died October 10, 1985, Los Angeles American motion-picture
actor, director, producer, and writer. His innovative narrative
techniques and use of photography, dramatic lighting, and music
to further the dramatic line and to create mood combined to make
his Citizen Kane (1941)which he wrote, directed, produced, and
acted inone of the most influential films in the history of the
art. From his progressive mother (a pianist and crack shot with
a rifle), Welles learned to play the piano and the violin. His
parents separated when he was six years old, and his mother died
when he was eight. Through his father, a successful inventor and
manufacturer, who died when his son was 13, Welles met actors
and sportsmen. By the time he was 11, Welles had traveled around
the world twice. He attended the Todd School for Boys in
Woodstock, Illinois, where he was an indifferent student but
learned much about dramatics. He studied briefly at the Art
Institute of Chicago and worked as a reporter before going to
Ireland, where he mad