Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (
May 6,
1915 –
October 10,
1985) was an
American radio broadcaster as well as
theatre and
film director. His all-black casting of the stage version of
Macbeth gained him national prominence. He subsequently founded the
Mercury Theatre, and directed their version of
Julius Caesar, considered by many to be the finest staging in the history of the play. He gained international notoriety for his October 30, 1938 radio broadcast of
H. G. Wells'
The War of the Worlds, which sparked panic among listeners who believed an actual Martian invasion was underway. But he is best known for his 1941 film classic
Citizen Kane, often chosen in polls of film critics as the greatest film ever made.
After
Kane, unable to reconcile his ambitions with the realities of commercial film production, Welles never again reached the critical and box-office successes that he enjoyed in his youth.
Welles was born in
1915 in
Kenosha, Wisconsin, the only child of Richard Head Welles, a wealthy
inventor, and Beatrice Ives, a
concert pianist. At eighteen months, Welles was declared a child prodigy by Dr. Maurice Bernstein, a Chicago physician. His mother taught him Shakespeare, as well as the piano and violin; he learned magic from vaudevillians. When Welles was six, his parents divorced and his mother moved to Chicago with him, where he attended the opera, theatre and concerts. Beatrice Welles died of
jaundice on May 10, 1924 in a Chicago hospital. Richard Welles died when the boy was fifteen, the summer after Welles's graduation from the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Bernstein then became his guardian.
Welles performed and staged his first theatrical productions while attending the
Todd School for Boys in
Woodstock, Illinois and was brought under the guidance of a teacher, later Todd's headmaster,
Roger Hill. While there he was also tutored by Dorothy Hartshorne, a singer and the widow of theologian and philosopher
Charles Hartshorne. He made his stage debut at the
Gate Theatre of
Dublin,
Ireland in
1931 when he talked himself onto the stage and appeared in small supporting roles. By
1934 he was a
radio director and actor in the
United States, working with some cast members who would later join him in forming the
Mercury Theatre. In that year, he married the actress and socialite
Virginia Nicholson. His early film, the eight-minute silent short film
The Hearts of Age, also featured Nicholson.
In
1936, the
Federal Theatre Projects, as part of
Roosevelt's New Deal, began putting unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Welles was assigned to direct a project in Harlem. His all-black
Macbeth was set in Haiti, at the court of King Henri Christophe, and is considered a landmark of African-American theatre tradition. Welles was 21, and hailed as a prodigy.
After the success of
Macbeth, Welles put on
Dr. Faustus and a satire,
Horse Eats Hat. In
1937,
Marc Blitzstein's
The Cradle Will Rock at the
Maxine Elliott Theatre was closed by the
Federal Theatre Project on the day of its first dress rehearsal. Welles and his co-producer,
John Houseman, announced to ticketholders that the show was being taken to another theater. Cast, crew and audience walked to The Venice, about twenty blocks away.
The Cradle Will Rock began with its author introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment onstage. Since the unions forbade the actors and musicians to perform from the stage, it was played from the audience seats. The show was a hit.
Welles and Houseman formed their own company, the
Mercury Theatre. Their first production was
Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar, set in a modern police state. Cinna the Poet died at the hands not of a mob but a secret police force. According to
Norman Lloyd, who played Cinna, "it stopped the show." The applause lasted more than 3 minutes. It was a great success and widely acclaimed.
At the same time, Welles became very active on radio, first as an actor and soon as a director and producer. He began playing Lamont Cranston,
The Shadow, in late
1937, and in the summer of
1938 with the
Mercury Theatre began weekly broadcasts of radio plays based on literary works. Their
October 30 broadcast of that year was
H. G. Wells'
The War of the Worlds. This brought Welles fame on an international level, as the program's realism created widespread panic among listeners, a panic that was reported around the world. Because of the notoriey of the production, Hollywood offers soon came Welles' way.
Among other radio series Welles produced and directed were:
*
The Orson Welles Show*
Hello Americans, utilizing music and research for his unfinished film
It's All True;
*
Ceiling Unlimited*
The Orson Welles Almanac, a touring show of comedy and magic, and
*
Orson Welles' Commentaries In addition to American radio, Welles also starred in
The Lives of Harry Lime in 1951-52 for the BBC. He hosted and produced another BBC series,
The Black Museum, dramatizing famous cases from
Scotland Yard's "Museum of Death."
After the War of the Worlds broadcast,
RKO Pictures offered what is considered to have been the greatest contract ever offered: A two-picture deal with total artistic control, including script, cast, final cut and crew. With this offer in hand, Welles moved to
Hollywood.
At first, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project for
RKO, settling briefly on an adaptation of
Joseph Conrad's
Heart of Darkness. He planned to film the action with a subjective camera from the protagonist's point of view. But when a budget was drawn up, RKO's enthusiasm began to cool.
Realizing that he had to come up with something or else lose out on his contract, Welles finally found a suitable project in an idea suggested by screenwriter
Herman Mankiewicz. Initially called
American, it was eventually Welles' first feature film,
Citizen Kane (
1941).
Mankiewicz idea was based mainly on the life of
William Randolph Hearst, whom Mankiewicz knew socially, being great friends with Hearst's mistress,
Marion Davies. The character was also loosely based on
Howard Hughes. At Welles' urging, Mankiewicz slowly began developing the idea into a screenplay. Welles then took the Mankiewicz pages and rewrote them. Though there is no question that the character of Charles Foster Kane is based on Hearst, there is also no question that he is also based on Welles himself. This is most noticeable in the treatment Welles gave to the childhood of Kane, which is virtually identical to the childhood Welles had, up to and including the kindly Jewish guardian that the orphaned Welles/Kane had.
Once the script was completed, Welles proceeded to hire the best technicians he could, including
Gregg Toland, considered one of the best cinematographers of the time. Insofar as the cast, Welles used most of his friends from the
Mercury Theatre group. To all of them, Welles gave free reign.
There was little concern or controversy at the time that Welles completed production on the film. However, in an act that can only be considered self-sabotage,
Herman Mankiewicz gave a copy of the final shooting script to a friend of his who he knew was the nephew of Marion Davies, Hearst's mistress. In this way, Hearst found out about the existence of the movie, and sent his gossip columnist,
Louella Parsons, to a screening of the picture. Parsons, realizing immediately that the film was based on Hearst's life, reported back to him. Thus began the controversy over Citizen Kane.
Hearst's media empire boycotted the film, and exerted an enormous amount of pressure on the Hollywood film community. At one point, all of the heads of the studios met, and offered RKO to buy out the negative and all the existing prints for the cost of the movie, for the express purpose of burning it. RKO dallied, and eventually the film was released, though not with much studio support.
Because of the lack of studio support, though the film was critically well-received and garnered nine Academy Award nominations, it fared poorly at the box-office.
Welles' second film for RKO was
The Magnificent Ambersons, adapted from the
Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel by
Booth Tarkington, and on which RKO executives hoped to make back the money lost by
Citizen Kane's relative commercial failure.
Simultaneously, he worked on a spy thriller,
Journey Into Fear, which he co-wrote with
Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was also a producer. Direction was credited solely to
Norman Foster, but the film is evidently co-directed by Welles.
During the production of
Ambersons, Welles was asked to make a
documentary film about
South America on behalf of the
government. Welles left the United States to begin shooting this documentary after putting together the first rough cut of
The Magnificent Ambersons, on the understanding that further editing decisions would be carried out via telegram. The studio wrested control of the film from Welles'
Mercury Productions staff, cut over fifty minutes of footage, and rearranged the editing. Welles' South American documentary, titled
It's All True, never saw completion in his lifetime. The surviving footage was released in
1993.
In
1946,
International Pictures released Welles' film
The Stranger, starring
Edward G. Robinson,
Loretta Young and Welles.
Sam Spiegel produced the film, which details the American life of a
Nazi war criminal. He next made
The Lady from Shanghai at
Columbia Pictures. Welles starred with his second wife,
Rita Hayworth.
The Lady from Shanghai suffered heavy editing by the studio, with approximately an hour removed from Welles' final cut.
At
Republic Pictures, he directed
Macbeth. The released version was trimmed of about twenty minutes of footage, including a ten-minute take.
Welles left Hollywood for Europe in
1948.
The following year, Welles appeared as
Harry Lime in
The Third Man with
Joseph Cotten. Several episodes of his later radio series
The Lives of Harry Lime written by Welles himself served as the basis of
Mr. Arkadin.
From
1949 to
1952, Welles worked on
Othello, filming on location in
Europe and
Morocco. It won the
Palme d'Or at the
Cannes Film Festival, but was not given a general release in the United States and played only in
New York and
Los Angeles. In
1992, the American release version of this film was subject to a controversial restoration from a nitrate negative, despite the fact the original European version of the film was widely available and popular in Europe. With a drastically changed and completely rerecorded soundtrack, the film went on a successful theatrical run in America.
Mr. Arkadin (
1955) stars Welles as a magnate whose past is obscure and brought to light at his own insistence by the investigations of a prospective son-in-law.
In
1958, Welles returned to Hollywood to film
Whit Masterson's novel
Badge of Evil (which he famously claimed never to have read). Originally only hired as an actor, he was promoted to director by Universal Studios when
Charlton Heston refused to star in the film unless Welles was at the helm.
Touch of Evil was wrested from Welles' hands, cut down and reshot. He protested in a 58-page memo outlining his objections to the studio's version. Even in this state, the film was widely praised across Europe, awarded the top prize at the
Brussels World's Fair by judges (and then critics)
François Truffaut and
Jean-Luc Godard, who both cited it as being highly influential on their own respective debuts,
The 400 Blows (
1959) and
Breathless (
1960). In
1998, editor
Walter Murch, working from the original memo and a workprint version, restored the film as close as possible to Welles' original vision.
Welles spent most of the rest of his directorial career in Europe, financed with acting fees or by sympathetic producers. On most of these projects he retained final cut, but the independence thus gained also resulted in drastically reduced budgets and technical facilities. Despite these setbacks, some of Welles' best work was produced during this period, including
The Trial and
Chimes at Midnight.
He returned to Hollywood in the early seventies, where he continued to work on various film and television projects, including the fully-shot and mostly-edited
The Other Side of the Wind, and remained there until his death in
1985.
F for Fake (
1974) is a tale of art forgery and other forms of charlatanism.
Welles' major work in television is little known.
The Orson Welles Sketchbook (1955) was created for the
BBC and featured Welles telling stories and drawing pictures to illustrate them. The director also created
Around the World with Orson Welles (
1955) for the BBC. In this series, he experimented with a film-essay format, foreshadowing his later
F for Fake (
1974). Welles also guest-starred as himself on a 1956 episode of
I Love Lucy called "Lucy Meets Orson Welles".
The Fountain of Youth (
1958) was made for American TV and in it Welles offers some possibilities for expanding the medium's vocabulary. Between 1965 and 1984 Welles made several appearances on Dean Martin's Variety Series (
1965) and Celebrity Roasts as a guest panelist.
The Immortal Story (
1968) was filmed for French television and stars Welles himself with
Jeanne Moreau, from a short story by
Isak Dinesen. In
Portrait of Gina (1958), the director and narrator roams through Italy, finally arriving at
Gina Lollobrigida's home. Welles continued to work in TV through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, but little of it was ever broadcast. A version of
The Merchant of Venice (
1969) was not completed because a reel was stolen and never recovered. Clips from unfinished TV projects appear in the documentary
Orson Welles: The One-Man Band (1995), a look at many of the director's various unreleased projects.He provided the voice of famous writer,
Robin Masters owner of the estate that Higgins and Magnum resided in on
Magnum, P.I.Welles in his later years was unable to get funding for his many filmscripts. After a studio auction, he complained that
Steven Spielberg spent $50,000 for a Rosebud sled, but wouldn't give him a dime to make a picture.
During his career he won one
Oscar and was nominated for a further four. Among his later film appearances were as Father Mapple in
John Huston's
Moby-Dick (
1956), as
Cardinal Wolsey in
A Man for All Seasons (
1966), and as General Dreedle in
Mike Nichols's
Catch-22 (
1970). In
1971 the Academy gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures".
Welles died at his home in Hollywood, California at the age of 70 on
October 10,
1985. He had various projects underway,
King Lear,
The Orson Welles Magic Show and
The Dreamers, from two stories by
Isak Dinesen, of which around twenty-five minutes had been filmed. Only weeks before his passing, he had completed recording for what proved to be his final performance, as the voice of the planet-sized robot
Unicron for the animated feature,
Transformers: The Movie. Welles' opinion of his final role was extremely dismissive and angry. He referred to playing Unicron as a toy in a movie where two groups of toys do awful things to each other.
His ashes were placed at a friend's estate in
Ronda, Spain, at his request. According to some reports, some of his ashes have been scattered in the town's famous
Plaza de Toros, the oldest bullfighting ring in Spain still in use.
Welles' exile from Hollywood and reliance on independent production meant that many of his later projects were filmed piecemeal or were not completed. In the mid-
1950s, Welles began work on
Cervantes' Don Quixote, initially a commission from
CBS television. Welles expanded the film to feature length, developing the screenplay to take Quixote and
Sancho Panza into the modern age. The project was finally abandoned with the death of
Francisco Reiguera, the actor playing Quixote, in
1969. An incomplete version of the film was released in
1992.
In
1970 Welles began shooting
The Other Side of the Wind, about the effort of a film director (played by
John Huston) to complete his last Hollywood picture, and is largely set at a lavish party. Although in
1972 the film was reported by Welles as being "96% complete", the negative remained in a Paris vault until
2004, when
Peter Bogdanovich (who also acted in the film) announced his intention to complete the production. Footage is included in the documentary
Working with Orson Welles (
1993)
Other unfinished projects include an adaptation of
Charles Williams'
The Deep, abandoned due to the death of
Laurence Harvey one scene away from completion, and
The Big Brass Ring, the script of which was adapted and filmed by
George Hickenlooper in
1999.
*Welles felt that
The Trial and
Chimes at Midnight were his most rewarding achievements,
Touch of Evil the most fun he had making a film and
The Stranger to be the least of his films.
*It was Orson Welles who suggested to
Peter Bogdanovich that he film
The Last Picture Show in black & white.
*As a child he was deeply fascinated by conjuring, both stage and close up. There is a myth that the young Welles was taught magic by
Harry Houdini when he was 5 years old. He travelled with a magic act on several occasions throughout his adult life. His interest in the psychology employed by a magician surfaced in much of his film-making. For example, in
Citizen Kane, during the dialogue in the famous puzzle scene with his wife Susan Alexander, Kane walks back in the shot to stand near the fireplace. He is unexpectedly dwarfed by the fireplace; a visual representation of his downward decline. The optical illusion obtained by Welles employs principles of 'manipulation of perspective' used by magicians.
*During Welles'
radio years, he often freelanced and would split his time between the
Mercury Theatre,
CBS,
Mutual, and
NBC, among others. Due to this, Welles rarely rehearsed, instead reading ahead during other actors' lines, a practice used by some radio stars of the time. Many of his co-stars on
The Shadow have remarked about this in various interviews. There are a number of
apocryphal stories where Welles was reported to have turned to an actor during the mid-show commercial break and commented that this week's story was fascinating and he couldn't wait to "find out how it all ends." Welles admitted to preferring the
cold-reading style in his on-air performances as he described the hectic nature of radio work to
Peter Bogdanovich in
This Is Orson Welles:
Soon I was doing so many [programs] that I didn't even rehearse. I'd come to a bad end in some tearjerker on the seventh floor of CBS and rush up to the ninth (they'd hold an elevator for me), where, just as the red light was going on, somebody'd hand me a script and whisper, "Chinese mandarin, seventy-five years old", and off I'd go again... Not rehearsing... made it so much more interesting. When I was thrown down the well or into some fiendish snake pit, I never knew how I'd get out.
*Also due to Welles' often tight radio schedule, he was hard pressed to find ways to get from job to job in busy
New York City traffic. In an interview conducted in his later years, Welles tells how he "discovered that there was no law in
New York that you had to be sick to travel in an
ambulance." Therefore, he took to hiring ambulances to take him, sirens blazing, through the crowded streets to get to various buildings.
*Orson Welles was
Francis Ford Coppola's first choice to play Colonel Kurtz in
Apocalypse Now (
1979), based on the novel
Heart of Darkness which Welles was planning to adapt before he wrote
Citizen Kane.
*His regular dinner: two steaks and a pint of scotch. During his early years, especially while filming
Citizen Kane, Welles' entire dinner menu also included a full pineapple, triple
pistachio ice cream, and a full bottle of scotch.
*According to a 1941 physical (Welles was 26), he was 72 inches tall, and weighed 218 pounds. His eyes were brown. (From the first volume of
Simon Callow's biography:
Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu.)
*He was born on the day that
Babe Ruth hit his first home run.
*Was dating
Billie Holiday at a point.
*Welles had three daughters: children's author
Chris Welles Feder, born 1937; mother Virginia Nicholson, Rebecca Welles Manning, born in 1944, died 2004; mother,
Rita Hayworth and
Beatrice Welles, born in November 1955, mother,
Paola Mori.
*Was parodied by comedian
Bill Martin in his monologue,
An Evening with Sir William Martin.
*He has been portrayed by
Vincent D'Onofrio with his voice dubbed by
Maurice LaMarche in
Ed Wood and the 2005 short film
Five Minutes, Mr Welles,
Angus Macfayden in
Cradle Will Rock,
Liev Schreiber in
RKO 281,
Jean Guerin in
Heavenly Creatures,
Danny Huston in the upcoming
Fade to Black,
Paul Shenar in
The Night That Panicked America,
Eric Purcell in
Malice in Wonderland, John Candy in
Second City Television and the voice of
Maurice LaMarche in various animation and films.
*Voiced a trailer for
The Incredible Shrinking Man in 1957.
*He died the same day as
Yul Brynner.
*The Brain, the evil genius lab mouse in the cartoon series
Pinky and the Brain, was loosely based on Orson Welles. The Brain even parodies Welles'
The War of the Worlds broadcast and his infamous radio commercial argument. Voice artist
Maurice LaMarche provided the voice of The Brain, and would later portray a bloated Orson Welles at the low point of his television career in
The Critic.
*His last filmed appearance was on the television show
Moonlighting. He recorded an introduction to an episode entitled "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice," which was partially filmed in black and white. The episode aired five days after his death and was dedicated to his memory.
*His final role was the voice of the planet eating robot
Unicron in
Transformers: The Movie, released almost a year after his death on
August 8,
1986.
*Welles narrated "Drippy the Runaway Raindrop" by Sidney, Mary and Alexandra Sheldon which continues to be a popular English educational series in Japan.
*When asked to describe Welles' influence,
Jean-Luc Godard remarked: "Everyone will always owe him everything." (Ciment, 42)
Directed by WellesHearts of Age (1934) - Welles' first film, a silent one-reeler made at age 18.
Too Much Johnson (1938)
Citizen Kane (1941) - won
Oscar for Best Writing (Original Screenplay); nominated for Best Actor, Best Picture and Best Director.
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) - nominated for Oscar for Best Picture; shortened and recut against Welles' wishes, footage forever lost
The Stranger (1946)
The Lady from Shanghai (1947) - shortened and recut against Welles' wishes, footage forever lost
Macbeth (1948) - shortened and recut against Welles' wishes, recently restored to original vision
Othello (1952) - won the
Palme d'Or,
1952 Cannes Film FestivalMr. Arkadin (aka Confidential Report) (1955) - shortened and recut against Welles' wishes,
Criterion's restoration released in April 2006.
Touch of Evil (1958) - won the top-prize at the Brussels World's Fair; shortened and recut against Welles' wishes, recently restored to original vision
The Trial (1962)
Chimes at Midnight (1965)
The Immortal Story (1968)
The Deep (1970) - unfinished
The Other Side of the Wind (1970-76) - currently unreleased, restoration in progress
F for Fake (aka Vérités et mensonges) (1974)
Other notable filmsSwiss Family Robinson (1940) - narration
It's All True (1942)
Journey Into Fear (1943) - actor, rumored to be co-director with
Norman Foster. Welles denied he directed it.
Jane Eyre (1944) - actor (Rochester)
Duel in the Sun (1946) - narration
Monsieur Verdoux (1947) - story idea
The Third Man (1949)- actor, dialogue
Moby Dick (1956) - cameo role as actor
Man in the Shadow (1957) - actor
The Long Hot Summer (1958) Will Varner
Compulsion (1959) - actor
A Man for All Seasons (1966) - actor
I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967) - actor
Casino Royale (1967) - as
Bond villain
Le Chiffre ("Zero" or "The Cipher")
Don Quixote (1969, version released 1992) - writer, director, actor
The Battle of Neretva (1969) - as
Chetnik senator
Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) - narration, cameo role
Catch-22 (1970) - actor
Waterloo (1970) - actor
Flame of Persia (1972) - Documentary narration
The Muppet Movie (1979) - cameo
History of the World, Part One (1981) - narration
The Dreamers (1980-82, unfinished) - actor, writer, director
Transformers: The Movie (1986) - voice actor
* Callow, Simon.
The Road to Xanadu. Cape, 1995.
* Callow, Simon.
Hello Americans. Cape, 2006.
* Cowie, Peter.
The Cinema of Orson Welles, Da Capo Press, 1973.
* Heylin, Clinton.
Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios, Chicago Review Press, 2005.
* Mac Liammóir, Micháel.
Put Money in Thy Purse: The Filming of Orson Welles' Othello, Methuen, 1976.
* McBride, Joseph.
Orson Welles, Da Capo Press, 1996.
* Naremore, James.
The Magic World of Orson Welles, Southern Methodist University Press, 1989.
* Naremore, James.
Citizen Kane: A Casebook, Oxford University Press, 2004.
* Thomson, David.
Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, Vintage, 1996.
* Welles, Orson et al.
This is Orson Welles, Da Capo Press, 1998.
* Higham, Charles.
Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius, St. Martin's Press, 1985
*
Ciment, Michel. "Les Enfants Terrible,"
American Film (Dec. 1984)
*
Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): Orson Welles*
War Of The Worlds website provides history of the broadcast and additional historical material on War Of The Worlds
*
Mercury Theatre on the Air website provides MP3 and Real Audio files of Welles' radio dramas
*
Wellesnet The Orson Welles Web Resource
*
The Magnificent Ambersons a site that details the strange saga of Welles' second film
*
The Unseen Welles a guide to Welles' unfinished and unreleased projects
*
The Orson Welles collection at the Lilly Library
*
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database*
UBU Web's 365 Days Project Outtake from Welles'
Frozen Peas commercial.
*
MovieMaker Magazine Article on hoped for eventual release of final Welles film
The Other Side Of The Wind.
