John Houseman

In 1934, Houseman was looking to cast Panic, a play he was producing based on a drama by Archibald MacLeish concerning a Wall Street financier whose world crumbles about him when consumed by the crash of 1929. Although the central figure is a man in his late fifties, Houseman became obsessed by the notion that a young man named Orson Welles he had seen in Katharine Cornell's production of Romeo and Juliet was the only person qualified to play the leading role. Welles consented and, after preliminary conversations, agreed to leave the play he was in after a single night to take the lead in Houseman's production. Panic opened at the Imperial Theatre on March 15, 1935. Among the cast was Houseman's ex-wife, Zita Johann, who had co-starred with Boris Karloff three years earlier in Universal's The Mummy.

Although the play opened to indifferent notices and ran for a mere three performances, it nevertheless led to the forging of a theatrical team, a fruitful but stormy partnership in which Houseman said Welles "was the teacher, I, the apprentice."

He supervised the direction of Walk Together Chillun in 1936.

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. The Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project was headed by Rose McClendon, a well-known black actress, and Houseman, a theatre producer. Houseman describes the experience in one of his memoirs:

Within a year of its formation, the Federal Theatre had more than fifteen thousand men and women on its payroll at an average wage of approximately twenty dollars a week. During the four years of its existence its productions played to more than thirty million people in more than two hundred theatres as well as portable stages, school auditoriums and public parks the country over.[11]

W.P.A. Federal Theater Project in New York: Negro Theatre Unit: "Macbeth", ca. 1935.

Houseman immediately hired Welles and assigned him to direct Macbeth for the FTP's Negro Theater Unit, a production that became known as the "Voodoo Macbeth", as it was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe (and with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters) and starred Jack Carter in the title role. The incidental music was composed by Virgil Thomson. The play premiered at the Lafayette Theatre on April 14, 1936, to enthusiastic reviews and remained sold out for each of its nightly performances. The play was regarded by critics and patrons as an enormous, if controversial, success. After 10 months with the Negro Theater Project, however, Houseman felt he was faced with the dilemma of risking his future:

... on a partnership with a 20-year-old boy in whose talent I had unquestioning faith but with whom I must increasingly play the combined and tricky roles of producer, censor, adviser, impresario, father, older brother and bosom friend.[11]

Houseman later produced for the Negro Theatre Unit, Turpentine (1936), without Welles.

In 1936, Houseman and Welles were running a WPA unit in midtown Manhattan for classic productions called Project No. 891. Their first production was Christopher Marlowe's Tragical History of Dr. Faustus which Welles directed while also playing the title role.

Houseman and Welles put on Horse Eats Hat (1936). Houseman, without Welles, helped in the direction of Leslie Howard's production of Hamlet (1936).

Original poster for Project #891's production of The Cradle Will Rock

In June 1937, Project No. 891 produced their most controversial work with The Cradle Will Rock. Written by Marc Blitzstein the musical was about Larry Foreman, a worker in Steeltown (played in the original production by Howard Da Silva), which is run by the boss, Mister Mister (played in the original production by Will Geer). The show was thought to have had left-wing and unionist sympathies (Foreman ends the show with a song about "unions" taking over the town and the country), and became legendary as an example of a "censored" show. Shortly before the show was to open, FTP officials in Washington announced that no productions would open until after July 1, 1937, the beginning of the new fiscal year.

In his memoir, Run-Through, Houseman wrote about the circumstances surrounding the opening night at the Maxine Elliott Theatre. All the performers had been enjoined not to perform on stage for the production when it opened on July 14, 1937. The cast and crew left their government-owned theatre and walked 20 blocks to another theatre, with the audience following. No one knew what to expect; when they got there Blitzstein himself was at the piano and started playing the introduction music. One of the non-professional performers, Olive Stanton, who played the part of Moll, the prostitute, stood up in the audience, and began singing her part. All the other performers, in turn, stood up for their parts. Thus the "oratorio" version of the show was born. Apparently, Welles had designed some intricate scenery, which ended up never being used. The event was so successful that it was repeated several times on subsequent nights, with everyone trying to remember and reproduce what had happened spontaneously the first night. The incident, however, led to Houseman being fired and Welles's resignation from Project No. 891.

That same year, 1937, after detaching themselves from the Federal Theatre Project, Houseman and Welles did The Cradle Will Rock as an independent production on Broadway. They also founded the acclaimed New York drama company, the Mercury Theatre. Houseman wrote of their collaboration at this time:

On the broad wings of the Federal eagle, we had risen to success and fame beyond ourselves as America's youngest, cleverest, most creative and audacious producers to whom none of the ordinary rules of the theater applied.[11]

Armed with a manifesto written by Houseman[12] declaring their intention to foster new talent, experiment with new types of plays, and appeal to the same audiences that frequented the Federal Theater the company was designed largely to offer plays of the past, preferably those that "...seem to have emotion or factual bearing on contemporary life." The company mounted several notable productions, the most remarkable being its first commercial production of Julius Caesar. Houseman called the decision to use modern dress "an essential element in Orson's conception of the play as a political melodrama with clear contemporary parallels."

Houseman and Welles later presented The Shoemakers' Holiday (1938), Heartbreak House (1938) and Danton's Death (1938).

Beginning in the summer of 1938, the Mercury Theatre was featured in a weekly dramatic radio program on the CBS network, initially promoted as First Person Singular before gaining the official title The Mercury Theatre on the Air. An adaptation of Treasure Island was scheduled for the program's first broadcast, for which Houseman worked feverishly on the script. However, a week before the show was to air, Welles decided that a program far more dramatic was required. To Houseman's horror, Treasure Island was abandoned in favor of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with Welles playing the infamous vampire. During an all night session at Perkins' Restaurant, Welles and Houseman hashed out a script.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air subsequently became famous for its notorious 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which had put much of the country in a panic.[13] By all accounts, Welles was shocked by the panic that ensued. According to Houseman, "he hadn't the faintest idea what the effect would be". CBS was inundated with calls; newspaper switchboards were jammed.

Without Welles, Houseman staged The Devil and Daniel Webster (1939).

While Houseman was teaching at Vassar College, he produced Welles' never-completed second short film, Too Much Johnson (1938). The film was never publicly screened and no print of the film was thought to have survived. Footage was rediscovered in 2013.[14]

The Welles-Houseman collaboration continued in Hollywood. In the spring of 1939, Welles began preliminary discussions with RKO's head of production, George Schaefer, with Welles and his Mercury players being given a two-picture deal, in which Welles would produce, direct, perform, and have full creative control of his projects.

For his motion picture debut, Welles first considered adapting Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for the screen. A 200-page script was written. Some models were constructed, while the shooting of initial test footage had begun. However, little, if anything, had been done either to whittle down the budgetary difficulties or begin filming. When RKO threatened to eliminate the payment of salaries by December 31 if no progress had been made, Welles announced that he would pay his cast out of his own pocket. Houseman proclaimed that there wasn't enough money in their business account to pay anyone. During a corporate dinner for the Mercury crew, Welles exploded, calling his partner a "bloodsucker" and a "crook". As Houseman attempted to leave, Welles began hurling dish heaters at him, effectively ending both their partnership and friendship.

Houseman later, however, played a pivotal role in ushering Citizen Kane (1941), which starred Welles. Welles telephoned Houseman asking him to return to Hollywood to "babysit" screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz while he completed the script, and keep him away from alcohol. Still drawn to Welles, as was virtually everyone in his sphere, Houseman agreed. Although Welles took credit for the screenplay of Kane, Houseman stated that the credit belonged to Mankiewicz, an assertion that led to a final break with Welles. Houseman took some credit himself for the general shaping of the story line and for editing the script. In an interview with Penelope Huston for Sight & Sound magazine (Autumn, 1962) Houseman said that the writing of Citizen Kane was a delicate subject:

I think Welles has always sincerely felt that he, single-handed, wrote Citizen Kane and everything else that he has directed — except, possibly, the plays of Shakespeare. But the script of Kane was essentially Mankiewicz's. The conception and the structure were his, all the dramatic Hearstian mythology and the journalistic and political wisdom he had been carrying around with him for years and which he now poured into the only serious job he ever did in a lifetime of film writing. But Orson turned Kane into a film: the dynamics and the tensions are his and the brilliant cinematic effects — all those visual and aural inventions that add up to make Citizen Kane one of the world's great movies — those were pure Orson Welles.

In 1975, during an interview with Kate McCauley, Houseman stated that film critic Pauline Kael in her essay "Raising Kane", had caused an "idiotic controversy" over the issue: "The argument is Orson's own fault. He wanted to be given all the credit because he's a hog. Actually, it is his film. So it's a ridiculous argument."[15][16]

After he and Welles went their separate ways, Houseman went on to direct The Devil and Daniel Webster (1939) and Liberty Jones (1941) and produced the Mercury Theatre's stage production of Native Son (1941) on Broadway, directed by Welles.

In Hollywood he became a vice-president of David O. Selznick Productions. His most notable achievement during that time was helping adapt and produce the adaptation of Jane Eyre (1943) which starred Joan Fontaine and Welles.

At the National Film Society convention in Los Angeles, 1979

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Houseman quit his job and became the head of the overseas radio division of the Office of War Information (OWI), working for the Voice of America whilst also managing its operations in New York City.[17]

In 1945 Houseman signed a contract with Paramount Pictures to produce movies. His first credit for that studio was The Unseen (1945). He followed it with Miss Susie Slagle's (1945) and The Blue Dahlia (1946), both with Veronica Lake. The latter, starring Alan Ladd and written by Raymond Chandler, has become a classic.

He left Paramount and returned to Broadway to direct Lute Song (1946) with Mary Martin.

Back in Hollywood he produced Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) for Max Ophuls at Universal.

Houseman went to RKO where he produced They Live by Night (1948) the directorial debut of Nicholas Ray. He also did The Company She Keeps (1949) and On Dangerous Ground (1951).

He returned to Broadway to produce Joy to the World (1949) and King Lear (1950-51), the latter with Louis Calhern.

RKO's head of production had been Dore Schary. When Schary moved to MGM he offered Houseman a contract at the studio, which the producer accepted.

Houseman's stint at MGM began with Holiday for Sinners (1952); then he had a huge success with The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), directed by Vincente Minnelli. He followed it with the film adaptation of Julius Caesar (1953) (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture)

Also popular was Executive Suite (1954), although Her Twelve Men (1954), Minnelli's The Cobweb (1955) and Fritz Lang's Moonfleet (1955) all lost money. So did Lust for Life (1956), a biopic directed by Minnelli of Vincent van Gogh, although it was extremely well-received critically.

Houseman moved into television producing, notably doing The Seven Lively Arts (1957) and episodes of Playhouse 90.

He also returned to theatre, producing revivals of Measure for Measure (1957) and The Duchess of Malfi (1957).

Houseman was enticed back to MGM as a producer, and given his own production company, John Houseman Productions. His films were All Fall Down (1962), Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) and In the Cool of the Day (1963).

Houseman returned to television where he made The Great Adventure and Journey to America (1964). He returned to Hollywood briefly to produce This Property Is Condemned (1966), then went back to TV for Evening Primrose (1966).

He went back to Broadway directing Pantagleize (1967).

Houseman in 1973

Houseman became the founding director of the Drama Division at The Juilliard School, and held this position from 1968 until 1976.[18][19] The first graduating class in 1972 included Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone; subsequent classes under Houseman's leadership included Christopher Reeve, Mandy Patinkin, and Robin Williams.[20]

Unwilling to see that very first class disbanded upon graduation, Houseman and his Juilliard colleague Margot Harley formed them into an independent, touring repertory company they named the "Group 1 Acting Company." [21] The organization was subsequently renamed The Acting Company, and has been active for more than 40 years. Houseman served as the producing artistic director through 1986, and Harley has been the Company's producer since its founding.[22] Writing in The New York Times in 1996, Mel Gussow called it "the major touring classical theater in the United States."[23]

Houseman continued to be involved in theatre, producing The School for Wives (1971), The Three Sisters (1973), The Beggar's Opera (1973), Scapin (1973), Next Time I'll Sing to You (1974), The Robber Bridegroom (1975), Edward II (1975), and The Time of Your Life (1975)

He directed The Country Girl (1972), Don Juan in Hell (1973), Measure for Measure (1973), and Clarence Darrow (1974) (with Henry Fonda).

In 1979, Houseman earned induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame[24]

In the 1980s Houseman became more widely known for his role as grandfather Edward Stratton II in Silver Spoons, which starred Rick Schroder, and for his commercials for brokerage firm Smith Barney, which featured the catchphrase, "They make money the old fashioned way... they earn it ." Another was Puritan brand cooking oil, with "less saturated fat than the leading oil", featuring the famous 'tomato test'.

He played Jewish author Aaron Jastrow (loosely based on the real life figure of Bernard Berenson) in the highly acclaimed 1983 miniseries The Winds of War (receiving a fourth Golden Globe nomination). He declined to reprise the role when the sequel War and Remembrance was made into a miniseries (the role then went to Sir John Gielgud).

However he was in the miniseries A.D. (1984), Noble House (1986), and Lincoln (1986).

Having played a Harvard Law School professor in the film The Paper Chase (1973), he reprised the role in a television series of the same name, which ran from 1978 to 1986. During that time, he received two Golden Globe nominations for "Best Actor in a TV Series — Drama".