- Hardcover: 528 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd; illustrated edition edition (4 May 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224038532
- ISBN-13: 978-0224038539
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.8 x 4.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 406,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Orson Welles: Hello Americans: v. 2
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Catherine Shoard, Evening Standard
`The only biog really worth it's salt this year...reliably
entertaining, wise and sane'
entertaining, wise and sane'
Sunday Telegraph, Catherine Shoard
"Welles’s packed schedule is rifled through with chatty elegance"
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
THE LOS Angeles premiere of Citizen Kane on 2 May 1941 was one of the greatest and most brilliant occasions Hollywood had ever mounted: a celebration of cinematic audacity, a slap in the face for William Randolph Hearst and his cohorts in the press and within the industry who had sought to suppress the film, and a very public vindication of RKO's controversial championship of Orson Welles. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
THE LOS Angeles premiere of Citizen Kane on 2 May 1941 was one of the greatest and most brilliant occasions Hollywood had ever mounted: a celebration of cinematic audacity, a slap in the face for William Randolph Hearst and his cohorts in the press and within the industry who had sought to suppress the film, and a very public vindication of RKO's controversial championship of Orson Welles. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Once again Simon Callow delivers a compelling account of the life (or should I say lives) of Orson Welles beyond Kane. Continuing where the last volume (The Road to Xanadu) left off, Callow explains how Welles lost control of The Magnificent Ambersons and ultimately his own career right up until his abandonment of Hollywood and his exile to Europe in 1947.
Outside of the movies Callow goes into detail (at times possibly too much for this reader) about Welles fledgling political career, but there are no complaints about how his theatre work, Around the World in 80 Days being a particular delight, is handled, or the roles in the Stranger and Journey into Fear, let alone his marriage to that mercurial beauty, Rita Hayworth and The Lady from Shanghi.
Callow takes us into the life of Welles, no one could take us into the man, where possibilities are endless and projects are begun and then discarded like broken Christmas toys. This is Welles large as life there on the page, it's a seminal work of a flawed genius; a man who time and again, ran from his pictures to let others complete what he started, sometimes because they gave him no choice and increasingly because he gave them none.
In short this is a fabulous continuation of what is becoming the definitive (there will be a third and final volume) Welles biography I couldn't recommend it to fans or lovers of film more highly.
Outside of the movies Callow goes into detail (at times possibly too much for this reader) about Welles fledgling political career, but there are no complaints about how his theatre work, Around the World in 80 Days being a particular delight, is handled, or the roles in the Stranger and Journey into Fear, let alone his marriage to that mercurial beauty, Rita Hayworth and The Lady from Shanghi.
Callow takes us into the life of Welles, no one could take us into the man, where possibilities are endless and projects are begun and then discarded like broken Christmas toys. This is Welles large as life there on the page, it's a seminal work of a flawed genius; a man who time and again, ran from his pictures to let others complete what he started, sometimes because they gave him no choice and increasingly because he gave them none.
In short this is a fabulous continuation of what is becoming the definitive (there will be a third and final volume) Welles biography I couldn't recommend it to fans or lovers of film more highly.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Books on Orson Welles tend to be either extremely defensive of Welles, or harsh attacks on his waste of his own talent (the former portraying him as a genius discarded by the studio system, some of the latter even suggesting that he was not completely responsible for his best work).
Callow's book, a sequel to The Road to Xanadu, take a more balanced approach, portraying him as both a legitimate genius and simultaneously a man unable to work to either budgets or timescales. As Callow puts it 'he was not his own best friend'.
I've always been a massive fan of Welles work but Callow's detailed account of Welles failure to reign himself in long enough to rescue the Magnificent Ambersons is indicative that he was as much to blame as any studio for his failure to live up to his early promise.
Still, a great filmmaker and this is a great book which leaves you wondering how different things might have been had Welles never left the states for Brazil after completion of shooting on Ambersons....
Callow's book, a sequel to The Road to Xanadu, take a more balanced approach, portraying him as both a legitimate genius and simultaneously a man unable to work to either budgets or timescales. As Callow puts it 'he was not his own best friend'.
I've always been a massive fan of Welles work but Callow's detailed account of Welles failure to reign himself in long enough to rescue the Magnificent Ambersons is indicative that he was as much to blame as any studio for his failure to live up to his early promise.
Still, a great filmmaker and this is a great book which leaves you wondering how different things might have been had Welles never left the states for Brazil after completion of shooting on Ambersons....
Format:Paperback
Having been flabbergasted by Simon Callow's first volume on Orson Welles, I had to read the second and was with him all the way until his recounting of "The Lady From Shanghai". I was hoping he would detest it as much as I. He doesn't, allotting what seemed to me a tedious description of its turgid plot. We get a summary of the critical response but not told how the movie fared at the box-office. We know that "Journey Into Fear" was fun to make but we never learn if the public and the critics had as much enjoyment other than a brief phrase that it wasn't a smash hit on its release. I'm carping. "Hello Americans" is an important, always absorbing, sometimes thrilling biography. Callow skillfully and honestly - often with brio and panache - wrestles with and succeeds in bringing to life a very slippery and highly complex multi-personality; which he does with almost unflagging generosity and gusto. This American did not know of Welles' fierce commitment to a liberal political credo that in many radio broadcasts he expressed fearlessly. I agree with Callow's keenly observed insights on the unfortunate shortcomings in Welles' personality, particularly his pattern of flight when it was obvious that he should have stayed to fight. A pithy sentence says it all: 'He was not his own best friend.' A lot of us are eagerly waiting for the third and final volume.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
