The Battle Over Citizen Kane Mercury Theatre (such as an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth", which featured an all-black cast and was set in the jungle), and the infamy of his October 30, 1938, radio broadcast of H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds", which sent residents of Grover's Mill, New Jersey into a panic, Orson Welles was able to negotiate a virtually unheard-of two-picture deal with RKO Pictures, the smallest of the 'big five' major studios in this era. The deal gave him creative control under a budget limit. "The Battle Over Citizen Kane" also details the lives of Orson Welles and William
Orson Welles Welles was an actor in radio and film, a Shakespearean stage actor, and a magician noted for presenting troop variety shows in the war years. George Orson Welles was born May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Head Welles (b. Richard Hodgdon Wells, November 12, 1872, near St. Joseph, Missouri; d. December 28, 1930, Chicago, Illinois) and Beatrice Ives Welles (b. Beatrice Lucy Ives, September 1, 1883, Springfield, Illinois; d. May 10, 1924, Chicago). He was named after his paternal great-grandfather, influential Kenosha attorney Orson S. Head, and his brother George Head. An alternative story of the source