Best books on Orson Welles?

[etimh]

Well Chirpy, if you're interested in Fake, this book IS essential reading. Yes, it is an academic dissertation, and it gets theoretical at times, but it does contain many interesting observations. Try getting it from a good library and read it for yourself, then you decide.

Tim

[jaime marzol]

i got the f for fake book through the public library. i thought it was caca. did i miss something? do i need to look at it again?

[etimh]

do i need to look at it again?

Yes.

[chrissie]

I just dozed through the close of an ebay auction for the legendary Brady book. I am not happy.

[jaime marzol]

library has lots of them.

you can also find it at www.half.com for $1.00 i bet.

and at edward r hamilton bookseller for $3.75

yeap, it doesn't hold it's value, but it's a hell of a read.

[chrissie]

$1.85 at half.com (which I only just heard about), but -- ARGH! They don't accept overseas orders at the moment. I'm in the newly explosive UK. Hamilton site not responding here. I will persist.

Books I do have: TiOW, Leaming, Interviews and -- gift from well-meaning but ill-informed friend -- Higham.

Quiz time: I haven't yet read one of the above. Any guesses?

[etimh]

chrissie:

Get the Heylin book, "Despite the System." Its goooooood.

Hey, is anybody else watching Ambersons on TCM right now (6:00 pm Pacific Time)?

Tim

[Knowles Noel Shane]

The "Books By and About" venue is another rich vein for collecting and research. I have yet to finish Conrad's The Stories of His Life but I've been fairly dazzled by it. It reminds me of James Joyce writing at the height (or depths) of his mad drunkeness, or one of those impenetrably esoteric Umberto Eco excursions like Foucault's Pendulum. Stories would be incomprehensible to all but the most scholarly and well-researched Welles fans, but even being one I still found myself dizzied - it made my brain percolate and effervesce.

I'll still happily recommend Simon Callow's The Road to Xanadu to anyone searching for a great bee-ography. I wonder why so many of you oppose this one; I thought it was great the one time I read it.

This Is Orson Welles should and must be on every Welles scholar's bookshelf. So too should be Orson Welles: Interviews.

Maurice Bessy's Mr. Arkadin is a lark, if you can find it. I wonder if Welles really did autograph Peter's copy.

If you can find any of the titles Welles really did write, Everbody's Shakespeare, Moby Dick Rehearsed, The Big Brass Ring, or The Cradle Will Rock, then snatch them up immediately (no dozing through the end of the auction) because they're all treasures.

I borrowed David Thompson's Rosebud from the library, but didn't think much of it. Anyone care for that one?

Even the Higham books,The Films of Orson Welles and Rise and Fall of an American Genius, have a lot of great information in them.

And let me not forget James Naremore's wonderful Freudian analysis The Magic World of Orson Welles.

I think I'll go check Ebay. There's that old paperback adapting some of Welles' Harry Lime radio scripts I've been hunting for...

[jaime marzol]

crissie:
so sorry those losers at half.com have not figured out how to get mail to the newly explosive england, it's a great place to find stuff that other sites jab you for. THE GOTTI TAPES, i almost broke down and paid the 40 bucks for this baby from a bookseller, then i found it for $1.25 at half.com. also found the hard to find lilian ross book, PICTURE, for $1.75. and 100 other such treasures.

my recommendations:
1 citizen welles, frank brady

2 this is OW, the book, and the audio tapes

3 despite the system, clinton heylin

4 the magic world of OW, james naremore

5 OW joseph mcbride

6 film art, david bordwell - it's not about welles, it's about watching films, but has the most bitching analysis ever written on kane, and on a bunch of other great films, and it will teach you a new way to enjoy films. bordwell is my film analysis guru. he has another bitching book called inference and rhetoric in the interpretation of cinema the really kicks.

7 the commentary track on criterion's othello, by myron meisel, it's fabulous.

8 the citizen kane book by harlan lebo

9 OW by bret wood

10 gary graver's documentary on welles

11 stories from a life in films with OW, a documentary

12 the welles segment of the RKO STORY, a documentary

13 OW, shakespeare, and popular culture, michael andregg

i think these items are the pinnacle of any welles collection.
and i'm sure i'm forgetting 3 or 4 other items important items.

i don't care for higham, kael, or robert carringer. IMHO, kael and higham are big fat liars, and carringer is always looking for any one he can give credit to besides welles. according to carringer, kane was made by every one that worked on it, except welles. he would credit an usher at a movie theater for the kane screenplay, if he could find the name of an usher in a theater in 1940. the calow and thomson books i thought were poor, but a lot of people didn't think so.

[tony williams]

Jaimie,

Thanks for the listings. But do the audio-tape versions of THIS IS ORSON WELLES contain any new material that is not in the book?

[NoFake]

Has anyone here read John Evangelist Walsh's "Walking Shadows: Orson Welles, William Randolph Hearst, and Citizen Kane"? I just started it. According to the flyleaf, the book "for the first time brings Hearst's vengeful anti-Kane campaign to the fore." At a quick glance, the bibliography seems to have rounded up the usual suspects (and some not-so-usual), so I'm looking forward to an absorbing, and hopefully illuminating, read.

If anyone's already read it, is there anything I should be on the lookout for?

Thanks,

[jaime marzol]

i don't think the information in the TIOW audio tapes is vastly different from the book, no, but it's quite a good offering, and how can you resist hearing it from the mouth of the man himself? hearing welles mumbling around his cigar, ice in glasses clinging, pouring drinks, laughing, hearing a pissed off mexican waiter complain about wanting his table free. it's like you are there.

[NoFake]

Apologies to all, and especially tony and jaime, for having interrupted the TIOW thread with my previous message. My only excuse is that I'm a rabid reader of all things Wellesian, and, not having seen "Walking Shadows" among the books listed, was eager to know if anyone here had read it, and could recommend (or recommend against) it.

Again, apologies all 'round!

[etimh]

NoFake:

NoApologies necessary--at least not to me. The subject of this thread is "Best Books on Orson Welles?", so I think your question was on topic and appropriate.

And getting back to the subject, I also was genuinely interested in the book you were asking about. No, I haven't read it, but it sounds cool.

How about "drinks all round!"

Tim

[Eve_h]

To NoFake:

maybe this will help you - a review of "Walking Shadows" by Wilson on this board ...

Topic: What Ever Happened to -, - Joseph McBride's new Welles Bio?