Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts. (Indiana University Press)
By RAY KELLY
A team of scholars has examined the many facets of Orson Welles’ amazing life — theatrical innovator, radio star, celebrated filmmaker, newspaper columnist and progressive activist — in Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts.
Ten contributors, including Catherine L. Benamou (It’s All True: Orson Welles’s Pan-American Odyssey) and Marguerite Rippy (Orson Welles and the Unfinished RKO Projects: A Postmodern Perspective), tackle various aspects of Welles’ career in the new book from Indiana University Press.
The book has its seeds in the Orson Welles: A Centennial Celebration and Symposium at Indiana University in 2015, according to James N. Gilmore, co-editor of the book and a member of the symposium planning committee.
“As we were preparing the schedule, we realized that we had a lot of really exciting scholars coming to give talks on brand new research that was looking at all manner of topics related to Welles,” Gilmore said. Chancellors’ Professor Emeritus “James Naremore (The Magic World of Orson Welles) had the original idea for an anthology that could suitably collect the best of this research, but was unable to take up the project because of existing commitments. I was happy to take the lead on developing plans for an anthology. Dr. Naremore continued to serve as a helpful advisor throughout the project, and contributed a lovely Foreword to the book.”
He added, “We did not want to make a book of conference proceedings, where contributors simply submit what they presented at the conference. We wanted to find folks who could significantly expand their talks into full-length research chapters, and in turn shape those contributions into a collection. Following the Symposium, the original planning committee reconvened to share their impressions and gather a list of folks to invite to the book. While the Symposium served as the foundation for the book, we wanted the book to stand on its own as a contribution to research on Orson Welles, and be overtly tethered to the events in 2015. We are hoping our work will be part of the energetic wave that maintains interest in Welles here at the start of his second hundred years.”
Gilmore, soon to be an assistant professor in Clemson University’s Department of Communication; and co-editor Sidney Gottlieb, professor of media studies at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, introduced the book with their essay The Totality of Orson Welles.
“Certainly one of the key emphases at the Indiana gathering was calling attention to the totality of Welles: not only recognizing how extensive his activities and accomplishments were but also how they fit together, not always seamlessly— and anyway, I think seamlessness is overrated — but always in fascinating and truly synergistic ways,” Gottlieb said.
Gottlieb and Gilmore also contributed separate essays for the book on Welles as a newspaper columnist in the 1940s and his liberal activism, respectively.
“My chapter in the book is on Welles as a writer, specifically a journalist, and even more specifically focusing on the columns he wrote for The New York Post when writing on current events was one of his highly prioritized activities,” Gottlieb said. “My paper is in fact drawn from a very detailed introduction I wrote for the section on Welles as a journalist, a key part of the volume I am assembling gathering a variety of writings by Welles. … I think it’s important that Welles’ writings be more well known and accessible and integrated into our understanding of him. And going along with this, it’s also important to recognize how important the activity of writing was to Welles, how seriously he thought of himself as a writer. It’s only one of his many serious vocations and talents, but it’s not one that has received the attention or respect it deserves.”
Other contributors probed various aspects of Welles’ career that often get overlooked.
For example, Matthew Solomon examined Welles keen interest in silent movies supported by comments made, but not included, in the Peter Bogdanovich interview book This Is Orson Welles. His fellow University of Michigan colleague, Vincent Longo, looked at the highs and lows of the Welles – Cole Porter 1946 stage collaboration Around the World.
Orson Welles in Focus includes:
- Foreword — James Naremore
- The Totality of Orson Welles — James N. Gilmore and Sidney Gottlieb
- The Death of the Auteur: Orson Welles, Asadata Dafora, and the 1936 Macbeth — Marguerite Rippy
- Revisiting “War of the Worlds”: First-Person Narration in Golden Age Radio Drama — Shawn VanCour
- Old-Time Movies: Welles and Silent Pictures — Matthew Solomon
- Orson Welles’s Itineraries in It’s All True: From “Lived Topography” to Pan-American Transculturation — Catherine L. Benamou
- Orson Welles as Journalist: The New York Post Columns — Sidney Gottlieb
- Progressivism and the Struggles Against Racism and Anti-Semitism: Welles’s Correspondences in 1946 — James N. Gilmore
- Multimedia Magic in Around the World, Orson Welles’s Film-and-Theater Hybrid — Vincent Longo
- “The Worst Possible Partners for Movie Production”: Orson Welles, Louis Dolivet, and the Filmorsa Years (1953-56) — François Thomas
- Presenting Orson Welles: An Exhibition Challenge — Craig S. Simpson
Orson Welles in Focus concludes with a wonderful essay by former Lily Library archivist Craig S. Simpson on the impressive Welles collection there and the challenge of mounting the 100 Years of Orson Welles exhibit in 2015.
He noted Welles’ distress in learning from former associate Richard Wilson that his professional papers were being acquired by Lily Library. “Now it’s in the hands of the cineastes, God help us all,” Welles lamented in a letter circa 1978.
Simpson pointed out the irony since it has been the academics, a frequent target of Welles’ disdain, who have fought to keep his legacy alive since his death in October 1985. These Welles defenders pushed back against the “failure thesis” and falsehoods, like the lie that he did not co-write his masterpiece Citizen Kane.
With the papers of Welles and his associates at Indiana University and other colleges, his legacy can be explored and appreciated by the general public for years to come.
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Orson Welles in Focus,: Texts and Contexts (paperback, 232 pages, $36) is available online from Indiana University Press, Walmart and Amazon.
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