Considered an artistic genius, Orson Welles was involved in productions for radio, theatre, film, and television in a career spanning more than forty years. He was found to be exceptional as a child--reading at age two, playing Igor Stravinsky's music on the violin at seven, performing William Shakespeare's plays at ten--and by the time he reached his mid-twenties he had acted on Dublin and New York stages and had created a sensation with his radio adaptation of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds. Broadcast on Halloween, 1938, by the Mercury Theatre of the Air--which Welles and actor John Houseman had founded the previous year. The drama unintentionally convinced many Americans that Martians were invading the earth, causing widespread panic.

Also the onetime voice of the popular radio character The Shadow, Wells was dubbed the "boy wonder" of radio, and his success attracted the attention of the motion picture...