Hello Americans offers readers a critical look at the years after Citizen Kane up to Macbeth (1947), from his difficult and self-defeating temperament to some of the monstrous personalities with whom he was involved. Callow fully illustrates each film of the period—The Magnificent Ambersons, Journey into Fear, The Stranger, The Lady from Shanghai—as well as Welles's off-screen activities—his dedicated but ill-fated attempts to be a radio comedian and stage magician; his fervent desire to revive spectacular theater single- handedly; his newspaper columns; and his political interests, which he pursued passionately. The result is an expertly researched and elegantly written portrait that will remain the final word on this larger than life genius for generations to come.
While the book is worth owning just for this 322-page interview, it is also full of other material that is equally revealing. Rosenbaum presents a meticulous chronology of Welles's life, closely following his day-to-day activities from his birth in 1915 to his death in 1985. Anyone who thinks that Welles was an essentially lazy and profligate artist will be astonished at how hard he worked and how much he accomplished, even after the completion of Citizen Kane. Another treat found in the book is a detailed description--complete with rare photographic stills--of the original Magnificent Ambersons, Welles's impressive follow-up to Kane, which can now be seen only in a tragically truncated version.
This 1998 reissue of the volume contains a fond new introduction by Bogdanovich and another crucial piece of Welles minutia, excerpts from his 58-page memo to Universal Pictures about the editing of Touch of Evil. Forty years after its composition, the material in this memo has been used to create a restored "director's cut" of the film. With such grand material between two covers, This Is Orson Welles is the most informative and entertaining book available on one of the 20th century's greatest artists. --Raphael Shargel
Contents •Tape One: Citizen Kane and other projects •Tape Two: The Magnificent Ambersons, Chimes at Midnight,and The Other Side of the Wind •Tape Three: Othello, Touch of Evil, The Lady FromShanghai, and The Trial •Tape Four: Radio, Televison, Comics and more
has a very distinct voice. It has the voice of Orson himself.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the book was the voyeuristic personal insight I was able to get from Welles and-despite his relatively passive role of interviewer-Bogdonovich as well. In this sense,
is quite unlike the other required texts, and I do not read too much into the title of "author" that is loftily bestowed upon Bogdonovich and Welles. Through a brief surface comparison between this book and several other texts on Welles, it's clear that there is a great difference between a removed, historical opinion and a defensive individual discussing his own life. Although much could be said about Welles' misleading-albeit thoroughly entertaining-statements, I cannot fault a man for being unable to have sound perspective on his own affairs. I can only read the book as a historical text, but Welles was being asked questions about his life, and I cannot fault him for his oft-grandiose replies. The sheer nature of an interview such as this places an enormous amount of attention on Welles, so I can only smile pleasantly at his recurring ego, wondering if I could be any more impartial or less boastful in his place.
Back to the question of authorship though.
While I readily disregard comparisons between
and, say, Thomson's
due to their drastic differences in intent, tone and content, the strong yet shadowy hand of the omnipotent editor is ever present in all forms of biographical text. Cut this, change that, add this, move that. A book like Thomson's may greatly benefit from such professional revision, but in the cases of
I felt as though the authorship accreditation was misplaced. "Edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum" should have graced the cover, replacing the names of Welles and Bogdonovich. Much like any documentary invariably guides an audience along a certain path, Rosenbaum has reconstructed the interviews amidst other such historical documentation in a very calculated and meticulous fashion. In this sense then there is no author at all, and I find it very difficult to discuss the book as a biography written by anyone.
In truth, this may be one of the worst biography's one could possibly pick up if they wanted to learn more about Welles and his life, and I doubt I would call it a biography at all. As required course reading, I am wholly appreciative that I was given the chance to "hear" the words of Orson Welles as he spoke of his own creations, idly gossiping about other actors and filmmakers. Is it all truth? No, it is laughably biased, but it is the bias of Orson Welles, and definitely a very unique variation on accepted truth. If I can trust that Rosenbaum left the integrity intact, then Welles' half-truths are just as important to understanding the man than commonly accepted "whole-truths" by some biographer.
Whereas
can never stand on its own as an investigative biography of the filmmaker's life, it remains as the text that helped me to understand the man behind the myth above all others.
Rosebud Reigns Supreme in Filmdom.......2003-09-15
As one who had just completed a viewing of Ciitzen Kane on DVD
(featuring the excellent audio commentary on the film by Roger Ebert & Rudy Behlmer) I turned to Frank Brady's excellent biography.This is Orson Welles completes my examination of this giant of film directorship. Over several years and in many locals the Falstaffian Welles shares his thoughts on film, his own movies and life with his devoted student Peter Bogdonovich
(himself a talented director best known for "The Last Picture Show'). If you want to know what Welles really thinks and believes this book is the Rosetta Stone for your investigation!
As Truffaut was able to discuss his life and films with Sir Alfred Hitchcock so does Peter B. do the same thing for Welles.
After all the reading and studying of Welles the man emerges as a titanic force of nature whose undisciplined genius is a wonder to behold. Any fan of Welles or Cinema should add this excellent book to your library. Well Recommended!
Orson Welles: The Man and his Movies, Larger Than Life.......2002-08-28
I commend to the book above, an interview with Peter Bogdanovich.
Although I'm not a huge fan of the latter's movies (with the exception of "Paper Moon," which I loved ever since it came out when I was eight, and fell in love with tomboy Tatum O'Neill forthrightly), I have begun reading about half of this book over the past few days, and find it better than my previous favourite, the Hitchcock/Truffaut book. Of course, much favoured above Wilder/Crowe, namely because of Crowe's incessant name dropping of "Jerry Maguire" and "Tom Cruise" every other irritating sentence, which prevented the reader from finding out what
Wilder had on *his* mind.
What impresses me about the Welles/Bogdanovich volume is the raucous sense of humour Welles brings to the conversation, always as lively and as larger-than-life as Welles was. Also, Bogdanovich has laced the book with pertinent interviews, articles, anecdotes that elucidate certain points of the text, as well as Welles' lines cut from "Magnificent Ambersons" and the long memorandum he wrote to Universal studio chiefs and cc'd to Chuck Heston, trying to save what I consider his masterwork,
"Touch of Evil" from falling prey to overzealous editing by indifferent studio hacks.
But most of all, I am touched that when all the world was dumping on Welles, when he was being derided as a has-been and a spendthrift, that up-and-coming director Bogdanovich gave him his friendship and accorded him the respect he was so shamefully denied. Even Pauline Kael couldn't resist savaging Welles, and she wrote a particularly nasty and libelous article that Welles didn't write any of the screenplay to "Citizen Kane."
Of all Hollywood's sins (and I retain in memory a cross-indexed catalogue of them), the fact that even when Welles started getting "lifetime achievement" accolades, he still couldn't get any financing for his movie projects, on which he worked until his last days, leaves the bitterest taste in my mouth. There must be certain people destined to the lowest rungs of hell -- or at least purgatory -- for creating a world in which Orson Welles' last paid acting role was as the voice of the evil planet in a "Transformers" movie.
Book Description
Variously described as a work of genius, a pretentious wreck, a crucially important film, and a victim of its director's ego, among other things, It's All True, shot in Mexico and Brazil between 1941 and 1942, is the legendary movie that Orson Welles never got to finish. In this book, the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of It's All True available, Catherine Benamou synthesizes a wealth of new and little-known source material gathered on two continents, including interviews with key participants, to present a compelling original view of the film and its historical significance. Her book challenges much received wisdom about Orson Welles and illuminates the unique place he occupies in American culture, broadly defined.
Customer Reviews:
important subject smothered in grotesque prose.......2007-09-23
"Textophagy"--better like the word, because you'll encounter dozens of such coinages "imbricated" (more fashionable terminology of this ilk) in the author's impenetrable prose: "Just as donning false noses and epidermises allowed Welles to take on significantly different personae while remaining easily recognizable to the public--thereby disclosing the fact of the prothesis to any viewer who had seen him in other performances--his recuperation of the lost work in progress does not involve erasure and forgetting, achieved through the decontextualization and compositional simulation (by way of suturing) of dismembered elements. Instead, it speaks to the reclamation and remembrance by way of bricolage of the text he had originally envisioned." It's the quaint, now antiquated thereobabble (to insert a coinage of my own) of humanities graduate schools in the late 1980s and 1990s. NYU (and the others) can't be entirely blamed for this--Benamou had adequate time to outgrow it in the decade between her 1997 dissertation and the publication of this book. (Also badly needed: a refresher course in the real-life economics of the film industry.) There's deep research behind this effort, and it yields up a wealth of invaluable new information on this pivotal project in Welles' career; let us hope that someone extracts it and blogs it in comprehensible form and that Benamou assents to the process (she holds the copyright): that, plus the reconstruction project of surviving footage she's heading in conjunction with UCLA Film/Television Archive, might turn out to be her most important contributions to Welles scholarship.
Average customer rating:
- Orson Welles and Magic
- The Only Biography from Welles's Perspective
- Mediocre, Irritating and Incomplete
- Weak.
- Meat Loaf with Extra Gravy
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Orson Welles: A Biography
Barbara Leaming
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ASIN: 0879101997 |
Amazon.com
While it is a shame that Orson Welles, great filmmaker and master raconteur, never wrote a full account of his life, this book is the next best thing to a Welles autobiography. Barbara Leaming's main sources are the hundreds of hours of interviews she conducted with Welles in the three years before his death. Though clearly biased toward its subject, this book benefits considerably from Welles's wit and charm, which can be felt in Leaming's summaries of the director's experiences and in the generous number of quotations from Welles himself. At Leaming's urging, and to the reader's great pleasure, Welles recounts the whole of his fascinating life, discussing his relationship with his parents and guardians; his early promise as a musical and artistic prodigy; his brilliant successes in the theater while still a teenager; his foundation--with John Houseman--of the Mercury theater; the legendary radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds; the triumph of Citizen Kane; the successful efforts of RKO studios to alter and crush the films he made after Kane; his friendship with Franklin Roosevelt; his marriage to Rita Hayworth and countless other affairs (including a rhapsody on Dolores del Rio's custom-made underwear, if that's your cup of tea); his relationship with Oja Kodar; and his later film career in America and Europe. An entertaining read that unfolds like a good novel, Orson Welles offers a perspective on the maestro's life that deserves to be compared to more recent biographies of Welles by Frank Brady, Simon Callow, and David Thomson, all of which have prejudices of their own. --Raphael Shargel
Book Description
"...[A] beautifully researched, valuable study of one of America's most influential and mysterious artists. ...[What] makes this book remarkable is Welles's own contribution. His comments, opinions, interviews cut in and out of the narrative with an almost cinematic force." -Patricia Bosworth
Customer Reviews:
Orson Welles and Magic.......2007-07-01
I have always been a fan of Orson Welles on radio and television. Having collected a ton of radio broadcasts on CD and audio cassette and having watched most of his movies, I appreciate the genius of his work. I picked up a copy of this book recently and am amazed at the amount of research put into it. An aspect of Welles rarely discussed is his magic career. At the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention this September in Aberdeen, Maryland, I plan to attend the presentation about Orson Welles and his magic career so I can watch rare footage and films with Welles, and get an even deeper insight to his trickery. Book comes recommended.
The Only Biography from Welles's Perspective.......2007-01-22
There are many biographies of Orson Welles but only one was written with his cooperation. Welles never wrote his autobiography past his childhood, so along with This Is Orson Welles, this is all we have to judge his life from, using his words. Despite the book's many flaws, most glaringly without details about many of Welles's most important films and with only bar and the fact that Leaming does seem to be very obsequious toward her subject, it still captures much of his personal life, especially with Rita Hayward. Overall, the book is intoxicating and a very compelling read considering the many other biographies about Welles, most of which are full of hyperbole and outright lies about the man, his life and his work.
To get the best idea of Welles, read this book along with This Is Orson Welles, to get an idea about Welles's ideas about his movie and stage careers, Citizen Welles which is a fair overview of his life without hyperbole and Whatever Happened to Orson Welles, which focuses on Welles's career from the 1960s to his death. All of which add up to get a real picture of this man who created some of the greatest films of the 20th century and wanted to be a mystery above all other things.
Mediocre, Irritating and Incomplete.......2005-12-16
Sifting through hundreds of hours of personal interviews with the enigmatic Orson Welles in the years before his death, Barbara Leaming presents an uneven and obsequious biography. She is entirely dependent on her interviews of Welles for the bulk of her work and seems to have spent little time in developing differing views on Welles. Perhaps Welles, who always wanted to dominate his surroundings, found Miss Leaming compliant and ready to write the biography Welles desired.
The author succeeds best in painting a picture of the rise of Orson Welles. His mother, Beatrice, not only introduced young Welles to Chicago's artsy society, but to her friend Da Da Bernstein, who considered Welles to be a prodigy at an early age. Bernstein was Welles' first mentor. As a teen, Welles was sent to the artsy Todd School and acquired another mentor, the drama teacher Roger "Skipper" Hill. Soon, Welles' career on stage rocketed and he landed on Broadway at 18 acting and producing. He was a wonder. On top of this, his powerful, distinctive voice landed him on radio, where he made his money, leading to the radio caper of "The War of the Worlds". Hollywood called and "Citizen Kane" and "The Magnificent Ambersons" soon followed.
But Welles' career stumbled afterwards. Very few of his movies made money. His directorships of movies were erratic and his relationships with the studio bosses were desultory. Thus, Welles became a vagabond director and actor and often had to use his acting salary to supplement production costs of HIS movies. Always scambling for production money, what he did produce after World War Two were generally fly-by-night, patchwork movies, most of which were unmarketable. His career had peaked by his mid-twenties. By the end of his life, he was reduced to audio voiceovers and a three year stint endorsing Paul Masson wines of which he was fired for his arrogant meddling in the production of the spots. Welles always had to be in charge and bridled when under the authority of others.
Miss Leaming leaves out details of Welles' career that he seems not to have wanted to discuss with her. For instance, Welles' acting in "Jane Eyre", "The Third Man" and "The Long, Hot Summer" receive less space in this book than Welles' poodle, KiKi. To a very annoying degree, the author interjects herself often in this book and in great depth. This biography is a case of a self-absorbed woman writing about a man who is even more self-absorbed.
Weak........2002-06-11
June 10, 2002
The first problem with Barbara Leaming's biography
of Orson Welles is that it principally relies on
the absolute worst source imaginable: Orson Welles
himself. Anyone who knows the details of Welles's
life, career and character even a little knows that
the man was a liar. Not a malicious one, to be
sure--his was more of a child's capacity for
prevarication, born out of equal parts insecurity
and need for attention--but a liar nonetheless.
The second problem is that while Leaming is a
serviceable writer, she is not particularly worldly.
She's certainly not objective. She seems to belong
to that cosmetically clever but ultimately narrow
breed of communicators: the gossip monger. She
loves anecdotes, and swallows Orson's whole.
All the requisite facts are in this book, but other
Welles biographies have served the man and his art
better. The single greatest irony about this book
is how smarmy, superficial and childish its subject
comes off in this, the work of his most flattering
biographer.
It's too easy to spot Welles toying with Leaming,
and he doesn't come off very charming or impressive
by extension. He sees her coming from too far off
and feeds her lots of junk, too much of which she
printed.
Meat Loaf with Extra Gravy.......1999-03-06
On the whole an entertaining read but Leaming's gossip-column style and unabashed idolatry grate before long. Leaming saves her best prose not for Welles' legendary charm or artistic genius, but for his various appendages. "The only way to make the plane was to hitchhike," Leaming writes, "but when Orson extended the long tapered thumb of his extraordinarily beautiful hand, the only vehicle to stop was a garbage truck, into which Welles and company promptly crowded." Such flourishes, as well as the index, which is surprisingly clever--under Welles, (George) Orson there is an entry entitled "false noses used by 350, 353, 401, 424" are the gravy on this meat loaf of a book. Eat up!
Product Description
With a career spanning almost five decades, Orson Welles became--and in many ways still is--one of entertainment's biggest names. His temperamental vitality, his humor and his general theatricality contributed volumes to the American stage and movie screen. His concepts of lighting and staging brought a new era to American productions. Welles influenced an entire generation of directors. These interviews conducted between 2003 and 2005 record the reminiscences of 30 individuals who worked with Orson Welles in a professional capacity. Beginning with 1937 and his work in Mercury Theatre, it follows a selected few of many who were part of Welles's life up to his sudden death in October 1985. Including actors, editors, cinematographers, camera assistants and magicians, the work presents a rounded view of Welles's career and, to some extent, his personal life. Each interview is presented in question and answer format with occasional commentary inserted for context or clarification. Projects discussed include Welles's most notable (Citizen Kane and War of the Worlds) as well as others like Heart of Darkness and The Cradle Will Rock which never quite reached fruition.
Customer Reviews:
TOP WELLES TREASURE.......2007-08-19
I have fifty or sixty books by or about Welles, a big collection of his films, and have written my own book about him, THE WELLES REQUIEM, as yet unpublished, and now happily confess to revising what I thought I knew about him, especially about his hands-on mode of filmmaking. For me the most important part of this truly stimulating, wonderful book are the parts about Welles in the cutting room. He himself personally did not cut film! He hired people to do that and told them what he wanted and then came back a day or a week later. Most revealing is the cutter for CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT who tells how Welles did not direct the battle scenes and did not do the cutting or assemblage. I won't reveal the "secrets" about that but they alone made this book worthwhile. Aside from that, this is truly personal about Orson and he is here talking with you straight into your face and gripping your shoulder and feeding you Chinese take-out. Any lover of Welles, no matter how deeply versed in his life-story, can not help but be lifted to the Wellesian heavens by this one-on-one face-to-face meeting with Orson Welles. Congratulations to young author/editor Peter Prescott Tonquette!
Orson Welles and Magic.......2007-07-01
I have always been a fan of Orson Welles on radio and television. Having collected a ton of radio broadcasts on CD and audio cassette and having watched most of his movies, I appreciate the genius of his work. I picked up a copy of this book recently and am amazed at the amount of research put into it. An aspect of Welles rarely discussed is his magic career. At the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention this September in Aberdeen, Maryland, I plan to attend the presentation about Orson Welles and his magic career so I can watch rare footage and films with Welles, and get an even deeper insight to his trickery. Book comes recommended.
Book Description
At twenty-five, Orson Welles (1915-1985) directed, co-wrote, and starred in Citizen Kane, widely considered the best film ever made. But Welles was such a revolutionary filmmaker that he found himself at odds with the Hollywood studio system. His work was so far ahead of its time that he never regained the wide popular following he had once enjoyed as a young actor-director on the radio.
Frustrated by Hollywood and falling victim to the postwar blacklist, Welles departed for a long European exile. But he kept making films, functioning with the creative freedom of an independent filmmaker before that term became common and eventually preserving his independence by funding virtually all his own projects. Because he worked defiantly outside the system, Welles has often been maligned as an errant genius who squandered his early promise.
Film critic Joseph McBride, who acted in Welles's legendary unfinished film The Other Side of the Wind, provocatively challenges conventional wisdom about Welles's supposed creative decline. McBride is the first author to provide a comprehensive examination of the films of Welles's artistically rich yet little-known later period. During the 1970s and '80s, Welles was breaking new aesthetic ground, experimenting as adventurously as he had throughout his career.
McBride's friendship and collaboration with Welles and his interviews with those who knew and worked with the director make What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? a portrait of rare intimacy and insight. Reassessing Welles's final period in the context of his entire life and work, McBride's revealing portrait of this great film artist will change the terms of how Orson Welles is regarded.
Customer Reviews:
Orson Welles Book.......2007-07-01
I have always been a fan of Orson Welles on radio and television. Having collected a ton of radio broadcasts on CD and audio cassette and having watched most of his movies, I appreciate the genius of his work. I picked up a copy of this book recently and am amazed at the amount of research put into it. An aspect of Welles rarely discussed is his magic career. At the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention this September in Aberdeen, Maryland, I plan to attend the presentation about Orson Welles and his magic career so I can watch rare footage and films with Welles, and get an even deeper insight to his trickery. Book comes recommended.
Fascinating and informative.......2007-03-06
While I might be biased because a many parts of this book included stories about my father, Gary Graver, this is not something you want to miss out on if you have any interest in Orson Welles or the inner workings of the Hollywood movie industry. I knew Orson when I was a young boy and teenager during the time my father worked with him, but my memories are nothing compared to the vivid details and thoroughness of Joe's writings.
This book taught me a lot about a man whom I admired and feared. He was rather scary from the perspective of a ten year old, but he often took time to have me sit with him while he taught me card tricks. I am so grateful that these stories are now available for everyone to read. Thank you Joe for your commitment in documenting what no one else ever has and sharing these wonderful stories.
Its value thus is twofold: as a biography for Welles fans, and as a history of film industry operations and politics........2006-12-11
Mention the name Orson Welles and his most famous involvement - with the radio scare 'War of the Worlds' - immediately comes to mind; but for a deeper understanding of Welles' life and career you need What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career. His later projects were largely self-financed and erratically distributed, but film critic and biographer Joseph McBride has a personal familiarity with Welles from previous projects worked on with him and here shows how the Hollywood studio system forced Welles out of the industry. Its value thus is twofold: as a biography for Welles fans, and as a history of film industry operations and politics.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
A Great Director's Independent Years.......2006-11-06
Everyone knows that Orson Welles made _Citizen Kane_, possibly the most audacious and most analyzed movie to come out of Hollywood. And then what happened? He had been called a "boy genius", having made the movie (co-written, directed, and starred) when he was but twenty-five years old, but within a decade the term was used with sarcasm, and Walter Kerr wrote that Welles had become "an international joke, and possibly the youngest living has-been." Welles had been knocked down, and in the view of many, he never got up. Certainly, he never made anything like a _Kane_ again, but that isn't really fair: no one has. It is true that he never produced the sorts of films that were Hollywood-popular, but he did not at all disappear. Joseph McBride, a film historian who knew Welles, has answered the title question in his book _What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career_ (The University Press of Kentucky). The answer, quite simply, is that Welles worked and worked for decades in film, writing scripts, making movies, and (perhaps because few would bankroll him) doing things his own way. It's a sad story, in many ways. No one could doubt Welles's genius, and there are so many "if only" episodes in this book that it is often a depressing account. But Welles was not a tragic figure; he reflected years later that he might have made a mistake in staying in films (rather than, say, returning to the theater in which he had previously made his mark). But he would not have had it any other way: "I'm just in love with making movies," he said, and indeed, it was only death that stopped him.
McBride necessarily describes the problems that beset Welles immediately after _Kane_, when Welles could no longer get anything close to the full control of a film which he had practiced on his first movie. Still wanting to make movies, he left Hollywood to continue in Europe. McBride makes the case that contributing to Welles's decision for self-exile was his fear that he would be called to testify in the Communist witch-hunts. Welles loved shooting films and he especially loved editing them (as anyone who has seen _Kane_ can tell). There are plenty of pictures Welles worked on whose footage has been lost, but many others have the footage saved by fans or by creditors, and they frequently propose bringing out a finished version, hiring someone to pull the scenes together into a finished movie even so long after Welles's death in 1985. One producer mentioned she'd like to see a particular film screened not as an unfinished work by Welles, but as a film the way he might have finished it; but she says, "Finished by whom? Who can you substitute for Orson Welles?"
McBride does not go deeply into Welles's inability to finish things. Certainly it was attributable in a large part to Welles's way of skin-of-his-teeth filmmaking, whether or not it was some deep-set psychological disability. Welles could have written a magnificent autobiography, but when he got advances for such a work, he always returned them to the publishers. McBride writes, "Welles was deeply ambivalent about reminiscing, perhaps because he would have had to address issues he usually found too painful or delicate, such as his sexuality, his family life and some of his more traumatic experiences in Hollywood." Some of the stories of incompletion here, however, are extraordinary. His finished negative of _The Merchant of Venice_ was simply stolen from Welles's production office in Rome. The Iranians held funding for his meditation on filmmaking in the sixties, _The Other Side of the Wind_, and then the Shah was overthrown. "It's hard to imagine a movie career more littered with sensational catastrophes than mine," Welles admitted. He seldom admitted that he was the source of the less sensational catastrophes; a cameraman who worked with Welles late in his career said that Don Quixote was never completed because Welles "moved around too much, stuff got lost." For sensational and unsensational reasons, the losses recounted here are staggering. Nonetheless, McBride shows that they cannot be blamed, as some critics say, on Welles's being lazy or dilatory. The decades were filled with work for him, and he was pounding out a manuscript for a brand-new project on the night he died. As an independent filmmaker, Welles may have never fully lived up to his potential, but with a record of films that includes _Touch of Evil_ or the supremely weird _Lady from Shanghai_, his pattern of incompletion must be a minor sin. Much of McBride's personal account comes from his being an actor in _The Other Side of the Wind_ (of course, never finished) as were such droppable names as John Huston and Dennis Hopper. McBride's story won't re-make Welles's post-1950 career, but it isn't just a story of loss and lost opportunities; it is one of real movie history and at least some genuine artistic success.
The Real Story behind a Misunderstood Talent........2006-10-07
This book's title aptly describes its critical task in taking issue with the misleading images perpetuated by certain critics and journalists concerning the significance of Orson Welles as a major cinematic talent who developed, rather than declined, after making CITIZEN KANE. The author had the benfit several years of contact with the director before he died as well as the opportunity to appear before the camera in the still unreleased THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.
McBride has been engaged in Welles's scholarship since his early 1970s monograph dealing with the director and is in a good position to promote the case that Welles was more of what we would describe as an independent film director rather than a Hollywood figure. This book covers similar territory to the first two volumes of Simon Callow's biographical project but has the advantage of extending beyond the final chapter of HELLO AMERICANS to document Welles work in Europe and his return to Hollywood up to his eventual death. It is also a much more balanced work than either of Callow's two volumes by avoiding tendencies towards cheap character assassination (mercifully limited in Callow's second volume but still present in certain instances) to document a person who was both a genius and a difficult person.
The key argument of this book is that the director was more sinned against than anything else. His Hollywood career was deliberately sabotaged by studion executives and he was under surveillance by the FBI for some 15 years. Despite that, Welles never gave in but directed several fascinating films and worked on others that still remain to be completed up to the very moment of his life. Welles was a fascinating character, a product of the New Deal Cultural Front, and a cinematic innovator in many ways. He left a legacy of completed American and European films as well as other works that challenged the boundaries of mainstream cinema. McBride delivers this argument in an eloquent manner and documents his sources meticulously.
This is one of the best biographies that has appeared so far on the subject. It aims to reveal the truth concerning Welles's real creative challenge to the establishment which several notorious treatments have attempted to deny. McBride writes in a very engaging manner and makes a strong case for the reassessment of the legacy of Orson Welles as one of America's major talents of the twentieth century. It is a really important work demanding wide readership and respect for its very valuable achievement.
The University of Kentucky Press also deserves congratulations for publishing this work along with the recent books on Cecil B. De Mille, Thomas Dixon and Peter Lorre which are all instrumental in rewriting film history and refuting so-called standard interpretations.
Book Description
Of the dozens of books written about Orson Welles, most focus on the central enigma of Welles's career: why did someone so extravagantly talented neglect to finish so many projects? Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has long believed that to dwell on this aspect of the Welles canon is to overlook the wealth of information available by studying the unrealized works. Discovering Orson Welles collects Rosenbaum's writings to date on Welles--some thirty-five years of them--and makes an irrefutable case for the seriousness of his work, illuminating both Welles the artist and Welles the man. The book is also a chronicle of Rosenbaum's highly personal writer's journey and his efforts to arrive at the truth. The essays, interviews, and reviews are arranged chronologically and are accompanied by commentary that updates the scholarship. Highlights include Rosenbaum's 1972 interview with Welles about his first Hollywood project, Heart of Darkness; Rosenbaum's rebuttal to Pauline Kael's famous essay "Raising Kane"; detailed essays and comprehensive discussions of Welles's major unfinished work, including two unrealized projects, The Big Brass Ring and The Cradle Will Rock; and an account of Rosenbaum's work as consultant on the 1998 re-editing of Touch of Evil, based on a studio memo by Welles.
Customer Reviews:
Orson Welles and Magic.......2007-07-01
I have always been a fan of Orson Welles on radio and television. Having collected a ton of radio broadcasts on CD and audio cassette and having watched most of his movies, I appreciate the genius of his work. I picked up a copy of this book recently and am amazed at the amount of research put into it. An aspect of Welles rarely discussed is his magic career. At the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention this September in Aberdeen, Maryland, I plan to attend the presentation about Orson Welles and his magic career so I can watch rare footage and films with Welles, and get an even deeper insight to his trickery. Book comes recommended.
Superb .......2007-06-03
Simply put... a great collection of essays, book reviews, commentary and notes pertaining to Mr. Welles' (mostly) independent ouvre. Mr. Rosenbaum is an erudite writer and almost every page contains a nugget of gold. This volume deserves a place on anyone's bookshelf remotely interested in Wellesian cinema, and it now resides next to Naremore's MAGIC WORLD on mine.
We have had a plethora of Welles biographies and Mr. Rosenbaum has indicated he has no interest in adding another. I only wish he would write a book with his personal criticism/analysis on each film in the Wellesian canon to add to the superlative effort by Naremore and the excellent effort by McBride. Mr. Rosenbaum, there is room for one more!
For those of you new to Welles (cinema), my personal take is:
Superior Films: Kane, Ambersons, Shanghai, Othello, The Trial, F for Fake
Excellent Films: Chimes, Touch of Evil
Very Good Films: MacBeth, Immortal Story
Very Bad Film: Arkadin
Probably Would Have Been Superior: Raft/True, Merchant of Venice, Moby Rehearsed (the filmed monologue/tests/whatever are RIVETING... in fact he should have shot the whole thing in closeup with the abstract blue background... a color version of Dreyer's JOAN but with Orson playing all the roles)
Probably Would Have Been Excellent: Quixote
Who the heck knows: The Deep
Jury's Out but about the enter the courtroom: Wind (the scene in the car in the rain and the lights is superb... hope the rest is half as good)
I prefer Shanghai to Evil... The Trial to Chimes... CERTAINLY Othello to MacBeth... and even to Chimes. I think The Trial and Othello are his two most underrated films.
Mr. Rosenbaum: please write that book. And do what nobody else ever bothers to do... include a couple thousand screen captures.
Film is a VISUAL medium. You could hang a thousand frames from Othello alone on a museum wall.
Five hundred years from now... only two directors will matter. Godard and Welles. They are the Mozart and Beethoven of cinema. But although Welles was versatile enough to make a Godardian film (FAKE)... I don't think Godard could ever make a Wellesian film.
Each of them deserve a book with two thousand frame enlargments!
NOTE: Some astute cinephiles will notice that THE STRANGER was not listed above in my rating of Welles'ouvre based on the common misperception that Mr. Welles directed this film. He merely 'acted' like the director when the press would show up. All his friends knew Orson had no chance of making a 'normal-Hollywood-type-film' so they took turns directing this program filler. Akim Tamiroff directed about 70 % of the footage and Marlene Dietrich authored most of the remaining 30%. Sadly, all of Rita Hayworth's contributions from the director's chair were cut by the studio editors.
Now THAT is a much needed area of research. The Lost Films of Rita Hayworth!
Book Description
Orson Welles' theatrical productions of Shakespeare for the W.P.A.'s Federal Theatre Project and Welles' own Mercury Theatre represent unique blending of high art and the highly politicized popular culture of the 1930s. This volume is the only publication available of the fully annotated playscripts of these adaptations, including the "Voodoo" Macbeth, the modern-dress Julius Caesar and Welles' compilation of history plays, Five Kings. Richard France's general introduction provides invaluable background information that relates the three plays and their productions to the social, historical, political and economic climate from which they emerged. He further introduces each script with all of the relevant information on the production, interview material from those on the scene and Welles' own directorial marginalia.
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- Screening Violence (Depth of Film Series)
- Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting; A step-by-step guide from concept to finished script
- Sculpting a Galaxy: Inside the Star Wars Model Shop
- Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters
Books Index
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![Falstaff Chimes At Midnight [Import]](http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0007X6KM2.01.THUMBZZZ.jpg)