George Orson Welles was an American director, actor, screenwriter, and producer who is remembered for his innovative work in radio, theatre and film. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
Touch of Evil is a 1958 American film noir written and directed by Orson Welles, who also stars in the film. The screenplay was loosely based on the contemporary Whit Masterson novel Badge of Evil (1956). The cast included Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, and Marlene Dietrich.
Oja Kodar is a Croatian actress, screenwriter and director known as Orson Welles's partner during the later years of his life.
Too Much Johnson is a 1938 American silent comedy film written and directed by Orson Welles. An unfinished film component of a stage production, it was made three years before Welles directed Citizen Kane, but it was never publicly screened. It was shot to be integrated into Welles's Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy, but the film sequences could not be shown due to the absence of projection facilities at the venue, the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut. The resulting plot confusion reportedly contributed to the stage production's failure.
Othello is a 1951 tragedy film directed and produced by Orson Welles, who also adapted the Shakespearean play and played the title role. Recipient of the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival, the film was distributed by United Artists when it was released in the United States in 1955. Othello was filmed on location over a three-year period in Morocco, Venice, Tuscany and Rome and at the Scalera Studios in Rome.
Mr. Arkadin, known in Britain as Confidential Report, is a French-Spanish-Swiss coproduction film, written and directed by Orson Welles and shot in several Spanish locations, including Costa Brava, Segovia, Valladolid and Madrid. Filming took place throughout Europe in 1954, and scenes shot outside Spain include locations in London, Munich, Paris, the French Riviera and at the Château de Chillon in Switzerland.
Joseph McBride is an American film historian, biographer, screenwriter, author and educator. He has written numerous books including biographies of notable film directors, a book on screenwriting, an investigative journalism book on the JFK assassination, and a memoir of the dark years in his life.
The Hearts of Age is an early film made by Orson Welles. The film is an eight-minute short that he co-directed with friend William Vance in 1934. The film stars Welles's first wife, Virginia Nicolson, and Welles himself. He made the film while still attending the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, at the age of 19.
Moby Dick is a two-act drama by Orson Welles. The play was staged June 16–July 9, 1955, at the Duke of York's Theatre in London, in a production directed by Welles. The original cast included Welles, Christopher Lee, Kenneth Williams, Joan Plowright, Patrick McGoohan, Gordon Jackson, Peter Sallis, and Wensley Pithey. The play was published by Samuel French in 1965.
The Other Side of the Wind is a 2018 experimental satirical drama directed, co-written, co-produced and co-edited by Orson Welles, posthumously released in 2018 after more than 40 years in development. The film stars John Huston, Bob Random, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg, and Oja Kodar.
I Was a Male War Bride is a 1949 comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant and Ann Sheridan.
The Orson Welles Show was an unsold television talk show pilot directed by Orson Welles. It has never been broadcast or released in its entirety. Filming began in September 1978 and the project was completed around February 1979. It ran 74 minutes and was intended for a 90 minute commercial time slot.
Orson Welles (1915–1985) was an American director, actor, writer, and producer who is best remembered for his innovative work in radio, theatre and film. He is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
The Fountain of Youth is a 1956 television pilot directed by Orson Welles for a proposed Desilu Productions anthology series that was never produced. Based on a short story by John Collier, the short film narrated onscreen by Welles stars Dan Tobin, Joi Lansing and Rick Jason. The Fountain of Youth was televised once, on September 16, 1958, on NBC's Colgate Theatre. It received the prestigious Peabody Award for 1958, the only unsold television pilot ever to be so honored.
Don Quixote is an unfinished film project written, co-produced and directed by Orson Welles. Principal photography took place between 1957 and 1969. Test footage was filmed as early as 1955, second-unit photography was done as late as 1972, and Welles was working on the film intermittently until his death in 1985. The film was eventually edited by Jesús Franco and was released in 1992, to mixed reviews.
The Deep is an unfinished film directed by Orson Welles, based on Charles Williams' novel Dead Calm (1963), which was later adapted as an eponymous 1989 film. Welles produced and wrote The Deep, as well as played the role of Russ Brewer opposite Jeanne Moreau and Laurence Harvey.
Orson Welles and People was a 1956 pilot for a projected documentary series by Orson Welles, which is now believed to be lost.
This is a comprehensive listing of the radio programs made by Orson Welles. Welles was often uncredited for his work, particularly in the years 1934–1937, and he apparently kept no record of his broadcasts.
Radio is what I love most of all. The wonderful excitement of what could happen in live radio, when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I was making a couple of thousand a week, scampering in ambulances from studio to studio, and committing much of what I made to support the Mercury. I wouldn't want to return to those frenetic 20-hour working day years, but I miss them because they are so irredeemably gone.
This is a bibliography of books by or about the director and actor Orson Welles.
The Citizen Kane trailer is a four-minute, self-contained, "making of" promotional featurette by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, released in 1940 to promote the film Citizen Kane. Unlike other standard theatrical trailers of the era, it did not feature any footage of the actual film itself, but was a wholly original pseudo-documentary piece. It is considered by numerous film scholars such as Simon Callow, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum to be a standalone short film, rather than a conventional "trailer", and to represent an important stage in the development of Welles's directorial style.
