A new podcast series based on the unpublished Polly Platt memoir It Was Worth It delves into her involvement in the The Other Side of the Wind and the relationship between Orson Welles and his collaborator, Oja Kodar. The multi-episode Polly Platt: The Invisible Woman is part of the You Must Remember This podcasts produced by Karina Longworth. It details how Platt was […]
The film of composer Daron Hagen’s multimedia opera Orson Rehearsed is now in post-production with a spring 2021 release eyed. A 90-second trailer was released online on June 27. The work – conceived, composed, and directed by Hagen – debuted in its staged form at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago in September 2018. It starred Robert Orth, Robert Frankenberry, […]
By MIKE TEAL and RAY KELLY Seven decades before Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets over police brutality, Orson Welles took to the airwaves in a series of broadcasts demanding justice for a decorated black veteran Isaac Woodard, who had been beaten and blinded by white police officers. Freshly discharged from Camp Gordon […]
TeePublic and parent company Redbubble began of production last year of fan-designed T-shirts, pillows, mugs and other merchandise licensed by the Estate of Orson Welles. Now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the production of Welles themed, non-medical masks has popped up with designs featuring a young Welles and images from the films Citizen Kane and The […]
Britain’s The Oldie magazine recently dug out an interesting piece written a few years back by the late filmmaker Andrew Sinclair (Under Milk Wood) recalling an unfinished 1970s project starring Orson Welles and Oliver Reed. Sinclair was set to direct Reed, Welles and Oja Kodar in a movie called Rider. He had previously worked with […]
By RAY KELLY Orson Welles was the consummate talk show guest, whether he was bantering with Johnny Carson, telling stories to Dinah Shore or performing sleight of hand before Merv Griffin. In the late 1970s — after routinely be called in to guest host for Merv or Johnny — Welles considered hosting his own series. […]
By MIKE TEAL After the excitement of 2018, which saw the near-miraculous completion of the 40-years-in-the-making The Other Side of the Wind, 2019 was a relatively quiet year for Wellesian matters. Reactions to Other Wind continued to roll in gradually during the first part of the year from various Welles scholars and authors (although […]
A cheery holiday reminder that streaming audio of four vintage Christmas radio shows featuring Orson Welles can be found on Wellesnet. First up are two versions of Charles Dicken’s classic A Christmas Carol as heard on the Campbell Playhouse in 1938 and 1939. The first features Welles as Ebenezer Scrooge, while the second has him narrating the story and […]
A line of licensed Orson Welles T-shirts, pillows, mugs and other merchandise featuring fan-created artwork has hit the market in time for Christmas. TeePublic tells Wellesnet that this is “the first time ever they (the Welles estate) are licensing fan art and allowing independent artists to create new incredible art using their IP (intellectual property).” […]
By RAY KELLY Among Orson Welles’ final unrealized projects, perhaps none came closer to fruition than The Cradle Will Rock. The autobiographical film would have been a retelling of Welles’ fabled 1937 Federal Theatre Project production of the controversial Marc Blitzstein musical on the labor movement. The government pulled support for the left-wing play before […]
Seventy five years ago on November 4, 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt made his final campaign stop with a speech before a crowd of 40,000 at Fenway Park in Boston. Red, white and blue bunting and banners were looped along the infield fence, around uprights and the edge of the grandstand roof of the historic ballpark. […]
It has been little more than a year since initial reports that 10cc’s Kevin Godley would write and direct a feature film chronicling a teenage Orson Welles’ experiences in Ireland. While the film is not yet in production, the project is not dead by any means. Screen Daily had reported in May 2018 that The […]