Orson Welles Welles had not been drafted. "The Mercury Wonder Show" ran August 3 – September 9, 1943, in an 80-by-120-foot tent located at 9000 Cahuenga Boulevard, in the heart of Hollywood. At intermission September 7, 1943, KMPC radio interviewed audience and cast members of "The Mercury Wonder Show"—including Welles and Rita Hayworth, who were married earlier that day. Welles remarked that "The Mercury Wonder Show" had been performed for approximately 48,000 members of the U.S. armed forces. The idea of doing a radio variety show occurred to Welles after his success as substitute host of four consecutive episodes (March 14 –
Orson Welles Party, however, later describing Wallace as "a prisoner of the Communist Party." "During a White House dinner," Welles recalled in a 1983 conversation with his friend Roger Hill, "when I was campaigning for Roosevelt, in a toast, with considerable tongue in cheek, he said, 'Orson, you and I are the two greatest actors alive today.' In private that evening, and on several other occasions, he urged me to run for a Senate seat in either California or Wisconsin. He wasn't alone." In the 1980s, Welles still expressed admiration for Roosevelt but also described his presidency as "a semidictatorship." For several