Orson Welles father Richard Head Welles
Personal life
Relationships and family
Orson Welles and Chicago-born actress and socialite Virginia Nicolson (1916–1996) were married on November 14, 1934.: 332  "Regardless of his later comments, the two were very much in love," wrote biographer Patrick McGilligan, "and she was his salvation." The couple separated in December 1939: 226  and were divorced on February 1, 1940. After bearing with Welles's romances in New York, Virginia had learned that Welles had fallen in love with Mexican actress Dolores del Río.: 227 Infatuated with her since adolescence, Welles met del Río at Darryl Zanuck's ranch: 206  soon after he moved to Hollywood in 1939.: 227 : 168  Their relationship was kept secret until 1941, when del Río filed for divorce from her second husband. They openly appeared together in New York while Welles was directing the Mercury stage production Native Son.: 212  They acted together in the movie Journey into Fear (1943). Their relationship came to an end due, among other things, to Welles's infidelities. Del Río returned to Mexico in 1943, shortly before Welles married Rita Hayworth.Welles married Rita Hayworth on September 7, 1943.: 278  They were divorced on November 10, 1947.: 142  During his last interview, recorded for The Merv Griffin Show on the evening before his death, Welles called Hayworth "one of the dearest and sweetest women that ever lived ... and we were a long time together—I was lucky enough to have been with her longer than any of the other men in her life."In 1955, Welles married actress Paola Mori (née Countess Paola di Gerfalco), an Italian aristocrat who starred as Raina Arkadin in his 1955 film, Mr. Arkadin. The couple began a passionate affair, and they were married at her parents' insistence.: 168  They were wed in London May 8, 1955,: 417, 419  and never divorced.
Croatian-born artist and actress Oja Kodar became Welles's long-time companion both personally and professionally from 1966 onward, and they lived together for some of the last twenty years of his life.: 255–258 Welles had three daughters from his marriages: Christopher Welles Feder (born 1938, with Virginia Nicolson);: 148  Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (born 1955, with Paola Mori).: 419 Welles is thought to have had a son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (born 1940), with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. When Lindsay-Hogg was 16, his mother reluctantly divulged pervasive rumors that his father was Welles, and she denied them—but in such detail that he doubted her veracity.: 15  Fitzgerald evaded the subject for the rest of her life. Lindsay-Hogg knew Welles, worked with him in the theatre and met him at intervals throughout Welles's life. After learning that Welles's oldest daughter, Chris, his childhood playmate, had long suspected that he was her brother, Lindsay-Hogg initiated a DNA test that proved inconclusive. In his 2011 autobiography, Lindsay-Hogg reported that his questions were resolved by his mother's close friend Gloria Vanderbilt, who wrote that Fitzgerald had told her that Welles was his father.: 265–267  A 2015 Welles biography by Patrick McGilligan, however, reports the impossibility of Welles's paternity: Fitzgerald left the U.S. for Ireland in May 1939, and her son was conceived before her return in late October, whereas Welles did not travel overseas during that period.: 602 After the death of Rebecca Welles Manning, a man named Marc McKerrow was revealed to be her son—and therefore a direct descendant of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth—after he requested his adoption records unsealed. While McKerrow and Rebecca were never able to meet due to her cancer, they were in touch before her death, and he attended her funeral. McKerrow's reactions to the revelation and his meeting with Oja Kodar are documented in the 2008 film Prodigal Sons by his sister Kim Reed. McKerrow died on June 18, 2010, suddenly in his sleep at the age of 44. His death was "...caused by complications from a nocturnal seizure" related to a car accident and resulting injury when he was younger.In the 1940s, Welles had a brief relationship with Maila Nurmi, who, according to the bio Glamour Ghoul: The Passions and Pain of the Real Vampira, Maila Nurmi, became pregnant; since Welles was at the time married to Hayworth, Nurmi gave the child up for adoption. However, the child mentioned in the book was born in 1944. Nurmi revealed in an interview weeks before her death in January 2008 how she met Welles in a New York casting office in the spring of 1946.Despite an urban legend promoted by Welles, he is not related to Abraham Lincoln's wartime Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles. The myth dates back to the first newspaper feature ever written about Welles—"Cartoonist, Actor, Poet and only 10"—in the February 19, 1926, issue of The Capital Times. The article falsely states that he was descended from "Gideon Welles, who was a member of President Lincoln's cabinet".: 47–48 : 311  As presented by Charles Higham in a genealogical chart that introduces his 1985 biography of Welles, Orson Welles's father was Richard Head Welles (born Wells), son of Richard Jones Wells, son of Henry Hill Wells (who had an uncle named Gideon Wells), son of William Hill Wells, son of Richard Wells (1734–1801).
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