• DOI:10.1353/vlt.2006.0021
• Corpus ID: 193226352

"Some Kind of a Man": Orson Welles as Touch of Evil's Masculine Auteur

@article{Rollins2006SomeKO,
  title={"Some Kind of a Man": Orson Welles as Touch of Evil's Masculine Auteur},
  author={Brooke Rollins},
  journal={The Velvet Light Trap},
  year={2006},
  volume={57},
  pages={32 - 41}
}

• Brooke Rollins
• Published 6 April 2006
• Art
• The Velvet Light Trap

����� ��� nterest in authorship has surrounded Touch of Evil since Orson Welles was hired, almost by chance, as its writer and director. Despite the critical success of Citizen Kane, Welles’s directorial status had steadily diminished in Hollywood because of a string of commercial failures and his perceived inability to see the films he directed through to their completion. But even though he had garnered a reputation as a megalomaniacal director, Welles was a popular actor and late-night television staple when Albert Zugsmith, the producer with whom he was working on Man in the Shadow, offered him the role of corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan in a crime drama then titled Badge of Evil. How Welles came to direct the film, his first studio project in ten years, is less clear given that we have three conflicting narratives—from Welles, Zugsmith, and Touch of Evil star Charlton Heston—that tell the story. As Charlton Heston tells it, when he was offered the role of Mike Vargas he accepted only under the condition that Welles be allowed to direct as well as act in the film (Delson 213). Welles himself offers up a slightly different account: he was trying to decide if he could afford to turn down the acting job when Zugsmith called to offer him the position of director. In this version Heston assumed that Welles would direct, and the actor’s excitement spurred Zugsmith to offer Welles the job. Welles says he accepted this offer under the condition that he could rewrite the script, adding that he was only allowed to assume these screenwriting duties if he accepted his original salary as an actor, forfeiting pay for writing and directing (Welles and Bogdanovich 297). Zugsmith recalls an entirely different scenario. According to the producer’s story, Welles asked to direct one of his projects, and, after being offered any of all the available properties, he requested the “worst one” (Zugsmith 418–21). Zugsmith decided that