Birthday of Orson Welles
Orson Welles was born on May 6, 1915 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, USA. Orson's father, Richard, invented a carbide lamp for bicycles and founded his rather successful business on this invention. Orson’s mother, Beatrice, was a concert pianist.
Richard Welles went uphill until electric lamps replaced carbide ones. This development of electricity-based technologies has led to the ruin of the business of Richard Welles. Orson’s father could not stand such a blow and, as is often the case with creative people, moreover, not only in Russia, drank too much. Orson’s mother did not want to live with an alcoholic, and the marriage broke up when Orson was 4 years old. Orson remained with his mother, but when he was 9 years old, his mother died of jaundice.
From 9 to 15 years, Orson was under the care of a certain Dudley Watson. And when Orson was 15 years old, his father, an alcoholic, died, and this somehow led to the transfer of custody rights to Dr. Maurice Bernstein. Bernstein had known Orson for a long time and had long noticed his obvious artistic talent. Therefore, he placed him in the famous Todd School for gifted boys. At this school, Welles first became seriously interested in theater, staging his own performances and playing them.
Richard Welles, despite his alcoholism, managed not to drink his entire fortune and left something to his son as an inheritance. This allowed Orson, after graduating from Todd School, to take a trip to Europe, which led him to Dublin, Ireland. In a local Dublin experimental theater, Orson, not without adventurism and arrogance, presented himself as a Broadway star, thanks to which he received several notable roles that brought him success. And already as a star of the Dublin theater, having returned to the USA, Orson received several roles on Broadway. Then his first work in the cinema began, however, at first only in short films.
On the wave of success in theater productions on Broadway, the 21-year-old Orson Welles created his own theater troupe, which specialized in radio shows, which were hugely popular with American radio listeners. One of these radio shows - based on Herbert Wells' science fiction novel "The War of the Worlds" - made a splash in the USA. The adaptation of the novel by Orson Welles was carried out in the form of documentary reports and testimonies that gave the impression of absolutely genuine radio news reports. As a result, many listeners panicked, since they seriously decided that the actual alien invasion had already begun. This was largely facilitated by the general paranoid mood of the US population, formed by reports of an impending war in Europe.
The sensation produced by the Orson Welles radio show attracted the attention of the broadcasting company RKO, which brought Wells to Hollywood. Orson received the most generous offer that Hollywood has ever made to an untested director, with the most complete freedom of action. The result was the cinema masterpiece "Citizen Kane". Some film critics call “Citizen Kane” the most amazing debut in the history of cinema and even the best cinema production of world cinema for all its existence. In fairness, it should be noted that three years before “Citizen Kane”, Orson Welles experimentally directed the feature film "Too Many Johnson". But due to the unresolved issues of some legal issues related to copyright, the film did not appear on the screens. Only in 2013, the Paramount film company lifted the ban on its screening.
As mentioned above, in the cinema Orson Welles performed, and, very successfully, in various roles: actor, director, screenwriter, producer, editor, artist. The success of Welles' cinematic career is evidenced by the award of a total of 33 cinematic awards, including the honorary awards Oscar, David di Donatello, Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival for excellent artistry and versatility in making films.
The most important thing for us is his directorial career. As a director in his life, Orson Welles independently shot 12 feature-length feature films. In another 5 films, Welles acted as a co-director, sometimes without credits. Of the total number of films in which Welles participated as a director, 3 films were included in the Golden Thousand. Due to this indicator, Orson Welles is included in the list of 100 greatest world film directors, compiled by FilmGourmand.
