Director: Orson Welles
Writers: Sherwood King, Orson Welles, William Castle, Charles Lederer, Fletcher Markle
Photography: Charles Lawton Jr., Rudolph Mate, Joseph Walker
Music: Heinz Roemheld
Editor: Viola Lawrence
Cast: Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted de Corsia, Erskine Sanford, Gus Schilling
By the time The Lady From Shanghai was shot and released in 1946 and 1947, Orson Welles, the director, cowriter, and star, had already so thoroughly alienated himself from Hollywood powers and money that he was denied credit for directing—his involvement is given in the opening titles as “Screen Play and Production.” In a way these tales of Welles and his titanic studio battles are just cases of petty on petty. Welles wanted to make great pictures—he wasn’t even 30 yet when he proved he could. But he could also be petty and passive-aggressive himself with the money people he resented. For The Lady in Shanghai, for example, he had his then wife Rita Hayworth cut her long red hair and dye it blonde. He probably knew what was going to happen—the studio got mad at him.
So it’s a two-way street between Welles and the studio heads, although the studio heads were always the ultimate power. Even as they attempted to rework his stuff, thrashing through edits and retakes, the mauling could go well above and beyond mere fixes. They often came back at him in ways that felt personal. Perhaps the most notable and painful example is the ballroom scene in The Magnificent Ambersons, reportedly in the vicinity of an hour or more in Welles’s original rough cut. The studio not only took it out but also destroyed the negative, making it impossible for anyone to ever see it. And so it went for most of the rest of Welles’s life. It was as if he and the studio powers could not help themselves. Welles saw himself in the business of making great pictures, which, especially in the Hollywood system of the ‘40s, tended to take great amounts of money. And Welles always seemed more interested (understandably enough) in the strategy that asks forgiveness later instead of permission first.
By the time The Lady From Shanghai was shot and released in 1946 and 1947, Orson Welles, the director, cowriter, and star, had already so thoroughly alienated himself from Hollywood powers and money that he was denied credit for directing—his involvement is given in the opening titles as “Screen Play and Production.” In a way these tales of Welles and his titanic studio battles are just cases of petty on petty. Welles wanted to make great pictures—he wasn’t even 30 yet when he proved he could. But he could also be petty and passive-aggressive himself with the money people he resented. For The Lady in Shanghai, for example, he had his then wife Rita Hayworth cut her long red hair and dye it blonde. He probably knew what was going to happen—the studio got mad at him.
So it’s a two-way street between Welles and the studio heads, although the studio heads were always the ultimate power. Even as they attempted to rework his stuff, thrashing through edits and retakes, the mauling could go well above and beyond mere fixes. They often came back at him in ways that felt personal. Perhaps the most notable and painful example is the ballroom scene in The Magnificent Ambersons, reportedly in the vicinity of an hour or more in Welles’s original rough cut. The studio not only took it out but also destroyed the negative, making it impossible for anyone to ever see it. And so it went for most of the rest of Welles’s life. It was as if he and the studio powers could not help themselves. Welles saw himself in the business of making great pictures, which, especially in the Hollywood system of the ‘40s, tended to take great amounts of money. And Welles always seemed more interested (understandably enough) in the strategy that asks forgiveness later instead of permission first.
But studio heads in Hollywood were famous for minding the budgets Welles always busted. They were on to him by 1946 and leashed him up as tight as they could on every project, starving him of resources. Welles fought back and, as usual after Citizen Kane, saw his work taken away from him and mangled. The Lady From Shanghai stands mostly as only one more example. The final 10 minutes get the most attention now and people look the other way on the mess made of most of it because of that finish—which, I admit, is absolutely essential cinema, abstracted noir, on the wavelength of Un Chien Andalou.
Typically, when he was presenting his idea for The Lady From Shanghai to Columbia studio head Harry Cohn—Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth), by the way, speaks Chinese in a couple scenes but that’s as far as the title applies to anything—Welles talked about the Sherwood King novel If I Die Before I Wake. He reportedly hadn’t read it (and neither have I). He just noticed a young woman reading it in the theater box office, and so that was his pitch. His contempt is fairly evident there.
Welles plays seaman Michael O’Hara, an Irishman with an accent that modulates some in intensity but is mostly kept up pretty well. He sees Elsa on the streets and makes a play for her but is disappointed when he finds she is married. Her husband is a rich and successful trial lawyer, Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane at his worthy best). He’s disabled and needs two crutches to get around. Elsa invites O’Hara to take a job on their yacht, which is sailing from New York for San Francisco via the Panama Canal.
From there, onboard (the yacht belonged to Errol Flynn, by the way, who was on the boat during the shoot), The Lady From Shanghai becomes a muddled murder plot. There’s strong support from Glenn Anders as George Grisby, an annoying gadfly and friend of the Bannisters who has his own muddled agenda. Anders and Sloane are the best players here. Elsa is a mostly unexplained femme fatale. She seems to be using O’Hara for some kind of frame-up job. Wheels within wheels, circles within circles. Does the story add up? Does it matter? The studio took out at least an hour from the rough cut, so it’s little surprise that it makes little sense.
But the big finish in a deserted amusement park’s funhouse (“Crazy House”) is a dazzling montage, with mirror images receding into infinity and a good deal of difficulty for shooters distinguishing those images from reality. It lasts about 10 minutes and finishes the picture strong, jettisoning most pretensions of a cohesive plot for the sake of an impressive assault of the visual. Leaves a good taste in the mouth. Probably the reason people still rate it highly as a film noir. I wouldn’t go that far. But I did have a lot of fun watching it on a youtube channel called Full Moon Matinee, with a host nervously smoking cigarettes, drinking Irish whiskey, and sharing interesting trivia. I’m going to watch some more movies on that channel, if youtube doesn’t do some mangling itself with forced advertising breaks.
Typically, when he was presenting his idea for The Lady From Shanghai to Columbia studio head Harry Cohn—Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth), by the way, speaks Chinese in a couple scenes but that’s as far as the title applies to anything—Welles talked about the Sherwood King novel If I Die Before I Wake. He reportedly hadn’t read it (and neither have I). He just noticed a young woman reading it in the theater box office, and so that was his pitch. His contempt is fairly evident there.
Welles plays seaman Michael O’Hara, an Irishman with an accent that modulates some in intensity but is mostly kept up pretty well. He sees Elsa on the streets and makes a play for her but is disappointed when he finds she is married. Her husband is a rich and successful trial lawyer, Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane at his worthy best). He’s disabled and needs two crutches to get around. Elsa invites O’Hara to take a job on their yacht, which is sailing from New York for San Francisco via the Panama Canal.
From there, onboard (the yacht belonged to Errol Flynn, by the way, who was on the boat during the shoot), The Lady From Shanghai becomes a muddled murder plot. There’s strong support from Glenn Anders as George Grisby, an annoying gadfly and friend of the Bannisters who has his own muddled agenda. Anders and Sloane are the best players here. Elsa is a mostly unexplained femme fatale. She seems to be using O’Hara for some kind of frame-up job. Wheels within wheels, circles within circles. Does the story add up? Does it matter? The studio took out at least an hour from the rough cut, so it’s little surprise that it makes little sense.
But the big finish in a deserted amusement park’s funhouse (“Crazy House”) is a dazzling montage, with mirror images receding into infinity and a good deal of difficulty for shooters distinguishing those images from reality. It lasts about 10 minutes and finishes the picture strong, jettisoning most pretensions of a cohesive plot for the sake of an impressive assault of the visual. Leaves a good taste in the mouth. Probably the reason people still rate it highly as a film noir. I wouldn’t go that far. But I did have a lot of fun watching it on a youtube channel called Full Moon Matinee, with a host nervously smoking cigarettes, drinking Irish whiskey, and sharing interesting trivia. I’m going to watch some more movies on that channel, if youtube doesn’t do some mangling itself with forced advertising breaks.
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