Orson Welles flew to Paris to discuss the project personally with the Russian author. Orson Welles George Orson Welles (; May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three: in theatre, most notably "Caesar" (1937), a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"; in radio, the legendary 1938 broadcast "The War of the Worlds"; and in film, "Citizen Kane" (1941), consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made. In his 20s, Welles directed a number of high-profile
Black smoke (The War of the Worlds) narrator of what he "read of the destruction of Pompeii". The smoke is very dense, and can be avoided by climbing to higher places. Although Wells never explains the smoke's mechanism in the novel, he mentions that it may bind with argon to become toxic. In reality, argon cannot combine with other elements, with the marginal exception of fluorine, but chemical weapons were widely used in human warfare after Wells' novel was written, especially in World War I. Orson Welles' radio adaptation dramatizes the effects of the black smoke: The poison is depicted as being potent enough to render gas