Orson Welles
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| Orson Welles | |
|---|---|
| George Orson Welles | |
| Birthday | |
| Birthplace | Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Actor, film director, theatre director, screenwriter, playwright, film producer, radio personality |
Welles, (George) Orson
(1915–85) stage/movie actor, director; born in Kenosha, Wis. Son of a wealthy inventor and a concert pianist, he was a precocious child who staged miniproductions of Shakespeare in his house. When his mother died in 1925, he went on a world tour with his father, then attended a private school in Illinois where he continued to direct plays (1926–31). With his father's death in 1927, he became the ward of a Chicago physician, Dr. Maurice Bernstein. Welles turned down college and set off for Ireland on a sketching tour—he had shown talent as an artist—and ended up acting with Dublin's famous Gate Theatre (1931). He returned to the U.S.A. in 1932, toured with Katharine Cornell's road company, and made his Broadway debut—as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet —in 1934, the year he also gave his first radio performance. With John Houseman, he collaborated on productions for the Phoenix Theatre Group and the Federal Theater Project; they then founded the Mercury Theatre in 1937, noted for such productions as an all-African-American Macbeth. In 1938, Welles and Houseman began to produce plays on their Mercury Theatre on the Air; that October 30, as a Halloween spoof, they broadcast a dramatization of H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, so realistic in conveying a Martian invasion that it led to a literal panic in the Northeast. His growing reputation led to his being hired by RKO in Hollywood but none of his initial projects got into production. Then he made Citizen Kane (1941), which despite its success with critics and a few metropolitan audiences, was not all that successful at the time. Two more movies, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and The Lady from Shanghai (1948), were heavily edited by the studios and only years later recognized as superb works. From this point on, Welles suffered from his reputation as an erratic filmmaker who couldn't hold to budgets or schedules, and he would spend the rest of his life forced to seeking financing for his projects. By about 1946, he was effectively in exile in Europe where he continued to act in others' movies (The Third Man, 1949) to earn money so that he could make his own (Othello, 1952; Chimes at Midnight/Falstaff, 1966). Back in the U.S.A. by the mid-1970s, he found himself honored as one of the true geniuses of American movies, but thereafter he was reduced to appearances in grade-B movies, television talk shows, and television commercials. Several times divorced, overweight, with a resume that included many failed projects, he would have seemed a failure at his death had his rich life not produced so many original works.Welles, Orson
Born May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wis. American motion-picture producer, director, actor, and writer.
Welles began his theatrical career in Dublin in 1931 as an actor. Returning to the USA, he directed an innovative production of Macbeth in 1936 and presented a famed radio production of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds in 1938. Welles’ first film, Citizen Kane (1941; screenplay by Welles and H. Mankiewicz), in which Welles played the title role, became a landmark not only of American film art but of world film art as well. The theme of power and its destructive influence on the human personality was developed by Welles in other films, such as Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1948) and Mister Arkadin (1955; based on a novel by Welles); Welles directed both films and played the title roles. Attempting to resolve sociopolitical problems in such films as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942; based on a novel by B. Tarkington) and The Lady From Shanghai (1946; based on a novel by S. King), Welles encountered the opposition of Hollywood filmmakers and left the USA in the late 1940’s. Welles was unable to realize many of his creative projects because of financial difficulties.
Films directed by Welles include Shakespeare’s Othello (1952), Kafka’s The Trial (1962), and Chimes at Midnight (1966; based on Shakespeare’s plays, with Welles playing the role of Falstaff). Welles also appeared in the films The Third Man (1949; directed by C. Reed), Moby Dick (1956; directed by J. Huston), and Waterloo (1970; directed by S. F. Bondarchuk).
REFERENCES
Cowie, P. The Cinema of Orson Welles. London, 1965. (References, pp. 197–207.)Orson Uells: Stat’i, Svidetel’stva, Interv’iu. Moscow, 1975.
IA. A. BEREZNITSKII