Cinema Experts

"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."
Welles was declared a child prodigy by Dr. Maurice Bernstein, a Chicago physician infatuated with his mother Beatrice. When Welles was six, his parents divorced. Beatrice was a major influence in the formation of Welles's character, despite her death when he had just turned nine, teaching him Shakespeare, as well as the piano and violin.
Chicago was at the forefront of creative life in America at the time and visited constantly by important European composers and artists. Beatrice Welles died of jaundice on May 10, 1924 in a Chicago hospital, four days after Welles' ninth birthday. After his mother's death, Welles would no longer pursue his interests in music. Richard Welles became an alcoholic and died when Orson was 15, the summer after Orson's graduation from the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. Maurice Bernstein became his guardian.
On his father's death, Welles travelled to Europe with the aid of a small inheritance. While on a walking and painting trip through Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. Gate manager Hilton Edwards later claimed he didn't believe him but was impressed by his brashness and some impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate Theatre of Dublin in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, acclaim that reached the United States. He acted in smaller supporting roles as well. On returning to the United States he found his brief fame ephemeral and turned to a writing project at Todd that would become the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare, and subsequently, The Mercury Shakespeare.
An introduction by Thornton Wilder led Welles to the New York stage. He toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company. Restless and impatient when the planned Broadway opening of Romeo and Juliet was cancelled, Welles staged a drama festival of his own with the Todd School, inviting Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards from Dublin's Gate Theatre to appear, along with New York stage luminaries. It was a roaring success. The subsequent revival of Romeo and Juliet brought Welles to the notice of John Houseman, who was then casting for an unusual lead actor and about to take a lead role in the The Federal Theatre Project.
By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theater as a radio actor in New York City, working with many of the actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre. He married actress and socialite Virginia Nicholson in 1934.
RKO Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered Welles what is generally considered the greatest contract ever offered to an untried director: complete artistic control. RKO signed Welles in a two-picture deal; including script, cast, crew, and most important, final cut. With this contract in hand, Welles (and nearly the entire Mercury Theatre) moved to Hollywood. He commuted weekly to New York to maintain his The Campbell Playhouse commitment.
Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project for RKO Pictures, settling on an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which he worked on in great detail.
He planned to film the action with a subjective camera from the protagonist's point of view. However, as the international political climate darkened this created marketing restrictions across Europe. When a budget was drawn up, RKO's enthusiasm cooled. The anti-fascist tenor of the story was now suddenly problematic. RKO also declined to approve another Welles' project, The Smiler with the Knife, for similar political reasons and ostensibly because they lacked faith in Lucille Ball's ability to carry the leading lady role.
Welles found a suitable film project in an idea he conceived with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. Initially called American, it would eventually become Welles's first feature film, Citizen Kane (1941). Mankiewicz based his original notion on an expose of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially but now hated, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Mankiewicz was now banished from her company because of his perpetual drunkenness. This "larger-than-life" character was also loosely modeled on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes, and Joseph Pulitzer, because Welles' wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. The use of multiple narrative perspectives in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" also influenced Welles' treatment. Supplying Mankiewicz with 300 pages of notes Welles urged him to write the first drafts of a screenplay under the watchful nursing of John Houseman, who was posted to insure Mankiewicz stayed on the wagon. On Welles's instruction, Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Taking these drafts, Welles drastically condensed and rearranged them, then added scenes of his own.
The resulting character of Charles Foster Kane is loosely based on parts of Hearst's life. Nonetheless, with perhaps sly and barely disguised malice towards their young boss, Mankiewicz and Houseman cunningly worked in autobiographical allusions to Welles himself, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood. Welles then added features from other famous American lives to create a general and mysterious personality rather than the narrow journalistic portrait intended by Mankiewicz, whose first drafts included scandalous claims about the death of the film director Thomas Ince, killed on an excursion on a Hearst yacht. Ironically, Mankiewicz later argued, probably astutely, that if this material had been left in Hearst would never have dared to make the public connection to his own life and would have left the film alone.
Once scripting was completed Welles attracted some of Hollywood's best technicians, including Gregg Toland, considered one of the finest cinematographers of the time, who walked into his office and announced he wanted to work on the picture. For the cast, Welles primarily used actors from his Mercury Theatre. Grasping that films were a collaboration, he invited suggestions from everyone, but only if they were directed through him.
There was little concern over the Hearst connection when Welles completed production on the film. However, Mankiewicz handed a copy of the final shooting script to his friend Charles Lederer. Hedda Hopper saw a small ad in a newspaper for a preview screening of Citizen Kane and went. Hopper, realizing immediately that the film was based on features of Hearst's life, reported this back to him and threatened to give "Hollywood, Private Lives" if that was what it wanted. Thus began the struggle over the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane.
Hearst's media empire boycotted the film. It exerted enormous pressure on the Hollywood film community by threatening to expose 15 years of suppressed scandals and the fact that most of the studio bosses were Jewish. At one point, the heads of the major studios jointly offered RKO the cost of the film in exchange for the negative and all existing prints, for the express purpose of burning it. RKO declined, and the film was given a limited release. Meanwhile, Hearst successfully intimidated theatre chains by threatening to ban advertising for any of their other films in any of his papers if they showed Citizen Kane. RKO didn't own many theatres, so few moviehouses actually dared to screen Citizen Kane.
While the film was critically well-received, by the time it reached the general public the positive tide of publicity had waned. It garnered nine Academy Award nominations but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared by Mankiewicz and Welles. The delay in its release and its uneven distribution contributed to its average result at the box-office, making back its budget and marketing, but RKO lost any chance of a major profit. The fact that Citizen Kane ignored many Hollywood conventions also meant that the film confused and angered the 1940s cinema public. Exhibitor response was scathing; most theater owners complained bitterly about the adverse audience reaction and the many walkouts, and only a few saw fit to acknowledge Welles's artistic technique. RKO shelved the film and did not re-release it until 1956. During the 1950s, the film came to be seen by young French film critics such as Francois Truffaut as exemplifying the "auteur theory," in which the director is the "author" of a film. Truffaut, Godard and others were inspired by Welles' example to make their own films, giving birth to the Nouvelle Vague. In the 1960s Citizen Kane became popular on college campuses, both as a film-study exercise and as an entertainment subject. Its frequent revivals on television, home video, and DVD have enhanced its "classic" status, and it ultimately recouped its costs.
Welles' second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. George Schaefer hoped to make back the money lost by Citizen Kane. Ambersons had already been adapted for The Campbell Playhouse by Welles, who wrote the screen adaptation himself. Toland was not available, so Stanley Cortez was named cinematographer. The meticulous Cortez, however, was slow and the film lagged behind schedule and over budget.
At RKO's request, simultaneously, Welles worked on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey Into Fear, which he co-wrote with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was also producer. Direction was credited solely to Norman Foster. Welles later stated that they were in such a rush that the director of each scene was whoever was closest to the camera.
To further complicate matters during the production of Ambersons and Journey into Fear, Welles was approached by Nelson Rockefeller and Jock Whitney to produce a documentary film about South America. This was at the behest of the federal government's Good Neighbor Policy, a wartime propaganda effort designed to prevent Latin America from allying with the Axis Powers. Welles saw his involvement as a form of national service, because his physical condition excused him from direct military service. Expected to film the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Welles rushed to finish the editing on Ambersons and his acting scenes in Journey into Fear. Ending his CBS radio show, he lashed together a rough cut of Ambersons with Robert Wise, who had edited Citizen Kane, and left for Brazil. Unfortunately, to get Ambersons made, Welles had renegotiated away his original contract for final cut.
Wise was to join him in Rio to complete the film but never arrived. Other moves were afoot at RKO. A provisional final cut arranged via phone call, telegram, and shortwave radio was previewed without Welles' approval in Pomona in a double bill, to a mostly negative audience response, in particular to the character of Aunt Fanny played by Agnes Moorehead.
Whereas Schaefer argued that Welles be allowed to complete his own version of the film, and that an archival copy be kept with the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, RKO was in no mood for such aesthetic niceties.
RKO studio management was in turmoil as Charles Koerner staged a management coup against Schaefer. It took control of the film, formed a committee which was ordered to remove fifty minutes of Welles' footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and tacked on a happy ending. Schaefer was replaced as RKO President by Koerner, who released the shortened film on the bottom of a double-bill with the Lupe Velez comedy Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost, thus providing the last nail in the coffin for both Welles's and Schaefer's careers. Ambersons was an expensive flop for RKO, though it received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead.
Unable to continue work as a film director after the twin disasters of The Magnificent Ambersons and It's All True, Welles worked on radio. CBS offered him two weekly series, Hello Americans, based on the research he'd done in Brazil, and Ceiling Unlimited, sponsored by Lockheed, a wartime salute to advances in aviation. Both featured several members of his original Mercury Theatre. Within a few months, Hello Americans was canceled and Welles was replaced as host of Ceiling Unlimited by Joseph Cotten. Welles guest-starred on a great variety of shows, notably guest-hosting Jack Benny's show for a month in 1943. He took an increasingly active role in American and international politics and used journalism to communicate his forceful ideas widely.
In 1943 Welles married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other directors' films. He starred in the 1943 film adaptation of Jane Eyre, trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He also had a cameo in the 1944 wartime salute Follow the Boys, in which he performed his Mercury Wonder Show magic act and sawed Marlene Dietrich in half after Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn refused to allow Hayworth to perform.
While his suitability as a film director remained in question, Welles' popularity as an actor continued. Pabst Blue Ribbon gave Welles their radio series This Is My Best to direct, but after one month he was fired for creative differences. He started writing a political column for the New York Post, again called Orson Welles Almanac. While the paper wanted Welles to write about Hollywood gossip, Welles explored serious political issues. His activism for world peace took considerable amounts of his time. The Post column eventually failed in syndication because of contradictory expectations and was dropped by the Post.
In 1946, International Pictures released Welles' film The Stranger, starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. Sam Spiegel produced the film, which follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in America. While Anthony Veiller was credited with the screenplay, it had been rewritten by Welles and John Huston. Welles' most imaginative work on the film was cut out by Spiegel, and the result apart from some bravura sequences on the clock tower or evoking the small town atmosphere, was a comparatively conventional Hollywood thriller. It was successful at the box office but Welles resolved not to have a career as a cog in a Hollywood studio.
In the summer of 1946, Welles directed a musical stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days, with a comedic and ironic rewriting of the Jules Verne novel by Welles, incidental music and songs by Cole Porter, and production by Mike Todd, who would later produce the successful film version with David Niven. When Todd pulled out from the lavish and expensive production, Welles supported the finances himself. When he ran out of money at one point, he convinced Columbia president Harry Cohn to send him enough to continue the show, and in exchange Welles promised to write, produce, direct and star in a film for Cohn for no further fee.
The film for Cohn wound up being The Lady from Shanghai, filmed in 1947 for Columbia Pictures. Intended to be a modest thriller, the budget skyrocketed after Cohn suggested that Welles' then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-star. Cohn was enraged by Welles' rough-cut, in particular the confusing plot and lack of close-ups, and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. After heavy editing by the studio, approximately one hour of Welles' first cut had been removed. While expressing dismay at the cuts, Welles was particularly appalled by the soundtrack, objecting to the musical score he thought more suitable for a Disney cartoon and the lack of the ambient soundscape he had designed. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release. Welles recalled people refusing to speak to him about it to save him embarrassment. Not long after release, Welles and Hayworth finalized their divorce.
Unable to find work as a director at any of the major studios, in 1948 Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth, which featured papier mâché sets, cardboard crowns and a cast of actors lip-syncing to a prerecorded soundtrack. Republic did not care for the Scottish accents on the soundtrack and held up release for almost a year. Welles left for Europe, while his co-producer and life-long supporter Richard Wilson reworked the soundtrack. Welles ultimately returned and cut twenty minutes from the film at Republic's request and recorded narration to cover the gaps. The film was decried as another disaster.
Welles left Hollywood for Europe in late 1947, enigmatically saying he had chosen "freedom". This must refer to both acting offers and the possibility of directing and producing films again. There is now compelling evidence that Welles was blacklisted in Hollywood, after years of propaganda by the Hearst empire labeling him a communist and years of FBI investigations prompted by J. Edgar Hoover.
In Italy he starred as Cagliostro in the 1948 film Black Magic. His co-star, Akim Tamiroff, impressed Welles so much that he appeared in four of Welles' own productions during the 1950s and 1960s. The following year, Welles appeared as Harry Lime in The Third Man, written by Graham Greene, directed by Carol Reed, starring Mercury Theatre alumnus Joseph Cotten, and with a memorable zither score by Anton Karas. The film was an international smash hit, but Welles unfortunately turned down a percentage of the gross in exchange for a lump-sum advance.
From 1949 to 1951, Welles worked on Othello, filming on location in Europe and Morocco. Filming was suspended several times over the years as Welles ran out of funds and left to find other acting jobs, accounted in detail in MacLiammóir's published memoir Put Money in Thy Purse. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but was not given a general release in the United States until 1955, and it played only in New York and Los Angeles.
In 1952 Welles continued finding work in England, after the success of the Harry Lime radio show. Harry Alan Towers offered Welles another series, The Black Museum, with Welles as host and narrator, and this would also run 52 weeks. Director Herbert Wilcox offered him the part of the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case. And in 1953 the BBC hired Welles to read an hour of selections from Walt Whitman's epic poem Song of Myself. Towers hired Welles again, to play Professor Moriarty in the radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson.
Late in 1953, Welles returned to America to star in a live CBS Omnibus television presentation of Shakespeare's King Lear. While Welles received good notices, he was guarded by IRS agents, prohibited to leave his hotel room when not at the studio, prevented from making any purchases, and the entire sum (less expenses) he earned went to his tax bill. Welles returned to England after the broadcast.
In 1954, director George More O'Ferrall offered Welles the title role in the Lord Mountdrago segment of Three Cases of Murder. Herbert Wilcox cast him as the antagonist in Trouble in Glen. And director John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in his film adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
Welles' next turn as director was the film Mr. Arkadin (1955). Based on several episodes of the Harry Lime radio show, it stars Welles as a paranoid billionaire who hires a petty smuggler to delve into the secrets of his seedy past. Frustrated by Welles' slow progress in the editing room, producer Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him.
In 1956 Welles completed Portrait of Gina, a 30-minute personal essay on Gina Lollobrigida and the general subject of Italian sex symbols. Welles returned to Hollywood, guesting on radio shows. He guest starred on television shows, including I Love Lucy and began filming a projected pilot for Desilu, owned by his former protégé Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, who had recently purchased the defunct RKO studios. The film was The Fountain of Youth, based on a story by John Collier. Originally deemed not viable as a pilot, the film wasn't aired until 1958. It won the Peabody Award for excellence.
Welles' next feature film role was in Man in the Shadow for Universal Pictures in 1957. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in the 1958 film of Whit Masterson's novel Badge of Evil. Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal Studios at the suggestion (and insistence) of Charlton Heston. Reuniting many actors and technicians with whom he'd worked in Hollywood in the 1940s, filming proceeded smoothly, with Welles finishing on schedule and on budget, and the studio bosses praising the daily rushes. Out of the blue, the studio wrested Touch of Evil from Welles' hands, re-edited it, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. Despite the trauma of having the film ripped from his creative control for no ostensible reason, Welles wrote a 58-page memo outlining suggestions and objections. The studio followed a few of the ideas, but cut another 30 minutes from the film and released it. Even in this state, the film was widely praised across Europe, awarded the top prize at the Brussels World's Fair.
As Universal reworked Evil, Welles began filming his adaptation of Miguel Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project.
Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and Compulsion (1959), but soon returned to Europe to continue his pattern of self-producing low budget films over which he would have creative control and final cut.
Welles returned to Europe and resumed acting jobs. He continued shooting Don Quixote in Spain, but replaced Mischa Auer with Francisco Reiguera. In Italy in 1959, Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in Richard Pottier's film David and Goliath. In Hong Kong he co-starred with Curt Jurgens in Lewis Gilbert's film Ferry to Hong Kong. In 1960 in Paris he co-starred in Richard Fleischer's film Crack in the Mirror. In Yugoslavia he starred in Richard Thorpe's film The Tartars.
In 1962 Welles directed his adaptation of The Trial, based on the novel by Franz Kafka. While filming exteriors in Zagreb, Welles was informed that the Salkinds had run out of money, meaning that there could be no set construction. No stranger to shooting on found locations, Welles soon filmed the interiors in the Gare d'Orsay, at that time an abandoned railway station in Paris. Welles thought the location possessed a "Jules Verne modernism" and a melancholy sense of "waiting", both suitable for Kafka. The film failed at the box-office. Peter Bogdanovich would later observe that Welles found the film riotously funny. During the filming, Welles met Oja Kodar, who would later become his muse, star and partner for 20 years.
In 1966, Welles directed a film for French television, an adaptation of The Immortal Story. Released in 1968, it stars Jeanne Moreau, Roger Coggio and Norman Eshley. The film had a successful run in French theaters. At this time Welles met Kodar again, and gave her a letter he had written to her and had been keeping for four years; they would not be parted again. They immediately began a collaboration both personal and professional, which would continue for the rest of his life. The first of these was an adaptation of Isak Dinesen's The Heroine, meant to be a companion piece to The Immortal Story and starring Kodar. Unfortunately, funding disappeared after one day's shooting.
Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles abandoned the editing of Don Quixote and moved back to America in 1970. Welles returned to Hollywood, where he continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on talk shows, and made frequent appearances for Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, Dean Martin, and Merv Griffin. Welles's primary focus in this period was filming The Other Side of the Wind, a project that took six years to film but has remained unfinished and unreleased.
In 1971 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles while they refused to give him any work.
In 1973 Welles completed F for Fake, a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr d'Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving. Based on an existing documentary by Francois Reichenbach, it included new material with Oja Kodar, Joseph Cotten, Paul Stewart and William Alland.
Working again for British producer Harry Alan Towers, Welles played Long John Silver in director John Hough's 1973 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, which had been the second story broadcast by The Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938. Welles also contributed to the script, his writing credit was attributed to the pseudonym 'O. W. Jeeves'.
In 1975, the American Film Institute presented Welles with their third Lifetime Achievement Award (the first two going to director John Ford and actor James Cagney). At the ceremony, Welles screened two scenes from the nearly finished The Other Side of the Wind. By 1976. Welles had almost completed the film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed. Written by Welles, the story told of a destructive old film director looking for funds to complete his final film.
Beginning in the late 1970s, Welles participated in a series of famous television commercial advertisements, acting as the on-camera spokesman for the Paul Masson wine company. The sign-off phrase of the commercials - "We will sell no wine before its time" - became a national catchphrase. He was also the voice behind the long-running Carlsberg "Probably the best lager in the world" campaign. The "probably" tag is still in use today.
In 1982 the BBC broadcast The Orson Welles Story for the Arena series. Interviewed by Leslie Megahey, Welles examined his past in great detail, and several people from his professional past were interviewed as well. It was reissued in 1990 as With Orson Welles: Stories of a Life in Film.
Welles in his later years was unable to get funding for his many film scripts, but came close with The Big Brass Ring and The Cradle Will Rock. Arnon Milchan had agreed to produce The Big Brass Ring if any one of six actors - Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, or Burt Reynolds - would sign on to star. All six declined for various reasons. Independent funding for The Cradle Will Rock had been obtained and actors had signed on, including Rupert Everett to play the young Orson Welles, location filming was to be done in New York City with studio work in Italy. While pre-production went without a problem, three weeks before filming was to begin the money fell through. Allegedly Welles approached Steven Spielberg to ask for assistance in rescuing the film, but Spielberg declined. The scripts to both films were published posthumously.
Welles died of a heart attack at his home in Hollywood, California at age 70 on October 10, 1985. He had various projects underway, including a planned film adaptation of King Lear, The Orson Welles Magic Show, and The Dreamers. His final interview had been recorded the day before, on The Merv Griffin Show and with his biographer Barbara Leaming.