Those who recognize Orson Welles only as the director of Citizen Kane, a work frequently mentioned as the finest movie in cinematic history, are aware of only a fraction of his interests, talents, and accomplishments. Though the phrase "renaissance man" has become something of a cliché, the description aptly applies to Orson Welles. A precipitous decline in the quality of his artistic output during the latter part of Welles’s life proved to form a menacing shadow to his rather startling accomplishments as a younger man. Accomplished in speechwriting, theatre, radio, and cinema, Welles created a style and legend that have fascinated and inspired countless would-be actors and directors.

Martin Scorsese credits Orson Welles with being "responsible for inspiring more people to be film directors than anyone else in the history of the cinema." Such powers of persuasion and influence were apparent from virtually the first moments of Welles’s life. The second son of Dick and Beatrice Welles, George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on May 6, 1915. Welles’s parents -- his father a manufacturer of bicycle and car lamps, his mother an accomplished pianist and singer -- separated when he was six years old, and he would have a number of mentors and surrogate parents throughout his childhood and adolescence. Surrounded by encouraging adults, Welles quite logically displayed a high verbal acuity at an early age. After the family moved from Kenosha to Chicago, the young Welles would frequently perform songs and spoken-word pieces for gatherings of his mother’s artistic salon. Soon, Welles’s performances moved beyond the family parlor when, at the age of five, he won roles in Chicago Opera productions of Samson and Delilah and Madame Butterfly. During the same year, Welles could also be seen dressed as a rabbit for a promotion at a Chicago department store. Regardless of the venue, Welles's affection and appreciation for performing had begun to develop.

Welles was educated at the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois, where he was enrolled as a boarding student. His achievements as an actor continued during his schooling, when he accomplished such feats as holding two roles, Cassius and Antony, in his school’s production of Julius Caesar. After high school, Welles eschewed his mentors’ wishes that he attend Cornell or Harvard and instead spent time in Ireland, where he traveled extensively and performed in whatever productions he could find. He spent some time in the Irish countryside before settling in Dublin in 1931, where Welles secured his first professional role in a play called Jew Suss at the Gate Theatre. After that show closed, Welles stayed on at the theatre, playing varied types of roles in many different shows in addition to performing tasks such as scenery construction and doing publicity for the theatre.

Welles returned to the United States in 1932, with his enthusiasm and confidence bolstered by well-rounded theatrical experiences and the positive critical reviews he received overseas. Much to his dismay, however, 1932 marked the most difficult period of the Depression, and theatres felt the effects of this difficult period. Many venues were forced to close due to financial troubles, and those that did remain open suffered from drops in attendance attributable due, in part, to the popularity of the movies. Unable to find work as an actor, Welles worked as a writer, drafting plays, screenplays, and stories, the last of which were purchased by various American magazines for publication. He also worked on a series of supplemental materials for editions of Shakespeare’s plays aimed at actors, including introductions to the works, explanations of certain stage directions, and detailed drawings of various scenes. Welles’s devotion to all aspects of a production, later an important component of his film work, are identifiable in these early projects. His official career as a director began in 1934, when Welles was in charge of various works, including a production of Hamlet, for a fundraiser for his old high school. This undertaking was also notable for being the place where Welles met his first wife, Virginia, the daughter of a wealthy Chicago family. They married in 1934 and had one daughter together.

In 1935, Welles was tapped as director for several theatre projects, including the Negro Theatre Project, for which he directed Macbeth. Subsidized by the government, with no ticket costing more than $0.55, the play was performed at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem by an entirely African-American cast. Prior to performance time, thousands of people gathered in the streets outside the theatre, enticed both by inexpensive tickets and interest in such an innovative production, forcing police to rope off four city blocks for crowd control. Despite some bad critical reviews, Welles’s reputation as a director continued to grow.

Welles’s work on the radio began in 1935, when he got a job as an actor on a variety program called March of Time. His sonorous voice was ideal for radio, and he quickly became a popular and frequently employed actor. In 1937, Welles formed his own theatre group, called the Mercury Theatre. In addition to staged performances, this group became famous for its radio plays. Expanding upon the experiences he had as an actor on March of Time, Welles directed and acted in works dramatized for the radio. These productions varied greatly in tone and subject matter, including such works as Treasure Island, Julius Caesar, Jane Eyre,and Sherlock Holmes. But perhaps the best-known broadcast of the Mercury Theatre on the Air, as it came to be called, was the 1938 production of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. Broadcast on October 30, conveniently coinciding with Halloween, the skillful dramatization of an alien invasion of Earth whipped listeners into a frenzy. It is to the credit, perhaps, of Welles’ acting skills and his theatre troupe that such a state of hysteria erupted in some places. Despite announcements that the material being broadcast was purely fictional, a significant portion of the evening’s 9,000,000 listeners was convinced of its veracity.

The first film made by Orson Welles, entitled Too Much Johnson, was never seen in its original context. Shot as a segment to be inserted into a play staged in 1938, the short film encountered projection problems that prevented it from being used in the production. Welles’s years in Hollywood began in the summer of 1939 when, based on the talent, ambition, and bravado he had shown as an actor and director for both radio and stage, he signed a contract with RKO Pictures. Though he experienced a great deal of early success (Citizen Kane, made when Welles was only 24 years old, is commonly regarded as one of the finest films of all time), harbingers of Welles’s career troubles would be apparent quite soon after he signed with the studio. Upon his arrival and, arguably, for a significant portion of his career, Welles was regarded with suspicion by the Hollywood community. Because he hailed from the Midwest and New York City and had been trained in the theatre, Hollywood was skeptical of Welles’s ability to be a successful film director. Additionally, Welles’s confidence and stubbornness as an actor and director did not match well with the hierarchical structure of the movie studios.

As a filmmaker, Welles was entirely self-taught. He learned film terminology from a primer constructed by the studio specifically for him. Studying the films of directors such as John Ford, Jean Renoir, and Alfred Hitchcock enabled Welles to learn about pacing, editing, and the general use of the film medium for storytelling. Despite this informal manner of learning about the medium of film, Welles’s first completed film was a critical, if not financial, success. Released in 1941 and chronicling the life of media tycoon Charles Foster Kane, Citizen Kane combined an interesting plot, riveting performances, and technical brilliance. In addition to acting and directing, Welles also wrote a significant portion of the screenplay, thereby exercising control over as much of the film as possible. Welles’s next project was an adaptation of Booth Tarkington’s novel The Magnificent Ambersons, filmed in 1942. While Welles had control over every aspect of Citizen Kane, including approval over the final version of the film, no such situation existed with The Magnificent Ambersons. After Welles left the country to begin filming another movie, the studio re-shot several key scenes and reedited the film. The result -- an entirely altered ending -- was fairly abominable, for it deviated from the narrative and thematic elements established in the movie. Welles was understandably irate, and the incident bolstered his feelings of acrimony for the director’s lack of control in the Hollywood system.

During the years in which Welles was particularly prolific as a filmmaker, his other interests were far from dormant. He continued to appear very regularly on the radio, as an actor, as a interviewee, and on self-titled programs such as the "Orson Welles Almanac." His interest in politics and national issues was also made apparent by frequent speeches and efforts as a campaigner: he hosted radio programs to publicize war loan drives, wrote newspaper columns on current issues, and delivered speeches in favor of political candidates such as Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1943, Welles married for a second time, to actress Rita Hayworth. The marriage, like his first, would eventually dissolve, but not before they had a daughter, made a movie together (The Lady From Shanghai, 1947), and spent several tumultuous years together. He would marry a third time in 1955, to an actress named Paola Mori, with whom he would have another daughter, and whom he would also divorce. In 1962, Welles met a woman named Olga Palinkas, who would be his companion and professional collaborator for the rest of his life.

The remainder of Welles’s career as a film director would very much follow the model set forth with the production of The Magnificent Ambersons. The now esteemed 1958 film, Touch of Evil, with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, and Welles himself, was taken out of Welles’s hands after the initial photography was done. Editors working from the studio’s specifications re-shot portions and edited the movie, a process from which Welles was barred. Ironically, Welles experienced more autonomy on Citizen Kane, his first movie, when the studios and executives were doubtful of his abilities, than he did for the rest of his career. Reasons for this decline in creative authority are numerous and complex, but hinge mostly upon a vast number of disagreements, both philosophical and practical, between Welles and those who ran the studios. Something of a prima donna, a hothead, and a womanizer, Welles could be a challenging man with whom to work. Conversely, Welles would always be considered something of an outsider in Hollywood, largely because of his continued interest and involvement in media such as radio and theatre, and because his attitudes and opinions reflected this diverse background. The money-driven film industry did not often choose to indulge, tolerate, or trust Welles and his ideas. He experienced slightly more luck as an actor, turning in fine performances in films such as The Third Man (1949) and Catch-22 (1970), but his career would never be as successful as his work on Citizen Kane seemed to portend.

Unfortunately, the deterioration of the career of Orson Welles has become rather legendary. The general consensus is that he did indeed peak at age 24, with Citizen Kane. While some subsequent films were quite accomplished, often containing bits of the genius apparent in Kane, they all ultimately failed to measure up to his first movie. On the stage and the radio, Welles continued to be prolific and frequently lauded, as in his performance as Ahab in a 1955 production of Moby Dick. However, the scope and quality of his projects continued to decline as time passed. During the 1960s and 1970s, Welles worked mainly as an actor, frequently contributing to documentaries such as 1965’s Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees and 1968’s Around the World with Orson Welles. In addition, he appeared in small or cameo roles in films such as 1970’s The Kremlin Letter, directed by John Huston. He also worked a great deal in television, as a frequent guest on such programs as "The Dean Martin Show" and "Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In," and in many made-for-television movies. Welles wrote several screenplays and pilots for television shows during these years, though none was ever produced or aired. His interest in political and humanitarian issues continued, and he contributed his strong speaking voice to favored causes, such as a 1982 anti-nuclear rally held in New York’s Central Park.

For younger audiences, Welles may be known for his late-1970s and 1980s appearances in The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan, as well as roles on "Moonlighting," "Magnum, P.I.," and voice work on The Transformers and the trailer for Revenge of the Nerds. While Welles’s later work may seem at sharp odds with the projects he favored early in his career, the film and theatre worlds did not forget his many accomplishments. Welles was frequently invited to speak at film schools such as the University of Southern California, and he was honored in 1975 with a lifetime achievement award from The American Film Institute. Welles passed away from a heart attack in October of 1985 while seated at his typewriter, working on a screenplay.

Reflections on the life and career of Orson Welles yield wonder at both the accomplishments and the disappointments. Citizen Kane, made when Welles was only 24 years old, continues to entertain and impress filmgoers, critics, and scholars for its narrative and technical accomplishments. Welles is also revered for his work in radio and theatre, having enriched and diversified those artistic landscapes through pieces such as The War of the Worlds and Macbeth. For many, however, the decline of Welles's career is as memorable as his successes. In the later years of his life, Welles's work was largely confined to stints such as appearances on television, as a guest on talk shows, or to jobs that utilized his sonorous voice and reputation rather than his talents as an actor or director. Among many film lovers, there is therefore a sense of disappointment at the potential loss of vast amounts of talent gone unused. For the works he did accomplish, however, Welles is well remembered and respected.