A very good daughter: an interview with Chris Welles Feder.(Interview)Cineaste - December 22, 2009Peter Tonguette

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For a long time, it seems, Orson Welles was something of a mystery to his children, and they, in turn, havebeen a mystery to us. "He was not particularly close to his three daughters, though closer with Beatrice, hisyoungest," Peter Bogdanovich once wrote, a view confirmed by an anecdote in Frank Brady's 1989biography Citizen Welles. Brady hauntingly recounts receiving a letter from Welles's middle child, Rebecca(who died in 2004), "to see if I could supply her with certain information about her parents, Orson Wellesand Rita Hayworth; it seemed to me at that time that she knew little about her father."

The anecdote leaves more questions than answers. It's hard to imagine how Rebecca's relationship withher father could have deteriorated (evaporated?) to the point where she was compelled to write to hisbiographer for assistance. Apparently, Kimberly Reed's recent documentary, Prodigal Sons, unseen by me,clears up some of the details of Rebecca's life, revealing that she had given birth to Welles's onlygrandchild.

Welles's eldest child, Chris Welles Feder, born in 1937, has been slightly less enigmatic, but only slightly.The product of his first marriage to Virginia Nicolson, she appeared in her father's film of Macbeth as achild, but she played the part of a boy, Macduff's child. For many years, Dann Cahn, an assistant editor onthe film, didn't know that she was a girl. As he told me when I interviewed him for my book, Orson WellesRemembered, "Because she was dressed as a little boy and with a name like Christopher, for a long time Ithought Christopher was a boy." Twenty years ago, Brady wrote that she was "a poet and writer ofeducational materials who lives in New York."

To say that Welles Feder's new memoir, In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles,goes a long way in enlarging our knowledge of both father and daughter is an understatement. Her bookfleshes out details that were once sketchy (such as her attending the Todd School, where her father went,for two years) and provides us with information and insight that simply no other book on Welles contains.

In My Father's Shadow is the most detailed account yet given of Welles by a family member, although itmust be seen as part of a trend in recent Welles books: those who were closest to him (whether bypersonal relation or by professional association) are making their voices known. Just as emblematic of thiswas the publication in 2008 of Making Movies with Orson Welles, a memoir by Gary Graver, the latecinematographer with whom Welles worked for fifteen years and who "had been like a son to Daddy,"according to Beatrice (as quoted by Welles Feder).

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Welles Feder bluntly describes their frustratingly intermittent relationship. Though Welles and Nicolsondivorced when she was two, initially she saw much of him, as she spent "almost every weekend" at thehouse of Welles and her new stepmother, Rita Hayworth, about whom she writes, "Rita was everything achild could wish for in a stepmother: sweet-natured, affectionate, fun-loving, and, in many ways, a childherself." Later, Welles paid regular visits to the home of her mother and stepfather, Charles Lederer, acting"as though he were a member of our household, coming and going as he pleased with no need to give anaccount of himself." But upon her mother's divorce from Lederer and subsequent remarriage to Major JackPringle, the family left America, first for Rome, and then for Johannesburg, South Africa, inaugurating aperiod of fits and starts in her relationship with her father: joyous visits and long stretches of disappointingabsences.

"Betrayal," Welles told Bogdanovich, "is a big thing with me, as you know from Chimes at Midnight--it'salmost a prime sin." The great break in his relationship with his daughter came after a (wrongly) perceivedact of disloyalty when Chris, under extreme pressure from her mother and stepfather, cut off ties with himas a teenager, in an act she refers to as "the Fatal Phone Call." This fissure resulted in years going by withno contact occurring between them. Later, after an all-too-brief "reunion in Hone Kong," eight years wentby without a face-to-face visit. "Although I wrote him letters, which I mailed to his constantly changingaddresses" she writes, "1 rarely received a reply. He preferred to make telephone calls or send telegrams,and I usually heard from him at Christmas, provided he knew where to reach me." A reconciliationeventually occurred in 1967 and they were never again out of touch.

Unexpectedly, In My Father's Shadow echoes the autobiographical essays Welles wrote for Paris Vogue in1982, "My Father Wore Black Spats" and "A Brief Career as a Musical Prodigy," which were about hisparents. Their shared preoccupation with filial matters is conspicuous, as is their sometimes sorrowful tone.Welles's parents had died by the time he was fifteen; the same was obviously not true for Welles Feder,yet she still missed him in her life.

Welles Feder told me, "My father was a great confabulator--he was one of the greatest. He couldn't resistembellishing a tale in order to make it more entertaining. There was always a grain of truth in every one ofhis stories, but the great challenge was to find it." While Welles Feder shares her father's poetic, descriptiveliterary style, her memoir requires no such detective work on the part of the reader. She writes with comitytowards not only her parents, but also seemingly villainous figures, like Jack Pringle, thereby revealinganother trait she inherited from her father: his fairness. She might as well be describing her own qualities asa writer when she noted during our conversation, "My father was remarkably free of malice and prejudice.He was very open-minded and evenhanded, even when people were not always fair to him. He tried asmuch as he could to be accepting."

If what old family friend Alessandro Tasca di Cuto said to Chris at Welles's funeral is true--that Welles toldhim that "even though he hadn't been a good father" to her, she had been "a very good daughter to him"--InMy Father's Shadow, with its kindly portrait of an imperfect parent and an extraordinary film artist, provesthat she has remained "a very good daughter."

Cineaste interviewed Chris Welles Feder in July 2009.--Peter Tonguette

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Cineaste: This is actually the second book you've written about your father, following The Movie Director,which was a book of verse. Why did you decide to write directly about him now?

Chris Welles Feder: I would say my father has been the most monumental figure in my life. He's had anenormous impact on me, shaped me in many ways, and so this would be for me a very natural subject.Also, I wanted to write this book because there are so many books out there about him, but they'rebiographies or they're critical studies of his works. Or they're written by people who didn't actually know himand they are just speculating for the most part or they are using second- or third- or fourth-handinformation. I wanted to present him as he was, in real life, as my father, as I knew him. In that sense, I feelmy book is unique because it offers an intimate, candid portrait of Orson Welles from my uniqueperspective as his daughter, which simply doesn't exist in any of the many, many books about him.

I wanted to bring my father to life and give him a human face. I also wanted to bring to life certain people,now dead, who were very big figures in his life but have been dealt with rather scantily, shall we say, oreven not at all in other books about him. For instance, there's almost nothing about my mother, just apassing reference to her as a Chicago socialite. I wanted people to know who the first Mrs. Orson Welleswas. I also felt it was very important for people to know who Oja Kodar is because she was probably themost important woman in my father's life, his companion for the last twenty-odd years of his life, and shealso gets treated very superficially, I think, in the Orson Welles bibliography.

Cineaste: Reading your book made me wish that your half-sister, Rebecca, had written about your father orthat your half-sister, Beatrice, might write about him in the future. It's unfortunate that, although Welles hasliving family members, no one besides you has written a first-hand account of him.

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Welles Feder: I don't honestly know if the other people who were intimately connected with him are able towrite. I just happen to be the one person in his immediate family who is also a writer, so that helped!

Cineaste: One of the things that make your book so vivid are the accounts of specific conversations withyour parents and others, like Roger Hill (the headmaster of the Todd School). Did you maintain a journal ordiary or was it strictly from memory that you were able to recreate these conversations?

Welles Feder: I'm one of those people who has been blessed with a very, very fine memory. I canremember things that were said in great detail. But what helped me write this book was that, back in thedays of snail mail, I wrote voluminous letters to all sorts of people, many of who are in the book. Thesepeople very kindly kept my letters and then at a certain point in my life they returned to me huge packagesof my letters. That enabled me to recall even more specific details and conversations and things in myearly life. The letters were a wonderful prompt.

Cineaste: Your description of the day you spent on the set of your father's film Othello is warmer than yourdescriptions of the other films you watched him make. As you tell it, The Lady from Shanghai sounds like itwas a tedious set to be on and Macbeth was rush, rush, rush.

Welles Feder: You're absolutely right. The real reason I wanted to be in Macbeth is because I was trying sohard to enter my father's world. I thought, "Well, maybe if I'm in his movie, that will do it!" My two attemptsto be in his films, The Lady from Shanghai and Macbeth, taught me a valuable lesson which was I reallydid not want to become an actress. But they also didn't achieve my goal. Being in his movies didn't mean Iwas in his everyday life.

By the time I was living in Rome [when Othello was being shot], I was older--I think I was twelve at thatpoint--and so I wasn't trying anymore to be a movie star or to wheedle my way into one of his films! So Iwas able to just enjoy the day. It was a very different mood.

Cineaste: I got the impression that the strain we sometimes detect in your relationship with your fatherdissipated as you got older.

Welles Feder: I understood him better.

Cineaste: And he seemed to begin to better appreciate your intelligence and enthusiasms as a teenager.Your telling of the trip you had with him in Rome and London is remarkable.

Welles Feder: I think the travels we had together when I was a schoolgirl in Europe were in many ways thehighlight of our relationship. And he was also at the top of his game.

That's the other thing: I think I'm one of the few people still alive who knew my father when he was in hisvibrant twenties and thirties. I wanted to recapture Orson Welles when he was young and full of life andenthusiasm. Most of the people who wrote books about my father didn't meet him until, say, 1970, whichwas just fifteen years before his death, and by then he was a very different Orson Welles. He sustained alot of disappointments and he simply wasn't the buoyant, exuberant Orson Welles that I knew in Paris andRome and Saint Moritz and Barcelona.

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Cineaste: During one of these visits, The Third Man was screened for both of you. Was it a rare occasionfor you to watch one of his films alongside him?

Welles Feder: Yes, it was. At that time, I was living in Johannesburg, South Africa, and The Third Manhadn't made it down there yet, even though this was several years after it had been released. So hearranged this special screening for me, which was a big thrill. It was just the two of us in the screeningroom.

Cineaste: I'm struck by how tolerant your mother was of your father during the years she was married toCharles Lederer and then how coldly she spoke of him after her marriage to lack Pringle.

Welles Feder: This was my mother's third marriage and she wanted very, very much not to be divorcedagain. She wanted to save this marriage if she possibly could. My stepfather, Jack Pringle, had these verydetermined plans for me, and I don't think my mother dared to stand up to him. He had his vision of meand that had big consequences for me. As I say in the book, he wanted me to be a secretary, which whenyou think about it is ludicrous.

But my father was very helpful because he would always try to get me to see the other point of view. Hetried to get me to understand that Jack Pringle was really working out of his notions as an upper-classEnglishman. This was the proper thing for a young lady, to become a secretary, and then make a brilliantsocial match and end up riding to hounds every morning. This was Jackie's vision for me. It wasn'tnecessarily that he was trying to ruin my life.

Cineaste: Near the end of his life, your father wrote an autobiographical screenplay, The Cradle Will Rock,featuring not only himself as a young man but also your mother. He's very generous in his depiction of her.Here is how he describes her first appearance: "Silence ... Then, in the upper floor a light goes on in awindow, framing the head of a beautiful young girl. This is VIRGINIA." Do you recognize your parents in thescreenplay?

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Welles Feder: Well, it was his version of them. They were somewhat fictionalized, I think. Also, in lookingback, my father seemed to believe that my mother had run away with him mainly to escape from her familyin Chicago. He seemed to discount that they had been totally infatuated with one another and had elopedin spite of my mother's parents wildly protesting this. They just ran off together.

Cineaste: You write that it was only at your father's funeral that his three daughters were together at thesame time. Have you and your half-sisters been together subsequently?

Welles Feder: No, we haven't. There's an age difference and we've had so little contact with one anotherand we've led very different lives. We really have nothing in common other than the fact that we happen tobe related by blood because our father is Orson Welles. At one point, my father was on The Dick CavettShow. He asked him about his daughters. My father said, in his great voice, "Like King Lear, I have threedaughters, but unlike Lear, my daughters have all been kind to me," which I thought was lovely.

Cineaste: At one point, you quote from a journal entry written by Rebecca.

Welles Feder: Yes, I do. When Becky died, she wanted all her personal papers sent to me.

Cineaste: From what little I've been able to glean, it seems that Rebecca had a difficult life. Can you fill inany of the blanks?

Welles Feder: I can't really fill in too many blanks because, although I was very fond of Becky, I really onlysaw her a handful of times in her life. The three daughters of Orson Welles grew up with different mothersin different parts of the world. We had very little contact with one another. I had more contact with Beckythan I did with Beatrice because I was around when Becky was born. I tried to keep up with her as muchas I could, but it wasn't easy because we were often separated by oceans and continents.

Cineaste: You write that at one point she aspired to be an actress.

Welles Feder: I knew Becky when she was going to the University of Puget Sound because I was at thattime living in Hollywood and so I was reconnected with her mother, Rita Hayworth. I would see Becky whenshe would come home on her school holidays, so I knew that she did have aspirations to be an actress. Butthat never came to anything. There was a sweetness about my father which not many people know, whodidn't know him privately, and I think Becky inherited that same sweet, loving nature.

Cineaste: You describe Oja Kodar as the woman your father "had loved above all others." When did youfirst become aware of Oja?

Welles Feder: It was when I was staying with the Hills (1) at their retirement home in Coral Gables. Thiswas around the time when my father involved Skipper in shooting The Deep. Skipper was getting all ofthese frantic telegrams from my father and then finally he went off to the Bahamas, over Granny's protests,to shoot a scene for The Deep, and that's when Skipper met Oja. He came back with rave reports of howbeautiful she was and how intelligent. He really thought she was the woman for Orson. Of course, heturned out to be absolutely right.

Oja was a tremendous help to him. She told me when we had this lovely meeting that the doctor told herthat she had prolonged my father's life by ten years, and I'm sure she did.

Cineaste: They were such close artistic collaborators, too.

Welles Feder: My father's life was his work, and if you wanted to live with him, you had to be willing to livewith him and his work. I think Oja was the only woman in his life who could do that.

Cineaste: This was your own intuition as a young child. Indeed, you wanted to be in his films as a way tobe closer to him.

Welles Feder: He was consumed by his work and he really didn't have time for his personal relationships.When my mother was interviewed when she was flying to Reno to get her divorce from my father--it was avery amicable divorce--she told one of the reporters who had cornered her at the airport, "Orson doesn'thave time to be married." And it's true. He didn't have time to be married; he didn't have time to be afather. His energies were totally consumed by his art. That's all he thought about and all he lived for.Cineaste: In recent years, you have formed a real bond with Oja.

Welles Feder: At this point, Oja and I think of each other as each other's family. It's been a wonderful thingfor both of us to get to know one another. It's really given us both a lot.

Cineaste: You single out the moment in Chimes at Midnight "when Falstaff is spurned--'I know thee not, oldman'--by the young king he had served so well." You call it your father's "most poignant moment on thescreen." When I interviewed Oja in 2003, she told me she treasured that moment, too. She said, "It's somuch Orson, that forgiveness and understanding mixed with pain, it's exactly him. This is why I loved him.When you look at Orson in that scene, you see whom I loved."

Welles Feder: That's lovely. Oja is a remarkable woman, she really is. After I met her, I totally understoodwhy my father was so crazy about her and why she became so important to him.

Cineaste: Do you have a favorite among your father's films?

Welles Feder: Well, I have several! I love many of the films that he made in Europe. I wish they werescreened more often in the United States. I think F for Fake is remarkable. It was so far ahead of itself. It'sinteresting to me that young filmmakers immediately connect with this film, they see what my father wastrying to do, whereas at the time that it was released, nobody understood what he was trying to do. Ofcourse, Chimes at Midnight would have to be up there as number one. I think The Trial is a fascinatingfilm.

Cineaste: Would you see his films as they were being released, regardless of whether you were in contactwith him or not?

Welles Feder: Oh, absolutely. I always went to see every film that I could. I even saw Othello in Seoul,South Korea, with Korean subtitles.

While my father was alive, I was so intent on trying to establish a more normal father-daughter relationshipwith him that in a sense that blinded me to the greatness of his achievements. Often I would sit in themovie theater watching his films and the tears would be pouring down my face because I would bethinking, "Oh, when am I going to see him again? Why hasn't he called me?" It really interfered with myability to appreciate the artistry of his work. Once he died, which put the final punctuation point on anypossibility of a more normal relationship, it was kind of liberating in a way in terms of looking at his films.Then I could really see them for what they are, for the great treasure that he left behind.

(1) Roger "Skipper" Hill and his wife Hortense owned the Todd School for Boys, where Orson Welles hadbeen a student, and where Christopher was sent at the age of ten, despite being the only girl at the all-boys school, when her mother divorced her second husband, Charles Lederer.

In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles by Chris Welles Feder. Chapel Hill:Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009. 304 pp., illus. Hardcover: $24.95.

Citation Details

Title: A very good daughter: an interview with Chris Welles Feder.(Interview)Author: Peter TonguettePublication: Cineaste (Magazine/Journal) Date: December 22, 2009Publisher: Cineaste Publishers, Inc.Volume: 35 Issue: 1 Page: 46(4)