How To Read Minds By Not

Orson Welles by Derren Brown

 

 Another two-show day, so here's your Sunday shot of Orson Welles. I first saw "cold reading" demonstrated in Derren Brown's Séance, which is also well worth a watch (of course, Derren Brown being Derren Brown, I may only think I saw it demonstrated). As described below to David Frost, it's "a fraudulent technique used by mediums in the Victorian times" whereby you "warm up the sucker" with facts about themselves that could apply to anyone (I have a scar on my knee!) until they're so convinced by your psychic powers they start unwittingly volunteering infomation about themselves. That's the theory.

Props can help. (Source)

 

 And Welles practised. According to various accounts, and a scene in Love Goddess – (tickets available here) – he even practised it on future wife Rita Hayworth when they first met. It's never made explicit in our show that this is what he's doing, but very little in our show is made explicit, which is one of the reasons I love it so much. And to Welles' credit, and unlike those who began it or most famously practice it now, he only ever claimed to have "mind-reading capabilities" rather than the ability to speak to the dead. It was a more innocent time. There was a war on.