Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane (135 page)

“A paradise for boys”: Wallingford Hall, the main entrance to the Todd School for Boys, where young Orson came into his own. “The school did to him . . . what none of the rest of us could,” recalled Dudley Crafts Watson.

The earliest known photograph of Orson onstage, performing magic tricks in his detective outfit with classmate Sherman Perlman, Todd School, Halloween, 1925.

Young Orson, around ninth grade, looking ready for greatness. “The guy was really an unbelievable human being,” said his first roommate and friend John Dexter, who graduated the same year as Welles. “We had a lot of fun.”

Orson
(chin in hand)
and classmates with headmaster Roger “Skipper” Hill—mentor, collaborator, and lifelong friend.

With Hill’s assent, Orson virtually commandeered the Todd School’s elaborate entertainment schedule. In 1929 he directed and appeared in the school’s abridged
Julius Caesar
, staged for Chicago’s annual Drama League contest. (The Todd boys took second place.)

Nearing graduation, Orson (
FOURTH
FROM
LEFT
) with his Todd School classmates, among them several other geniuses and footballers capable of reciting Shakespeare on command.

At sixteen, newly orphaned, Orson went to Ireland, where he traveled the countryside on a cart pulled by a donkey named Sheeog.

Finally landing in Dublin, he met Hilton Edwards (
LEFT
,
next to Orson
) and Micheál MacLíammóir (
RIGHT
) at the celebrated Gate Theatre. Three years later, in 1934, he summoned them to perform for his Todd School summer festival, where classmate Hascy Tarbox took this photo.

Orson as a flamboyant Mercutio in the Katharine Cornell repertory production of
Romeo and Juliet
. The Cornell tour was a professional breakthrough with a steep learning curve.

Outside La Louisiane in New Orleans, scene of the Cornell players’ overindulgence.

A page from
Everybody’s Shakespeare
, Orson’s collaboration with Roger Hill; the pages were finally sent off to press after the tour.

Scenes from
The Hearts of Age
, Welles’s Sunday afternoon “home movie”: Welles’s friend William Vance (
facing camera
), who also served as cameraman; cackling granny Virginia Nicolson; and a grandstanding Orson (
BOTTOM
LEFT
).