William Alland

So eager was Neighborhood Playhouse-trained William Alland to become a on-stage member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre in the late 1930s that he locked himself in Welles' dressing room and wouldn't come out until Orson had heard his audition. He functioned as an actor and stage manager with the Mercury on Broadway, and as assistant director on the troupe's radio series. When Welles took his players to Hollywood in 1940 to make Citizen Kane, Alland went along as dialogue director; he also appeared in the film as the shadowy reporter Thompson, and was heard as the stentorian narrator in the "News on the March" sequence. He remained with Welles into the late 1940s, acting in Lady from Shanghai (1947) and MacBeth (1948) (as one of the murderers) and wearing several hats behind the camera. In 1952, Allan was engaged as a staff producer at Universal-International. Among his best-known productions were the science fiction classics It Came From Outer Space (1953), Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) and This Island Earth (1955). In 1961, William Alland made his film directorial debut with the juvenile-delinquency melodrama Look in Any Window. Alland died at the age of 81 following complications from heart disease. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide