Orson Welles biography

Synopsis

Early Years

A pioneer in both film and radio, Orson Welles was born May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His parents, Richard and Beatrice, were both incredibly bright people who introduced their son to worlds that went far beyond his Wisconsin roots.

Through his father, an inventor who'd made a fortune inventing a carbide lamp for bicycles, Welles met actors and sportsmen. His mother was a concert pianist who taught Welles how to play the piano and the violin.

But his childhood was far from easy. Welles' parents separated when he was four, and Beatrice died from jaundice when he was nine. When Richard Welles' successful business began to falter, he turned to the bottle. He died when Orson was 13.

Stability was found in the care of Maurice Bernstein, took Welles in, becoming his official guardian when Orson was 15. Bernstein saw Welles' creative talents and enrolled him in the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, where Orson discovered his passion for the theater.

Following the Todd School, Welles left for Dublin, Ireland, paying his way with a small inheritance he'd received. There, he captivated audiences in a production of Jew Suss at the Gate Theatre.

Welles had announced his arrival in Dublin by declaring himself a Broadway star. By the age of 19, the brash and confident young actor made his Broadway debut with his role as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. His performance caught the attention of director John Houseman, who cast Welles in his Federal Theatre Project.

War of the Worlds

The Houseman-Welles partnership proved to be an important one. In 1937, the 21-year-old Welles, fresh off directing an all-black cast in a version of Macbeth, teamed up with Houseman to form the Mercury Theatre. Its first production, an adaption of Julius Caesar in contemporary dress and with tones of Fascist Italy, was a huge success. Several more acclaimed stage productions followed before the Mercury moved into radio and began producing a weekly program, "The Mercury Theatre on the Air," which ran on CBS from 1938 to 1940, and again in 1946.

Critical praise was heaped upon the series soon after the program launched, but ratings were low. All that changed on October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles aired his adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.

The program simulated a news broadcast, and Welles, as its narrator, described in breathless detail the alien invasion and attack on New Jersey. The program included news reports and eyewitness accounts, and sounded so real that listeners panicked over what they perceived to be a real event. When the truth came out, duped believers were outraged.

Hollywood and Citizen Kane

Even while drawing the ire of some of his listeners, the broadcast cemented Welles' status as a genius, and his talents quickly became a fascination for Hollywood. In 1940 Welles signed a $225,000 contract with RKO to write, direct and product two films. The deal gave the young filmmaker total creative control, as well as a percentage of the profits, and at the time was the most lucrative deal ever made with an unproven filmmaker. Welles was just 24 years old.

Success wasn't immediate. Welles started and then stopped an attempt at adapting Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for the big screen. The daring behind that project paled in comparison to what became Welles' actual debut film: Citizen Kane (1941).

Modeled after the life and work of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, the film told the story of newspaperman Charles Foster Kane (played by Welles), tracing his rise to power and his eventual corruption from that power.

The film outraged Hearst, who refused to allow mention of the movie in any of his newspapers, and helped drive down the film's disappointing box-office numbers. But Citizen Kane was as revolutionary as it was revolutionary and earned Welles a 1941 Oscar for best screenplay.

In the film, which was nominated for a total of nine Academy Awards, Welles deployed a number of pioneering filmmaking techniques, including the use of deep-focus cinematography, which presented all objects in a shot in sharp detail. Welles also anchored the film's look with low-angle shots and told its story with multiple points of view.

It was only a matter of time before the genius of Citizen Kane would be lauded. It's now considered one of the greatest films ever made.

Welles' second film for RKO, The Magnificent Ambersons, was a far more straightforward project and one that