Bright Lucifer
Bright Lucifer | |
---|---|
Written by | Orson Welles |
Characters | Bill Flynn, Jack Flynn, Eldred Brand |
Original language | English |
Genre | Horror |
Bright Lucifer is an unproduced 1930s era semi-autobiographical horror play, and the first written by Orson Welles as a single author. It has, to date, never been professionally staged.
History
Welles first began writing Bright Lucifer in 1932, while he was writing the play Marching Song at a friend's summer home in Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin.[1]: 224 [2] He was still developing the text in September 1934 (having moved to New York to play the part of Tybalt in Katharine Cornell's transferred production of Romeo and Juliet), telling John Houseman that he was working on a script “about the devil” when they first met in December. He had intended to premiere the play at a proposed theater festival at his old school in the summer of 1935 (though this never came about; due to difficulties with the 1934 summer festival the event was not repeated), and continued to work on the script with an eye to producing it as late as 1938.[3]
An amateur presentation was given of the script by a community group in Wisconsin on September 27, 1997, 12 years after Welles's death, at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison, Wisconsin.[2]
Characters
- Jack Flynn - a burned-out B-movie horror actor, suffering a nervous breakdown after the breakdown of his marriage - a cross between John Barrymore and Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi
- Bill Flynn - a newspaper editor, his brother - a large, Falstaffian father-figure with a heart condition
- Eldred Brand - Bill's teenage ward, an asthmatic orphan - a "bitch boy," and the Lucifer of the plays title
Plot
After the disappearance of Jack's wife (in the wake of a sexual affair and drug abuse scandal), he has abandoned his career in Hollywood (where he specialised in "creature features" - playing the monster in B-movie horror films) and is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He has arranged for a retreat to recover in the family cabin (on a north woods Indian reservation) with his brother (Bill - a tabloid newspaper editor) and his brother's young ward (Eldred - a strange, young asthmatic), his brother's wife (Martha) due to arrive a few days later. As the play opens the three males have been fishing, and tensions are already high. Outside the cabin an American Indian funeral is ongoing, and "devil drums" ceaselessly beat throughout. The twisting story unfolds to encompass whisky, murder, God, the Devil, a monster costume, insanity, and the hysterical desecration of a corpse. The entire play taking place over two nights, and is set entirely in the cabin in the woods.
Themes
Gothicism
The play is a lurid gothic horror, mixing high art with grand guignol; the Chicago Tribune referred to the play as a combination of Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill, Weird Tales and The Twilight Zone.[2]
Father-figures
Welles was orphaned at the age of 15, and was adopted by Dr. Maurice Bernstein - a lover of his mothers'. This relationship directly reflects that of Eldred and Bill, and biographers have speculated on the autobiographical nature of the depiction.[4][5]
Homoeroticism
A notable aspect of the play, considering the era in which it was written, is the homoerotic undertone which runs throughout (not to mention the implied Hebephilia of the Bill/Eldred relationship).[5]
As a precursor to other Welles works
- The constant beat of the "devil drums" and the exoticised "magic" of the American Indian tribe outside the cabin reflect the staging of both Welles's 1936 Voodoo Macbeth and his 1937 Dr Faustus.[5]
- Jack's talk of wanting "to scare people in a big scale ... Not lousy movies. No, I mean artistically -- a huge practical joke" has been connected with Welles's own infamous 1938 "War of the Worlds" broadcast.[2]
- Bill runs a tabloid newspaper, the National Weekly, a theme famously returned to in Welles's 1941 Citizen Kane.[5]
- Bill's gregarious, avuncular character echoes Welles's obsession with the Falstaff of his earlier Five Kings and later Chimes at Midnight.[2]
- The notion of "character" as something predetermined and unchangeable in people, as in the "scorpion and the frog" story of Mr Arkadin.
References
- ^ McGilligan, Patrick (2015). Young Orson. New York: Harper. ISBN 978-0-06-211248-4.
- ^ a b c d e Wilmington, Michael. Digging Welles, The Chicago Tribune. 5 October 1997.
- ^ Naremore, James. The Magic World of Orson Welles, University of Illinois Press, 12 Jun 2015. pp.22-26
- ^ McGilligan, Patrick "Young Orson" HarperCollins 2015
- ^ a b c d Callow, Simon "Orson Welles, Volume 1: The Road to Xanadu" Random House, 8 Jun 2011
- v
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- Filmography
- Radio credits
- Theatre credits
- Discography
- Bibliography
- Unrealized projects
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
- The Stranger (1946)
- The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
- Macbeth (1948)
- Othello (1951)
- Mr. Arkadin (1955)
- Touch of Evil (1958)
- The Trial (1962)
- Chimes at Midnight (1965)
- The Immortal Story (1968)
- F for Fake (1973)
- Filming Othello (1978)
- The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
- Twelfth Night (1933)
- The Hearts of Age (1934)
- Citizen Kane trailer (1940)
- Around the World (1946)
- The Miracle of St. Anne (1950)
- Magic Trick (1953)
- The Dominici Affair (1955)
- Portrait of Gina (1958)
- An Evening with Orson Welles (1970)
- Orson's Bag
- Vienna (1968)
- The Merchant of Venice (1969)
- One Man Band (1968–1971)
- Moby Dick (1971)
- Orson Welles' Magic Show (1976–1985)
- The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh (1984)
- Too Much Johnson (1938)
- It's All True (1942)
- Don Quixote (1957–1969)
- The Heroine (1967)
- The Deep (1967–1970)
- Filming 'The Trial' (1981)
- The Dreamers (1980–1982)
- Journey into Fear (1943)
- Follow the Boys (1944)
- Black Magic (1949)
- Three Cases of Murder (1955)
- David and Goliath (1960)
- The Southern Star (1969)
- Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
- Treasure Island (1972)
- Cradle Will Rock (1999)
- The Big Brass Ring (1999)
- Orson Welles' Sketch Book (1955)
- Around the World with Orson Welles (1955)
- Orson Welles and People (1956)
- The Fountain of Youth (1958)
- In the Land of Don Quixote (1964)
- The Orson Welles Show (1979)
- Marching Song (1932)
- Bright Lucifer
- Voodoo Macbeth (1936)
- Horse Eats Hat (1936)
- The Cradle Will Rock (1937)
- Caesar (1937–1938)
- Too Much Johnson (1938)
- Native Son (1941)
- The Mercury Wonder Show (1943)
- Around the World (1946)
- Othello (1951)
- The Lady in the Ice (1953)
- Moby Dick—Rehearsed (1955)
- Rhinoceros (1960)
- Les Misérables (1937)
- The Shadow (1937–1938)
- The Mercury Theatre on the Air (1938)
- "Dracula" (1938)
- "The War of the Worlds" (1938)
- The Campbell Playhouse (1938–1940)
- The Orson Welles Show (1941–1942)
- Ceiling Unlimited (1942–1943)
- Hello Americans (1942–1943)
- The Orson Welles Almanac (1944)
- This Is My Best (1945)
- Orson Welles Commentaries (1945–1946)
- The Mercury Summer Theatre of the Air (1946)
- The Adventures of Harry Lime (1951–1952)
- The Black Museum (1951–52)
- The Happy Prince (1946)
- The Begatting of the President (1970)
- This is Orson Welles (1992)
- Les Bravades (1996)
- Mercury Theatre
- Rita Hayworth (second wife)
- Paola Mori (third wife)
- Beatrice Welles (daughter)
- Oja Kodar
- Frozen Peas
- Orson Welles Paul Masson advertisements
- It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles (1993)
- Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles (2014)
- They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)
- Orson Welles (crater)