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

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The Wellesnet Media audio page has now been transferred to it’s own site, The Orson Welles Museum where you can spend hours listening to various audio recordings Welles did for radio and records, as well as several very informative interviews Welles gave throughout his career.

It’s quite a fabulous collection of material, and to any uninformed person, such as so many entertainment writers seem to be – especially those who seem to think Welles did nothing but make Citizen Kane and wine commercials – just point them to this site.

In reality, it’s rather incredible to realize just how great the depth of Welles’s work was in the medium of radio and the spoken word.

To start out, here is a show I think is as relevant today as when Welles recorded it, over 60 year ago:

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It’s perfectly possible, that we are the ancestors of a great race. This is only possible, if the world doesn’t come to an end, which is only possible if we can put an end to war-making and to war.

—Orson Welles June 30, 1946

So said Mr. Welles, four days before the fourth of July, in 1946, when he delivered a sobering talk about America’s first atomic bomb blast at the Bikini Atoll in the south Pacific. Of course, this wake up call, warning us about the dangers of testing and stock piling of Atomic weapons went unheeded.

I found the whole show to be quite a superb piece of political commentary, that also weirdly anticipates several elements in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. There’s even a point where Welles says his wife at the time (Rita Hayworth) had her picture pasted on the side of the A-bomb that was to be dropped – shades of Slim Pickens – although Welles notes it was apparently very much against Ms. Hayworth’s own wishes.

Enter the ORSON WELLES museum and give it a listen!