Orson Welles, with the support of singer Eartha Kitt and Gate Theatre founders Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, staged An Evening with Orson Welles at three stops in West Germany in August 1950. Performances began at the Frankfurt Zoo theater before moving on to Hamburg and Munich. An Evening with Orson Welles, under the direction […]
La Cinematheque francaise has made an extraordinary interview with Orson Welles available online. The 90-minute interview is part of the Henri platform put in place by Cinémathèque francaise, which has been closed since March 13. Film lessons and conferences, sites and articles devoted to its exhibitions and retrospectives, not to mention treasures from its collections, […]
By RAY KELLY Imagine eavesdropping on a suppertime conversation between a maverick filmmaker who was frequently at odds with the major studios and a young director at the forefront of the New Hollywood movement. Cineastes will rejoice in learning that extensive footage of the November 1970 meeting of Citizen Kane creator Orson Welles and Easy Rider director […]
If you spend enough time on social media, you will find a number of young people either do not know who Orson Welles was — or know him only from YouTube outtakes of Paul Masson or Findus frozen peas commercials. But the release today of Logic’s album, No Pressure, has sent some fans of the […]
Classic Orson Welles radio broadcasts are sampled on a forthcoming album by Grammy nominated rapper Logic. Welles can he heard prominently on two tracks on Logic’s album, No Pressure, which is set to arrive on Friday, July 24, via Def Jam Recordings/Visionary Music Group. (Some of the album tracks have already leaked online.) The […]
In the works is an Argentinian-led remake of The Immortal Story – the Karen Blixen short story previously filmed by Orson Welles for French television in 1968. Argentina’s Daniel Rosenfeld and director Luca Puenzo will write the screenplay for the big screen effort. Argentine-French actor Nahuel Parez Biscayart (BPM) and Leonardo Sbaraglia (Pain and Glory, Wild Tales) […]
A new podcast series based on the unpublished Polly Platt memoir It Was Worth It delves into her involvement in the The Other Side of the Wind and the relationship between Orson Welles and his collaborator, Oja Kodar. The multi-episode Polly Platt: The Invisible Woman is part of the You Must Remember This podcasts produced by Karina Longworth. It details how Platt was […]
The film of composer Daron Hagen’s multimedia opera Orson Rehearsed is now in post-production with a spring 2021 release eyed. A 90-second trailer was released online on June 27. The work – conceived, composed, and directed by Hagen – debuted in its staged form at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago in September 2018. It starred Robert Orth, Robert Frankenberry, […]
By MIKE TEAL and RAY KELLY Seven decades before Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets over police brutality, Orson Welles took to the airwaves in a series of broadcasts demanding justice for a decorated black veteran Isaac Woodard, who had been beaten and blinded by white police officers. Freshly discharged from Camp Gordon […]
TeePublic and parent company Redbubble began of production last year of fan-designed T-shirts, pillows, mugs and other merchandise licensed by the Estate of Orson Welles. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the production of Welles themed, non-medical masks has popped up with designs featuring a young Welles and images from the films Citizen Kane and The […]
Britain’s The Oldie magazine recently dug out an interesting piece written a few years back by the late filmmaker Andrew Sinclair (Under Milk Wood) recalling an unfinished 1970s project starring Orson Welles and Oliver Reed. Sinclair was set to direct Reed, Welles and Oja Kodar in a movie called Rider. He had previously worked with […]
By RAY KELLY Orson Welles was the consummate talk show guest, whether he was bantering with Johnny Carson, telling stories to Dinah Shore or performing sleight of hand before Merv Griffin. In the late 1970s — after routinely be called in to guest host for Merv or Johnny — Welles considered hosting his own series. […]
By MIKE TEAL After the excitement of 2018, which saw the near-miraculous completion of the 40-years-in-the-making The Other Side of the Wind, 2019 was a relatively quiet year for Wellesian matters. Reactions to Other Wind continued to roll in gradually during the first part of the year from various Welles scholars and authors (although […]
A cheery holiday reminder that streaming audio of four vintage Christmas radio shows featuring Orson Welles can be found on Wellesnet. First up are two versions of Charles Dicken’s classic A Christmas Carol as heard on the Campbell Playhouse in 1938 and 1939. The first features Welles as Ebenezer Scrooge, while the second has him narrating the story and […]
A line of licensed Orson Welles T-shirts, pillows, mugs and other merchandise featuring fan-created artwork has hit the market in time for Christmas. TeePublic tells Wellesnet that this is “the first time ever they (the Welles estate) are licensing fan art and allowing independent artists to create new incredible art using their IP (intellectual property).” […]
By RAY KELLY Among Orson Welles’ final unrealized projects, perhaps none came closer to fruition than The Cradle Will Rock. The autobiographical film would have been a retelling of Welles’ fabled 1937 Federal Theatre Project production of the controversial Marc Blitzstein musical on the labor movement. The government pulled support for the left-wing play before […]
Seventy five years ago on November 4, 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt made his final campaign stop with a speech before a crowd of 40,000 at Fenway Park in Boston. Red, white and blue bunting and banners were looped along the infield fence, around uprights and the edge of the grandstand roof of the historic ballpark. […]
It has been little more than a year since initial reports that 10cc’s Kevin Godley would write and direct a feature film chronicling a teenage Orson Welles’ experiences in Ireland. While the film is not yet in production, the project is not dead by any means. Screen Daily had reported in May 2018 that The […]
By RAY KELLY For decades, Todd Tarbox has assisted Orson Welles biographers and scholars by providing them access to the archive of his late grandfather, Roger “Skipper” Hill, headmaster at the former Todd School for Boys. In 2013, Tarbox published Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts, a play recounting the two […]
By RAY KELLY The RKO corporate archive Welles material that was presumed lost in the sale to Turner has now been restored in a workable digital version and should be available online soon, Wellesnet has learned. Wellesnet has reached out to WarnerMedia, the current rights holder, for further details. Orson Welles was signed by RKO […]
