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Orson Welles | |
|---|---|
 March 1937 portrait | |
| Born | George Orson Welles May 6, 1915 Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | October 10, 1985 (aged 70) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Ronda, Andalusia, Spain |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1931–1985 |
| Notable work |
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| Spouses | Virginia Nicolson
(m. 1934; div. 1940) |
| Partners |
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| Children | 3, including Beatrice |
| Signature | |
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George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American director, actor, writer, and producer who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre.[1][2] He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.[3]
At age 21, Welles was directing high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project in New York City—starting with a celebrated 1936 adaptation of Macbeth with an African-American cast, and ending with the controversial labor opera The Cradle Will Rock in 1937. He and John Houseman then founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941, including a modern, politically charged Caesar (1937). In 1938, his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, which caused some listeners to believe that a Martian invasion was in fact occurring. The event rocketed 23-year-old Welles to notoriety.[4]
His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in as the title character, Charles Foster Kane. Cecilia Ager, reviewing it in PM Magazine, wrote: “Seeing it, it’s as if you never really saw a movie before.”[5] It has been consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made. He directed twelve other features, the most acclaimed of which include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Stranger (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962), Chimes at Midnight (1966), and F for Fake (1973).[6][7] Welles also acted in other directors' films, playing Rochester in Jane Eyre (1943), Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949), and Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (1966).
His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots and long takes. He has been praised as "the ultimate auteur".[8]: 6 Welles was an outsider to the studio system and struggled for creative control on his projects early on with the major film studios in Hollywood and later in life with a variety of independent financiers across Europe, where he spent most of his career. Many of his films were either heavily edited or remained unreleased.
Welles received an Academy Award and three Grammy Awards among other numerous honors such as the Golden Lion in 1947, the Palme D'Or in 1952, the Academy Honorary Award in 1970, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1975, and the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1983. In 2002, he was voted the greatest film director of all time in two British Film Institute polls among directors and critics.[9][10] In 2018, he was included in the list of the 50 greatest Hollywood actors of all time by The Daily Telegraph.[11] Micheál Mac Liammóir, who worked with the 16-year-old Welles on the stage in Dublin and later played Iago in his film Othello (1951), wrote that "Orson's courage, like everything else about him, imagination, egotism, generosity, ruthlessness, forbearance, impatience, sensitivity, grossness and vision is magnificently out of proportion."[12]: xxxvii
- ^ Buffum, Richard (October 20, 1985). "Magic Loomed Large in World of Orson Welles" Archived January 8, 2024, at the Wayback Machine The Los Angeles Times
- ^ Naremore, James (2015). "Orson Welles: Director, Magician and Pedagogue". New England Review. 36 (2): 70–74. doi:10.1353/ner.2015.0061. ISSN 1053-1297. JSTOR 24772596.
'My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear on stage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?'
- ^ "Orson Welles is Dead at 70; Innovator of Film and Stage". The New York Times. October 11, 1985. Archived from the original on May 8, 2020. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
- ^ Bartholomew, Robert E. (2001). Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. p. 219. ISBN 978-0-7864-0997-6.
- ^ Kael, Pauline (February 12, 1971). "Raising Kane". The New Yorker.
- ^ "List-o-Mania, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love American Movies". June 25, 1998. Archived from the original on April 28, 2016. Retrieved May 9, 2015.
- ^ "Great Movie: Chimes at Midnight". June 4, 2006. Archived from the original on January 4, 2020. Retrieved May 9, 2015.
- ^ Rosenbaum, Jonathan (2007) Discovering Orson Welles. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-25123-7
- ^ "Sight & Sound |Top Ten Poll 2002 – The Directors' Top Ten Directors". BFI. September 5, 2006. Archived from the original on October 13, 2018. Retrieved December 30, 2009.
- ^ "Sight & Sound |Top Ten Poll 2002 – The Critics' Top Ten Directors". BFI. September 5, 2006. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved December 30, 2009.
- ^ "The 50 greatest actors from Hollywood's Golden Age". The Daily Telegraph. June 25, 2018. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on November 9, 2019. Retrieved November 9, 2019.
- ^ Welles, Orson; Bogdanovich, Peter; Rosenbaum, Jonathan (1998). "My Orson [new introduction by Peter Bogdanovich]". This is Orson Welles (2nd ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press. pp. vii–xxxix. ISBN 9780306808340.