The War of the Worlds Murder by Max Allan Collins

one...also spoiled. Like all spoiled children, he wasn’t much on asking permission....
    “I can tell you, though, Walter, playing with this film, seeing how you can tell a story through pictures, little jigsaw-puzzle pieces, well, I get a real charge out of it.”
    “So this Warners interest means a lot to you.”
    “It does. It does indeed. I have so many ideas about making films—Walter, I can barely contain myself.”
    “Such as?”
    “You’ve seen the German films? Caligari , for instance? Fritz Lang’s Metropolis ?”
    “Sure. Judging by their crime pictures, I think the guys at Warner Bros. have, too.”
    “Precisely! But they haven’t taken it far enough.” Welles sat forward, his eyes alive and twinkling, his palms open and outstretched, like Jolson on his knees. “I want to make radio...for the screen .”
    Gibson winced in thought. “You mean, do more heightened, sophisticated sound work?”
    Welles waved a dismissive hand. “Well, that, too, but...Walter, do the images you produce in your own mind, when you listen to a radio show—do the motion pictures you see in your local movie house match up to that?”
    “To my own imagination? Hell no!”
    “Ha! Precisely. It was better back in the silent days, when the cameras weren’t so bulky—think of the images von Stroheim achieved, and Griffith, and even DeMille. It was as if you were witnessing your own dreams coming to life...and that’s what I intend to make happen again, but even more so. Low angles, high angles, lighting effects, backgrounds as carefully art-directed as one of my Mercury stage productions.”
    “And you think the Shadow would lend itself to this?”
    A small smile twitched. “Well...if I may be frank...”
    Gibson grinned. “You’re buying lunch, aren’t you?”
    “Well, Housey’s checkbook is.... My goal would be to do on screen the kinds of things I’m attempting on stage. Nobody’s seriously tried to do Shakespeare, for example, since Mickey Rooney was Puck in that MGM fiasco.”
    “I liked that movie.”
    “You have to strip these classics down, reimagine them, for the masses. I did Hamlet in an hour on the radio!”
    And left out the ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ speech , Gibson thought, but said nothing.
    “I intend to do Conrad’s Heart of Darkness...Lear...The Life of Christ !”
    “If you have these...” The writer almost said “pretensions,” but substituted: “...goals—why the Shadow?”
    Welles’s expression seem to melt into a mask of chagrin. “I’ve insulted you...”
    “No. No!”
    “... Please don’t think I undervalue your contribution to either my career or the medium of radio.”
    “I didn’t think—”
    “I am no snob.” Then, in a tone so arch it undercut everything he said, Welles continued: “In fact, I am so resolutely middlebrow as to want to bring the highbrow down to my meager level.”
    “Some would call the Shadow lowbrow.”
    “Not Orson Welles. I kept myself alive, in Spain, back in ’33, plying your trade—writing pulp detective yarns! And you know of my love for magic—for the carnival-like thrill of prestidigitation, for velvet cloaks, for rabbits in hats, for aces of spades that appear in pockets! No, I love melodrama, and your hawk-nosed avenger...I’m working on my own false nose already, wait untilyou see me with a snoot worthy of this face!...Your creation is ideal for the cinema of dreams-come-to-life, my radio for not just the ears, but the eyes!”
    Breakfast arrived, a small army of butlers bringing such a banquet that Gibson had first wondered who Welles might have invited to join them.
    But it was all for them, a finnan haddie with baby red shrimps in a cream sauce for Gibson, an enormous serving of lobster Newburg for his host, plus appetizers including frog legs, scallops and oysters, with fresh-baked dinner rolls and a side salad with garlic dressing. No dessert had been ordered (“I can have them bring you something, Walter, just say the