In My Father's Shadow Read Online Free PDF

me. “What is it, Christopher?”
    “I want to be in your movie, Daddy.”
    “You … what?” He stared down at me with a kind of horror.
    “I want to be in the movie with you and Rita.”
    “Oh, no! Oh, my God, no!”
    I was as taken aback by his reaction as he had been by my request. We looked each other in the eyes for a long moment. Then I persisted, “I’ll do anything, Daddy, but please let me be in your movie.”
    “Looks like she’s a chip off the old block, Mr. Welles,” observed one of the crew.
    Mr. Welles winced as though a fly had landed on his nose while he continued to stare at me as though he had never seen me before. At length he sighed. “Oh, all right, Christopher. You can be an American brat eating an ice cream cone.”
    This wasn’t exactly the role I had in mind, but already one of the minions had been sent in search of anything resembling an ice cream cone. He came back with a frozen glob of fruit juice on a stick. Suddenly I was standing in a blaze of lights and being ordered by a father, turned imperious, to “whine and snivel” like the brat I was supposed to be. The camera rolled and I gave it my all while the glob melted down my arm. In less than a minute, it seemed, my father-director had yelled, “Cut!” Then he stood with his back to me, talking to the cameraman.
    I waited for him to say something. Had he liked the way I had played it? “Do you want another take?” I called out. Slowly he turned and stared at me, but I saw no spark of pride in his hazel eyes. “Do you want another take?” I piped up again. Perhaps he hadn’t heard me the first time.

    Orson (in white suit and sailor’s hat), Glenn Anders (on his right), and Chris (in front, second from right), buying ice cream in Acapulco, Mexico, while filming
The Lady from Shanghai
in 1947.
    His answer came in a soft, dismissive voice on the edge of a hollow laugh. “No, that will be all, Christopher. You’ve had your big moment on the silver screen. Now run along and find something better to do.”
    Quite a few years passed before I found myself in a movie house, watching
The Lady from Shanghai
for the first time and wondering when a bratty little girl eating an ice cream cone was going to appear on the screen. She never did.
    I N THE SPRING of 1947, for several months my father lived in the beach house next door to ours in Santa Monica. He had ended his relationship with Rita Hayworth and had moved in with another lovely redhead, the Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald. While I loved having my father next door, I did miss Rita. She had the quality, rare in Hollywood, of being herself, whether her hair was copper red or platinum blond. She was the same unaffected person in spangles and furs that she was in faded jeans and bare feet. I knew where I stood with Rita. She liked me and liked having me around.
    Geraldine Fitzgerald—Aunt Geraldine to me—was a different animal. There was something elusive about her, something that made me suspect I could never know the real person hiding behind the soft-spoken Irish charm and the dazzling smile. She seemed to live in a vast reservoir of calm known only to herself. On the other hand, I had no trouble figuring out her son, Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Two years younger than I was, Michael was a lovable scamp with a mop of dark hair, eager to join in any adventure I might propose. We were in and out of each other’s houses every day. Sweet and amenable most of the time, Michael was also an only child who liked doing things
his
way. The inevitable moment came when he got tired of being bossed around.
    “Are they fighting
again
?” The question rose, incredulous, from the nook on the open-air porch where my father had buried himself in papers, scripts, pencils, and pads. “Can’t I get any quiet around here? I
must
get this work done!” Heaving himself to his feet, sweeping up papers, scripts, et al., he vanished into the serene depths of Geraldine’s house.
    “You naughty