This Is Orson Welles [Paperback]

Orson Welles (Author), Peter Bogdanovich (Author), Jonathan Rosenbaum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 22, 1998

Innovative film and theater director, radio producer, actor, writer, painter, narrator, and magician, Orson Welles (1915–1985) was the last true Renaissance man of the twentieth century. From such great radio works as "War of the Worlds" to his cinematic masterpieces Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Othello, Macbeth, Touch of Evil, and Chimes at Midnight, Welles was a master storyteller, as expansive as he was enigmatic. This Is Orson Welles, a collection of penetrating and witty conversations between Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, includes insights into Welles's radio, theater, film, and television work; Hollywood producers, directors, and stars; and almost everything else, from acting to magic, literature to comic strips, bullfighters to gangsters. Now including Welles's revealing memo to Universal about his artistic intentions for Touch of Evil, (of which the "director's edition" was released in Fall 1998) this book, which Welles ultimately considered his autobiography, is a masterpiece as unique and engaging as the best of his works.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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. Edited and annotated by Jonathan Rosenbaum, these conversations give wonderful insights into Welles's craft and personality. He discusses his forays into acting, producing, and writing as well as directing, his confidences and insecurities, and his plans for film projects that were either never made or only partially completed. He also offers insights into the triumph of Citizen Kane and later masterpieces like The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight. His defense of his controversial adaptation of Kafka's The Trial is so fascinating that readers might want to rush out and rent the film.

While the book is worth owning just for this 322-page interview, it is also full of other material that is equally revealing. Rosenbaum presents a meticulous chronology of Welles's life, closely following his day-to-day activities from his birth in 1915 to his death in 1985. Anyone who thinks that Welles was an essentially lazy and profligate artist will be astonished at how hard he worked and how much he accomplished, even after the completion of Citizen Kane. Another treat found in the book is a detailed description--complete with rare photographic stills--of the original Magnificent Ambersons, Welles's impressive follow-up to Kane, which can now be seen only in a tragically truncated version.

This 1998 reissue of the volume contains a fond new introduction by Bogdanovich and another crucial piece of Welles minutia, excerpts from his 58-page memo to Universal Pictures about the editing of Touch of Evil. Forty years after its composition, the material in this memo has been used to create a restored "director's cut" of the film. With such grand material between two covers, This Is Orson Welles is the most informative and entertaining book available on one of the 20th century's greatest artists. --Raphael Shargel

From Publishers Weekly

This title is a potpourri of material by and about Welles (1915-1985), who wrote, directed and starred in the classic Citizen Kane , played a masterful Harry Lime in The Third Man and wrote, directed and acted in other films that have garnered a devoted if relatively small following. The bulk of the book consists of a series of interviews conducted by director/author Bogdanovich with Welles (interspersed with letters, memos and telegrams), as well as a chronology of Welles's life and career, a description of the scenes and dialogue cut by studio bosses from Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons and notes by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum (which often correct Welles's entertaining but sometimes inaccurate stories). Welles and Bogdanovich's conversation develops interestingly--like the conversation in Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre --and is sprinkled with discussions of Welles's radio career, movies and observations on film and other directors. For example, about Alfred Hitchcock, Welles says: "There's a certain icy calculation in a lot of Hitch's work that puts me off. He says he doesn't like actors, and sometimes it looks as though he doesn't like people ." Photos .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 592 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (March 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030680834X
• ISBN-13: 978-0306808340
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #369,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitive Word On An American Filmmaker, January 31, 2000

By 

David Cromwell - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Is Orson Welles (Paperback)

Some have criticized this book, which Welles felt was the definitive word on his films, by stating that it never deals with Orson's children or his failed marriages. That has nothing to do with what this book is about. If you are looking for a biography then look elsewhere. This is Orson Welles talking about his films and his life in film and what he was trying to do and say. When I finished reading I knew that for once Welles was getting the final word on his films and that what he said was honest. If you want to really know him as an artist I would strongly recommend reading this book. It's a very fast read even though it's crammed full of insights. As a bonus it also contains the shooting script for Magnificent Ambersons which would have exceeded Citizen Kane in its beauty if RKO hadn't cut it to shreds. I strongly recommend this book.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Orson Welles: The Man and his Movies, Larger Than Life, August 27, 2002

By 

Interplanetary Funksmanship "Swift lippin', e... (Vanilla Suburbs, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: This Is Orson Welles (Paperback)

I commend to the book above, an interview with Peter Bogdanovich.
Although I'm not a huge fan of the latter's movies (with the exception of "Paper Moon," which I loved ever since it came out when I was eight, and fell in love with tomboy Tatum O'Neill forthrightly), I have begun reading about half of this book over the past few days, and find it better than my previous favourite, the Hitchcock/Truffaut book. Of course, much favoured above Wilder/Crowe, namely because of Crowe's incessant name dropping of "Jerry Maguire" and "Tom Cruise" every other irritating sentence, which prevented the reader from finding out what
Wilder had on *his* mind.

What impresses me about the Welles/Bogdanovich volume is the raucous sense of humour Welles brings to the conversation, always as lively and as larger-than-life as Welles was. Also, Bogdanovich has laced the book with pertinent interviews, articles, anecdotes that elucidate certain points of the text, as well as Welles' lines cut from "Magnificent Ambersons" and the long memorandum he wrote to Universal studio chiefs and cc'd to Chuck Heston, trying to save what I consider his masterwork,
"Touch of Evil" from falling prey to overzealous editing by indifferent studio hacks.

But most of all, I am touched that when all the world was dumping on Welles, when he was being derided as a has-been and a spendthrift, that up-and-coming director Bogdanovich gave him his friendship and accorded him the respect he was so shamefully denied. Even Pauline Kael couldn't resist savaging Welles, and she wrote a particularly nasty and libelous article that Welles didn't write any of the screenplay to "Citizen Kane."

Of all Hollywood's sins (and I retain in memory a cross-indexed catalogue of them), the fact that even when Welles started getting "lifetime achievement" accolades, he still couldn't get any financing for his movie projects, on which he worked until his last days, leaves the bitterest taste in my mouth. There must be certain people destined to the lowest rungs of hell -- or at least purgatory -- for creating a world in which Orson Welles' last paid acting role was as the voice of the evil planet in a "Transformers" movie.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, lots of information and source material, November 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: This Is Orson Welles (Paperback)

The first good thing about this book is that the interviews are by Peter Bogdanovich who is also a movie maker. He knows as much about movies as Orson and is not afraid to challenge him. There is a lot of source material, e.g. notes/letters/memos written by Orson and other people he worked with which give a very personal feeling to the overall book. Also the fact that the interviews were conducted over a number of years (we are lucky the book ever got published) lends a sense of intimacy.

The full version of the Magnificent Ambersons and a very extensive listing of all of Orson's works make this a must for any Orson fan and indeed for any serious fan of the movies.