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Start giftingOrson Welles
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Learn moreGenius, artist, monstre sacr├®, Orson Welles had one of the most brilliant and tempestuous careers in show business. Here he confides his most intimate feelings and recollections of his extraordinary life. With remarkable detail and intimacy, Barbara Leaming reveals the private Welles: from child prodigy and young lion in Dublin and New York, to the succ├¿s de scandale of his The War of the Worlds broadcast; from his auspicious directing debut with the legendary Citizen Kane in his twenties, to the sabotage of his further directing career by the Hollywood studios; from his affairs, carousing, and stormy marriage to Rita Hayworth, to his association with Roosevelt and aspirations to the presidency. It is a picture with an all-star cast, including Olivier, Monroe, Dietrich, Garbo, Warren Beatty, Charlie Chaplin, Princess Margaret, and Prince Aly Khan.
Based on painstaking research andextensive interviews with Welles, this is a firsthand portrait of the flamboyant American genius who became a titanic figure in twentieth-century popular culture.
Barbara Leaming is a New York Times bestselling author. Her biography of John F. Kennedy was the first to detail the extraordinary influence of Winston Churchill on President Kennedy’s intellectual formation and political strategies. She lives in Connecticut.
Grace Conlin (1962–1997) was the recording name of Grainne Cassidy, an award-winning actress and acclaimed narrator. She was a member of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC, and won a Helen Hayes Award in 1988 for her role in Woolly Mammoth’s production of Savage in Limbo.
Reviews
“A biography that splendidly evokes a good deal of the man, his work, and his time…Here is a man of appetites, of supreme self-confidence, and deep insecurities. But above all here is the man.”
“[A] beautifully researched, valuable study of one of America’s most influential and mysterious artists…[What] makes this book remarkable is Welles’ own contribution. His comments, opinions, interviews cut in and out of the narrative with an almost cinematic force.”
“[The] next best thing to a Welles autobiography…An entertaining read that unfolds like a good novel.”
“A distinguished gift to American arts and letters, Leaming’s biography is the serious, affectionate big book that hungry Wellesians have awaited for decades.”
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