A fake Martian invasion on radio handed Orson Welles the keys to Hollywood
In 1938 a 23-year-old narrated The War of the Worlds on radio so convincingly that some listeners thought Martians had landed. The uproar won Orson Welles an extraordinary Hollywood contract, and his first film, Citizen Kane, is still ranked among the greatest ever made.
Welles arrived on May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the younger son of an inventor who had made money from a bicycle lamp and a concert pianist trained under Leopold Godowsky. His parents split in 1919. His mother supported them by playing at art lectures in Chicago and died of hepatitis just after he turned nine; a string quartet that had debuted in her home played at the funeral. With his father drinking heavily, the boy was hauled to Jamaica and the Far East, and one biographer wondered who was really looking after whom.
At the Todd Seminary for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois, from 1926, a teacher named Roger Hill let him follow his own interests. The school had a theatre and its own radio station, where Welles made his broadcasting debut in a Sherlock Holmes adaptation he wrote himself.
By 21 he was staging productions for the Federal Theatre Project in New York, beginning in 1936 with a Macbeth performed by an African-American cast. He and John Houseman then created the Mercury Theatre, whose Broadway seasons opened with a modern, politically charged Caesar and closed in 1941 with the premiere of Richard Wright's Native Son. Its radio offshoot delivered the Martian broadcast.
Citizen Kane in 1941 saw him co-writing, producing, directing and playing Charles Foster Kane. Twelve more features followed, among them Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight, built on nonlinear storytelling, deep focus, long takes, dramatic lighting and sound tricks learned in radio. Studios fought him for control, and as an independent he often could not raise money. He acted for others too, most famously as Harry Lime in The Third Man. A 2002 British Film Institute poll named him the greatest director of all time. He died on October 10, 1985.
Source: Orson Welles
