"Jaded," the 1989 cinematic effort by Orson Welles' partner Oja Kodar has never been released on home video and has remained unseen by most Welles fans.
Now, the trailer for the film, which was included in a Gary Graver documentary, is available online.
The preview trailer heavily promotes her connection to Welles and utilizes scenes from his unreleased "The Merchant of Venice.
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The seldom seen British Arena special "The Complete Citizen Kane" has made its way to YouTube.com, courtesy of online video poster Citizen Welles.
The 91-minute documentary opens with a faux, but effective, "Heart of Darkness" and includes BBC interviews with Orson Welles filmed in 1960 and 1982. Also interviewed are Peter Bogdanovich and Pauline Kael.
"The Complete Citizen Kane," first shown in 1991, is also the only place where you can see the "colorized" test footage created by Ted Turner.
We have embedded the complete YouTube video below. (No guarantee how long it will be available).
A very special thanks to Alan Nowogrodzki for alerting us to this. (more...)
William Friedkin, who is making the rounds publicizing his memoir "The Friedkin Connection," gave his picks for the five best books on directors to The Wall Street Journal.
Among his picks was "This Is Orson Welles" by Peter Bogdanovich and Welles. Friedkin says of the book, "Peter Bogdanovich is a respected film historian and critic as well as a fine director ... His lively conversations with Welles in various parts of the world took place over a nine-year period in the late 1970s and early '80s."
Also on Friedkin's list was "Searching for John Ford" by Joseph McBride. "McBride has written the definitive work on Ford's inner life – a respectful but critical study of a complex man, the most "American" of filmmakers."
As Welles fans know, McBride has written three books about Welles, most recently "What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career." He also had a role in the still unfinished "The Other Side of the Wind." (more...)
By MIKE TEAL
Over the course of their 24 years together on television, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert became the best-known movie critics in the nation, if not the world. They began as fierce rivals for competing newspapers in Chicago, but rose to fame together, reviewing the latest theatrical films on public television starting in 1975. Their influence grew as they made their way onto network television in the early 80s, thus gaining bigger distribution and audiences.
Their avuncular charm and often spirited sparring over films they disagreed with caused millions to tune in weekly, and their “thumbs up/thumbs down verdict” format often meant the difference between a film succeeding or failing at the box-office. Furthermore, because they had started out on public television, and only gradually worked their way onto network TV, (more...)
Rich Phoenix, president of the New Jersey Radio Museum, will discuss "The War of the Worlds" radio broadcast at the Wyckoff Free Public Library in New Jersey next week.
"The Radio Broadcast That Terrorized America," Orson Welles’ radio dramatization of H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel "War of the Worlds," will be the subject of his March 27 evening presentation. The October 1938 broadcast converted Wells’ book into a series of breaking news bulletins, leading many listeners throughout the Northeast to believe aliens had landed.
"At the beginning of the broadcast it was announced that it was a work of fiction but the many people tuned into the program after the announcement and just panicked," (more...)
"What does 'Rosebud' mean in 'Citizen Kane'?" It is perhaps the question most often fielded by Wellesnet. The most detailed answer given by Orson Welles was contained in a press statement released by RKO Radio Pictures prior the film's release in May 1941. The complete press release, uncovered by biographer Frank Brady, has been more extensively reported here in the past, but it bears repeating.
________________
By ORSON WELLES
January 15, 1941
I wished to make a motion picture which was not a narrative of action so much as an examination of character. For this, I desired a man of many sides and many aspects. It was my idea to show that six or more people could have as many widely divergent opinions concerning the nature of a single personality. Clearly such a notion could not be worked out if it would apply to an ordinary American citizen.
I immediately decided that my character (Charles Foster Kane) should be a public man — an extremely public man — an extremely important one ...
There have been many motion pictures and novels rigorously obeying the formula of the “success story,” I wished to do something quite different. (more...)
Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau
By RAY KELLY
A collection of production notes, correspondence, film rolls, contracts, scripts, and other materials related to Orson Welles' unfinished movie "The Deep" were sold at auction in California for $8,320.
Julien's Auctions of Beverly Hills did (more...)
Courtesy of Paul Bradbury; Total Hvar
Paul Bradbury of the website Total Hvar has been generous in sharing with Wellesnet several rare photographs of Orson Welles filming his unfinished thriller "The Deep" (also known as "Dead Reckoning").
According to Bradbury, the photographs were taken in 1967 on the beautiful Croatian island of Hvar. These black and white photographs show Welles in character as Russ Brewer and directing co-stars Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. The photographs were supplied to Total Hvar by the son of a cook, who worked on the set. (more...)
By LAWRENCE FRENCH
In the fall of 1944, Orson Welles wrote an article for FREE WORLD which supported his hero FDR, even though Welles must have been highly distraught at FDR letting Henry Wallace being dumped as his Vice-President from the ticket. Harry Truman became Henry Wallace's replacement, and of course we have no way of knowing what would have happened if Henry Wallace had stayed on the ticket and become President after President Roosevelt died, but I think it's rather safe to say we wouldn't have had one of the most shameful era's in American history, starting with the Communist witch hunts, that had been ongoing but only gained traction while Harry Truman was President. The most significant Truman decision was of course using Nuclear weapons against Japan. (more...)
By LAWRENCE FRENCH
During the month before this year's Presidential election, Wellesnet will be presenting some of the political writings of Orson Welles, as first published in FREE WORLD magazine starting in 1943, and continuing through the election of 1944 when Welles was a huge supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Welles' views were well in advance of the political thinking of the time and I daresay, they are also far in advance of the rather regressive and backward political thinking of this year's Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, who has said 47 per cent of America's poorer citizens think of themselves as "victims."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"MORAL INDEBTEDNESS" by Orson Welles
Free World, October, 1943
To be born free is to be born in debt: to live in freedom without fighting slavery is to profiteer. (more...)
By RAY KELLY
Welles scholars now have access to the exciting additions to the Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan.
The first collection, “The Orson Welles – Chris Welles Feder Collection,” is a gift from Welles’ eldest daughter, Chris Welles Feder. It includes photographs of the family and letters from Welles to his first wife, Virginia Nicolson Welles. Among the letters is a series written by Welles when he made the transition from New York to Hollywood in the summer of 1939, which documents his activities and thoughts during his introduction to movie making.
The second collection, “The Alessandro Tasca di Cutò – Orson Welles Collection,” is from the personal papers of Alessandro Tasca and was purchased at auction in London. (more...)
By LAWRENCE FRENCH
'The Magnificent Ambersons' opens in Los Angeles - July 7, 1942
Even in it's truncated version, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS received many excellent reviews and eventually was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Agnes Moorehead); Best Cinematography (Stanley Cortez); and Best Art Decoration. Certainly not an easy task for a film that was released in July of the awards year. And despite a widely perceived notion that the film was dumped without fanfare by RKO, this was not entirely the case. At least initially, RKO gave AMBERSONS an impressive campaign, with full page ads appearing in many national publications, such as LIFE and LOOK. In fact, according to Joseph McBride, AMBERSONS box-office returns for many major cities boded very well for the films prospects. "It was holding up beyond expectations in LA, doing sensationally in San Francisco, nice in New York and Baltimore, good in Denver and Omaha, and not bad in Boston and Philly." (as reported in 1942 by Variety).
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