🌳 Ep. 209: Orson Wells – Top 5 Films Directed Memory Mnemonic
👋 Intro
Hello and welcome to this episode of the podcast, "The Mnemonic Memory", where we add a single mnemonic leaf to our Tree of Knowledge.
I’m Jans, your Mnemonic Man, and today's episode will be one of the most influential figures of the 20th century in film and theatre, Orson Welles.
Just before we get into it, it is worth mentioning that it is the 40th anniversary of the death of Orson Welles, who died on 10th October, 1985.
Orson Welles was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who had an extraordinary gift for storytelling. He grew up a sickly child suffering from many conditions. His father was an inventor and his mother a concert pianist, which led to world travel and his living in various countries.
Both parents died when he was relatively young, which left him the ward of Dr Maurice Bernstein, who was a family friend. He fostered the child prodigy by enrolling him in the Todd School to support his artistic gifts.
Orson Welles’ early jobs included being a stage actor, directing stage productions, and a radio actor and director with “The Mercury Theatre on the Air.” Here, he had the infamous broadcast of The War of the Worlds, which ignited his career further.
This early success led to a Hollywood contract and his directorial debut with Citizen Kane in 1941, which is often cited as the greatest film ever made.
This was followed by works such as The Magnificent Ambersons, which he narrated, Touch of Evil alongside Charlton Heston, and Chimes at Midnight with John Gielgud.
He also appeared in several films he did not direct, including A Man for All Seasons, Jane Eyre, and The Third Man.
Welles also had an unfinished masterpiece, which he spent over a decade working on. This movie was called The Other Side of the Wind and was meant to be his grand comeback. Unfortunately, he passed before its completion, but the movie was finally completed and released on Netflix in 2018.
Though Welles had a troubled relationship with the restraints and creative control of Hollywood, his legacy endures as a master storyteller and a legend of both acting and filmmaking.
Today’s mnemonic will be on the top five films directed by Orson Welles.
So, with that being said, we will begin with a summary from Wikipedia.
📖 Wikipedia Summary
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985), known as Orson Welles, was an American filmmaker and actor. Remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre,[1][2] he is considered among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.[3]
Aged 21, Welles directed high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project in New York City—starting with a celebrated 1936 adaptation of Macbeth with an African-American cast, and ending with the political musical The Cradle Will Rock in 1937.
He and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented productions on Broadway through 1941, including a modern, politically charged Caesar (1937).
In 1938, his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds, which caused some listeners to believe a Martian invasion was occurring. The event rocketed the 23-year-old to notoriety.[4]
His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in as the title character, Charles Foster Kane. Cecelia Ager, reviewing it in PM Magazine, wrote: "Seeing it, it's as if you never really saw a movie before."[5] It has been consistently ranked as one of the greatest films ever made.
He directed twelve other features, the most acclaimed of which include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Othello (1951), Touch of Evil (1958), The Trial (1962), and Chimes at Midnight (1966).[6][7] Welles also acted in other directors' films, playing Rochester in Jane Eyre (1943), Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949), and Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (1966).
His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, dramatic lighting, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots and long takes. He has been praised as "the ultimate auteur".[8]: 6
Welles received an Academy Award and three Grammy Awards among other honours and accolades such as the Golden Lion in 1947, the Palme D'Or in 1952, the Academy Honorary Award in 1970, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1975, and the British Film Institute Fellowship in 1983.
British Film Institute polls among directors and critics in 2002 voted him the greatest film director ever.[9][10]
Extracted from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles]
🧠 Memory Mnemonic
Orson Welles – Top 5 Films Directed Memory Mnemonic – CCOTT
(Picture Orson Welles as a child sleeping in his cot with his sleigh, Rosebud, right beside him)
1. Chimes at Midnight (1966)
2. Citizen Kane (1941)
3. Othello (1951)
4. The Trial (1962)
5. Touch of Evil (1958)
🔎 Five Fun Facts
1. To say Orson Welles had a rough childhood is an understatement. His mother passed when he was nine, and his dad when he was just 15. Along with this, he suffered from malaria, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, asthma, sinus headaches, anomalies in the spine, and flat feet, spending much of his childhood bedridden.
2. Welles had many hidden talents. Along with his acting and directing, he had a penchant for painting and performing magic tricks. He was a member of both the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Society of American Magicians, practicing and keeping magic in his back pocket on the off chance his acting career failed. His early lessons of magic came from the one and only Harry Houdini.
3. Orson Welles was originally the number one choice of George Lucas for the role of Darth Vader in the 1977 Star Wars film. In the end, Welles’ voice was too familiar to audiences, and Lucas was after a darker and more menacing sound for the villain, which eventually went to James Earl Jones.
4. The movie, Citizen Kane, was originally a flop. In the film, Welles portrayed a fictionalised version of the real-life publishing tycoon, William Randolph Hearst. This infuriated Hearst, who refused to publicise or mention the film in his papers, which resulted in poor attendance at the box office. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning for Best Original Screenplay. Not only did Welles star in the movie, but he also co-wrote, directed, and produced it, and was applauded for a number of new techniques he used in making the film.
5. Now, to the radio panic of 1938. This happened when on a broadcast, Welles narrated a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, which was so realistic it caused widespread panic among listeners. Many believed Earth was truly under attack by Martians, prompting frantic phone calls and even evacuations. This made Welles a household name overnight.
🎓 Three-Question Quiz
Q.1. At what age did Orson Welles co-write, direct, and star in Citizen Kane? Options are 20, 25, or 30
Q.2. What real-life newspaper magnate was widely believed to be the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane from the movie Citizen Kane?
Q.3. Orson Welles was married to which Hollywood actress, known for her roles in Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai? Hint: Her name starts with R, and she is very well known
Bonus Q. Welles provided the voice for which character in the 1986 animated film The Transformers: The Movie? Options are Unicron, Optimus Prime, or Megatron
Bonus Q. What do you give a director with a broken arm?
🧠 Memory Mnemonic Recap
Orson Welles – Top 5 Films Directed Memory Mnemonic – CCOTT
(Picture Orson Welles as a child sleeping in his cot with his sleigh, Rosebud, right beside him)
1. Chimes at Midnight (1966)
2. Citizen Kane (1941)
3. Othello (1951)
4. The Trial (1962)
5. Touch of Evil (1958)
🎓 Three-Question Quiz Answers
Q.1. At what age did Orson Welles co-write, direct, and star in Citizen Kane? Options are 20, 25, or 30
A. 25
Q.2. What real-life newspaper magnate was widely believed to be the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane from the movie Citizen Kane?
A. William Randolph Hearst
Q.3. Orson Welles was married to which Hollywood actress, known for her roles in Gilda and The Lady from Shanghai? Hint: Her name starts with R, and she is very well known
A. Rita Hayworth
Bonus Q. Welles provided the voice for which character in the 1986 animated film The Transformers: The Movie? Options are Unicron, Optimus Prime, or Megatron
A. Unicron, which was actually his last role
Bonus Q. What do you give a director with a broken arm?
A. A cast!
🔤 Word of the Week
ethereal
[ ih-theer-ee-uhl ] adjective
extremely delicate or refined
Example
Orson Welles’ deep, resonant voice and visionary storytelling gave his films an ethereal quality, which went beyond ordinary cinema.
Extracted from: [https://www.dictionary.com/]
💡 Memory Tip
For our memory tip today, we will be talking about one of the strongest and most effective mnemonics, the memory palace, otherwise known as loci, which is placing items along an imagined path or location in your mind.
The memory palace technique is an ancient and powerful mnemonic method that enhances recall by linking information to locations within a familiar setting.
By placing these items at specific locations, you create strong spatial and visual associations that the brain excels at remembering.
An example to illustrate its use is: Let’s say we make a small memory palace of five stations, which include your car, your post box, your garage door, the door into your house, and then the TV which you see as you walk in.
A person called Nial could be in the passenger seat as you drove home, who spent the whole trip telling you about his boat trip down the Nile. The Post box has an oversized package from Amazon for the Amazon. The garage door has a big mural of the yin and yang symbol, which is followed by the letter Z for the Yangtze. The front door has an iconic picture of a river running through New Orleans with famous blues performers for Mississippi, and finally, when you walk in and turn the tv on, the currency of the Japanese Yen is spat out of the screen, which makes you sigh for Yenisei.
1. Nile River
2. Amazon River
3. Yangtze River
4. Mississippi
5. Yenisei
And just before I go, there have been some big improvements with the weekly email I send to subscribers. Instead of just sending a pretty standard image on the topic, I now send an interactive picture in relation to the mnemonic, which burns that image into your brain, and actually makes it hard to forget, which is a perfect way to link the topic with the mnemonic.
To give you an example, the mnemonic for the six tallest natural waterfalls was “Angel TTOYS” so the image created for this one was an image of Angel Falls with an angel hovering above it with toys cascading over the falls. Another example would be the top 5 discoveries of Marco Polo, for which the mnemonic was “Marco Polo CoPS,” where the image is of Marco Polo on a small Camel with stolen bags of spices, being chased by two cops.
I have been testing these over the last couple of months to see how well they work and have found these images unforgettable; they link the mnemonic with the topic perfectly.
So, if you would like to receive this email once per week, just go to themnemonictreepodcast.com and simply subscribe. I don’t spam, collect, or share your information, and you will only receive one email per week. See you next week.
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🔗 References
https://chatgpt.com/c/68dc7552-ad8c-8327-a421-cdf2e9208647
https://chatgpt.com/c/68ddf119-1844-8324-971e-8e7b4ca0cf46
https://www.factinate.com/people/42-remarkable-facts-orson-welles
https://upjoke.com/director-jokes
https://larrylambert269.medium.com/14-facts-about-orson-welles-180704f97d9d