Orson Welles worked harder than you

As he recalled in Barbara Leaming's Orson Welles: A Biography, in his youth Welles was always a dynamo fueled by his addiction to art. He lived the manic life of a New York actor juggling theater responsibilities with the Mercury Theatre, radio, and, soon enough, Hollywood. The only constant was that he never stopped. As he remembered years later:

Macbeth, which he directed in Harlem in 1936, is a perfect example of his early workflow: first he was on the radio from 9 to 6, and then work really began. After midnight, he finished radio rehearsals and headed to the theater. He snuck a nap in the projection booth and then rehearsed until dawn. After that, he took a stroll through Central Park, took a shower, and got right back to work again.

That workaholic talent extended to others, too. He demanded that the script for The War of Worlds be rewritten in one all-nighter session. As described in Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius, he hired Howard Koch, future screenwriter of Casablanca, and had him work 20-hour days.

After Welles aired The War of The Worlds, he went back to Danton's Death — another play he'd been working on at the same time. Yes, Welles had a second job while he was creating the most legendary radio production in history. He didn't sleep for two days, and he slept, ate, and directed from a couch in the center of the theater.

That obsessive work ethic continued with Citizen Kane, which Welles made when he was only 25. He worked hard, shooting countless takes and using massive quantities of film. Like most major films, it had a grueling schedule. Unlike most major films, Welles was both director and star in his feature film debut.

After Citizen Kane, Welles struggled through the difficult production of The Magnificent Ambersons. Kane remained a highlight of his career, but even though his star in Hollywood was fading, he remained a workaholic.

His pace was manic: sometimes he'd take days off at a time, only to follow them up with marathon filming sessions. There was never any doubt he enjoyed luxury, but he paid for it with labor.

In Making Movies With Orson Welles, collaborator Gary Graver said it wasn't just obsession. Work was part of Welles's biology:

–Gary Graver in Making Movies With Orson Welles.

–Eric Sherman in Orson Welles Remembered, reflecting on Welles's work habits in 1968 while filming The Other Side of the Wind.

Why did Welles work so hard? It's hard to know for sure. When interviewers asked Welles about his motivation, he usually told them to have a drink. But in Orson Welles: Interviews, he gave a hint about why he had so much trouble sleeping. He said, "The degree of concentration I utilize in a world that I create, whether this be for thirty seconds or for two hours, is very high; that is why, when I am shooting, I have a lot of trouble sleeping."

It was also a passion he couldn't turn off. As Joseph McBride described after meeting Welles in 1970, "I realized something about him I had known but had never really understood. He lived for the moment." Welles's improvisation kept his work feeling lively instead of something he had to plod through.

Welles died in 1985, and in the public eye he was a shadow of the wunderkind he'd been in the 1930s and '40s. Even though he'd continued pouring his own cash into making new movies, the public forgot how hard he had worked.

But Orson Welles didn't forget. Peter Biskind's My Lunches With Orson includes a selection of conversations with Welles just before his death. It's telling that Welles said Alfred Hitchcock — a director who ended up finding greater popular success — only made hit movies because of his "egotism and laziness." To Welles, laziness was one of the greatest inexcusable faults. Even though his star had faded, he still believed work would make the difference.