BW - EP141—006: Orson Welles In Europe—The BBC Sketchbook And Moby Dick

On March 15th, 1955, Orson Welles premiered as Lord Mountdrago in the British Omnibus horror film, Three Cases of Murder. The film consisted of three stories, Welles appeared in the one titled after his character. Ten days later he premiered in the french historical epic film Napoléon. He had a small part as Sir Hudson Lowe. Then on April 2nd, Welles appeared for BBC’s TV network in the first of a six-part series entitled, Orson Welles' Sketch Book. Written and presented by Welles, the fifteen-minute episodes present his commentaries on a range of subjects. The six episodes were called, “The Early Days,” “Critics,” “The Police,” “People I Miss,” “War of the Worlds,” and “Bullfighting.” Later that year Welles took part in another series of shorts called Around the World with Orson Welles. Between June 16th and July 9th, 1955 at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, Orson Welles staged a two-act version of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Welles used minimal design. The stage was bare, the props were minimal, and the actors, which included Christopher Lee, Joan Plowright, Kenneth Williams, Patrick McGoohan, and Gordon Jackson, wore street clothes. Brooms were used for oars, and a stick was used for a telescope. The actors provided the action, and the audience's imagination provided the ocean, costumes, and the whale. Welles filmed approximately seventy-five minutes of the production, hoping to sell it to Omnibus for a TV film, but he was disappointed in the result. The next year, old friend John Huston cast Welles as Father Mapple in his 1956 film adaptation of Moby Dick, which starred Gregory Peck. Welles later cast John Huston as director Jake Hannaford in The Other Side of The Wind. The film wouldn’t be completed and released until 2018, more than thirty-three years after Orson’s death. Welles modeled Jake Hannaford on his good friend Ernest Hemingway.