The filmmaker/writer/magician/etc. played the Riviera in 1956 and used the exterior of the Desert Inn as a location in his 1974 "mockumentary" F for Fake. But he hadn’t moved here yet. On Nov. 30, 1978, Welles signed the deed for a house at 3189 Montecito Dr., southeast of Sunset Park. He and wife Paola Mori had been looking at places in Arizona, but Welles settled on Nevada for tax purposes.
Over the next seven years, Welles lived a fragmented existence. He kept Paolo and daughter Beatrice in Las Vegas, but spent most of his time at a Hollywood pied-a-terre he shared with his mistress and collaborator, Oja Kodar. This doubled as a makeshift studio for Welles’ self-financed experimental films, as did a third residence he and Kodar shared outside Paris. He did live in Las Vegas from time to time and was interviewed here by Leslie Megahey for a documentary in BBC-TV’s "Arena" series.
Welles’ unconventional family life, understandably, gave rise to considerable acrimony between Mori and Kodar, a fight that Beatrice Welles carried on after her mother’s death. As she put it, Welles and Mori, "sort of separated toward the end because he had a girlfriend. My mother found out about it, and he denied it. She told him he could come back home [to Las Vegas] as soon as he stopped lying to her. He didn’t come home during that last year of his life, but he and my mother talked on the phone every day."
The longest consecutive period that Welles spent in Vegas is surely the 18-month stint following his decease (Oct. 10, 1985), when his ashes sat in a box under Beatrice’s desk. Paola Mori was deeded the house in Welles’ will, but didn’t have long to enjoy it; on Aug. 12, 1986, the car in which she was a passenger was struck and she suffered severe head trauma. She died at Desert Springs Hospital a few hours later.
Ironically, according to unattributed information in the Internet Movie Database, "Paola and Oja finally agreed on the settling of his will. On the way to their meeting to sign the papers, however, Paola was killed in a car accident." Beatrice Welles had her parents interred together in an orchard in a remote part of Malaga, Spain, on May 6, 1987.
Beatrice Welles continues to battle Kodar –- as well as film studios, cable networks, and Welles scholars –- in her efforts to thwart the restoration and/or completion of her father’s many films. She has even attempted to assert ownership of Citizen Kane, rights that Orson Welles signed away in 1943. She sold the Montecito Drive house in October 1993.
Kodar can be viewed at great length in F for Fake. Mori played the female lead in Welles’ Mr. Arkadin (1955) and had an uncredited supporting role in his movie of Kafka’s The Trial (1962). Beatrice Welles can be seen in his Shakespearean adaptation, Chimes at Midnight (1965), in which she plays Sir John Falstaff’s pageboy. Falstaff is portrayed by –- who else? –- Papa Orson.
