Orson Welles: Volume 2: Hello Americans

Orson Welles volume II "Hello Americans" (title taken from an Orson Welles radio program of the 1940s) is a fine sequel to his first volume on the behemoth Welles called "Orson Welles: The Road to Xandau". This volume covers the years from 1941 to 1947. Callow has promised a third and final volume to the series covering the years from 1947 to the death of Welles in 1985.
The book begins with triumph for the boy genius! Welles saw his first and best film "Citizen Kane" given the royal treatment at a fabulous premier as he escorted the lovely Mexican actress Dolores del Rio on his fleshy arm. Welles would lose the support of top brass at Columbia Pictures never repeating the acclaim garned by Kane.
Orson Welles went to Brazil for the filming of "It's All True" which was supposed to be a film promoting good will with our American neighbors as the war clouds in Europe were about to break unleashing the horror of World War II, Welles arrived in South America where he played, cavorted, drank, ate and danced at carnival time. The film withered on the vine to the disgust of his creative associates and Hollywood executives. After over 100 pages of dense writing by biographer Callow we learn that nothing came of this project. The failure of his South American film was a signal that Welles was losing his popularity. As a cinematic genius he would continue to experiment with film the rest of his life producing a good deal of failures tempered by some successes. The last quarter century of his life would be spent in Europe.
Welles failed to win plaudits for the chopped up "The Magnificent Ambersons" which is still a fine filming of the Booth Tarkington chronicle of the rise and fall of a wealthy Indiana family in the early years of the twentieth century. His film "Journey Into Darkness" was a so-so film while the artistic "The Lady from Shangai" with ex-wife Rita Hayworth in the lead is considered an imperfect classic. Welles dyed Miss Hayworth's hair blonde for her starring role as a mysterious murderess. The scene in the Fun House with the mirror imagery is classic film.
During World War II Welles became a spokesperson for the administration of FDR. Welles was a liberal Democrat who spoke out against racial discrimination. Welles, to his great credit, was free of racial prejudice,
Welles toyed with politics writing a current events column for a newspaper syndicate and going on good will tours for Uncle Sam. He was not drafted but did consider himself a patriotic American. He was never a Communist.The McCarthy era gave him the willies leading to his leaving the states in 1947. Welles filmed the Shakespearean play "Macbeth" which was compared unfavorably to the Laurence Olivier hit
"Hamlet".
Orson Welles had less than an admirable character. He was a serial cheater during marriage to his second wife the stunningly beautiful sex goddess Rita Hayworth. The couple had a child named Rebecca but Welles was not interested in playing daddy. He had affairs with Lena Horne, Judy Garland and a legion of other ladies. He was a braggart with a Texas size ego who could be explosive and crude. Welles wanted you to do it his way or hit the highway. On the other hand, he could be witty, charming, kind and supportive of good causes. The man was as are repeatedly told a "genius" whatever that word is supposed to mean.
One wishes that Simon Callow would be able to finish volume three of his magnus opus on Orson Welles. Welles is essential for anyone wanting to explore cinema in the twentieth century. Simon Callow is his excellent biographer. Well done work of biography.

The second volume of Simon Callow's admirable biography of Welles does full justice to Welles's work in radio, which extended far beyond his Mercury Theater On the Air. A great read about a great artist.

For me, this was as much an introduction to a witty author as a way of tracing the fall of Orson Welles' career. I had never read any of Simon Callow's previous books, I was more familiar with his work as an actor, but only sightly.

I've missed something. His voice in prose is bright, and the light he throws on Welles here (and presumably in the first volume, which I intend reading) doesn't allow his subject to hide.

He's clearly sympathetic to Welles, but he doesn't let that sympathy overwhelm his perceptions. His observations on acting and directing have the added weight of someone who has, shall we say, dipped a toe or two in that pool...

HURRAH FOR CALLOW! A long and rewarding read with actor/author Callow in fine form as he reviews Welles from within the man himself, while weighing every scene and line-reading of Welles's works from The Magnificent Ambersons to Macbeth. This includes a close survey of all of Welles' radio and theatre works as well, which are weighed from within the art of acting. This is a book Welles himself would enjoy though it often takes him vastly to task. If the book has a problem it's that Callow spent ten years writing it and, now at age 78, I fear I may not be around to read the concluding volume(s)--and I'm sure two volumes will emerge from Callow's fine sifting of research materials at the Lilly Library's Welles Collection at Indiana University. As an aside, while reading this bio, I happened upon Callow's brief but inspired appearance in Howard's End as the pompous lecturer on Music & Meaning at the picture's opening where Boham Carter "steals" an umbrella, and caught him bouncing about bareassed at a country swimming hole in A Room with a View. Finally, Callow's work on stage and film sets (and his fine earlier biography of Charles Laughton) gives him special insight into each of the Welles works he studies: lighting, editing, makeup and so forth. Hey, he writes well too, no academese. Now if only Criterion would bring out Chimes at Midnight.

Appropriately for a book on Welles, there is some nifty sleight-of-hand here. Simon Callow's excellent writing and meticulous marshaling of facts distract us from seeing what should become plainer and plainer with each chapter: Welles is really not worth this kind of extended treatment. One great film, a handful of interesting clips thereafter, and a personal life not especially to be differentiated from that of many a spoiled, "infante terrible" hardly justifies 1200 pages...and counting. With ten years between volumes, the pushing-60 Mr.Callow will readily be exonerated if he abandons the project, and taxes his finite resources no further therein.