Orson Welles

Welles was a self-identified “progressive” who was hounded for being a leftist and sometimes probed or followed by various Red Scare-oriented committees of the U.S. government. He first threw his hat into the arena of politics and current events in October of 1943, speaking at the Third Free World Dinner at NYC’s Hotel Pennsylvania. Others taking the rostrum were a British Minister, a U.S. Colonel and a Chinese ambassador. He also gave two speeches in November on behalf of the American Free World Association, which was committed to the destruction of fascism. As a companion to these appearances at conferences, Welles began publishing essays in the left-wing journal Free World, edited by Louis Dolivet, a French emigre who’d risen among the ranks of American and exile wartime politics. Welles espoused the Free Worlders’ value of internationalism, which was positioned opposite the isolationism prevalent in America as the second Great War rumbled on. This stance garnered s...

Welles’ later career was comprised, not so much of his directing films, but working as an actor, often as a voice actor. A famous component of this new career-within-a-career was his acting as a spokesperson for Masson wines. However, he also appeared in a couple of advertisements for a British purveyor of frozen foods, and the attempt to tape one of these created a much-ballyhooed incident, one that has become an Internet sensation. Welles may have been having a bad day, may have been frustrated with the role of the pitchman, or may have just been displaying a capacity for throwing tantrums that manifest itself various times in his career. Whatever the case, it wasn’t a good day to be the commercial’s director. Welles was reading the commercial’s copy: “We know a remote farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs. Buckley lives. Every July peas grow there,” when the director interrupted with “I’d start half a second later.” Rather than addressing that direction per se, Welles begins a fen...

On Oct. 10, 1985, Welles appeared on The Merv Griffin Show in what would be his last public appearance before his death. It is made all the more poignant by the personal, wistful turn the discussion takes. Dressed in a Navy blue jacket with a sky blue shirt and an ascot, Welles says that not long ago he’d begun thinking he was 70 when really only 69, meaning that he’d given himself an extra year. He told Griffin that he experienced “certain parts of every day that are joyous,” continuing, “I’m not essentially a happy person, but I have all kinds of joy.” On the difference between the two, he said, “joy is a great big electrical experience, but happiness is...a warthog can be happy.” He died in the early morning, slumped over his typewriter, of a heart attack. He’d been, as in life, working on a script for one of his crammed schedule of projects. It was a script for a TV show tentatively titled “Orson Welles Solo.” Welles was cremated and a stark funeral was hastily arran...

Director Full-length feature films Citizen Kane. 1941 The Magnificent Ambersons. 1942 Journey Into Fear. 1943 The Stranger. 1946 The Lady From Shanghai. 1947 MacBeth. 1948 Black Magic. 1949 Othello. 1952 Mr. Arkadin. 1955 Touch of Evil. 1958 The Trial. 1962 Chimes At Midnight. 1965 The Deep. 1970 Documentaries F For Fake. 1970 Filming Othello. 1978 Filming The Trial. 1981 television documentaries Around The World With Orson Welles (7 episode series). 1955 Orson Welles and People. 1956 Portrait of Gina. 1958 Nella Terra di Don Chisciotte. 1964 Short features The Hearts of Age. 1934 Too Much Johnson. 1938 The Miracle of St. Anne. 1950 The Fountain of Youth (TV). 1958 Treasure Island. 1965 Vienna. 1968 The Golden Honeymoon. 1970 London. 1971 The Spirit of Charles Lindbergh. 1984 Orson Welles’ Magic Show. (TV) 1985 Moby Dick. 2000 Actor Full-length feature films Swiss Family Robinson (voice). 1940 Citizen Kane. 1941 The Magnificent Ambersons. 1942 Journey Into Fear. 1943 Jayne Eyre...

In addition to receiving the gift of a golden-toned speaking voice, Welles was very articulate in a way that is largely a trait of a bygone era. He also possesses razor wit and unforgiving bluntness. Here are many of his most memorable aphorisms: Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch. A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. The enemy of art is the absence of limitations. I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don’t think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money. A good artist should be isolated. If he isn’t isolated, something is wrong. I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts. They teach anything in universities today. You can major in mud pies. On The War of The Worlds : “We couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates by tomorrow night, so...

Citizen Kane By the accounts of nearly all the experts Kane is one of the very best movies ever made. It was ahead of its time stylistically, bold in structure, and compelling in its narrative. Citizen Kane was not only Orson Welles’ best film, but his first. With it, he went from being a big--though still relatively new--figure in the New York drama scene, as well as a radio star, to being hailed as a film director of prodigious talent and boundless potential. For Citizen Kane, Welles cast many of his Mercury Theatre veterans. Joseph Cotten played Jedediah Leland; Dorothy Comingore played Susan Alexander Kane; Agnes Moorehead was Mary Kane, Ruth Warrick, Emily Monroe Norton Kane, Everett Sloane, Mr. Bernstein. Welles starred as the man himself, Charles Foster Kane. The story centers around a gaggle of reporters chasing the meaning of the last word, “Rosebud,” of Charles Foster Kane, an iconic and enigmatic newspaper publisher. Their journey takes the viewer through...

Film noir is usually thought of as a style marked by a thematic focus on gritty crime, with crooked detectives and colorful criminals, and black and white compositions with harsh shadows and streetlights falling across the characters at sharp angles. Welles’ film noir moments came in a few of his projects, particularly those early and midway through his career. One familiar with Citizen Kane can see that the classic does embody some of the stylistic traits noted above, and because of this, it can be said to have influenced the genre. Lady From Shanghai would mark Welles’ directorial foray into elements of noir. One noir trait it embodies is the fall guy and femme fatale paradigm, with Michael O’Hara (Welles) as the former and Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) as the latter. The film also has an air of hopelessness, of the main characters stepping into webs from which they won’t be able to escape, that is a trait of the noir. However, what links Welles most to film noir here...