By RAY KELLY
A bronze sculpture of Orson Welles will be dedicated on June 8 in Woodstock, Illinois, where the celebrated actor-director was educated at the former Todd School for Boys.
It will be placed near the 118-foot long mural, located along the pedway adjacent to Classic Cinemas Woodstock Theatre. The colorful mural honors Welles and other hometown heroes.
The sculpture was created and donated by artist Bobby Joe Scribner, 60, who moved to Woodstock 15 years ago.
Scribner began work on the sculpture weeks after attending the Welles centennial celebration in Woodstock in May 2015.
He told Wellesnet he was inspired by a conversation with Welles’ longtime companion, Oja Kodar, herself a sculptor, who lamented how sad it was that there were no statues honoring Welles in his native country.
Scribner, who teaches figure modeling at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, had to rely on photographs and videos of Welles to capture his likeness.
He chose to depict Welles during the 1960s. “I wanted him to be recognizable to most people as he looked later in life with the beard. But I wanted him vigorous, so I went with early middle age.”
Scribner first constructed an armature for his oil-mixed clay three-quarter scale sculpture of Welles. He said he initially made the sculpture for himself, but later decided to donate it to the town.
“I wanted to give something back to the town,” Scribner said, “and I have to admit, selfishly, that I would like it to be out there and be seen.”
The community raised the nearly $10,000 to have a foundry cast Scribner’s clay work in bronze.
The nearby mural features four of Woodstock’s cultural legends: Welles, Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould, the 1993 movie Groundhog Day; and stars of the Woodstock Opera House. Gould lived in Woodstock during the final 50 years of his life and is buried there. The romantic comedy Groundhog Day with Bill Murray was filmed in Woodstock and the Opera House is a local landmark with a rich history.
The mural panel depicting Welles features a late 1930s Welles at a CBS radio microphone next to a War of the Worlds poster. It also features artwork from his landmark movie Citizen Kane.
Welles was educated at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock from 1926 to 1931. In 1934, he co-directed his first film, an eight-minute short “The Hearts of Age,” in Woodstock, organized the Todd Theatre Festival there and published Everybody’s Shakespeare on Todd Press. He visited the Illinois campus in the years that followed. His eldest daughter, Chris Welles Feder, attended Todd in the late 1940s.
Although born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Welles expressed a deep fondness for Woodstock when asked where he considered home. “I have lots of homes … I suppose it’s Woodstock, Illinois, if it’s anywhere. I went to school there for four years, and if I think of home, it’s there.”
In an October 1945 Los Angeles Times interview uncovered by biographer Simon Callow, Welles spoke to Hedda Hopper about his desire to return to Todd School in Woodstock. “My real interest in life is education. I want to be a teacher … One day I shall leave all this behind me, go back there, and give full rein to my ideas. That’s when life will really begin for me.”
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