Welles, Orson
- Charles L. P. Silet
Extract
Welles, Orson (06 May 1915–10 October 1985), director and actor, was born George Orson Welles in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the son of Richard Hodgon Welles, an inventor and businessman, and Beatrice Ives, a talented amateur musician. Welles was precocious, his pampered childhood abruptly ending after his mother’s death when he was nine. At eleven he was enrolled in the progressive Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, where he directed and acted in classics by Shakespeare and Shaw. After graduation in 1930, he spent a summer at the Chicago Art Institute....