PPT Slide
- prodigy who read at three and was performed King Lear by seven
- Began radio career at nineteen, starring in The Shadow
- Founded Mercury Players with John Houseman when he was 21
- His 1938 radio production of The War of the Worlds caused panic
- Hired by struggling RKO in 1939 and given full authority over his first project Citizen Kane
- In part because of actions of Hearst newspapers, Kane was a financial disappointment and Welles was never again given full control of his films
- Welles’s films were never great financial successes, but critics often list the following as his most important work: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Macbeth (1948), Othello (1952), Touch of Evil (1958), Chimes at Midnigh