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Simon Callow

Orson Welles, Volume 2 Hardcover – 4 May 2006

by Simon Callow (Author)

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The reason for the decline of Orson Welles' career is a hotly debated issue, but decline it certainly did. When "Citizen Kane", his first film, opened in 1941, Welles was universally acclaimed as the most audacious film maker alive. But instead of marking the beginning of a triumphant career in Hollywood, the film still regularly voted the greatest ever made proved to be an exception in Welles' life and work. He found it increasingly impossible to function within Hollywood's system. Project after project foundered, either abandoned incomplete - as with his ambitious Brazilian epic "It's All True" - or, as in the case of virtually every other film he made in America, being released in very different form from the one he intended. Finally, in 1947, he left America for Europe where for the best part of twenty years he lived in self-imposed exile, occasionally and briefly returning to stage a play, make a film or shoot a television drama. In close and colourful detail, "Hello Americans" examines the years from "Citizen Kane" to "Macbeth" in which Welles' Hollywood film career came apart. It offers a scrupulous analysis of the factors involved, revealing the immense and sometimes self-defeating complexities of Welles' temperament as well as some of the monstrous personalities with whom he had to contend. At the same time, the book gives full weight to the almost bewildering range of his activities beyond Hollywood: his serious but doomed attempts to be a radio comedian and stage magician, his flamboyant and financially disastrous endeavour to revive spectacular theatre single-handedly, his newspaper columns, and the political activities into which he so passionately flung himself. And of course the films, as fascinating as they were flawed: "The Magnificent Ambersons", "Journey Into Fear", "The Stranger", and "The Lady From Shanghai". The thread that runs through this apparently incoherent blur of activity is an often frustrated engagement with his native land, its faults, its dreams, its popular arts, and its history. But by 1947, he had said all that he had to say to his fellow citizens; it was Goodbye Americans for two decades of endlessly experimental and innovative but essentially European work.

Print length

528 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Jonathan Cape Ltd
Publication date

4 May 2006
Dimensions

16.18 x 4.29 x 24.13 cm
ISBN-10

0224038532
ISBN-13

978-0224038539
See all details

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Product description

Review

"Callow is a match for his subject in terms of showmanship but he has gifts
of analysis that eluded Welles" -- Christopher Sylvester, The Sunday Times

"A vivid, sympathetic account provides a definitive explanation of Welless ultimate, lingering downfall." -- Financial Times

"Hello Americans is full of witty asides Enchanting" -- Christopher Silvester, The Sunday Times

"The research is breathtaking. The book is bursting with details, references and anecdotes" -- The Times, James Christopher

"The research is breathtaking. The book is bursting with details, references and anecdotes" -- The Times

"Welless packed schedule is rifled through with chatty elegance" -- Sunday Telegraph, Catherine Shoard

'Callows authoritative analyses, and the honest, modest tenor of his gorgeous prose, are a joy to read. -- David Isaacson, The Word

'[A] universal story of hubris, wasted talent, and celebrity achieved at much too young an age.' -- Spectator

`Book of the Year', as chosen by Philip French. -- The Observer

`The only biog really worth it's salt this year...reliably
entertaining, wise and sane'
-- Catherine Shoard, Evening Standard

From the Publisher

The second volume of Simon Callow's brilliant, definitive biography of Orson Welles.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Jonathan Cape Ltd (4 May 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 528 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0224038532
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0224038539
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.18 x 4.29 x 24.13 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 1,231,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,107 in Film Director Biographies
- 4,110 in Individual Directors
- 14,853 in Actors & Entertainers Biographies

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43 ratings

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2 star		4%
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Andrew McSkimming

Fascinating!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 December 2017

Verified Purchase

I found this fascinating. If you are at all interested in Welles, then this is a must. It chronicles in detail the years from 'Citizen Kane' to 'Macbeth' in which Welles's Hollywood film career came apart. It also charts his growing political activities and the crazy atmosphere during the making of the subsequently abandoned Brazilian epic 'It's All True'. After reading this, I just had to get Vol 3: One Man Band, which is also great.

Helpful

PeterN

Given as a present Receiver appears to be very happy with it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 January 2016

Verified Purchase

Given as a present Receiver appears to be very happy with it.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 June 2016

Verified Purchase

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 October 2015

Verified Purchase

Disappointed. Concentrates on the turgid minutiae of the making of Welles' films – the endless back and forth of telegrams, etc, broken promises, failed deals – rather than on the juicier and much more interesting aspects of Welles' personal life, how this interfered with the making of his films. Welles was much more than a film-maker.

2 people found this helpful

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Stephen Murphy

easy deal. No problems

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2015

Verified Purchase

quick, easy deal. No problems. Many thanks.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 July 2013

Verified Purchase

Just very glad to have it,I would never have thought that a book bought for
1 pence would be such a good well packaged one,even a new plastic cover put on it by the seller.
Thankyou,I would like you to do very well.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

M. N. Horsford

Callow's wonderful world of Welles

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 June 2006

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.

17 people found this helpful

Helpful

Harvey Vincent

Welles 2 works

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 September 2011

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.

4 people found this helpful

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