Thief of Hearts

In the theater, you know, the old star actors never liked to come on until the end of the first act. Mister Wu is a classic example -- I've played it once myself. All the other actors boil around the stage for about an hour shrieking, "What will happen when Mister Wu arrives?," "What is he like this Mister Wu?," and so on. Finally a great gong is beaten, and slowly over a Chinese bridge comes Mister Wu himself in full Mandarin robes. Peach Blossom (or whatever her name is) falls on her face and a lot of coolies yell, "Mister Wu!!!" The curtain comes down, the audience goes wild, and everybody says, "Isn't that guy playing Mister Wu a great actor?" That's a star part for you! -- Orson Welles

Once in a Lifetime

The American Film Institute is neither a museum nor an institute, it is a mausoleum preserving in aspic every conventional, unexamined, and corrupt notion expressed about American movies and television since time began.

Yet even a busted clock is right twice a day . . .

Lost and Found

Sometimes you get lucky. Three years before Citizen Kane (1941), 22-year-old Orson Welles directed a stage adaptation of William Gillete's 1894 comedy called Too Much Johnson. The production was to be an interchange between the live action in the theater and a projected movie. In a pre-Broadway test done in Stony Creek, Connecticut, mechanical problems prevented Welles's movie from being shown. The audience hated the show anyway. Broadway was canceled. And the movie was lost.

Until recently. Joseph McBride with the details.

Let us pray we can someday get as lucky with the missing 45 minutes of The Magnificent Ambersons.

The Ecstasy and the Agony

One of the great conversationalists of his time in conversation with the worst talk show host of all time.

Orson Welles and Dick Cavett, July 27, 1970.

Welles and War

How many of us have actually taken the time to listened to it? An astonishing piece of radio art, and perfectly believable as the source of mass 1938 panic.

The background.

All of Welles's Mercury genius can be found here.