This is the first episode of "Orson Welles' Sketchbook" in which he discusses his trips abroad and how he came to be an actor. Originally Aired: April 24, 1955.
"Every year I learn how much I've yet to learn". Thank God that he was alive in the era of recorded sound and vision and that that voice and presence are not lost forever.
I just discovered this by TOTAL accident. I've so far watched 5 of his Sketchbooks and am totally enthralled by them, but then again I've always been enthralled by his works.
How could the Divine bestow upon this mortal all that is sought for? Presence, talent, sense of humor, artistry, and that proverbial WIT. I'll marry you a billion times, Mr. Welles.
Welles could do anything! A man who entertained millions then and still to this day. An artist, writer, actor, director, radio performer. He was a genius! What a time audiences had then watching this master perform.
Happy Happy 115th Birthday! You were so talented! I will always be greatful for KANE and all the other films you did, but wish that you had been born later and came along during the 70s. You would have been the leader of the pack and made all the films you wanted. Anyway, I hope you are happy where you are and making lots of films your way.
Didn't know his birthday was yesterday ... technically 50 minutes ago. :) Yes, imagine if he'd been around for the digital revolution? The things he'd have accomplish with today's technology. These episodes of "Orson Welles' Sketchbooks" are pretty amazing and makes me want to do these things myself during quarantine.
He was basically a selfmade man, with very little outside intervention. I simply never get tired of watching or listening to him, my God bless your soul.
The man was a genius, in the truest definition of that title & like all true geniuses remained humble & not pretentious. Only the true great talents have that quality.
I find his accent interesting. There is no hint of Wisconsin or Illinois (where he grew up) in his vocalizations, instead he seems to have more of a Transatlantic accent. I'm guessing this is a product of his upper class education and time in cultured institutions.
A classy,Intellectual and a royalty of a man but still gives that Joe blow type of person that he can and would talk to anyone with no arrogance or ego very few men in this world like Orson Welles
Welles, The Early Days. At the age of 2 I made my way by steamship to the west coast of Ireland. Then discovered a farmer prepared to sell me an old roan which took me to Dublin. Luckily my voice broke when I was 3.
I scrolled down and read this very comment the very moment Mr. Wells uttered the phrase. Astonishing the connections we find as time bears us onward into the ignorant oblivion--the future. And look, here I am writing as though I were Orson speaking. And to whom? or to what? 4 years hence and still falling no doubt.
Years ago the Irish State broadcaster RTE aired a show by John Bowman, in which he raids the archives. Bowman played this clip, but intercut it with the account by Micheál Mac Liammóir, the Gate theater's director. Welles' story of the Broadway experience is mentioned by MM, who says "He told us he worked on Broadway. Total nonsense of course, but I could see he had great talent". Rest = history, etc etc etc.
Certainly the most intelligent and well-spoken entertainer of the last century. Too bad there is no room for his type in Hollywood today... today I suppose a man like Orson would be a lawyer or something.
In Hollywood, there was never room for Welles's type. RKO offered him a contract because they wanted something new, but it is clear that Welles was a bit too knew.
The thing is, today Hollywood has embraced auteur theory and routinely gives carte-blanche contracts of the sort Welles would have leaped at -- to second- and third-string directors like Tarantino.
Welles in 1955 was still good-looking despite his increasing bulk: he had one of those voices that made you want to listen in, regardless of what he was saying.
What he is talking about is like following God. You are a tiny Dingy adrift on a tumultuous sea. The swell of each wave showing great distances & them swallowing them whole in an instant. You have a rudder, but what is that tiny control against such a force? When your at home, safe, & still in planning, all is a dream. You can chase away the clouds of worry with a thought. Once your knee deep in the endeavor bailing furiously to keep the ship a float, no amount of high hopes will carry you to safe harbors. That is the moment you truly pray. Your desire is honed like a well oiled sword & your ready to pull it out. Then you fall on your head & find God was leading you there the entire time. And in so doing, are lucky just to be alive & the applause is as loud as a gale. At that moment you realize your success, although reliant on your brashness & skill, is truly not your own. Great things happen in my life, none of which I can claim to be made from my own power. God Bless
Good Lord! Why don't we have a contempory to Mr. Wells? Have we wrung sophistication out of the general population? Can we blame public education? Or the over prescribing of psychotropic medication (Mr Wells would have been given Ritilin or something)... Why are there no people like him left.....Can I blame high fructose corn syrup, or GMO's or SOMETHING?
Lack of parental attention in infancy, especially educational attention. Even so, when young people of great ability, who have been given those advantages from birth, reach their teens, they tend to want to conform to the general idiocy of their peers. In a Facebook group an hour ago, somebody was writing about his son's college roommate, who had never heard of The Beatles.
The only American voice I have never tired of, Where did the tone intonation and timbre of that voice come from? He wasnt just born with it, Was he raised in a part of America or a household where American English wasnt spoken ?
I think he was mostly raised in America but acquired a transatlantic accent, as many actors and upper class people did in the '30s, for example Franklin D Roosevelt had a similar dialect
You hear that accent, which is often called a Mid - Atlantic accent, in movies after sound came in in 1927. It gradually faded away as the performers who spoke with that accent aged, retired, died.
Too often I will ill-advisedly scroll down to the comments, where nostalgia fondly, warmly aches, the ache being some oddly bathetic comparison between Orson Welles and no modern day equivalent. It is so marked as a bitter condemnation of the modern day. And it is unfair, much of the time. In terms of acting and actors, for example, the fondness for some long gone golden age is unnecessarily counterpointed with a cri de cœur complaining of a paucity or even total absence of modern day equivalents, as if that were somehow necessary in lauding and lionizing a singular artist and auteur in Orson Welles. I cannot in good conscience, so far as good conscience is required in summation of the artistry of the modern day, say that today's great writers and performers are of lower calibre. There are those who are artisans of their chosen pursuits every bit as great as their forebears. The one concession that I will make is that, while I acknowledge the virtuosity of a performer like Meryl Streep, for example, there is nobody quite like the undeniably great Orson Welles.
Produced by Huw Wheldon, who later interviewed Welles at length for Monitor. Welles invited Wheldon to be his European producer. Wisely Wheldon declined. New biography of Wheldon here: unbound.co.uk/books/kicking-the-bar PLEASE PLEDGE!
Lynn Turman Orson had just finished playing Othello onstage in London and so impressed some producers at the BBC when he appeared on an interview show there they invited him to do a series of lecture-type shows, completely improvised.
New prose: Running 🏃♂️ out of time How does one, run out of time? When Time is on your side? Do you know your on the side of Time? Or on the side, of just about anything else out there? Or do you care? Do you know that Jesus Christ is Time? Or would you rather have someone tell you the time of day? Do you pray, and meditate on God's holy book? 📖 Or would you rather go fishing 🎣 in that there moving brook? It took a lot of human courage for God's Son, to go to the Cross ✝️ and literally be nailed there Or are you at a loss, about this? Or do you care? He went down to the depths of hell, for you So you, wouldn't have to go there God chose mercy, instead of Judgment Although Judgment Day is coming Can you feel the Last Days drumming? Your life is like hell I understand your plight - so much fear, you don't know whether to run, or fight So, why don't you let go, and let God And get yourself into the zone, of the Miracle Man Who walked upon water 💧 Just because He can And you can't Running out of time How does one run out of time? When Time is on your side
Soleman had over a 1,000 wives. it is documented in the bible. Whether you are Catholic or Protestant. 1Kings 11:3. I don't really differentiate between wives and concubines. They were his and no one elses' as spouses.
