RKO 281 Page #3

An interview with a Hollywood Insider, who looks like a bookie:

HOLLYWOOD INSIDER

John Ford doesn't have a deal like that. Cecil B.

DeMille doesn't have a deal like that. No one has a

deal like that! If ya ask me, George Schaefer is

just plain nuts

Images of Welles arriving in Hollywood and touring the town: Welles

climbing down from a plane; posing with Schaefer before of the RKO

gates; touring the studio; leaning over an editing machine; laughing

with female extras in the commissary; posing in front of his Brentwood

home. As we hear:

NEWSREEL VOICE:

So Cometh Orson! He toured the RKO studio and met

with the biggest of the big! He charmed his way

through the town from the Brown Derby to the

Copacabana, from the Pacific Palisades to the

Hollywood Hills!

More images of Welles in Hollywood: Welles touring the town; visiting

all the nightclubs and dancing with beautiful women; he is seen

everywhere about the town. As we hear:

NEWSREEL VOICE:

Yes, the Boy Wonder had arrived! He even charmed

those rival maidens of Hollywood gossip, those well-

coiffured chroniclers of the dream factory: Hedda

Hopper and Louella Parsons.

Shots of Welles with LOUELLA PARSONS and HEDDA HOPPER

Louella is a much-feared gossip columnist. She is a gorgon in her 60's;

Margaret Dumont possessed by the devil and tanked up on gin. Her

capricious cruelty is only matched by her fervent loyalty to all things

Hearstian.

Hedda is a gossip columnist in her 50's. She is given to elaborate hats

and villainous intrigue. Louella's younger, smarter rival, Hedda

probably spends her spare time eating children.

Then a snippet of an interview with Louella:

LOUELLA:

Orson is the sweetest boy. We're both from the

midwest, you know. He's just a local fella making

good, ya follow?

More shots of Welles just after his arrival in Hollywood, blissfully

touring the RKO facilities as:

NEWSREEL VOICE:

So today, almost a year after his arrival in

Hollywood, we leave the Boy Wonder still hard at

work developing his much-anticipated first feature,

preparing to dazzle us all again. We're waiting,

Orson!

Welles after his RKO tour, smiling mischievously, stands before a

microphone:

WELLES:

I'll tell you what, this is the best electric train

set a boy ever had!

"The End" and newsreel credits

The newsreel sputters to a stop in a screening room. A shaft of light

shines on a large MGM logo on one wall. Another shaft of light

illuminates the sitting figure of LOUIS B. MAYER.

Mayer is a short, crafty, bespectacled man in his 50's. His cloying,

avuncular exterior only fleetingly disguises the film titan's

outrageous barbarism.

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