King Lear
Orson Welles, Beatrice Straight
Released: 1953
Directed by: Andrew McCullough
19.Tomorrow Is Forever
Natalie Wood, Orson Welles
Released: 1946
Directed by: Irving Pichel
18.The Immortal Story
Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau
Released: 1968
Directed by: Orson Welles
17.Waterloo
Orson Welles, Christopher Plummer
Released: 1970
Directed by: Sergei Bondarchuk
16.Prince of Foxes
Orson Welles, Tyrone Power
Released: 1949
Directed by: Henry King
15.The Lady from Shanghai
Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles
Released: 1947
Directed by: Orson Welles
14.Casino Royale
Woody Allen, Ursula Andress
Released: 1967
Directed by: Val Guest, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, John Huston, Ken Hughes
13.Othello
Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten
Released: 1952
Directed by: Orson Welles
12.Moby Dick
Orson Welles, Gregory Peck
Released: 1956
Directed by: John Huston
11.Touch of Evil
Charlton Heston, Orson Welles
Released: 1958
Directed by: Orson Welles
10.Touch of Evil
Charlton Heston, Orson Welles
Released: 1958
Directed by: Orson Welles
9.Citizen Kane
Orson Welles, Alan Ladd
Released: 1941
Directed by: Orson Welles
8.Journey into Fear
Orson Welles, Dolores del Río
Released: 1943
Directed by: Orson Welles, Norman Foster
7.The Third Man
Orson Welles, Trevor Howard
Released: 1949
Directed by: Carol Reed
6.The Long, Hot Summer
Paul Newman, Angela Lansbury
Released: 1958
Directed by: Martin Ritt
5.A Man for All Seasons
John Hurt, Orson Welles
Released: 1966
Directed by: Fred Zinnemann
4.Macbeth
Orson Welles, Roddy McDowall
Released: 1948
Directed by: Orson Welles
3.The Trial
Orson Welles, Anthony Perkins
Released: 1962
Directed by: Orson Welles
2.Chimes at Midnight
Orson Welles, John Gielgud
Released: 1965
Directed by: Orson Welles
1.The Magnificent Ambersons
Orson Welles, Anne Baxter
Released: 1942
Directed by: Orson Welles
BIOGRAPHY
Orson Welles, in full George Orson Welles, (born May 6, 1915, Kenosha, Wisconsin, U.S.—died October 10, 1985, Los Angeles, California), American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. His innovative narrative techniques and use of photography, dramatic lighting, and music to further the dramatic line and to create mood made his Citizen Kane (1941)—which he wrote, directed, produced, and acted in—one of the most-influential films in the history of the art.
Welles was born to a mother, Beatrice Ives, who was a concert pianist and a crack rifle shot, and a father, Richard Welles, who was an inventor and a businessman. Welles was a child prodigy, adept at the piano and violin, acting, drawing, painting, and writing verse; he also entertained his friends by performing magic tricks and staging mini productions of William Shakespeare’s plays.
Welles’s parents separated when he was four years old, and his mother died when he was nine. In 1926 Welles entered the exclusive Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. There his gifts found fertile ground, and he dazzled the teachers and students with stagings of both modern and classical plays. His father died in 1930, and Welles became the ward of a family friend, Chicago doctor Maurice Bernstein. In 1931 he graduated from Todd, but, instead of attending college, he studied briefly at the Art Institute of Chicago before traveling to Dublin, where he successfully auditioned at the Gate Theatre for the part of the Duke of Württemberg in a stage adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel Jew Süss.
Welles remained in Ireland for a year, acting with the company at the Abbey Theatre as well as at the Gate; he also designed sets, wrote a newspaper column, and began directing plays. In 1932 Welles left Dublin and tried to get work on the stages of London and New York; unsuccessful, he instead traveled for a year in Morocco and Spain. In 1933 in the United States, he was introduced to actress Katharine Cornell by author Thornton Wilder and was hired to act in Cornell’s road company, playing Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Marchbanks in George Bernard Shaw’s Candida, and Octavius Barrett in Rudolf Besier’s The Barretts of Wimpole Street. In 1934 Welles organized a summer drama festival at the Todd School, where he played Svengali in an adaptation of George du Maurier’s Trilby and Claudius in Hamlet. At the end of the festival, he made his first film, the short The Hearts of Age. With Todd School headmaster Roger Hill, he prepared Everybody’s Shakespeare (1934), editions for performance of Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar, with introductions by Hill and Welles and illustrations by Welles. He made his New York debut as Tybalt in Cornell’s production of Romeo and Juliet in December 1934.
When Welles was performing in Romeo and Juliet, he met producer John Houseman, who immediately cast him as the lead in Archibald MacLeish’s verse play Panic, which premiered in 1935 for Houseman’s Phoenix Theatre Group. They then moved on in 1936 to mounting productions for the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA’s) Federal Theatre Project. Their first effort, for the Federal Theatre’s Negro Division, was Macbeth, with an all African American cast and the setting changed from Scotland to Haiti. They began 1937 with Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus (starring Welles). Their most (in)famous effort was Marc Blitzstein’s proletarian musical play The Cradle Will Rock. WPA guards shut down the theatre the night before its opening. (The shutdown was ostensibly for budgetary reasons; however, the political nature of the play was considered too radical.) Welles and Houseman quickly rented another theatre, and on opening night the play was presented with the actors performing their roles from seats in the audience. That same year they formed the Mercury Theatre, which presented a renowned modern-dress version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. In 1938 the Mercury Theatre presented William Gillette’s comedy Too Much Johnson. Welles shot three short silent films to precede each act of the play; however, the films were never finished. (The Too Much Johnson footage was believed to have been destroyed by fire in 1970; however, it was rediscovered, restored, and premiered in 2013.)
britanica.
BY MOVIES
