Me and Orson Welles by Robert Kaplow Page B

hand to her chest, “and I do not think this is unreasonable, is for you to take one step up the ramp before I enter.”
    â€œAnything you say, Muriel.”
    Muriel looked up toward the lighting assistant, who was standing on a ladder now. “Can you aim that spot directly down, dear? When the light hits my face correctly, a tiny butterfly-shaped shadow appears under my nose. That’s when you know you’ve got it right.”
    The fire doors on the side of the stage opened, and Houseman led onstage a gigantic Negro man dressed in African tribal costume; he was holding a long staff with a screaming animal skull at the end of it.
    â€œMeestah Whales! Meestah Whales!”
    â€œAbdul!” cried Orson, and he hugged the tribal chieftain.
    â€œAbdul need five teek! Opening night.” He shook his staff.
    â€œAbdul did the drumming for my Haitian Macbeth ,” explained Welles to the company.
    â€œAbdul need five teek for Caesar! Opening night!”
    â€œI don’t know if—”
    â€œIf I no get, bad spirit in theatre! Bad review!”
    Orson went pale. “John, give him the tickets. That’s all we need now: the Bad Luck Thing.”
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    Welles rehearsed the funeral oration scene until everybody was sick of it. Now he had the actors stomping the platforms as they demanded to hear Caesar’s legacy. (“The will! The will!”)
    Joe Cotten, Norman Lloyd, and I sat in the audience and watched Welles yelling out the light cues.
    I had unerringly been drawn to the two least serious members of the company. The major source of our entertainment was Cotten’s inexhaustible tales of his sexual conquests. Cotten really was an astonishingly handsome young man, with a leading man’s curling blond hair and blue eyes. Lloyd had nicknamed him “Fertilizer.”
    Cotten was sitting in the seventh row with Lloyd and me cataloguing all the New York theatre women he had slept with during the past two months. He was counting on his fingers, and he’d moved onto his second hand. “There was Jeanette Bradley. She and I got together the night after she broke up with Orson. I broke up with her twice, each time for two days, and during those two days I messed around with Jeanette Lee, Velma Lord, and Kate Fredric, who asked me if I would go to bed with her and her twin sister, but I told her no. That was too much even for me.”
    â€œFertilizer draws the moral line,” said Lloyd.
    â€œThen I got back together with Jeanette Bradley, but she dicked me over by sleeping with Orson again. So that same night I met up with both Evelyn Allen and Muriel Brassler.”
    â€œWhat’s the dope on Muriel?” Lloyd asked, looking at the stage. “I heard she’s a gymnast.”
    â€œShe’s got a gymnast’s body, I can tell you that.”
    â€œDid she get a firm grip on your monkey bar?”
    â€œTell me about Evelyn,” I said. Evelyn Allen played Caesar’s wife. Her part only ran about a page and a half, but you stopped to notice her. She had these lovely arms, bare to the shoulder. Backstage, she always sat by herself reading a book. “I think she’s got style.”
    Lloyd and Cotten leaped into some old vaudeville schtick of theirs:
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    â€œI like her style.”
    â€œI like her smile.”
    â€œI like her class.”
    â€œI like her— other features.”
    They found this extremely amusing, and, once again, Lloyd played his stripper’s bump-and-grind drumbeat on the seat as he sang out: “Oh! Doc! I-feel-so-good! Meetcha-round-the-corner-in-a-half’n-hour!”
    â€œI’m kind of fascinated by her,” I said. “I always wonder what she’s reading. She’s got class.”
    â€œShe’s gotta big what?” said Cotten.
    â€œA toast to class!” said Lloyd. He lifted his bottle of root beer, and intoned: “The deep red wine may kiss the glass; and you, my