SCENE OF THE CRIME

ORSON WELLES

"Scene of the Crime" was a suspense anthology series hosted by Orson Welles who asks the audience to solve the crime presented in the first part of each episode. The second part was a separate horror or thriller story with a twist. ORSON WELLES From IMDB: Born George Orson Welles on 6 May 1915 in Kenosha, Winconsin, USA; his father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles when a child, was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting). When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was orphaned at 15 after his father's death in 1930 and became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein of Chicago. In 1931, he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. He turned down college offers for a sketching tour of Ireland. He tried unsuccessfully to enter the London and Broadway stages, traveling some more in Morocco and Spain, where he fought in the bullring. Recommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katharine Cornell's road company, with which he made his New York debut as Tybalt in 1934. The same year, he married, directed his first short, and appeared on radio for the first time. He began working with John Houseman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937. In 1938, they produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" (intended as a Halloween prank). His first film to be seen by the public was Citizen Kane (1941), a commercial failure losing RKO $150,000, but regarded by many as the best film ever made. Many of his subsequent films were commercial failures and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948. In 1956, he directed Touch of Evil (1958); it failed in the United States but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1975, in spite of all his box-office failures, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984, the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award. His reputation as a filmmaker steadily climbed thereafter. Welles passed away on 10 October 1985 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA. "War of the Worlds" was one of Orson Welles' most well known radio broadcasts. Play Clip Below is an opening for the series: "Scene of the Crime" - an opening from The Professor's Scary Clips on Vimeo.

LINKS

Internet Movie Data Base "Scene of the Crime"	Facebook "Orson Welles"	Internet Movie Data Base "Orson Welles"
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