Classic Radio Spotlight: Orson Welles, Vol. 2
About this audiobook
Enjoy eight hours of classic radio episodes starring the incomparable Orson Welles and his friends.
Armed with the nickname “The Boy Genius,” Orson Welles graduated from the New York stage to expand his creative talents in the radio industry, hoping to use the audio medium to promote his stage ventures. Welles followed the edict that most stage actors applied—he played roles in hundreds of radio dramas produced by advertising agencies and the radio networks. After creating a minor panic in the minds of radio listeners with his 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, Welles attracted the attention of a movie studio that offered the actor the spotlights of tinsel town ... resulting in Citizen Kane. Making the move to California, Welles continued to appear on radio programs, now established as a Hollywood actor, and made numerous guest appearances on variety, comedy, and dramatic programs. In 1941, and again in 1946, Welles starred in a chilling story titled “The Hitch-Hiker,” scripted by Lucille Fletcher, which thirteen years later was adapted into a television episode of The Twilight Zone. In the early fifties, when Welles was momentarily “blacklisted,” the actor moved to England and narrated the radio program The Black Museum and starred in The Lives of Harry Lime, a sequel to the Carol Reed classic The Third Man, now regarded as one of the one hundred best movies ever made. This collection of Orson Welles radio dramas are among his very best, and we hope you’ll enjoy them for years to come!
About the author
Orson Welles (1915–1985) was an iconic Academy Award–winning director, writer, actor, and producer for film, stage, radio, and television. He won the 1941 Academy Award for best original screenplay for Citizen Kane and in 1970 received the Academy Honorary Award. Known for his baritone voice, he was well regarded as a radio and film actor, a celebrated Shakespearean stage actor, and an accomplished magician. He first gained notoriety for his October 30, 1938, radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Winner of multiple awards, he is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important dramatic artists of the twentieth century. In 2002, two British Film Institute polls of directors and critics voted Orson Welles the greatest film director of all time.
