Orson Welles

Orson Welles news, related photos and videos, and reviews of Orson Welles performances. According to Wikipedia: George Orson Welles was an American theater and film producer and director, and a theater, radio and film actor. Welles first gained notoriety for his October 30, 1938 radio broadcast of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Adapted to sound like a contemporary news broadcast, it panicked a large number of listeners. Welles and his biographers subsequently claimed he was exposing the gullibility of American audiences in the tense preamble to the Second World War. In the mid-Thirties his New York theater adaptations of a voodoo Macbeth and a contemporary Julius Caesar became legendary. Welles was also a practiced magician, starring in troop variety spectacles in the war years. During this period he became a serious political activist and commentator through journalism, radio and public appearances closely associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1941, he co-wrote, directed, produced and starred in Citizen Kane, most often chosen in polls of film critics as one of the greatest films ever made.

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Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' Online Friday Night

Written by bigpicture on

From: getthebigpicture.net

I know a thing or two about the legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938. It served as the initial inspiration for my master's thesis covering what was called "First Person Singular," the then-revolutionary narrative technique Orson Welles employed in his radio dramas, and how his later film writing owed such a debt to those early days of radio. Before Welles, only 23 at the time of War of the Worlds, almost all radio dramas employed a narrator separate from the story, but Orson figured rightly that you could tell those stories more efficiently by giving the exposition to a central character.

Because of that, the approach allowed for the device in War of the Worlds of advancing the story through fake news reports. Problem was, even though there was a disclaimer before the broadcast that it was a work of fiction, roughly two million people thought it was a real alien invasion. Imagine if the show had more listeners: The radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy) attracted roughly 35% of the radio audience that night; War of the Worlds was heard by less than 4% of people with a radio. But there was panic in the streets of New York, FCC investigations, and more.

War of the Worlds returns Friday night, marking its 71st anniversary. The original radio drama will be streamed live on WaroftheworldsTribute, and it's all made possible by the new film Me and Orson Welles (thanks to First Showing for finding this earlier today). The stream will begin at 8pm Eastern.

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