. . . Mercury Theater Honcho Orson Welles tells TV talk show host Merv Griffin regarding his infamous WAR OF THE WORLDS Halloween Radio Hoax in 1939. This excerpt from Mr. Griffin's Sept. 21, 1965 show involves some sort of satellite interview of Mr. Welles from his FALSTAFF (CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT) editing room in Spain, the day before Orson says he was to fly to Paris to finish the sound mixing for CHIMES and beat the deadline to get this Shakespearian flick over to Italy for the Venice Film Festival. (This Griffin Show excerpt, lasting 11 minutes, 7 seconds, is included on the 2016 Criterion Collection CHIMES restoration, on disc #2: the "extras.") "It took volunteer Quakers three months to talk all of those who'd taken to the hills (following his radio hoax) back down to Civilization," Welles relates. After showing some battle scene excerpts from CHIMES and yakking a little about his sleeper hit, CITIZEN KANE, Welles concludes by telling Griffin that it would be nice to get his old Mercury Theater gang including Joseph Cotton, Something Gable, Something Sloane, and Agnes Moorhead back together to relate what REALLY happened leading up to the Grassy Knoll. (This never happened, as the CIA was able to silence Orson in a preemptive strike.)
The Merv Griffin Show (TV Series)
Orson Welles, Arlene Francis, George Carlin, Renee Taylor, Marguerite Young, Bill Veeck, Saverio Saridis (1965)
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"We anticipated a small lunatic fringe would be bamboozled . . . "
oscaralbert2 December 2017
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