Orson Welles

In 1992, the first publication of This Is Orson Welles brought a priceless document to light. In the late '60s and early '70s, filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich had conducted extensive interviews with Welles, but a number of circumstances--including the director's decision to compose an autobiography that he never got around to writing--kept the interviews out of the public eye...

Out of all the many stars and celebrities Hollywood has produced, only a handful have achieved the fame—and, some would say, infamy—of Orson Welles, the creator and star of what is arguably the greatest American film, Citizen Kane. Many books have been written about him, detailing his achievements as an artist as well his foibles as a human being...

Now in paperback, Callow's vastly entertaining chronicle of Welles's first 26 years seems even finer than it did in 1995. The author's ability to skewer his subject's evasions and lies while retaining critical affection for him is perhaps explained by the fact that Callow, an actor himself, understands the need to mythologize...

"This is the story of one week in my life. I was seventeen. It was the week I slept in Orson Welles’s pajamas. It was the week I fell in love. And it was the week I changed my middle name—twice." With this beginning, Robert Kaplow sweeps readers into a break-neck romantic farce that reads like a Who’s-Who of the classic American theater...

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...

An excellent introduction to Orson Welles's career and accomplishments. Newly revised by author Joseph McBride, Orson Welles now features essays on F for Fake, Welles's last theatrical film; the recently reconstructed It's All True; the still unreleased The Other Side of the Wind (which Welles completed in the late '70s and in which McBride acted); and the seldom seen television pilot The Fountain of Youth...