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As the clock struck 8 p.m. in New York City on the night of October 30, 1938, Orson Welles stood on a podium inside a Madison Avenue radio studio. The baby-faced, 23-year-old theatrical star, who had graced the cover of Time magazine months earlier, prepared to direct 10 actors and a 27-piece orchestra for the Columbia Broadcasting System’s weekly “Mercury Theatre on the Air” program

Orson Welles played nearly all the roles. From director to writer to leading actor, Welles was an innovative creator whose keystone production, Citizen Kane, effectively changed the course of moviemaking in the '40s. But throughout much of his career, his established independence and his frequent squabbles with other producers on film projects meant he often found himself taking odd production jobs to keep afloat, where he also butted heads with others. In one such instance, hired for some narration work sometime around 1970 by the Swedish frozen food brand Findus, Welles can be heard on tape breaking from script and...

It is reported that at 8:50 P. M. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey, twenty-two miles from Trenton. The flash in the sky was visible within a radius of several hundred miles and the noise of the impact was heard as far north as Elizabeth.

PLEASE allow this thread to remain.I think the historical value is timely and apropos. The Untold Story and The Original Broadcast (remastered

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Orson Welles. Click puzzle (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Orson Welles was a charismatic fella of some heft. He originated the media's fake news industry by announcing a Martian attack in New Jersey, then worked his way up to selling wine (but never before its time). All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidental spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the...

He was reading the script of a 1938 radio drama based on the novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, who died AUGUST 13, 1946. Herbert George Wells was from an impoverished lower middle class family. He failed as a draper and chemist assistant before going into literature. H.G. Wells wrote many best-selling science fiction novels, such as: The Time Machine, 1895; The Island of Doctor Moreau, 1896; The Invisible Man, 1897; The War of the Worlds, 1898; The First Men in the Moon, 1901. H.G. Wells space novels inspired the imagination of Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945). Goddard...

Citizen Kane, the 1942 drama made by Orson Welles, is frequently cited as one of the greatest movies ever made. In the 76 years since its release, critical support for the film has gone from strength to strength, and historians of cinema have recognized its crucial importance in setting the agenda for filmmaking in the 20th century. So why did this classic of modern cinematography fail at the box office? The movie was the brainchild of Orson Welles, a rising star on the 1930s theater and radio scene. According to the Guardian, by the tender age of just 22, Welles...

The Valley of the Living Dead

1. Orson Welles was born on May 6, 1915. 2. As a filmmaker, his three greatest pictures, in order, are Touch of Evil (1958), Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). 3. Ah, yes, but Citizen Kane tops many lists as the greatest film of all time (with Welles filling the top slot on many directing lists). The fictional story of a megalomaniac newspaper magnate (loosely based on William Randolph Hearst) and innocence lost is indeed a masterpiece . . . albeit a dated one. Newspaper magnates? Not in this century, bub. 4. John Houseman wrote in his 1972...

Mary Healy, a versatile actress and singer who starred with Orson Welles on Broadway and opposite her husband Peter Lind Hayes for nearly 60 years on stage, screen and radio, has died. She was 96.

After nine decades in the business, the former collaborator of Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles is still looking for his next great role. The earliest surviving footage of broadcast television in America is a fragment of "The Streets of New York," an adaptation of playwright Dion Boucicault's 19th-century drama, aired by the experimental New York NBC affiliate W2XBS on August 31, 1939. All that now remains of the hour-long program is a silent, 11-minute kinescope, filmed off a TV screen and archived at the Paley Center For Media. And there, in those primitive flickering images, you can catch...

Paul Masson would sell no wine before its time...which apparently didn't stop Orson from having a quart or two before showing up for the original commercial shoot...

Excellent 1946 Thriller/Noir featuring Edward G. Robinson as a Nazi hunter whose investigations bring him to a small town in Connecticut. Orson Welles directs, and co-stars along with Loretta Young and a young Richard Long...

Today's feature: black and white, film noir, a blond femme fatale, a cripple millionaire, a luxury yacht and a hall of mirrors. Enjoy.

On the film's debut in 1941, the New York Times acknowledged that Citizen Kane was "one of the great (if not the greatest) motion pictures of all time." The paper hedged its bets, however, adding that "it was riding the crest of perhaps the most provocative publicity wave ever to float a motion picture," and that this "pre-ordered a mental attitude." The whirlwind surrounding the making of Citizen Kane is well known. Orson Welles, the brash prodigy of stage and radio, earned the envy and scorn of Hollywood veterans by striding onto the RKO lot with an unprecedented contract awarding...

Sunday, January 3rd at 2 PM Pacific / 3 PM Mountain / 4 PM Central / 5 PM Eastern, Classical KUSC presents a rebroadcast of “On Dangerous Ground: A Tribute to Bernard Herrmann.” This two-hour sound portrait of one of cinema’s greatest composers will be hosted by Jon Burlingame, author, USC professor, and a writer on film music for Variety. The program includes rarely heard interviews with Herrmann himself, and excerpts from his concert music as well as dozens of his great film scores, from Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver. Herrmann’s legendary partnership with Alfred Hitchcock will be showcased with...

In “Me and Orson Welles,” director Richard Linklater’s effervescent historical romp about Welles’ 1937 theater production of “Julius Caesar,” Christian McKay steals the show as the temperamental director. (WSJ film critic Joe Morgenstern calls him “an excellent English actor who bears, or somehow simulates, a facial resemblance to the great man, and nails Welles’s expression of pouty, aggrieved amusement.) Welles is a character that the 36-year-old McKay is quite familiar with. He first began playing the director five years ago in the one-man show “Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles,” which sold out audiences at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004...

In case you have never heard of Orson Welles, he might go down as one of the biggest actors/directors in Hollywood history. He was the Martin Scorsese, Brad Pitt, and Robert De Niro all rolled into one. His film Citizen Cane has been ranked as the #1 best film ever made, including the prestigious American Film Institute. He acted and directed that movie and has as very successfully career since the movie was made in 1941. In 2002 he was voted as the greatest film director of all time in the British Film Institute's poll of Top Ten Directors. He...

Most Christian Bale fans won’t know the name Orson Welles. So please allow us to contrast the two: Welles was called The Boy Genius. Bale isn’t. Welles was an Academy Award-winning actor, director, writer and producer. Bale isn’t. Welles wrote, produced, directed and starred in Citizen Kane, often called the greatest film ever made. Bale played Batman. Welles also had a magnificent voice. In the later years of his life, he was paid obscene amounts of money to use that voice in commercials. The attached audio track is famous. It’s made up of out-takes from a London recording session in...