Kenosha native Orson Welles is the first celebrity to be honored with a spot on the Wisconsin Entertainers Wall of Fame in West Bend, Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Entertainers Wall of Fame is located on the north exterior wall of The Bend Theater on North Main Street in the covered walkway between the theater and Husar’s House of Fine Diamonds. Lighted display boxes will highlight 10 of the state’s most celebrated entertainers who have ties to Wisconsin in either music, movies and comedy.
“The City of West Bend is proud to collaborate with The Bend to transform the covered walkway into a welcoming destination that highlights Wisconsin’s rich history of talented musicians, artists and entertainers,” Mayor Joel Ongert said in a statement. “Congratulations to the dedicated team who made this vision to a reality!”
Welles was born to inventor Richard Head Welles and concert pianist Beatrice Ives Welles, who lived in a two-story house on the east side of Library Park in Kenosha. Welles, who spent relatively few of his 70 years in Wisconsin. However, he described himself as “almost beligerently Midwestern, and always a confirmed badger” in a 1937 letter to a Kenosha congressman who asked Welles to withdraw criticisms he reportedly made about his birthplace.
“I have been to Kenosha in recent years,” Welles replied in the letter, and found it “vital and charming.”
But years later, Welles told film scholar and Milwaukee native Joseph McBride, “I’m not ashamed of being from Wisconsin – just of being from Kenosha. It’s a terrible place.”
That impression was surely colored by the fact, McBride wrote, that his only memory of Kenosha “was the bleak day at his mother’s funeral.”
The Historic West Bend Theatre Board chose Welles as the inaugural Wall of Fame inductee, but will leave the next nine selections up to the community.
There are 32 entertainers up for consideration for the nine remaining spots. They include Bunny Berigan, Woody Herman, Steve Miller, Greg Koch, The Chordettes, BoDeans, Hildegarde, Liberace, Bon Iver, Oprah Winfrey, Gene Wilder, Pat O’Brien, Willem Dafoe, Chris Farley, Frederic March, Les Paul, Gena Rowlands, Fred MacMurray, Agnes Moorhead, Spencer Tracy, Rachel Brosnahan, Mark Ruffalo, Harrison Ford, Al Jarreau, Lund and Fontaine, Daryl Stuermer, The Violent Femmes, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Garbage.
Kine Torinus, vice president of the Historic West Bend Theatre Board, boasted that “West Bend is becoming a destination city for tourists, and this project will add nicely to its draw as a cultural district.”
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