Welles in the news - Recent mentions

[Jeff Wilson]

Here are some news snippets of recent Welles-related topics:

From The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Dec 4, 2001 pF9
"A&E is attempting to restore Orson Welles' original vision for his movie "The Magnificent Ambersons."

The cable network in January will premiere a remake of the 1942 film, based on Booth Tarkington's novel. The cast and crew of the new version worked from Welles' original screenplay, nearly 60 years after RKO Pictures executives re-edited the movie and released it against the director's wishes.

"The Magnificent Ambersons" tells the story of a prominent but fading Midwestern family in the early 20th century. The Amberson family spans three generations, none of which can see that the world is changing faster than they are and that their tradition-bound way of living is disappearing into history.

Madeleine Stowe, James Cromwell, Bruce Greenwood, and Jennifer Tilly star in the remake, which was directed by Alfonso Arau.

A&E's remake of "The Magnificent Ambersons" is scheduled to premiere at 8 p.m. Jan. 13.

From The Independent (London, England), Nov 6, 2001 p5
Tuesday Book: The pride and passion of the divine Mrs Olivier.
(from review of Joan Plowright's recent autobiography)
Actors peak at different points, and for Plowright the happiest and most acclaimed years were clearly the early ones. She describes her first West End appearance in Orson Welles's Moby Dick as "the most brilliantly imaginative, exciting and unpredictable theatrical experience of my life".

The New York Times, Nov 25, 2001 p8(L) col 02 (26 col in)
From a review of food writer Jim Harrison's book The Raw & the Cooked:

Harrison learned to be a food bully at the gargantuan knee of Orson Welles. He shares with us that Welles overwhelmed him ''over a number of successive meals at Ma Maison.'' The last of these, Harrison writes, Welles '''designed' and called me at dawn with the tentative menu as if he had just written the Ninth Symphony. We ate a half-pound of beluga with a bottle of Stolichnaya, a salmon in sorrel sauce, sweetbreads en croute, a miniature leg of lamb (the whole thing) with five wines, desserts, cheeses, ports. I stumbled to the toilet for a bit of nose powder, a vice I've abandoned, and rested my head in a greasy faint against the tiled walls.''