Books archives • Wellesnet | Orson Welles Web Resource

‘What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?,’ updated by Joseph McBride, on its way

An updated paperback edition of Joseph McBride’s book “What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career” has been announced for publication by the University Press of Kentucky.
In updating What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? for its first-ever paperback edition, McBride has included significant developments of the past decade, chiefly the surprise discovery of the 1938 footage shot for the stage show “Too Much Johnson” and the completion of Welles’ last major work, “The Other Side of the Wind.”

April 17, 2021

‘The Great Lie’ chronicles life, struggles of Mary Astor

“The Great Lie: The Creation of Mary Astor” examines not only the Academy Award winning actress’ personal struggles, but her second career as an author.

March 31, 2021

‘Apres Welles’ book looks at legacy of Orson Welles

The French publishing house Éditions Mimésis has released Après Welles: Imitations et influences (After Welles: Imitations and influences) — a collection of essays in French on the impact Orson Welles has had on cinema. It was edited and compiled by Jean-Philippe Trias of the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier.

March 6, 2021

‘Assassination of Orson Welles’ up for French book prize

The French detective novel “The Assassination of Orson Welles” is set at the Cannes Film Festival in 1949. A film-loving private detective is hired by Welles to find the gunman who tried to kill him.

February 8, 2021

Retired lawyer is the son of Vampira but is Orson Welles the father?

Maila Nurmi, who gained fame as Vampira in the 1950s, reportedly dated Orson Welles a decade earlier, but the jury is out as to whether he fathered her child.

January 18, 2021

‘Quijote Welles’ novel covers love of Spain, Cervantes

Spanish screenwriter Agustín Sánchez Vidal has just published Quijote Welles, a novel which delves into Orson Welles’ love of both Spain and the Cervante’s character Don Quixote. The 668-page novel utilizes interviews, diaries, confessions and even fragments of the Don Quixote script. Vidal, a professor of Film History at the University of Zaragoza, is the […]

September 13, 2020

‘Shoot ’em Dead’ – Book lauds ‘The Other Side of the Wind’

Slipping under the radar last summer was the publication of the first book to critique the completed release of Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind. Welles filmed his takedown of New Hollywood and machismo between August 1970 and early 1976, and fought to complete the movie until his death in October 1985. However, […]

August 18, 2020

Peter Bogdanovich looks back at career in new book

By RAY KELLY Serious movie fans know that before Peter Bogdanovich hit it big with The Last Picture Show, he directed the cult classic Targets with Boris Karloff. But Peter Tonguette’s new book on Bogdanovich is so exhaustive it delves into the footage Bogdanovich shot with Mamie Van Doren to be morphed with a Soviet […]

July 17, 2020

‘Orson Welles: Warrior of the Worlds’ graphic novel finds publisher

Scout Comics is set to publish a graphic novel series that finds a heroic Orson Welles defending the Earth from alien invaders. In Milton Lawson’s Orson Welles: Warrior of the Worlds, the October 30, 1938 radio show was no joke. Following his first run-in with aliens, Welles joins an organization that defends the Earth from […]

June 14, 2020

‘Touch of Evil’ part of relaunched BFI Film Classics book series

By RAY KELLY Richard Deming’s Touch of Evil — the latest offering in Bloomsbury Publishing’s relaunch of the BFI Film Classics series — looks at Orson Welles’ role as screenwriter, as well as director and star of the 1958 film. Deming, a senior lecturer in English and director of creative writing at Yale University, sees […]

May 21, 2020

Simon Callow busy at work on fourth Orson Welles bio

By RAY KELLY Noted author-actor and all-around Renaissance man Simon Callow is enduring the COVID-19 shutdown like the rest of us. But Wellesians will be delighted to know he is using this time to write the fourth and final installment in his Orson Welles biography series. Wellesnet has fielded more than a few queries in […]

April 25, 2020

Peter Bogdanovich study with extensive Q&A due this summer

Well, 2020 has just started and there is already something for Orson Welles fans to look forward to. Peter Tonguette, who wrote the highly informative Orson Welles Remembered: Interviews with His Actors, Editors, Cinematographers and Magicians back in 2007, will publish Picturing Peter Bogdanovich: My Conversations with the New Hollywood Director this summer. Coming from University Press […]

January 2, 2020

Orson Welles fights alien invaders in planned graphic novel

By RAY KELLY Some engaged in the Martin Scorsese-led debate about the merit of Marvel superhero films have wondered what Orson Welles would have thought. Here is a more relevant question: How would Welles have felt about being a comic book hero? The premise of the forthcoming graphic novel Orson Welles: Warrior of the Worlds […]

October 28, 2019

‘Brothers Mankiewicz’ looks at achievements, relationship of Hollywood siblings

By RAY KELLY Herman J. Mankiewicz co-wrote Citizen Kane and his kid brother, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, scripted and directed All About Eve — not too shabby for the sons of a school teacher and seamstress who left Germany for the United States shortly before the start of the 20th century. Sydney Ladensohn Stern — author […]

October 7, 2019

Todd Tarbox: ‘Marching Song’ was first flowering of Orson Welles’ liberal social consciousness

By RAY KELLY For decades, Todd Tarbox has assisted Orson Welles biographers and scholars by providing them access to the archive of his late grandfather, Roger “Skipper” Hill, headmaster at the former Todd School for Boys. In 2013, Tarbox published Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts, a play recounting the two […]

August 1, 2019

Simon Braund, Beatrice Welles talk ‘Orson Welles Portfolio’

“Orson Welles Portfolio” offers a trove of many unseen paintings and drawings.

February 9, 2019

New edition of ‘Magnificent Ambersons’ to mark 150th anniversary of Booth Tarkington’s birth

Library of America and Penguin Random House will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Pulitzer Prize winner Booth Tarkington with a new edition of The Magnificent Ambersons. Orson Welles adapted Tarkington’s acclaimed 1918 novel for his second film in 1942. Later, Welles said that his father, Richard, an inventor of bicycle lamps, had been friends […]

January 16, 2019

‘Orson Welles Portfolio: Sketches and Drawings from the Welles Estate’ set for early 2019 release

Beatrice Welles’ long-promised collection of her father’s artwork is heading to bookstores in the new year. Orson Welles Portfolio: Sketches and Drawings from the Welles Estate will be published by Titan Books on February 19. The 192-page tome, available in the U.S. and U.K., will be 12-by-9 inches in size. It includes amusing self-portraits and sketches […]

December 27, 2018

‘Orson Welles in Hvar’ chronicles making of ‘The Deep’

A new book out of Croatia looks at the filming of Orson Welles’ unfinished The Deep in Hvar. Orson Welles in Hvar is bilingual (Croatian and English) and written by Dusko Kovacic and Daniel Rafaelic with additional writings by Nenad Polimac, Tonko Maroevic, and Slavko Kovacic. Aside from known photos, the book has never before […]

August 20, 2018

Lost novel credited to Orson Welles unearthed in Turin

By RAY KELLY A previously unknown English-language novel credited to Orson Welles has been discovered in the archives of the National Museum of Cinema in Turin. The bound hardcover typescript of V.I.P. ― mistakenly cataloged at one point by the museum as a treatment for the movie The V.I.P.’s or V.I.P ― is an English version of Welles’ […]

July 26, 2018