OK, by popular demand of The Emperor, the Orson Welles story follows, given in the long version the way Tommy first heard it. May an eternal case of the shanks be visited upon me if what follows isn't gospel.
From 1979-1982, I wrote a column at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner called Page 2, that, not surprisingly, ran on the second page of the paper. Though I could write about anything that either interested or pissed me off that day, what I mostly wrote about was Hollywood, because, back then -- and I know this is hard to believe given today's saturation -- nobody else was. At least twice a week, and always on Friday, I'd eat lunch at a restaurant in West Hollywood called Ma Maison. The place was amazing, the modern incarnation of the old studio canteen; everyone would be there, especially on Friday -- stars, directors, producers, studio chiefs. (It was the one place I knew I could find everyone who hadn't returned my phone calls all week.) And the food was tremendous, one of the first LA outposts of what would be known as nouvelle cuisine. Wolfgang Puck, who's since become a dynasty, was the lunch chef. The other truly salient bit of background here is the declasse decor. The main dining room, a patio really, was a canvas tent attached to a much smaller indoor dining area beside the bar. Tourists who could get a lunch reservation -- and few could because the restaurant's phone number was unlisted -- would eat in that indoor Siberia, where they couldn't even get a peak at the swells on the patio. The only celeb they'd ever see who wasn't rushing to the loo in the back was the only one who'd eat inside. Orson Welles had a corner table there ever day by the bar because Gods can sit wherever they damned please. He never -- EVER -- stepped foot on the patio. I don't think he appreciated the odor.
Ma Maison's proprieter, a publicity chaser named Patrick Terrail, was a great friend of Welles's. One day I asked him to introduce me to Welles -- few intimidated me, then, and Welles was one of the few. He turned out to be anything but intimidating, and I'd regularly stop by to say hello. He was a great story-teller, obviously, and disdainful of all the posing and posturing in the other room. (But he did love the food, and was not about to deprive himself.)
Anyway, the Herald was a Hearst newspaper, (and Citizen Hearst, as everyone knows, was the not very appreciative model for Citizen Kane; indeed, Hearst, no stranger to Hollywood, tried to destroy Welles and the movie). Through my tenure at the HerEx, various Hearsts were regularly thrown our way to cut their newspaper teeth in LA, including Grandson Will Hearst (III), later editor of the SF Examiner, who was our news editor, and his cousin, The Chief's granddaughter Gina, sister of SLA Sister Tanya (aka Patty Hearst), who worked on the op-ed page. Gina was terrific, a real gamer with no airs at all, and for her last day at the paper before leaving for a job in the magazine division in NY, I offered to take her and a few mutual friends to lunch anywhere she wanted. Since it was a Friday, she wanted Ma Maison. Our table for six was toward the front of the tumult, and when we sat down, Gina sat with her back to the door so she could watch the Friday celeb table-hopping in all its g(l)ory. She could see the hubub around her on the patio, but she couldn't see arrivals and departures. Naturally, Orson Welles eventually walked in, and proceeded directly to his niche near the bar. Gina hadn't seen a thing.
But I had, and wasn't about to let a moment like this one simply pass by. I excused myself, walked into the other dining room, and briefly sat down with Orson. I told him I just wanted him to know that we were having a goodbye lunch in the other room with the granddaughter of an old, uh, pal of his. Is she a good kid, Welles wanted to know. I told him she was terrific. He took a quick look across the divide and asked which one she was. I pointed her out. He nodded. That Welles sparkle lit up.
About 20 minutes later, all eyes -- except Gina's -- turned to the patio entrance because Orson Welles, who never crossed this threshold, was lumbering into the room. Gina, in the middle of a story, was oblivious to the earthquake rumbling closer. Deftly, Welles slipped behind her, and bent down until his lips were inches from her left ear. Then whispered the most immortal two syllables in all of celluloid:
"Rosebud"
Gina jumped, turned and saw this mastadon with a completely stern face standing over her. She just stared...until Welles howled out a laugh they could probably hear on Catalina. He threw his arms out, picked Gina up off her seat, pulled her into his great girth and embraced her, thus burying the Hearst-Citizen Kane feud forever.
Now, if you've held on this far, you're probably asking, what does this all have to do with golf? Why hasn't Ran erased this as off topic? Easy. Instead of carpet, the Ma Maison patio was covered with the exact same fake green stuff they use to make artificial putting surfaces. Unlike on the golf course, nothing in that room was very real.
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