Orson Welles

Made a Hollywood satire, The Other Side of the Wind (2018), starring John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich. Though it was completed, the post-production process was not and the film also ran into legal problems.

Welles' Oscar statuette sold for $861,542, when it was auctioned by Nate D. Sanders Memorabilia on December 20, 2011.

Ranked #9 in Empire (UK) magazine's "The Greatest directors ever!" [2005].

A bootleg tape of a short-tempered (and foul-mouthed) Welles arguing with a recording engineer during a voice-over session has been widely distributed. It was used as the basis for an episode of the animated series Pinky and the Brain (1995), with The Brain reading cleaned-up versions of Orson's rantings (the episode's title, "Yes, Always", is taken from one of Welles' complaints). Ironically, the actor who plays The Brain, Maurice LaMarche, dubbed the voice of the actor who portrays Welles in Ed Wood (1994).

Has been played by Vincent D'Onofrio twice: Ed Wood (1994) and Five Minutes, Mr. Welles (2005).

Posthumously inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988.

He died on the same day as his The Battle of Neretva (1969) co-star Yul Brynner: October 10, 1985.

Was the narrator for many of the trailers for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

ABC-TV wanted him to play Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island (1977), but the series' producer, Aaron Spelling, insisted on Ricardo Montalban.

Lobbied to get the role of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), even offered to lose a good deal of weight in order to get the role. Francis Ford Coppola, a huge fan of his, had to turn him down because he already had Marlon Brando in mind for the role and felt Welles would not be right for the role.

Most of his movie projects never got finished or released due to financial problems and disputes with studio executives. Some of his unfinished productions are: The Deep (1970) (Laurence Harvey's death made a finished movie impossible), The Merchant of Venice (1969) and Don Quixote (1992).

When he signed on to direct Touch of Evil (1958), instead of reading the book on which it was based--a pulp novel named "Badge of Evil"--Welles completely changed an early draft of the script.

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

He tried to make a film version of Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra' book "Don Quixote". He started working on it in 1955 and continued to film through the 1970s with Francisco Reiguera and Akim Tamiroff starring. An incomplete version was released in Spain in 1992.

Host/narrator of the BBC/Mutual Radio's "The Black Museum" (1952).

He portrayed the title character on the syndicated radio show "The Lives of Harry Lime" (also known as "The Third Man") (1951-52). This was based on his character from the film The Third Man (1949).

His performance as Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949) is ranked #93 on Premiere magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

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

Was suggested as a possible suspect by author Mary Pacios, in the mutilation murder of actress Elizabeth Short, known as "The Black Dahlia" case, in Los Angeles in 1947. Among other reasons, Pacios suggested Welles as a suspect because Welles' artwork for the surreal bizarre funhouse set in The Lady from Shanghai (1947) was similar in many ways to the mutilation and bisection of Elizabeth Short. Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures--the studio that produced The Lady from Shanghai--ordered the footage cut before release because of its disturbing resemblance to the murder.

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

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).

He began working with John Houseman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937.

where he fought in the bullringRecommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katharine 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.

His father was a well-to-do inventor, his mother a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died (he was six) he traveled the world with his father. He was orphaned at 15 after his father's death and became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein of Chicago. In 1931, he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. 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.

In the 1930s, he worked at various radio stations in New York City, at different times of the day. He found it difficult to be on time for his live shows because he had to use taxicabs and the heavy New York City traffic meant that he was often late. He soon found a loophole in the law that said you didn't have to be sick to hire an ambulance, so he did just that and had the drivers blast their sirens as he traveled from one station to the next, and that way he was on time.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890- 1945". Pages 1168-1185. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.