Orson Welles - Oja Kodar Papers, 1910-2000 (majority within 1965-1985)

Summary

Creator:

Welles, Orson, 1915-1985 and Kodar, Oja

Abstract:

The Orson Welles – Oja Kodar Papers includes scripts, production documents, photographs, and other materials from Orson Welles's work in film and other media. General correspondence, topical files, papers related to Oja Kodar, and personal materials also make up a portion of collection. The bulk of the papers date from the 1960s to the 1980s with a smaller amount of material from the 1930s-1950s. The Additions to the Welles-Kodar Papers series, acquired in 2015, complements the scripts, correspondence and photographs already held, but also include annotated typescripts of drafts for a planned memoir, additional on-the-set photographs from films, television, and other projects, personal photographs, and documents from collaborations between Welles and Kodar.

Extent:

41.5 Linear feet (27 record center boxes, 15 manuscript boxes, 4 flat oversize boxes, and 1 oversize drawer )
27 record center boxes, 15 manuscript boxes, 4 flat oversize boxes, and 1 oversize drawer

Language:

English

Authors:

Finding aid prepared by Sally Vermaaten, 2009; scripts largely processed by Frank Uhle, 2006; 2015 additions processed by Caitlin Moriarty, 2015

Background

Scope and Content:

The Orson Welles - Oja Kodar Papers primarily document the creative activities of Orson Welles during the last two decades of his life. The papers also contain a smaller amount of materials from the 1930s through the early 1960s. The materials in this collection were obtained from Oja Kodar, his companion and creative collaborator from the 1960s until his death in 1985. Additional papers were acquired in 2015 and are described below in the Additions to the Welles-Kodar Papers series.

The Welles-Kodar Papers have been divided into thirteen series: Theater, Radio, Film, Television, Other projects, Magic, Name and topical, Personal, Oja Kodar, Sound, Motion pictures, Realia, and Articles and clippings. Though much of the collection was loose and unordered, any parts of the collection that were grouped or organized by Welles, his assistants, or Oja Kodar have generally been kept in their original order. The loose, unorganized papers were then arranged according to the patterns that seemed exist in the material that was organized. Essentially, the current organization of the collection is an attempt to more fully implement the organizational schemes that Welles and Kodar were employing in the collection.

The first five series (Theatre, Radio, Film, Television, Other projects) represent the bulk of the collection and are arranged by project. For example, all materials relating to Citizen Kane including correspondence, photographs, and production documents, are kept together, physically and intellectually. The projects are then ordered chronologically. For example, immediately after the Citizen Kane (1941) materials are materials related to Welles' next project, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). There are two exceptions to this project-based arrangement, where two groups of materials were kept together by production company (Astrophore and Roprama Film). Researchers should also note that Welles often worked on several projects at once so a memo filed, for example, under F for Fake (1974), may touch on Blind Window , which he was working on in roughly the same time period. Browsing through material from projects that occurred during the same general time period may therefore be a useful search strategy for researchers.

The Magic series, consists of a small amount of magic books, scripts for tricks, correspondence with magicians, and playing cards, reflects Orson Welles' strong, life-long interest in magic.

The remaining seven series (Name and topical, Personal, Kodar, Sound, Motion pictures, Realia, and Articles and clippings) contain material not generated during the making or distribution of Welles' creative projects. The Name and topical series consists of an alphabetical set of subject and name files material may range from correspondence with friends to posters from film festivals honoring or featuring Welles's work. The Name and topical series also includes correspondence with many famous filmmakers and actors and actresses. The Personal series contain photographs of Welles and materials relating to childhood friends, family, Welles's houses, and personal legal and financial matters. The Oja Kodar series includes material from her career as a sculptor, scripts she wrote, and some correspondence and personal material.

The final series: Sound, Motion pictures, Realia, and Articles and clippings, are relatively small (taken together they take up roughly 3 linear feet). Some material of note include cigar boxes on which Welles jotted various notes and a set of acetate records which seem to include a rare Welles radio performance.

The Theater series consists of a few files (about .1 linear feet) with he contents made up primarily of photographs and some programs from relatively early in his career, including the Mercury Theatre, as well as some from after he started working in film. Dates span 1934-1960.

In 2015, the library acquired the remaining Orson Welles papers in the possession of Oja Kodar. The Additions to the Wells-Kodar Papers series has been arranged into eleven series, mirroring the arrangement of the papers in the original acquisition. The series are: Theater, Radio, Film, Television, Other Projects, Magic, Name and Topical Files, Personal, Oja Kodar, Biographical Works, Clippings and Articles, and Oversize Photographs.

The Radio series consists of a few files (about .1 linear feet), related to Welles' work in the late 30's and early 1940s, including photographs, scripts, articles, and correspondence.

The Film series is the largest in the added material, comprising ca. 3 linear feet of scripts, drafts, correspondence, articles and clippings, promotional materials, and photographs. Films represented include both those directed by Welles and those directed by others in which he acted or participated. The series is arranged chronologically by film, dated according to their first public showing or general release date. Unfinished or unreleased projects are identified with an approximate date range of the years in the work took place.

The material related to the earliest films from the 1940s and 1950s consists primarily of photographs. Later unfinished films of particular interest include The Deep, Because of the Cats, The Other Side of the Wind, Crazy Weather, Assassin/The Safe House, The Other Man, The Dreamers, Big Brass Ring, and King Lear. Also included is articles, promotional materials, correspondence, and photographs from Don Quixote, filmed on and off from the late 1950's to the early 1970s. Materials are primarily related to the version which was released in 1992 after a the footage was edited and finished by director Jesus Franco, but the photographs are from the original filming.

As with drafts in the earlier accessions, Welles typically worked on scripts in sections, producing successive drafts which he then amended. The collection preserves many pages of these working drafts, which sometimes also include Welles's typed or written notes about the story and characters, along with messages to and from his typists. Minimal reorganization of the papers was done in order to preserve evidence of the process, and there are many files of "drafts" which may contain repetitions and out-of-sequence pages, filed as they were found. As Welles often worked by inserting new pages into older drafts or blending together several different versions of a scene, page numbers may not follow a logical sequence. In many cases no information about the script material was recorded before it was filed away, so dating the drafts is difficult. The dates assigned to this material are approximate. Because of the lack of identifying information on some of the material, a miscellaneous sub-series is included at the end of the series, which includes unidentified photographs and drafts of scripts.

The Television series comprises about .4 linear feet, and includes scripts, photographs, correspondence, and other materials relating to projects that were originally meant for television. This includes The Orson Welles Show, a talk show that only ever shot one episode with guests Burt Reynolds and the Muppets. Aslo included are materials related to Orson's Bag, a collection of short films including Swinging London, Stately Homes, and the Merchant of Venice, the contents of which were eventually released in 1995 as part of The One-Man Band. Other materials reflect the initial stages of a Christmas TV movie and a special for NBC.

The Other Projects series (.1 linear ft.) includes materials related to Welles' non-film related work, including advertising and vioceover work, as well as correspondence about various job offers.

The Magic series (about .5 linear ft.) includes scripts, correspondence, photographs, and other materials related to Orson Welles magic performances, including the Mercury Wonder Show, and television specials The World of Magic and Orson Welles' Magic Show. Also included are collected printed magic tricks, drafts of trick patter that he used during performances, articles and clippings, and drawings of costumes.

The Name and Topical Files series (approximately 1 linear ft.) contains primarily correspondence and various other materials arranged alphabetically by the name of a person, place, event, or subject. The series includes letters from directors and film executives such as Martin Scorsese and August Coppola, actors and actresses such as Charleton Heston and Charles Fawcett, close friends such as Roger Hill and Peter Bogdanovich, and some fans of Welles's work. Also included are posters, programs, and other materials related to film festivals and tributes to welles, including the Cannes International Film Festival and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The Personal series (1 linear ft) includes a variety of materials related to Welle's personally, rather than his screen work. This includes drafts of his writing including essays and articles about various topics, including Shakespeare and tributes and remarks about others in the film business, as well as untitled, unidentified drafts. Also in this series are works by others given to or collected by Welles including poems, short stories, and tributes. Most significant is the material from Welles' unpublished memiors, both in draft form and shorter more organized versions, along with notes, correspondence, and photographs meant for the book. Additionally, there are miscellaneous personal documents, including the notes he would write himself with lists of things that needed to be done, and notebooks with similar content as well as several doodles, one a self protrait. Correspondence with his daughters and Oja is also found in this series, as well as personal and family photographs, some from very early in his life.

The Oja Kodar series (approximately .75 linear ft.) consists of materials related to Oja Kodar's work both with and Without Orson Welles, as well as correspondence, and personal matters. The series is divided into subseries for film, writing, name and topical files, and personal. The writing and film subseries both include unpublished drafts of scripts and stories. The personal subseries included several topics related to Orson Welles' estate after his death, including real estate, legal papers related to the dispute over film rights, and Oja's eulogy for Welles. Also included are materials from her sculpture work and photographs.

The Biographical Works series (about .25 linear ft.) includes published and unpublished works about Welles written by others, including a collection of annotated correspondence, "Orson!:An Original Play", drafts of biographies by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Barbara Leaming, and a copy of The Unknown Orson Welles.

The Clippings and Articles series (approximately .5 linear ft.) is a collection of articles and clippings about Welles from various publications including magazines and newspapers. Materials are mainly arranged chronologically from before 1970 to 2014, but also included are folders of undated materials, undated clippings from Croatian/Yugoslavian publications, and photographs clipped from articles.

The Oversize series comprises two oversize boxes with oversize photographs that correspond with materials in the Film, Television, Magic, Personal, and Oja Kodar series and follows the same order. The magic subseries includes pages from a scrapbook with images from vintage magic ephemera together with images of Welles performing magic.

Biographical / Historical:

ORSON WELLES, 1915-1985

From American National Biography Online:

"Welles, Orson (6 May 1915-10 Oct. 1985), director and actor, was born George Orson Welles in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the son of Richard Hodgon Welles, an inventor and businessman, and Beatrice Ives, a talented amateur musician. Welles was precocious, his pampered childhood abruptly ending after his mother's death when he was nine. At eleven he was enrolled in the progressive Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, where he directed and acted in classics by Shakespeare and Shaw. After graduation in 1930, he spent a summer at the Chicago Art Institute.

His father died in late December 1930, and the following August Welles set out for a walking and painting tour of Ireland. Although he lacked professional experience, he talked his way into a position with the Gate Theater in Dublin, where he made his stage debut at the age of sixteen. Welles remained in Dublin until March 1933 when he returned to the United States. Although he received respectable notices abroad, he was at first unable to get theatrical work at home. In September 1933 he was offered a place in Katharine Cornell's touring company, in which Welles made his American professional debut that year in The Barretts of Wimpole Street . He married socialite Virginia Nicholson in 1934 and moved to New York. He divorced Nicholson in 1940; they had one child. In New York, with John Houseman, a young theatrical producer, he formed one of the most important partnerships in the American arts. Houseman was running the Negro section of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theater Project, for which Welles mounted in 1936 a "voodoo version of Macbeth ," with an all-black cast plus dancers and drummers. The opening night attracted a crowd of thousands outside the Lafayette Theater in Harlem, and the innovative dynamism of the production as well as the publicity surrounding it launched Welles as a major figure in the American theater.

Over the next three years Welles and Houseman produced a remarkable array of theatrical events, including a striking version of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus , a politically styled production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar , and Marc Blitzstein's controversial opera, The Cradle Will Rock . In 1937 Welles and Houseman founded the Mercury Theater, which attracted a talented ensemble of actors, many of whom later followed Welles to Hollywood. In addition to his stage career, Welles appeared regularly on radio, playing the Shadow in a weekly adventure drama. He soon had the Mercury Theater on the air, experimenting with the possibilities of radio drama. His best-known Mercury radio play was an updated version of H. G. Wells's science fiction tale, The War of the Worlds , broadcast on Halloween night. Simulating news coverage of a Martian invasion of the United States, the production created panic along the eastern seaboard. The broadcast received widespread publicity and won Welles a contract with RKO Radio Pictures. In July 1939 he went to Hollywood to begin his career in films, the medium that would largely occupy him for the rest of his life.

Welles's unprecedented contract to direct, star in, write, and edit a motion picture was the envy of the movie industry. After some false starts, he settled on an idea developed with Houseman and veteran scriptwriter Herman Mankiewicz, loosely based on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Citizen Kane , Welles's first feature-length film, so outraged Hearst that he tried to buy the negative and, failing that, banned any mention of the movie in his newspapers. The film, released on 1 May 1941, fared only moderately well at the box office. However, Citizen Kane was directed with such stylistic verve and with such innovative use of cinematography, sound, and music and within such a daring narrative structure that it became one of the most celebrated films ever made.

Welles next directed a costly and ambitious movie based on Booth Tarkington's bestselling novel, The Magnificent Ambersons . Welles had not finished its editing when he went to Brazil to begin shooting a film for the U.S. Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. The project was designed to help strengthen relationships among nations of the Western Hemisphere and to counter Nazi influence in South America. Although he shot miles of film, It's All True was never completed. In Welles's absence, the studio severely edited The Magnificent Ambersons and released it without fanfare during the summer of 1942. Although Welles complained throughout his life about the butchering of the release print, critics have regarded The Magnificent Ambersons as one of his greatest films. Welles's last venture at RKO was the 1943 movie version of Eric Ambler's thriller Journey into Fear , which Welles starred in, cowrote, and without credit did much of the direction. In September 1943 he married Hollywood star Rita Hayworth; they had one child and were divorced in 1947. Although he continued to be heard on radio, Welles spent the remaining war years working for the government in various capacities and writing political journalism, mostly essays and editorials.

During the postwar years Welles assumed a frantic pace: acting on radio and in movies, directing and producing for both stage and screen, and giving speeches, making radio broadcasts, and writing editorials and newspaper columns in support of progressive political causes. In 1946 he completed, as director, costar, and coscenarist, a film melodrama, The Stranger ; staged an innovative version of Cole Porter's musical Around the World in Eighty Days in New York; and began work as director and costar with Hayworth on The Lady from Shanghai , which was released after much studio revision in 1948. In 1947 Welles prepared another stage version of Macbeth for the Utah Centennial Festival in Salt Lake City. Later that year he directed a film version of the play for Republic Pictures in twenty-one days on a small budget to prove that classics could be made cheaply and be accessible to the average moviegoer; it was released in 1948.

At the end of the 1940s Welles moved to Europe, where for years he acted in films. Among the most celebrated of the roles he created was Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949). Also in 1949 he began work on a film version of Othello , which received widespread critical acclaim from the European press when it was released in 1952. To make this film, Welles established a pattern he would often repeat, using his earnings as an actor to underwrite his work as a director, for increasingly he was forced to rely on his own intermittent financing to produce his films.

By the 1950s Welles was recognized, at least by European critics, as one of America's most important filmmakers. He next directed Mr. Arkadin , a film based on his own script. Released in 1955, the film was not shown in the United States until 1962. In 1955 he married Paola Mori; they had one child. That same year Welles also appeared in a dramatic version of Moby Dick in London, and the next year he played King Lear on the New York stage. At the insistence of Charlton Heston, who was to star in the film, Welles returned to Hollywood to direct the offbeat and suspenseful Touch of Evil (1958), in which he also played the lead. In Europe in 1962 he began filming his version of Franz Kafka's labyrinthine novel The Trial , which was released in 1963.

During the early 1960s Welles initiated work on a long-standing project about Shakespeare's Falstaff, primarily using material from the two Henry IV plays. The majestic but uneven Chimes at Midnight was released in 1966. Another film, The Immortal Story , based on an Isak Dinesen tale, appeared in 1968. Although Welles continued to work on his own films, Don Quixote, The Deep , and The Other Side of the Wind , none was completed, and he spent his later years acting in films and appearing on the celebrity circuit, making television guest appearances and doing voice-overs for commercials. His last released film, F for Fake (1975), about art forgeries, was premiered at film festivals in New York and San Sebastián.

During the final years of his life Welles received increasing recognition for the quality and originality of his film work. In 1970 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him a special Oscar, and he was presented with a Life Achievement Award by the A merican Film Institute in 1975. He assisted in a number of documentaries about his career, cooperated in the writing of two books about himself, and continued to trade on his magnificent voice by recording readings of literary works. Until the end, his prodigality stayed with him. Just before his death, financing of his film version of King Lear fell through because of its inflated budget and extremely difficult production requirements. Welles died in Hollywood.

Welles's bold experimentation as a director and actor, on the stage, on radio, and in films, established him as one of the great artists of the twentieth century. However, he will probably be best remembered as a filmmaker of international reputation. Citizen Kane appears on virtually every film critic's list of ten best movies and is regarded by many as the singular achievement of one hundred years of American films. The great French critic André Bazin noted that through his distinctive style Welles had achieved a major breakthrough in the evolution of film language."

-- Charles L. P. Silet. "Welles, Orson." American National Biography Online http://www.anb.org/articles/18/18-01233.html (February 2000). Access Date: Mon Feb 16 2009

OJA KODAR (Olga Palinkas), 1941-

Oja Kodar was born as Olga Palinkas on the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia. As a young woman, she worked in film in television in Belgrade. She then studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. She first met Orson Welles in 1961 when he was filming The Trial. They developed a relationship but parted ways for several while Welles continued his work. In 1963, Oja left Zagreb to study sculpture at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. They resumed their relationship sometime around 1967-1968.

The first of Welles's films in which Kodar appeared was The Deep (1967-1970). Thereafter, Kodar worked on many of Welles's film projects, including F for Fake, The Other Side of the Wind, The Dreamers, The Magic Show, and The Big Brass Ring. Kodar worked in various capacities including actress, lead actress, co-author, and author. At the time of this finding aid's writing, Oja Kodar lives and works in Croatia.

Acquisition Information:

Acquired from Oja Kodar, 2005 and 2015.

Arrangement:

The Welles-Kodar Papers has been divided into fourteen series:

• Theater
• Radio
• Film
• Television
• Other projects
• Magic
• Name and topical
• Personal
• Oja Kodar
• Sound
• Motion pictures
• Realia
• Articles and clippings
• Additions to the Welles-Kodar Papers (2015).

Rules or Conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Related

Additional Descriptive Data:

Related Materials

There are two other major collections that compliment the Orson Welles -- Oja Kodar Papers. The first, the Richard Wilson-Orson Welles Papers (61 boxes), also here at the University of Michigan Special Collections Library, contain 1930s-1950s Mercury Theater material and other papers kept by Welles's friend and long-time associate, Richard Wilson. The second is a concentration of Welles materials (at least 40 boxes) at Indiana University’s Lilly Library, the bulk of which came from the Lilly Library's purchase in the 1970s of many of Welles and Richard Wilson's pre-1949 papers. Orson Welles's kept a third cache of papers in a home in Spain but these papers were destroyed in a house fire in the late 1960s.

Subjects

Click on terms below to find any related finding aids on this site.

Subjects:

Actors -- United States.
Magic tricks.
Motion picture producers and directors.
Motion pictures -- Production and direction.
Motion pictures -- United States -- 20th century.
Radio -- United States -- 20th century.
Theater -- Production and direction.
Theater -- United States -- 20th century.

Formats:

Clippings.
Correspondence.
Drafts (documents)
Interviews.
Manuscripts.
Phonograph records.
Photographs.
Radio scripts.
Screenplays.