corner. Many dollars were wasted because of this. A sound engineer (who obviously was not a 'salt of the earth') recorded the director snoring and played it back to Welles as an explanation of why no recording had been done for several hours. Welles played it for a while, then took the record and broke it in thousands of pieces. "If you think that I'm going to sack a guy after he has worked for 35 years in film, you are mistaken!" Orson Welles said.
A Director's Broken Heart
Another producer, just as well-known as Orson Welles, acted completely differently. This time Gerald Mohr was directly involved. He had just finished the final confrontation with the film's heroine. After a number of rehearsals, the scene was shot successfully. In the pause that followed, Gerald Mohr sat down at the piano. This gave the director, William Howard, an idea. They should do the scene once more and let Gerald deal with the young lady while he nonchalently played the piano. In this way the scene would be much more dramatic. But the producer said no. The first version of the scene was good enough, no point in wasting money! William Howard took this refusal so hard that he went out and got drunk, with fatal consequences for his future career. But he thought he was in the right. "They did not want to invest their money in a wonderful idea." he lamented.
The Iron Duke
Gerald Mohr's grandfather was a teacher in Heidelberg, his father emigrated from Vienna to the USA and settled in New York, where Gerald was born during World War One. He was fortunate enough to be able, at the age of 5, to decide his future profession: he wanted to become an actor! At the age of 16 he left home and went to Los Angeles and Hollywood. Looking like he was 26 and already shaving twice a day, he started as a radio writer and ended up in front of the microphones, first as an announcer and then as an actor.
Early on he got his nickname, which has stayed with him ever since: "The Iron Duke". The first part of the name, of course, had to do with his nerves, the second because he looked like a Spanish grandee. "The Iron Duke" was soon known to never miss a line or an entry and never to hesitate in critical situations. Therefore, there was great delight when he once, at the time when radio programmes were recorded on records instead of tape, made an error no less than 7 times in a row. Every record lasted half an hour. If an error occurred, the entire record had to be re-recorded. In this particular case, "The Iron Duke" had the last line. He was to finish the recording with the proud tirade: "And Queen Wilhelmina extradited the Ex-Kaiser of Prussia out of Holland!"
Whoopee!
Seven times in a row, Gerald Mohr said "Hollywood" instead of "Holland". He could not help it. The movie city obviously had a strong grip on him. On the eighth try he finally managed to say "Holland". At this point, the director became so excited that he had crept up close to Gerald Mohr in order to help him get it right. When he succeeded, the director jumped for joy and cried out "Whoopee!". The record had to be recorded a ninth time!
