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Orson Welles Biography

Actor / Filmmaker

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Name at birth: George Orson Welles

Orson Welles's 1941 feature film Citizen Kane is still thought by many critics to be the best film ever made in America. Ambitious even as a youngster, Welles started on the stage at an early age, and by his early 20s had joined with John Houseman to form The Mercury Theater, a live theater (and later radio) production group. On Halloween of 1938, Welles directed a radio version of the H. G. Wells story "The War of The Worlds" that unintentionally fooled many people into thinking Martians had invaded Earth. Welles became nationally famous, and at age 25 was brought to Hollywood by RKO Studios to make movies. His first feature was Citizen Kane, the tale of a tyrranical newspaper tycoon who was widely assumed to be patterned after publisher William Randolph Hearst. The film was hailed for its innovative techniques and extremely stylish visuals, but was not a hit at the box office, with Hearst using his clout to help quash it. The flamboyant and ambitious Welles went on to make other movies, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady From Shanghai (1948) and Touch of Evil (1958), but he battled with studio executives and became known for having difficulty finishing projects. Welles also acted in dozens of movies, including The Third Man (1949) and The Muppet Movie (1979). In his later years he worked mostly in television and as a narrator.

Extra credit: The Mercury Theater's radio productions were known as the Mercury Theater on the Air... The actors (and sometimes the group itself) were called the Mercury Players... His 1974 movie F For Fake examined the career of forger Elmyr de Hory... Welles was played by Liev Schreiber in the 1999 film RKO 281... Welles did a famous series of television commercials in the 1970s for Paul Masson wine, in which he uttered the tag line, "Paul Masson will sell no wine... before its time."

Blog posts mentioning Orson Welles:

• The Anniversary of Welles's Death
• "F for Philately"
• Hollywood's Mount Rushmore
• The Impeccable Death of Bernard Herrmann