Mini biography

Orson Welles (Maj 6th, 1915 - October 10th, 1985)

His father was a well-to-do inventor, his mother a beautiful concert pianist; he was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child.

When his mother died (he was eight) he traveled the world with his father. When his father died (he was twelve) he became the ward of Chicago's Dr. Maurice Bernstein. 

In 1931 he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock IL; he turned down college offers for a sketching tour of Ireland.

He tried unsuccessfully to enter the London and Broadway stages, traveling some more in Morocco and Spain (where he fought in the bullring).

“A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. ”

Recommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katherine Cornell's road company, with which he made his New York debut as Tybalt in 1934.

The same year he married, directed his first short, and appeared on radio for the first time. He began working with John Housman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937.

In 1938 they produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" (intended as a Halloween prank).

His first film to be seen by the public was Citizen Kane (1941), a commercial failure losing RKO $150,000, and regarded by many as the best film ever made.

Many of his next films were commercial failures and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948.

In 1956 he directed Touch of Evil (1958); it failed in the U.S. but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.

In 1975, in spite of all his box-office failures, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984 the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award.

His reputation as a film maker has climbed steadily ever since.

Director - Selected filmography

1. The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
   
2. F for Fake | Vérités et mensonges (1975)
   
3. The Trial - Le Procès (1962)
   
4. Touch of Evil (1958)
   
5. Macbeth (1948)
   
6. The Stranger (1946)
   
7. Citizen Kane (1941)