Actor Turns Columnist

Orson Welles, 29, precocious master of a number of trades--and jack of several more--apprenticed himself to a new one: newspaper columning. This week his first effort appeared in eleven papers (The New York Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Detroit News, etc.), all of whom bought him sight unseen. What they got were 1) excerpts from Welles's favorite reading, the Farmer's Almanac; 2) handy hints about cooking; 3) cocksure remarks about foreign affairs; 4) personal chitchat.

The first day Welles committed the high journalistic sin of describing an event before it happened. His column, written three days before the Term IV inaugural but published two days after it, told how Franklin Roosevelt "played his part in the ritual like a veteran bridegroom. I was there. . . ." In his second try, Wonderboy Welles professed accurate knowledge of what Stalin had told his Big Three partners--at Teheran, Churchill and Roosevelt had wanted to refer a matter to their experts; Stalin rejoined: "Can't we three decide anything?"

One big problem faced the New York Post Syndicate, which signed Welles to a three-year contract: would the column hold Welles's interest, as well as the reader's? Welles, who has taken a Hollywood highbrow's vocal interest in the world since 1940, was reassuring. "Right now I'm much more interested in politics and foreign affairs than I am in the theater," said he. "I have set up my life in such a way that I can spend more than occasional time on these interests."

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