Orson Welles given name George
Early life
George Orson Welles was born May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a son of Richard Head Welles (1872–1930): 26  and Beatrice Ives Welles (née Beatrice Lucy Ives; 1883–1924).: 9  He was named after one of his great-grandfathers, influential Kenosha attorney Orson S. Head, and his brother George Head.: 37  An alternative story of the source of his first and middle names was told by George Ade, who met Welles's parents on a West Indies cruise toward the end of 1914. Ade was traveling with a friend, Orson Wells (no relation), and the two of them sat at the same table as Mr. and Mrs. Richard Welles. Mrs. Welles was pregnant at the time, and when they said goodbye, she told them that she had enjoyed their company so much that if the child were a boy, she intended to name him after them: George Orson.Despite his family's affluence, Welles encountered hardship in childhood. His parents separated and moved approximately 55 miles south to Chicago in 1919. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. Welles's mother, a pianist who studied with Leopold Godowsky, played during lectures by Dudley Crafts Watson at the Art Institute of Chicago to support her son and herself; the older Welles boy, "Dickie", was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital on May 10, 1924, just after Welles's ninth birthday.: 3–5  : 326  The Gordon String Quartet, a predecessor to the Berkshire String Quartet, which had made its first appearance at her home in 1921, played at Beatrice's funeral.After his mother's death, Welles ceased pursuing music. It was decided that he would spend the summer with the Watson family at a private art colony established by Lydia Avery Coonley Ward in the village of Wyoming in the Finger Lakes Region of New York.: 8  There, he played and became friends with the children of the Aga Khan, including the 12-year-old Prince Aly Khan. Then, in what Welles later described as "a hectic period" in his life, he lived in a Chicago apartment with both his father and Maurice Bernstein, a Chicago physician who had been a close friend of both his parents. Welles briefly attended public school: 133  before his alcoholic father left business altogether and took him along on his travels to Jamaica and the Far East. When they returned, they settled in a hotel in Grand Detour, Illinois, that was owned by his father. When the hotel burned down, Welles and his father took to the road again.: 9 "During the three years that Orson lived with his father, some observers wondered who took care of whom," wrote biographer Frank Brady.: 9 "In some ways, he was never really a young boy, you know," said Roger Hill, who became Welles's teacher and lifelong friend.: 24
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