Here’s episode three of Orson Welles marvelous six-part monologue series ‘Orson Welles’ Sketchbook’, which he made for the BBC in 1955. I posted the first entry in which he recalls his beginnings in the Irish theater on Monday. Yesterday I posted Orson discussing critics and Voodoo. Today the subject is the police–and his point of view on the necessity to ‘police the police’ is timely, daring and in its day a bit shocking. The mid-50s were a time of extreme government and policing overreach with private citizens having to sign loyalty oaths etc. etc. Now, Orson is in Europe while delivering this polite little tirade–he skirted the blacklisting era (in which he would most certainly have been targeted for his very liberal and publicly espoused views in the 1940s) by being abroad for most of the decade. I still think, though, that it took quite a bit guts to express these views at this time in history. Of course, as we all know, Orson had quite a bit of guts…three hundred plus pounds of it. There–I made a fat joke. I’m sorry. Anyway, his manner is charming, dour, serious, whimsical and at all times that of a performer who knows how to reel in his audience. Or at least his dinner companion, which is how these intimately delivered monologues makes me feel. Enjoy part three of six…