Orson Welles: Volume 1: The Road to Xanadu

Orson Welles, by his very nature, made himself an almost impossible subject for biography. He told so many stories about himself that in later life, even he didn't know what the truth was anymore. He also spent most of his life as the ultimate hustler living a roll that was bigger than anything he ever played.

The genius of this book is that it cuts through the nonsense and gives us the truth about Welles...or as close as anyone will ever get. He lays bear the rise of the boy genius from school into the theater, on to radio and then to Hollywood. The theater portions are the best part of the book. In some ways, just the portions of the book dealing with Welles in the theater would have been enough for a great work. We get a level of detail about each production that no other book really provides. The author also avoids the obvious tendancy to focus on the sensational and gossip.

There is nothing new really in terms of Citizen Kane because that particular set of events was long-ago mined for anything of worth by many others. The coverage of Welles on Radio isn't as complete as his work in the theater, but its still good.

I think Peter Bogdonovich appears way too much in the book. As a source, he is rather flawed in the sense that he is so devoted to promoting the Welles legacy.

The author, in my opinion, comes just short of saying that the manic portion of Welles career was fueled by amphetamines. He drops every hint in the deck but only comes close to saying it once. I'm not sure what the sensativity is about it at this point. I suppose it could be lack of final confirmation from the inside.

What comes across in the book is a talented Welles whose attempts at self-promotion ultimately destroyed everything he did. At every stage of the book, he seems more intrested in creating the aura of genius and being publically acclaimed rather than methodically creating works. The book shows him burning every bridge behind him on a trajectory for hollywood. The book ends with him at the apex with nowhere left to go but down.

Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1915. His wild father loved dames, booze and travel while making an upper class living in industry. His mother was a socialite well known in church and community. His older brother had mental problems and spent time in an institution. And so the scene is set for the Kenosha kid the inimitable huckstere, magician, director, actor, storyteller and good time Charlie we call Citizen Welles!
Orson studied at the prestigious private Todd School for boys near Chicago. He did well at Todd, acting in student productions; directing plays and becoming the big man on campus. Welles did not go to college but instead became an actor on the Dublin Gate Theatre stage for a period of ten months. He was on his rocket ride to the top of the slippery slope of showbiz.
Welles became an actor in the prestigious Katherine Cornell company touring the nation. He wed his first wife Virginia, sired a daughter but kept busy whoring around town. Wells had a gargantuan appetite for food, drink, women, the stage and fame. He was tempermental and liked to receive all of the credit for collaborative efforts. Welles was often vain and childish. He could be a tyrant or pussycat depending on his mood.
Welles was the voice on countless radio programs earning him a comfortable living. He teamed with John Houseman in the Harlem "Macbeth" which was a sensation of the New York branch of the Federal Theatre Administration during the Great Depression.
Wells hosted and created the Mercury Theatre on the air becoming notorious for the 1938 production of "The War of the Worlds. He was lured to Hollywood directing what has been considered the greatest American film of all time: "Citizen Kane" in 1941. The movie was controversial being based on the life of William Randolph Hearst.
This book focuses on the career of Welles on stage and screen. The book does report the private life of Welles but does so in a tasteful manner free of innuendo or gossip. Welles comes across as massively egotistical, selfish, sybaritic and self-destructive. He was, despite his faults, a genius of show business.
Simon Callow is a famous British actor and writer who has served his subject well in this massive volume one which takes us through Citizen Kane and ends in 1941,

This is a fantastic, very detailed and rather objective biography of the boy genius of the theatre world. 600 pages about Welles for only the first 26 years of his life is a lot, but definitly worth all the details.

The author basically tells Orson's early life around the plays he directed and that were his life at the time. It is amazing to me how a 14 year old kid was able to succesfully direct Shakespeare plays and even write a book on how to understand Shakerpeare's work.

The book gives great details on every single play he directed, radio shows he produced, the making of citizen Kane and on a broader scale gives a great insight on what broadway was like during the 30s. The account of the war of the world radio broadcast that terrorised the northern US on halloween night 1938 will make you relive the moment as if you were there.

I highly recommend this biography to any fan of Orson Welles or anyone who is interested in the history of broadway or the theatre in general.

Simon Callow's thick and detailed biography of Orson Welles is a staggeringly thorough account of the actor/director's life, from his birth up until the release of his most famous picture, CITIZEN KANE. Callow goes to great lengths to separate the man from his inhumanly grandiose reputation. Armed with years of research, his personal interviews, and a keen sense of humor, Callow sets off to discover the real early life of Orson Welles. He finds a man smaller than his gargantuan myth, yet fascinating and brilliant all the same.

Orson Welles is a notoriously difficult man to write about with any great degree of accuracy. This is attributable to the fact that Welles seems to have spent almost as much time publicizing his work as he spent creating. The difficulty arises when one realizes that the majority of what he said wasn't strictly accurate, and yet it's that publicity which has been accepted for many years. Not to say that Welles was lying, or making up facts (at least, not all the time). It would be closer to the truth to say that Welles was prone to exaggerations, sometimes wild ones when it concerned himself. For the sake of his image, and for the sake of his career, he would embellish and overstate what he was doing and what he had done. Some of the more hysterical (and insightful) portions of the book are those where we see Welles describing something that had occurred several chapters previous. The story that gets told later can be almost totally at odds to what the actuality of the situation was. The further on one goes into the book, the farther away from reality these descriptions become. Welles was obsessed with constantly reinventing himself, creating a gigantic legend that became increasingly difficult for any mortal man to live up to.

This is not to say that Simon Callow is merely running down Orson Welles, or making his achievements seem unworthy. Indeed, Callow appears genuinely impressed by what Welles achieved in such a short amount of time. While Welles apparently preferred his fantasy image of himself, the truth was quite remarkable by itself; Welles packed more living into his first twenty-five years than most people do in a lifetime. The respect that he commanded as an actor/director was unprecedented for someone of his young age. But Callow emphasizes with how Welles thought of himself. He sees Welles' drive to continually achieve more. As a fellow actor, Callow understands and relates to the need for constantly promoting oneself for the benefit of one's career. He compares events in Welles' later life to the man's childhood, looking for the reasons for the overriding desire to drive farther and faster.

The book does tend to take slight detours on its road to CITIZEN KANE's Xanadu. Many of the subjects tangentially related to the main feature are given adequate descriptions. Welles' parents, his hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin, the state of the American theatre in the 1930s and other assorted topics all benefit from Callow's in-depth research and his wonderful attention to detail. These asides and tangents are vital to understanding Welles in his context, and this biography is much the richer for these additions.

As for the portions of Welles' early life that Callow chooses to focus on, it is Welles' theatre work that receives the lion's share of attention. These sections are remarkably detailed, and I simply cannot imagine the book containing any more information. All of his productions are covered, the bulk of the spotlight being aimed towards those plays that Welles approached as both director and actor. Numerous memorable stories are contained in these sections, one of my favorites being the description of Welles directing a collapsing production by punctuating his screams at the cast with intermittent swigs straight from his omnipresent bottle of bourbon.

Descriptions of Orson Welles' other endeavors can only pale by comparison, though they themselves are also covered meticulously. The portions dealing with his radio career aren't given nearly the same attention, and the chapter involved with his WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast seems remarkably brief given how big a place it holds in the Welles Legend. On the other hand, Callow is quick to point out how little input Welles had in the writing side of that radio play, so in retrospect it shouldn't really be all that surprising to see it neglected here. Still, even Welles' work as The Shadow is only briefly mentioned; again, probably based on Welles' lack of creative input on that series. However, it would have been interesting to see the same flurry of facts, and anecdotes directed towards the radio and film work as it was towards the stage.

For anyone who is slightly curious as to actor Simon Callow's ability to write, let me put your mind at ease. Not only is Callow a competent writer, but he's a very engaging one. The subject of Orson Welles is not a simple one for any biographer to attempt, yet Callow has put together a superbly researched and diabolically entertaining portrait of a man who surrounded himself with so much misinformation that sorting through it all must have been an exhausting task. Callow himself is never far from his descriptions, injecting his wry sense of humor into numerous observations. His style of writing makes it very clear when he's talking about verifiable facts, or when he is basing something on conjuncture. Further to this, there are twenty-five pages of references, as well as two and a half pages of bibliography. This is both a lively read and a superbly researched book --a rarity, but an extremely welcome one. In the preface, Simon Callow states that this is merely the first book of two and the second will deal with Welles' descent from the peak of his career. That second book has yet to be published, but based on the extraordinary achievement of this volume, it should be well worth the wait.

In his later years, Welles often complained that he spent more time trying to find money to make films than he did actually making films. And seeing Welles still scrambling for cash in his last days as a commercial pitchman for such products as Dark Tower and Paul Masson Wines ("Where we will sell no wine before it's time"), you know he was right.

This entertaining and exhaustive book by Simon Callow doesn't deal with most of his film career - only covering up to 1941. (We're still waiting on part two to cover the rest. Simon? Simon?). However, what it does do is clear up much of Welles' confusing past (he often told conflicting stories in interviews) and delve into the two main works that set Welles up for stardom...and the fall...in Hollywood - The War of the Worlds radio broadcast and Citizen Kane. And no wonder they were sharpening knives for the boy wonder when Welles publicly put down the Hollywood community, his Kane script bit the hand that feeds him by taking obvious shots at newspaper mogul Randolph Hearst and he was given the kind of directorial freedom veteran directors could only dream of.

Some people may tire of reading about Welles' theatre days with Houseman, anxiously waiting to get to the meat of his film career. But to understand why Welles became a "has-been" at 26 and the long slide to come, this is required reading.