I moved to New York City nearly 19 nears ago in large part due to Orson Welles. Through a strange set of circumstances, I was lucky enough to work with the great man during the final year of his life in Los Angeles. After his death in 1985, I came to New York to interview the living members of the Mercury Theatre Company for a documentary on Welles. I fell in love with New York City and eventually moved here.
The New York City I was attracted to was of the 1930s. To hear the exciting stories I was told by the Mercury actors, I thought those wonderful times still existed. Like so many before me, I was lured to the city by a false dream. One soon learns they have to make their own dreams come true in this town.
On Sunday afternoon, I was reminded of this again by Timothy “Speed” Levitch, the legendary New York City tour guide, who gave an Orson Welles tour of the Broadway area as a promotion for Me and Orson Welles, the new film opening this week. Though I had been an executive producer of Cradle Will Rock, a 1999 film about Orson, I had never walked the streets to see where Welles had actually worked.
Timothy “Speed” Levitch, performer and legendary tour guide. Photos by Frank Beacham
---
Sadly, there was little to see. Just as theatre itself exists only in the memories of those who witness it, Levitch reminded us that very little of Welles’ New York of 1937 is now left. “Just like us, the city goes through constant transformation,” Levitch said. “That’s why there's almost nothing of old Times Square left. The city has been destroyed and rebuilt 5,000 times already. As we walk along the concrete of the city, think of it as the skin of a living being.” It was an interesting way to think of constant change.
As we walked past the Marriott Marquis, Levitch reminded us of the 1985 massacre when three Broadway theatres were torn down to build the huge hotel. Hilariously, however, Levitch noted that three of the hotel’s “homogenized, plastic conference rooms” are each named for among the most radical, socialistic, innovative minds in American theatre: Clifford Odets, Eugene O’Neill and Thornton Wilder. Only in New York!
As we approached the site of the original Mercury Theatre at 110 West 41st Street, where Welles and the Mercury produced the modern dress Julius Ceasar—the subject of the new movie—I was saddened. It's now a dreary, nondescript office building. This Wednesday, after all these years, a plaque is finally going up to mark the location as a historic site.
Orson Welles brought innovation and daring to American theatre. The Mercury’s mission was to break the fourth wall and “scratch the nervous system of its audience.” It was an exciting, provocative period of Broadway that is now long gone. To relive the experience today, the closest we can come is to see movies like Me and Orson Welles.
At least, in our dumbed down society, films like this are still being made. Bravo to those who still celebrate great artistic vision. There’s so damn little of it anymore.
Christian McKay as Orson Welles in Me and Orson Welles
---
It says a lot about New York City in 2009 that it took the promotion of a movie to finally install a plaque marking the original site of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. But finally, Thanksgiving week, it happened. It was part of the hoopla for the opening of Me and Orson Welles. In the photo is Christian McKay and Zac Efron, actors from the film.
The scene of such a burst of creativity should have been on every tourist map for 50 years. But it was lost. Finally, for those who want to know, the place—now a dreary office building—is marked at 110 West 41st Street.
