ORSON WELLES

ORSON WELLES

Birth name George Orson Welles

Born May 6, 1915(1915-05-06)
Kenosh, Wisconsin, U.S.

Died October 10, 1985 (aged 70)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Years active 1934-1985

Spouse(s) Virginia Nicholson (1934-1940)
Rita Hayworth (1943-1948)
Paola Mori (1955-1985)

Youth and early career (1915 to 1934)

Welles was born in 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the second son of Richard Head Welles, then a manufacturer of vehicle lamps, and Beatrice Ives, a concert pianist and suffragette. He was raised a Roman Catholic. The family appears in the 1920 US Federal Census in Chicago, where his father was working as a salesman of automobile parts, working for wages and renting. This may suggest that the family was not wealthy as previously suggested.

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. Not long after his mother's death, he began a period filled with international travel. When he was 11, Maurice Bernstein took him to Havana. The next year passenger records suggest that his father took him to Europe. By 1929, he was traveling alone. Records verify that he took trips to Europe alone in 1932 and 1933.

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. Welles later revealed in interviews that he felt that he had neglected and betrayed his father, and a feeling of guilt stung him for the rest of his life.

Maurice Bernstein became his guardian. There is some question about Maurice's suitability as a guardian as evident by his history. Born in Russia, he came to Chicago in 1890, studied and became a successful physician. In a very few years, he had several wives, including Chicago Lyric Opera soprano, Edith Mason. Edith divorced company director Giorgio Polacco to marry Bernstein. Not long thereafter, they divorced and she remarried Polacco. In 1930, he was living in Highland Park as a wealthy physician with another wife and child, claiming to have been born in Illinois to parents from New York.

At Todd, Welles came under the positive influence and guidance of Roger Hill, a teacher who later became Todd's headmaster. Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged his first theatrical experiments and productions there.

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. Welles traveled to North Africa while working on thousands of illustrations for the Everybody's Shakespeare series of educational books, a series that remained in print for decades.

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. Houseman was especially impressed by Welles' youth, wed to what appeared to be an overabundant creative certainty and drive. 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. They had one daughter, Christopher, known as Chris Welles Feder, an author of educational materials for children. [Simonson] Welles also shot an eight-minute silent short film, The Hearts of Age, with Nicholson.

Death

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. The last film roles before his death included voice work in the animated films The Enchanted Journey, on-screen in Henry Jaglom's film Someone to Love, released in 1987 and the 1986 film Transformers: The Movie providing the booming voice for the villainous transformer Unicron. Some credit his performance in this film as the introduction of the younger generation at that time to legendary filmwork, as many youths discovered the classic works of Welles and others of his generation through research about the voice of Unicron.

According to Welles' associates Gary Graver and Oja Kodar, Welles did not wish to be cremated, but his wife Paola and daughter Beatrice had the cremation performed, and his ashes were eventually placed in a dry well at a friend's estate in Ronda, Spain. According to some reports, some of his ashes have been scattered in the town's famous "Plaza de Toros", the oldest bullfighting ring in Spain still in use.

Unfinished projects

Welles' exile from Hollywood and reliance on independent production meant that many of his later projects were filmed piecemeal or were not completed. In the mid-1950s, Welles began work on the Cervantes' masterpiece Don Quixote, initially a commission from CBS television. Welles expanded the film to feature length, developing the screenplay to take Quixote and Sancho Panza into the modern age. Filming stopped with the death of Francisco Reiguera, the actor playing Quixote, in 1969. Orson Welles continued editing the film through the next few decades and had supposedly completed a rough cut in the mid 1970s. By his death however, the footage of many scenes had been lost around the world during Welles' travels. A search continues for Orson Welles' later edits and other missing footage, but they likely no longer exist. An incomplete version of the film was released in 1992.

In 1970 Welles began shooting The Other Side of the Wind, about the effort of a film director (played by John Huston) to complete his last Hollywood picture, and is largely set at a lavish party. Although in 1972 the film was reported by Welles as being "96% complete", the negative remained in a Paris vault until 2004, when Peter Bogdanovich (who also acted in the film) announced his intention to complete the production. Footage is included in the documentary Working with Orson Welles (1993).

Other unfinished projects include The Deep, an adaptation of Charles Williams' Dead Calm — abandoned in 1970 one scene short of completion due to the death of star Laurence Harvey — and The Big Brass Ring, the script of which was adapted and filmed by George Hickenlooper in 1999.

The 1995 documentary Orson Welles: One-Man Band, included on the Criterion Collection DVD release of F for Fake, features scenes from several of these unfinished projects, as well as footage from an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice starring Welles that was never aired due to vital footage being allegedly stolen; several short subjects such as the titular One-Man Band, a Monty Python-esque spoof in which Welles plays all but one of the characters (including two characters in drag); footage of Welles reading chapters from Moby Dick; and a comedy skit taking place in a tailor shop and co-starring Charles Gray. One short, also included in the documentary, is a comedy routine in which Welles (filmed in the 1970s) plays a reporter interviewing a king, also played by Welles, but in footage shot in the 1960s; Welles finished the skit and edited it together years later. The documentary is built around a college lecture given by Welles not long before his death, in which he displays frustration at being unable to complete so many projects. According to Oja Kodar, interviewed in the documentary, Welles always traveled with camera equipment and would shoot film whenever the mood struck him, even if there were no immediate prospects for commercial release of such material.

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

• 1942: Best Picture — Citizen Kane (nominated)
• 1942: Best Director — Citizen Kane (nominated)
• 1942: Best Actor in a Leading Role — Citizen Kane (nominated)
• 1942: Writing, Original Screenplay — Citizen Kane (won)
• 1943: Best Picture — The Magnificent Ambersons (nominated)
• 1971: Honorary Award

BAFTA Awards

• 1968: Best Foreign Actor in a Leading Role — Chimes at Midnight (nominated)

Cannes Film Festival

• 1952: Palme d'Or — Othello

Golden Globe Awards

• 1982: Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture — Butterfly (nominated)

Venice Film Festival

• 1947: Golden Lion — The Stranger (nominated)
• 1970: Career Golden Lion

Grammy Awards

• 1982: Best Spoken Word Recording — Donovan's Brain (won)

AFI Life Achievement Award

• 1975 (won)

FILMOGRAPHY

Director

• Hearts of Age (1934) - Welles's first film, a silent one-reeler made at age 18.
• Too Much Johnson (1938) - assorted scenes to accompany stage play, all footage now lost
• Citizen Kane (1941) - won Oscar for Best Writing (Original Screenplay); nominated for Best Actor, Best Picture and Best Director.
• It's All True (1942) - director, producer
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) - nominated for Oscar for Best Picture; shortened and recut against Welles's wishes, excised footage lost
• The Stranger(1946) - nominated for Oscar
• The Lady from Shanghai(1947) - shortened and recut against Welles' wishes but with his cooperation, excised footage lost
• Macbeth (1948) - shortened and recut by Welles at studio's request, restored to original version in the 1970s
• Othello (1952) - won the Palme d'Or, 1952 Cannes Film Festival
• Mr. Arkadin (also known as Confidential Report) (1955) - shortened and recut against Welles' wishes, extended Criterion restoration released in April 2006.
• Touch of Evil (1958) - won the top-prize at the Brussels World's Fair; shortened against Welles's wishes, some of Welles' requested editorial changes made in 1998
• The Trial (1962)
• Chimes at Midnight (1965)
• The Immortal Story (1968)
• The Deep (1970) - abandoned after death of star Laurence Harvey
• The Other Side of the Wind (1970-76) - unfinished, restoration currently in progress
• F for Fake (also known as Vérités et mensonges) (1974)
• The Orson Welles Show (1979) - Welles directed as G.O. Spelvin. Unaired TV show with Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson, Frank Oz, Jim Henson

Other Roles

• Swiss Family Robinson (1940) - narration
• Journey Into Fear(1943) - producer, actor, rumored to be co-director with Norman Foster. Welles admitted directing some scenes
• Jane Eyre (1944) - actor (Rochester), co-producer
• Duel in the Sun (1946) - narration
• Monsieur Verdoux (1947) - story idea
• The Third Man (1949)- actor, dialogue
• Three Cases of Murder (1956)-actor
• Moby Dick (1956) - cameo role as actor
• Man in the Shadow (1957) - actor
• The Long Hot Summer (1958) Will Varner
• Compulsion (1959) - actor
• A Man for All Seasons (1966) - actor
• I'll Never Forget What's'isname (1967) - actor
• Casino Royale (1967) - as Bond villain Le Chiffre ("Zero" or "The Cipher")
• Don Quixote (1969, version released 1992) - writer, director, actor
• The Battle of Neretva (1969) - as Chetnik senator
• Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) - narration, cameo role
• Catch-22 (1970) - actor
• Waterloo (1970) - actor
• Malpertuis by Harry Kumel (1972) - actor
• Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972) - actor
• Flame of Persia (1972) - Documentary narration
• Treasure Island (1972)
• Rikki Tikki Tavi (1975) - narration
• The Muppet Movie (1979) - cameo
• Shogun (1980) - narration
• History of the World, Part One (1981) - narration
• The Dreamers (1980-82, unfinished) - actor, writer, director
• Transformers: The Movie - voice actor of Unicron