Welles had no lack of mentors and patrons in his early career, and he would continue to gather them.

Bernstein, who became Orson’s guardian, was, in McGilligan’s words, “a sophisticated man of ideas who could also be a bumbler and a buttinski,” but he and Orson were undeniably close. As McGilligan puts it, they “were Orson’s first producers, surrounding the boy with the finest stagecraft money could buy: high-quality puppet theater paraphernalia, the best magic and makeup kits, and a wide array of face paints, mustaches, beards, and wigs.” Beatrice died when Orson was just 9, but Dick continued to lavish attention on the boy, with the help of a somewhat enigmatic family friend, Maurice Bernstein.

Dick was a bon vivant who cultivated the friendship of Chicago’s newspapermen, giving him access to visiting celebrities, and Beatrice threw dinner parties that included famous actors and musicians. Welles’ parents catered to his every interest, particularly in the arts. The word most often bandied about is “genius,” which Welles once said “was whispered into my ear … while I was still mewling in my crib … so it never occurred to me that I wasn’t until middle age.” And there were always plenty of people to whisper it, including his parents, Beatrice and Dick Welles, a prosperous Midwestern couple who began to pin their hopes on Orson when it became apparent that his older brother, Richard, had severe mental problems. How he got that way is both the theme and the riddle of McGilligan’s book. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds.” He was, in a word, precocious. Over the next decade, he would make his Broadway debut, tour in repertory with Katharine Cornell, start his own theater company, astonish New York with his productions of “Macbeth” with an all-black cast and a modern-dress “Julius Caesar,” and cause a widespread panic with his Halloween 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. But he arrived in Hollywood bearing the label of “Boy Wonder,” having made his professional stage debut at age 16 with the Gate Theatre in Dublin, where he played, in heavy makeup, characters much older than he was. As McGilligan points out, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and John Ford had all made movies by the time they reached that age. As monuments tend to do, it cast a shadow over the remaining years of his life.Īt age 25, Welles was not exceptionally young to be making his debut as a film director. There is not likely to be a more fitting observance of those anniversaries than Patrick McGilligan’s “Young Orson,” the story of Welles from his early life to the creation of the movie that was to become his lasting monument. Orson Welles was born 100 years ago, released his most celebrated film, “Citizen Kane,” almost 75 years ago and died 30 years ago. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu

Young Orson by Patrick McGilligan