Orson Welles

The Three Wives Orson was known to carry a certain charm for ladies who encountered him. He responded by throwing as much verve into matters of the heart as he did into his work. Virginia Nicholson He did everything young, with marriage as no exception. On Dec. 23, 1934, the nineteen-year-old married Virginia Nicholson, whom he’d met at one of his Summer drama festivals at the Todd school. Described by Barbara Leaming as “a porcelain skinned beauty,” Virginia endeared herself to Orson with “the wonderfully outrageous stories she would tell him when they were alone.” Virginia gave birth, on Mar. 27, 1938, to a baby girl named Christopher. Orson’s marriage to Virginia was marked by his infidelities to her and his absences. It came to an end five years after it began, on Feb. 1, 1940. Welles was at the crest of the success of his Mercury Theatre empire, about to begin work on Citizen Kane. Rita Hayworth Enter Rita Hayworth. She was born Margarita Carmen Cansi

Welles was striking to all who encountered him, both in terms of of his spirit and his appearance. He filled up the room with his confident, sometimes domineering personality, and possessed good looks to match. Photos from his teenage years show him gazing impishly into the camera with piercing brown eyes. His face is diamond-shaped, curving in sharply at the jaw to a point at the chin. His walnut hair was swept up and slicked back into a look of sophistication. He looked older than he was throughout his formative years, with a voice that sounded quite a bit older. During adulthood, he sported various beards and struggled with his weight. By the mid 70’s, he’d become an imposing figure with a rotund midsection and a gray-brown expanse of hair on his face.

Welles once said, “I have a great love and respect for religion, great love and respect for atheism. What I hate is agnosticism, people who do not choose.” Religion was not paramount in the life of Welles, and there isn’t a large body of commentary or other artifacts concerning his spiritual life. The website adherents.com, listing the reported religious beliefs of celebrities, calls Welles a Protestant Christian. He had a wide range of interests, including airplanes and other scientific advances, South American culture, anti-Nazism and contemporary U.S. politics, so it may have been only in the spirit of being a polymath that he was once interested in starring as Jesus in a film--the project never materialized. He did narrate a film about Christ’s life King of Kings.

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