Few people in film history are more fascinating, infuriating, and complex than Orson Welles.
The filmmaker's legacy marked not only the movies, but radio, theater, and pop culture.
However, Welles' life story contains just as much tragedy and missed opportunities as
it does drama and brilliance. Difficult childhood
Before he was even 10 years old, Orson Welles had experienced some serious upsets in his
young life. He was born to Richard Welles and Beatrice Ives in Kenosha, Wisconsin in
1915. His parents separated when he was four, and Beatrice died when he was nine. Not long
after, he was admitted to the Todd School, a preparatory academy that offered him intellectual
advancement and an educational philosophy that encouraged creativity amongst its students.
However, this move also meant that Welles moved to Illinois, separating him from his
family at what was surely a vulnerable time in his life. Richard would die in 1930, orphaning
a teenage Orson, who then became the ward of a family friend. Young Welles was also
an artistic prodigy. He played piano and violin, wrote poetry, made visual art, and seemed
pretty inclined towards the dramatic arts. Yet, he was also a sickly child. Welles was
born with a spinal issue that caused numerous health problems. He also had, according to
at least one childhood doctor, the spooky ability to weigh in on the philosophy of medicine
from the comfort of his crib.
Though Orson Welles was striking enough to make an impression on people like his childhood
doctors and high school teachers, he didn't really come to wider attention until 1938.
That's when Welles, along with CBS Radio's The Mercury Theatre on the Air, broadcast
an adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel, The War of the Worlds. Yet, where Well's novel was
plainly fictional, Orson's broadcast was a different beast altogether. Presented as if
it were breaking news, the program presented itself as an on-the-ground account of a real
extraterrestrial invasion of Earth.
It certainly seemed that way to some listeners, who promptly freaked out and assumed that
the world was ending. Later examinations of the incident indicate that reports of mass
hysteria were probably overblown, but it is nevertheless clear that Orson Welles became
a notorious figure in the aftermath.
"Views that you might have taken advantage of the public?"
"I simply don't know. I can't imagine an invasion from Mars would find ready acceptance."
Welles was only 23 at the time and would spend much of his life either apologizing for the
turmoil he'd caused or cheekily hinting that he knew it would be a mess all along.
Today, Orson Welles is probably best known for his 1941 film, Citizen Kane. The movie,
which follows the life of a newspaper magnate character closely modeled on the real-life
mogul William Randolph Hearst, has since been widely hailed as one of the greatest movies
of all time. It also proved to be a millstone around Welles' neck for the rest of his life.
The problem was that a young Welles was given broad creative control over Citizen Kane,
an unprecedented move for the time. Even more extraordinary was the fact that, at only 25,
Welles was a first-time director. Much as he might have been riding the high of this
honor, the release of Citizen Kane was disappointing, getting good reviews but not many ticket sales.
It didn't help that Hearst himself realized that he was the inspiration for Kane and,
being rather sore about it, banned mention of the movie in all of his newspapers.
Welles believed that the film's initial flop set the stage for his later struggles with
studios over who was supposed to make his movies. Citizen Kane effectively spoiled the
self-involved Welles for all other collaborative filmmaking experiences. As a result, he later
called Citizen Kane, quote, "the greatest curse of my life."
"I was spoiled in a very strange way. I didn't know what was ahead of me."
Like quite a few other creative folks in the mid-century American film industry, Welles
was a generally pretty progressive person. And, like so many of those people, they soon
ran into trouble in some circles for having the "wrong" sorts of views in an increasingly
tense and image-conscious world. Orson Welles was about to butt heads with the Hollywood
blacklist.
As History reports, Welles was put under investigation by the FBI in part because Citizen Kane was
interpreted as a thinly veiled critique of William Randolph Hearst, an anti-Communist
newspaper mogul. Under this line of reasoning, anyone who didn't like Hearst was therefore
a potential Communist themselves. Never mind that, as the New Yorker points out, Welles
was not a member of the Communist Party and hadn't done much political organizing beyond
some leftist scripts and plays.
"I'm 86 percent communist. The rest is capitalist."
However, Welles was still put on a watchlist and later included in the "Red Channels" pamphlet,
a list of 151 artists and journalists whom right-wing commentators believed were helping
the Communist cause in the United States. Yet, by the time the pamphlet came out in
1950, Welles was already in Europe, having left a film industry he had already deemed
overly restrictive. He was, in many ways, already in exile and beyond the reach of the
Red Scare.
After Citizen Kane, much of Orson Welles' filmmaking career was marred by constant struggles
with film studios over who, exactly, was to make the films that would bear his credit.
Though Welles would eventually admit that he did, in fact, need to collaborate to some
extent with other people in order to make a movie, he wanted to always be the, quote,
"dominant personality." Unfortunately, this often meant that Welles intentionally destabilized
productions with endless rewrites and reshoots, thus prolonging the struggles he was having
with studios.
As a result of these struggles, Welles often undertook independent projects that gave him
control. But they were frequently held back by poor funding and planning. Welles was forced
to play along in other productions, including a starring role in the 1949 film noir The
Third Man.
Yet, he must have always been thinking of his "real" and oftentimes frustrating work,
like the on-again, off-again, constantly cash-strapped production for his adaptation of Shakespeare's
Othello. At least that film got released in 1952, unlike some of his other troubled projects
that would remain unfinished at the time of his death.
Like so many Hollywood stars, Orson Welles was forced to fret over his image. According
to Orson Welles, a biography written by Barbara Learning, the issues started at least as early
as his involvement with Citizen Kane. Welles went on crash diets to slim down for the role.
One diet had him eating only bananas and milk.
Other "diets" were a steady supply of pills loaded with amphetamines, as author Simon
Callow's 2006 book, Orson Welles: Hello Americans, reports. Early on, Welles was enthusiastic
about the effects of the diet pills, though he later recognized that these were a hasty
choice in an era before everyone admitted that packing your body full of amphetamines
was pretty bad for one's health.
Later on in his career, Orson Welles appears to have discarded the diets and allowed his
weight to balloon. Welles was notorious for his love of fattening steaks and ate them
regularly, to the point where his considerable girth became part of Welles' image. It was
part of a long-lasting caricature of him, perhaps as persistent and potentially damaging
to Welles the man as his association with Citizen Kane. He was, for many, the cartoonish
image of a louche, overweight film auteur and less so a complicated human being dealing
with weight issues, like so many others both then and today.
Even though Orson Welles died in 1985, it appears that his first film, Citizen Kane,
is still haunting his legacy today. That's because everyone feels obligated to talk about
it when discussing Welles. It's the pinnacle of filmmaking, many say, and an absolute highlight
of Welles' career. Yet, it's possible that, for each time someone talks on and on about
Kane, they're missing another opportunity to discuss the film that Welles himself considered
his very best.
That work would be Chimes at Midnight, a quasi-adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V that focuses on the
fat, riotous and entirely made-up character of Falstaff, young Prince Hal's best friend
and mentor. According to the New Yorker, for a long while, it was notoriously difficult
to find a decent copy of the film, which is a real shame. Chimes at Midnight shows the
combination of grandiosity and self-awareness in Falstaff that was also arguably part of
Welles' own sense of himself, of a man who is eventually overcome by the caricature of
himself.
It's also just a good movie. As the Folger Shakespeare Library notes, it's full of Welles'
trademark inventiveness and passion, from smart camera moves to excellent acting. Welles
himself, of course, stars as Falstaff. He was, by all accounts, awfully proud of this
particular work, telling the Columbia Journal,
"If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that's the one I would offer
up."
At a certain point in his life, it was clear that Orson Welles wasn't going to be conventional.
Early on, as a child prodigy and wunderkind producer, it was clear that he was ready to
push intellectual and artistic boundaries. And, as he aged, Welles made it pretty clear
that he wasn't especially committed to social conventions, either. Welles was married three
times and had three children. The first marriage, to actress Virginia Nicolson, happened when
he was only 19.
However, Welles was never terribly faithful. So what if the pair had eloped in what must
have been a spontaneous act of romance or at least impulsiveness? Welles was already
carrying on affairs with other women soon into the marriage, a pattern he repeated continuously
throughout his life. That reportedly ruined his second marriage to Rita Hayworth, who
dropped him for cheating on her by 1948.
He then married Italian actress Paola Mori in 1955. Though he paired up with actress
and artist Oja Kodar for the last 24 years of his life, he often took his leave of her
and returned to Paola. Welles' three daughters were painfully cognizant of their father's
artistic achievements and of his failures as a parent. Chris Welles Feder, his oldest
daughter, wrote in In My Father's Shadow that he was both, quote, "a great creative force"
and a dad who often wasn't there.
Later in life, Orson Welles lent his distinctive voice to a series of commercials that ultimately
tarnished his reputation and contributed to the cartoonish pop culture pictures of Welles
as a self-involved, ridiculous blowhard. The Paul Masson wine advertisements of the 1970s
and 1980s included outtakes of a supposedly drunk Welles slurring his way through the
ad copy.
"Faaaaather French Champagne… that's always been celebrated for its excellence."
The possibility that he might have been tired, overly medicated, or simply too grouchy to
play along shilling wine on television doesn't really matter, at least not for people who
prefer to laugh at the commercial takes today.
Another set of outtakes from a frozen pea commercial underscore Welles' difficulty relinquishing
control even while doing hack work. Why should he care about the setting and story for an
ad that was just trying to get housewives to throw a particular brand of peas into their
shopping carts? But, as Mental Floss reports, Welles cared anyway. Of course, he could have
also backed off somewhat and consented to multiple takes, as the beleaguered audio engineer
asked him to do in the recording.
Even the commanding baritone of Orson Welles doesn't sound terribly respectable when he's
railing about grammar rules and calling the commercial directors "pests." Instead, Welles
comes across as a petty tyrant when, just maybe, he could have played along for once
and quietly collected his check at the end. But that just wasn't Orson.
At the time of his death in 1985, Welles left behind a large number of unfinished film projects.
These are perhaps one of the most tragic details of Welles' life, given how the complicated,
difficult filmmaker was so intensely devoted to his work. They were also, as the British
Film Institute notes, mostly independent projects that reflected the endless, lifelong war of
creative control that Welles waged with other film studios. One of the oldest projects was
a 1939 adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, while Welles had been more
directly working on a 1980s film version of King Lear when he died.
Some of these attempts are little more than enigmatic fragments, like the test footage
for Heart of Darkness. Others were close to completion, like the film that would be released
as The Other Side of the Wind in 2018. Quite a few were incredibly frustrating simply because
we never got to see the completed project, like the on-again, off-again Don Quixote film
that Welles started in 1955 and was still talking about revisiting decades later. Sadly,
he never got the chance to finally finish it.
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