Cinema: Welles’s Terms

A holdout against Hollywood blandishments for two years has been pudding-faced, precocious Orson Welles, 24-year-old actor-manager of Manhattan’s Mercury Theatre. Last week, when young Mr. Welles put his name to a one-picture-a-year contract with RKO, the terms for which he had been holding out were revealed. The terms: he will pick his own pictures, produce them under the Mercury banner (for RKO release), use Broadway instead of Hollywood players, serve as actor, co-author and director, and all without spending more than 18 weeks away from Broadway. First picture—Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.