Orson Welles: Volume 2: Hello Americans (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "THE LOS Angeles premiere of Citizen Kane on 2 May 1941 was one of the greatest and most brilliant occasions Hollywood had ever mounted: a..." (more)
Key Phrases: carnival sequence, comedy form, Orson Welles, New York, Dick Wilson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This scintillating follow-up to Callow's acclaimed The Road to Xanadu traces Welles's career from the triumphant premiere of Citizen Kane to his self-imposed exile to Europe in 1947. It was a pivotal period in the director's life, as his luster as Hollywood's boy wonder dimmed through a series of flawed—if intermittently brilliant—films, from The Magnificent Ambersons to MacBeth, that were snatched from his control and vandalized by frustrated studio executives. Eschewing the cliché of misunderstood genius persecuted by Tinseltown philistines, Callow assigns some of the blame to Welles's perpetual distraction with a plethora of projects (including a misbegotten scheme to become a radio comedian), the unfocused grandiosity of his artistic impulses and his directorial "strategy of simply shooting until the nature of the film finally declared itself." As he explores the tension between the director's compulsion to make art and Hollywood's need to run a business, the author interweaves fluent critiques of Welles's films and creative processes that are nuanced and perceptive. Callow's is a superbly written account of a magnetic personality and towering talent plagued by internal weaknesses and external friction, one that manages to shape the "Orsonic tornado" into an engrossing tragicomedy. (Aug. 21)
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Review

“It is not only the best biography of Welles that we can possibly have, it is also one of the best biographies in any field I’ve read in years.”
–Roger Lewis, Sunday Express

“A vivid, sympathetic account . . . provides a definitive explanation of Welles’s ultimate, lingering downfall.”
–Financial Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (August 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670872563
• ISBN-13: 978-0670872565
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #799,767 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Orson Welles storyteller 4 1/2 stars, August 18, 2006

By	Wayne Klein "If at first the idea is not absu... (My Little Blue Window, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Simon Callows' second volume examining the life of Orson Welles looks at Welles' career and personal life after the release of "Citizen Kane" as he prepared and shot his second film The Magnificient Ambersons", toured South America as part of a goodwill gesture, made a film in South America that wouldn't be completed during his life time ("It's All True"), romanced Rita Hawyworth and discovered that critical darlings could also be commercial pariahs. "Kane" created quite a bit of scandal with William Randolph Hearst's newspapers attacking the film, refusing to carry ads and Hearst even had a consortium of Hollywood heavyweights approach RKO with an offer to buy the film outright so that they could destroy the negative.

Welles wasn't trying to recreate the success of "Citizen Kane" in Callow's view. Welles was trying new and different ways to tell stories with every film, play and radio show he did. He desperately wanted to experiment and his restless spirit did just that. He would reach that rarified air of critical success again with "Touch of Evil" (at least in France) and a handful of other classic films. Callow discusses Welles' career with penetrating insight into both the man, all of his foibles and his strengths which he inexplicably would undermine.As Callow points out Welles lacked the talent to harness his own talent and focus it the way that lesser artists might do.

Welles approached each new subject with zest imbued each film with his restless creativity only to have studios ("The Magnificent Ambersons"), producers ("The Stranger")and even himself ("Macbeth") undermine his work. The second volume ends with "Macbeth" as Welles went overseas to act in Europe. Welles edited "Macbeth" while in Rome shooting another movie as a performer. Ultimately Republic had their version of the film (nearly 90 minutes) as did Welles (112 minutes)and the director himself seemed to lose interest in his baby. Lost in the wake of Olivier's spectacular "Hamlet" Welles' film received mixed reviews with some loving it(the French) while others found it lacking (the American and UK press).

If many of the films that Welles made in the wake of "Kane" didn't quite live up to its epic grandeur it had more to do with the fact that Welles had mastered that particular story so well. There were many parallels between Welles' life and that of Kane; he understood the story at the core of Kane all too well. He continued to have mixed successes from "Ambersons" to "The Trial" and all have their merit and featured inventive work. This second volume gives us Welles the whirlwind; Welles the world traveler truly without a home and paints a vivid Welles the human.

Callow brings to this volume his keen insight. The reader will have to have patience though as there are some areas that fascinate Callow more than they might some readers and as a result he spents a bit too much time focusing on certain years at the expense of others. Still, Callow is nothing if not complete in his examination of Welles professional, personal life and the sometimes uneasy mix between the two. I'd recommend Callow's book because like the first volume it's the most insightful and intelligent glimpse into Welles' life yet.

Callow brings his unique insight as an artist and actor to this book as with the first and it informs it with great insight and observations. My only complaint is that Callow covers a very brief period of time with the book (however complete)and that we have to wait for a third (and perhaps a fourth)book to completely cover this remarkable artists life. It will be worth it but it will also be quite a wait at this pace.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A BRILLIANT BIO BY A BRILLIANT AUTHOR, August 28, 2006

By	Alan W. Petrucelli (THE ENTERTAINMENT REPORT (ALAN W. PETRUCELLI)) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Cinema mavens and simple movie fans can rejoice: the second volume of Simon Callow's scrupulously researched biography of Orson Welles has been published. The first volume, The Road to Xanadu, took Welles from his birth through the release of his first film, Citizen Kane (1941). This volume takes up immediately after Kane, and traces the arc of Welles' career until 1947, when he went into self-imposed exile in Europe for more than 20 years. Not only does the volume cover films--The Magnificent Ambersons (sliced to a shadow of Welles' intention); the Brazilian epic, It's All True, aborted and never really completed; the spectacular The Lady from Shanghai, again destroyed by the studio with inept editing and awful soundtrack and the half-baked, yet fascinating Macbeth--but it also covers Welles' career as a political pundit, a fuzzy leftist, just before the horrors of the House Un-American Activities Committee . . . an event that contributed to his flight from the United States.
Callow is really magnificent biographer. His work on Charles Laughton (Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor) really set the benchmark for both scholarship and humanity in dealing with a public figure in the arts. That Callow is primarily known as an actor and director proves renaissance men really do exist. (For those of you fuzzy on his looks, he was the hirsute gay man in Four Weddings and a Funeral.) This massive, 400+ page volume on the middle period of Welles' life is day-to-day detailed beyond one's wildest wish, yet fully captures both Welles' humanity and his follies. Callow is not quick to judge any of his subject's foibles, yet doesn't shrink from reporting Welles' sometimes callous and outre' work habits. Apparently, Welles suffered from a chronic inability to finish something, perhaps less it be judged. As a result, films were edited after he left a project to work on another, then never edited as well as the only film he ever really completed, Citizen Kane.
That Welles may have been an American tragedy--destroyed by the potential engendered in his youth, and never able to come up to the standard he himself had set--is left unspoken by Callow, but Welles' genius is keenly illustrated. Simon Callow is a man who clearly knows the
entertainment business better than most, and this biography is illuminating, touching, and, ultimately, heartbreaking.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN ACTOR REVIEWS AN ACTOR/DIRECTOR, October 12, 2006

By	Donald A. Newlove (Greenwich Village/Cape Cod) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.