It was another big night at the joint in the valley the night I met Orson Welles. Orson was in Hollywood for the first time, like me. I liked him and he liked me, and jazz. We started hanging around together.
So when I’d finished at the joint in the valley, we’d head for Central Avenue, and the Negro ghetto of Los Angeles, and I’d take him around all the joints and dives. I was bored with all this stuff; I’d grown up in it, there was nothing anybody in California could show me, anything there was doing out there, I’d seen before and sideways. I was bored, but he loved it.
There wasn’t a damn thing or person he wasn’t interested in. He wanted to see everything and find out who and why it ticked. I guess that’s part of what made him such a great artist.
Orson was up to his ears then making his first picture, Citizen Kane, was writing, directing, and acting all over the place. He might be out balling, but his head seemed to going all the time, thinking about what was going to happen at the studio the next morning at 6 A.M. Citizen Kane was a great picture. I’ll bet I saw it nine times before it played in any theaters. He was such a hell of an actor, I never missed the scenery or the costumes.
After we’d been seen together a few times I started getting phone calls at my hotel telling me I was ruining Orson’s career by being seen with him. People used to bug me, saying the studio would get after me, that I’d never get to work in pictures, and God knows what, if I didn’t leave him alone. The hotel used to get the same kind of calls from people trying to make trouble for me or for him.
A lot of creeps have been dogging Orson Welles ever since but they can’t touch him. He’s a fine cat – probably the finest I ever met. And a talented cat. But more than that, he’s fine people.
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