Orson Welles

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Term Paper Title	Orson Welles
# of Words	893
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.57

Orson Welles

Orson Welles

     The term 'genius' was applied to him from the cradle, first by the man
who would vie with Orson's father to nurture the talent all agreed resided in
the fragile boy.(Leaming, 3)
     George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin on May 6, 1915. He
was the second son of Richard Head Welles, an inventor, and his wife Beatrice
Ives, a concert pianist.  His mother was the child of a wealthy family.  She had
been brought up to revere artistic achievements, and began playing the piano,
professionally, only after her marriage broke up when Orson was six.  A local
doctor, Russian-Jewish orthopedist named Maurice Bernstein, who was a passionate
admirer of Mrs. Welles, on first sight of the infant Orson declared him to be
without a doubt a genius.  Bernstein showered Orson with gifts and virtually
took over the direction of his life, to such an extent that Orson called him
'Dadda'. When Orson was four, his father moved his family to Chicago, possibly
to get away from Bernstein's attentions.  This plan failed when Bernstein almost
immediately followed them.  Through Bernstein who was always forcing him to
perform, and through his mother musical talents, the young Orson quickly came
into contact with Chicago's musical society and walked on in the Chicago Opera's
production of 'Samson and Delilah', then in a more important role of Butterfly's
love-child Trouble in 'Madame Butterfly'.  He also got a temporary job dressed
up as a rabbit at Marshall Fields.
     Shortly after Orson's sixth birthday his parent's formally separated,
his father taking off and his mother remaing to pursue her music ambitions in
Chicago.  Welles live most of his time with his mother and Dadda Bernstein, but
regularly traveled with his father on holidays.
     His health effectively kept him out of school until he was eleven, so he
had acquired a lot of cultural groundings at home with his mother and the doctor.
Fears that he might prove ungovernable like his brother Richard, who had been
expelled from school by the age of ten and subsequently banished from home,
brought him in 1926 to enrollment in the Todd School for Boys at Woodstock,
Illinois, a few months after his mothers death from a liver condition at the age
of forty-three.  The school was ideally equipped for the nurturing of a young
wayward genius.(Taylor)  It was run by the proprietor, a terror rejoicing in the
name as 'the King'.
     Todd School had something of a tradition in drama, though mainly
lightweight r...

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