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 […]
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 […]
American law forbids a man the right to take away another’s right. It must be law that groups of men can’t use the machinery of our Republic to limit the rights of other groups—that the vote, for instance, can’t be used to take away the vote. RACE HATE MUST BE OUTLAWED by Orson Welles Free […]
Chris Welles Feder’s wonderful new book about her life and times with Orson Welles, In My Father’s Shadow has just been released by Agonquin Books. Chris Welles began her book tour in San Francisco with a showing of The Lady From Shanghai at the Rafael Theatre on November 2, and earlier that day Alex Fraser […]
Richard France, who Wellesnet readers will know as the author of two excellent books on Welles, The Theater of Orson Welles and Orson Welles on Shakespeare (that contains the text for Welles’s playscripts of Macbeth, Julius Caesar and Five Kings), has sent along this letter he recently wrote in response to the Time Magazine cover […]
Interview with JACK MARSHALL Artistic Director of The American Century Theatre, on their production of Native Son ************************** By LESLIE WEISMAN ************************** It’s alright to steal from each other, what we must never do is steal from ourselves. –Jake Hannaford, in The Other Side of the Wind. ************************** Introduction By Lawrence French Francis Ford Coppola […]
When you ask me if there is a movie I want to make, I have to answer in a very general way; I want to make movies —Orson Welles From a rare 1979 Yugoslavian TV Interview at The Orson Welles Museum ____________________ The Wellesnet Media audio page has now been transferred to it’s own site, […]
Frankly, I don’t think anybody’s race is anybody else’s business. I’m willing to admit that the policeman has a difficult job, a very hard job, but it’s the essence of our society that the policeman’s job should be hard. He’s there to protect, protect the free citizen, not to chase criminals, that’s an incidental part […]
Given that most of Hollywood today leans distinctly Democratic, I found this 1944 article from Time Magazine to be quite interesting, in terms of getting an idea of where the Hollywood players of the time stood on the political spectrum. The article also brought forth a letter of response from Orson Welles, which Time published […]
In retrospect, one of the amazing things about Orson Welles’ Almanac, was the historic times in which they were written. World War II was still being waged, and although by early 1945 things were looking much better for the Allies, it was still far from certain if the war would actually come to an end. […]
This column features a hilarious riposte to The New Yorker magazine’s then recent article describing Welles’s new political activities as both columnist and speaker on world affairs. According to Welles, The New Yorker sent along an attractive young Juliette Riche-like female reporter to draw Mr. Welles out about his serious new activities, who ended up […]
In this column, Welles writes from Washington D. C., where he has flown to assess the seemingly slim chance former Vice-President Henry Wallace has for becoming President Roosevelt’s new Secretary of Commerce, after 14 conservative Senators have voted against Wallace’s confirmation. _________________________ ORSON WELLES’ ALMANAC By Orson Welles – January 29, 1945 A number of […]
In this column, Welles reports on a French collaborationist who had an office in the Pentagon, prefiguring one of the ideas behind the next movie he would soon be directing, The Stranger. _________________________ ORSON WELLES’ ALMANAC By Orson Welles – January 26, 1945 This is St. Paula’s and St. Polycarp’s Day, and is auspicious for […]
Since several of Welles’ s upcoming Almanac columns feature detailed comments about the (at the time) departing progressive Vice-President, Henry A. Wallace, here is some brief background information about the highly charged political atmosphere in January of 1945: Henry Wallace was Roosevelt’s Vice-President, but had been dumped from the ticket at the party convention in […]
In his third column Welles really hits his stride, producing an absolute gem! Here he pontificates for the first time on two of the great actors and directors of the time: John Barrymore, who was a great friend to Welles when he first came to Hollywood, and C. B. DeMille, who was more of a […]
In Welles’s second column, he follows up his quote of President Woodrow Wilson’s call for peace, by reporting on the current progress of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals. These proposals refer to the name of the mansion in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. where representatives from China, the Soviet Union, the United States and the […]
Thanks to the efforts of writer and researcher Peter Giordano, Wellesnet will be able to offer up an ongoing series of Orson Welles rare Almanac columns that appeared in the pages of The New York Post, beginning in January of 1945. As noted recently, Welles was a great friend of The New York Post’s regular […]
The Free Company presents HIS HONOR THE MAYOR A radio play by ORSON WELLES http://www.box.net/shared/xky7hn4uxk As originally broadcast on April 6, 1941 on CBS _______________ For what avail the plow or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail. —Ralph Waldo Emerson JAMES BOYD: Today our theme is an ancient and fundamental democratic right, which […]
I’m not very hot about being nationalistically inclined. …I hate that in anybody. I do truly believe that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. —Orson Welles. 1974 ______________________________ I don’t think a policeman should work like a dogcatcher, putting criminals behind bars. In any free country a policeman is supposed to […]
