William Alland
William Alland ( born March 4, 1916 in Delmar, Delaware, † November 11, 1997 in Long Beach, California ) was an American actor and film producer who became known for his collaboration with Orson Welles celebrity.
Life
Alland began his career in show business in the twenties in New York, where he worked as an actor under the pseudonym Vakhtangov. During this time he met the one years old Orson Welles, who hired him for his Mercury Theatre. Here Alland worked as an actor and stage hands and took in Welles' productions and smaller roles in radio and movies on.
He played his greatest role, directed by Welles in his award-winning work of Citizen Kane. Alland acted as a reporter who is trying to trace the life of the late media baron " Charles Foster Kane" and numerous interviews of his former companions, without being able to solve the mystery of Kane's last word. It is rare to see his face; Instead, the viewer gets usually only in the form of a suggestive camera work shoulder or back to see while his voice is present throughout the film. Even the fictional obituary as staging of the equally fictitious "News on the March " news show in the film took Alland.
After his military service in World War II Alland reunited with Welles. He played in smaller roles like the Macbeth adaptation, before working as a producer for Universal Studios. Here he was responsible esp. for horror and sci-fi productions and supervised classics of the genre such Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Island Earth IV is not responding.
Spent his retirement William Alland in Long Beach, where he built sailing ships.