William Alland(1916-1997)
- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Born in Delmar, DE, William Alland began his show-biz career as
an actor with a semi-professional Baltimore troupe. Arriving in
Manhattan with $25, "a paper suitcase" and the ambition to work on
Broadway, he took courses and acted at the Henry Street Settlement
House, where he met "boy wonder"
Orson Welles, then on the eve of forming
his Mercury Theatre group. Alland got in on the ground floor, acting
with the Mercury Players on the New York stage and in radio (including
the notorious Halloween 1938 "War of the Worlds" broadcast) before
playing the (camera-shy) reporter Thompson in Welles'
Citizen Kane (1941). During World
War II Alland was a combat pilot (50 missions over the South Pacific);
in the postwar years he was the Peabody Award-winning producer of
radio's groundbreaking "Doorway to Life". He then turned movie
producer, cranking out a series of features (mostly sci-fi films and
Westerns) at Universal-International in the 1950s.
