d bought into the hype about his genius, at the cost of his creative integrity. As his cowriter on Citizen Kane Herman Mankiewicz would say of him, “There, but for the grace of God, goes God.” Welles was also drinking excessively—one or two bottles of either brandy or whiskey a day—and his sexual dalliances were running him even more ragged.
In later years, when asked why he threw the Sterno, Welles claimed it was a calculated move. He couldn’t just fire Houseman—Welles was in a delicate position with the Mercury players as it was, and didn’t want to appear disloyal. Better to make Houseman quit. Which is exactly what happened. Three days after the fight, Houseman sent Welles a letter of resignation and returned to New York. But within a few months, Houseman was back in the fold. Welles needed someone to keep Mankiewicz sober while Mank hammered away on the first draft of Kane. By offering the job to Houseman, Welles could appear both gracious and loyal, while avoiding any substantive contact with his once-trusted producer.
Welles was also drinking excessively—one or two bottles of either brandy or whiskey a day—and his sexual dalliances were running him even more ragged.
Houseman had the last laugh, though. He and Mankiewicz spent the next three months together writing, and at some point the Chasen’s incident was mentioned. Of course, Mankiewicz felt he just had to put that into the script; it became Kane’s furniture-smashing fit, the scene after his wife walks out on him. Ironically, many consider it Welles’s finest performance in the film—but he scarcely had to act at all.