Orson Welles

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... [more]

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.

On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre performed a radio play based on an H.G. Wells story entitled "War of the Worlds". The national broadcast caused panic and mass hysteria as listeners began to believe Martians had landed in New Jersey and were taking over the world. Read More. (Pictured: Orson Welles performing on radio.)Halloween Scare: Radio Version of 'War of the Worlds' Panicked America in 1938 originally appeared on...  
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