George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor and filmmaker. Remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre,Buffum, Richard (October 20, 1985). "Magic Loomed Large in World of Orson Welles" The Los Angeles Times he is considered among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
Aged 21, Welles directed high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project in New York City—starting with a celebrated 1936 adaptation of Macbeth with an African-American cast, and ending with the political musical The Cradle Will Rock in 1937. He and John Houseman then founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented Broadway productions through 1941—beginning with a modern, politically charged Caesar (1937) and ending with the premiere of Richard Wright's Native Son. In 1938, his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, which caused some listeners to believe a Martian invasion was occurring. The event rocketed the 23-year-old to notoriety, drawing offers from Hollywood studios and culminating in what is regarded as the greatest contract ever offered to a filmmaker.
His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in as the title character, Charles Foster Kane. It has been consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made. He directed 12 other features, the most acclaimed of which include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Othello (1951), Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962), and Chimes at Midnight (1966). His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots and long takes. Welles struggled for creative control while working within the studio system and later worked as an independent filmmaker, though he often failed to secure financing for his projects. He also acted in other directors' films, playing Rochester in Jane Eyre (1943), Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949), and Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (1966).
Welles has been praised as "the ultimate .Rosenbaum, Jonathan (2007) Discovering Orson Welles. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. He received an Academy Award and three Grammy Awards among other honors and accolades such as the Golden Lion in 1947, the Palme D'Or in 1952, the Academy Honorary Award in 1970, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1975, and the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1983. British Film Institute polls in 2002 voted him the greatest film director ever. In 2018, he was included in the list of the greatest Hollywood actors of all time by The Daily Telegraph.
Early life
George Orson Welles was born May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the younger of two sons of Richard Head WellesAncestry.com, Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths Index 1916–1947 [database online], Provo, Utah. Ancestry.com Operations 2011. Retrieved September 29, 2014. and Beatrice Ives Welles (née Beatrice Lucy Ives). He was named after one of his great-grandfathers, Kenosha attorney Orson S. Head, and his brother George Head.Higham, Charles, Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985 Orson's brother, Richard Ives Welles, who was ten years older, struggled with mental health problems and was often institutionalized.
Despite his family's affluence, Welles encountered hardship when his parents separated and moved to Chicago in 1919. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a type of bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. Welles's mother was a concert pianist who had studied with the pianist-composer Leopold Godowsky. She played during lectures by Dudley Crafts Watson at the Art Institute of Chicago to support her younger son and herself. Welles received piano and violin lessons arranged by his mother. Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital on May 10, 1924, just after Welles's ninth birthday. The Gordon String Quartet, which had made its first appearance at her home in 1921, played at Beatrice's funeral.
After his mother died, Welles ceased pursuing a musical career. It was decided he would spend the summer with the Watson family at a private art colony established by Lydia Avery Coonley Ward in the village of Wyoming in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. There he played and became friends with the children of Aga Khan, including the 12-year-old Prince Aly Khan. Then, in what Welles later described as "a hectic period", he lived in a Chicago apartment with his father and Maurice Bernstein, a Chicago physician who had been a close friend of his parents. Welles attended public school before his alcoholic father left business altogether and took him along on travels to Jamaica and the Far East. When they returned, they settled in a hotel his father owned in Grand Detour, Illinois. When the hotel burned down, Welles and his father took to the road again.
"During the three years that Orson lived with his father, some observers wondered who took care of whom", wrote biographer Frank Brady.
"In some ways, he was never really a young boy, you know", said Roger Hill, who became Welles's teacher and lifelong friend.
Welles attended public school in Madison, Wisconsin, enrolled in the fourth grade. On September 15, 1926, he entered the Todd Seminary for Boys, an expensive independent school in Woodstock, Illinois, that his older brother had attended until he was expelled. At Todd School, Welles came under the influence of Roger Hill, a teacher who was later the school's headmaster. Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that allowed Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged theatrical experiments and productions.
"Todd provided Welles with many valuable experiences", wrote critic Richard France. "He was able to explore and experiment in an atmosphere of acceptance and encouragement. In addition to a theatre, the school's own radio station was at his disposal." Welles's first radio experience was on that station, performing his own adaptation of Sherlock Holmes.Heyer, Paul, The Medium and the Magician: Orson Welles, the Radio Years 1934–1952. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005
On December 28, 1930, when Welles was 15, his father died of heart and kidney failure in a hotel in Chicago, aged 58. Shortly before, Welles had told his father that he refused to see him until he stopped drinking. Welles suffered lifelong guilt and despair that he was unable to express. "That was the last I ever saw of him", Welles told biographer Barbara Leaming 53 years later. "I don't want to forgive myself." His father's will left Welles to name his own guardian. When Roger Hill declined, he chose Dr. Bernstein.
Following graduation from Todd in May 1931, Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard College; his mentor Roger Hill advised him to attend Cornell College in Iowa. Instead, Welles chose travel. He studied for a few weeks at the Art Institute of ChicagoHill, Roger, One Man's Time and Chance, a Memoir of Eighty Years 1895 to 1975 . Privately printed, 1977. Woodstock Public Library collection, digitized by Illinois State Library. with Boris Anisfeld, who encouraged him to pursue painting.
Welles occasionally returned to Woodstock. He was asked in a 1960 interview, "Where is home?" and replied, "I suppose it's Woodstock, Illinois, if it's anywhere ... If I try to think of a home, it's that."
Career
Early career (1931–1935)
After his father's death, Welles traveled to Europe using a portion of his inheritance. Welles said that while on a walking and painting trip through Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of the Gate, Hilton Edwards, later said he had not believed Welles but was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned audition.Mac Liammóir, Micheál, All For Hecuba: An Irish Theatrical Biography. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1946, Welles made his stage debut at the Gate Theatre on October 13, 1931, appearing in Ashley Dukes's adaptation of Jud Süß as Duke Karl Alexander of Württemberg. He performed supporting roles in Gate productions, and produced and designed productions of his own. In March 1932, Welles performed in W. Somerset Maugham's The Circle at Dublin's Abbey Theatre and traveled to London to find work in the theatre. Unable to obtain a work permit, he returned to the U.S.
Welles found his fame ephemeral and turned to a writing project at Todd School that became immensely successful, first entitled Everybody's Shakespeare, for the first three volumes, and subsequently, The Mercury Shakespeare. In spring 1933, Welles traveled via the SS Exermont, a tramp steamer, writing the introduction for the books while on board. After landing at Morocco, he stayed as the guest of Thami El Glaoui, in the Atlas Mountains surrounding Tangier, while working on thousands of illustrations for the Everybody's Shakespeare series of educational books, a series that remained in print for decades.
In 1933, Hortense and Roger Hill invited Welles to a party in Chicago, where Welles met Thornton Wilder. Wilder arranged for Welles to meet Alexander Woollcott in New York so he could be introduced to Katharine Cornell, who was assembling a theatre company for a seven-month transcontinental repertory tour. Cornell's husband, director Guthrie McClintic, immediately put Welles under contract and cast him in three plays. Romeo and Juliet, The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Candida began touring in repertory in November 1933, with the first of more than 200 performances taking place in Buffalo, New York.
In 1934, Welles got his first job on radio—with The American School of the Air—through actor-director Paul Stewart, who introduced him to director Knowles Entrikin. That summer, Welles staged a drama festival with the Todd School at the Opera House in Woodstock, Illinois, inviting Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards from Dublin's Gate Theatre to appear along with New York stage luminaries in productions including Trilby, Hamlet, The Drunkard and Tsar Paul. At the old firehouse in Woodstock, he also shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age.
On November 14, 1934, Welles married Chicago socialite and actress Virginia Nicolson in a civil ceremony in New York. To appease the Nicolsons, who were furious at the elopement, a formal ceremony took place December 23, 1934, at the New Jersey mansion of the bride's godmother. Welles wore a cutaway borrowed from his friend George Macready.
A revised production of Katharine Cornell's Romeo and Juliet opened December 20, 1934, at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York. The Broadway production brought the 19-year-old Welles to the notice of John Houseman, a theatrical producer who was casting the lead in the debut production of one of Archibald MacLeish's verse plays, Panic.Houseman, John, Run-Through: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972, On March 22, 1935, Welles made his debut on the CBS Radio series The March of Time, performing a scene from Panic for a news report on the stage production.