Table of Contents

* New Introduction: My Orson by Peter Bogdanovich Rome * Theatre * Moby Dick * Rehearsed * Radio * Acting * D.W. Griffith * Hollywood * John Barrymore * The Green Goddess * John Ford * Heart of Darkness * The Smiler with a Knife * Comics * Too Much Johnson * Hearts of Age * Bullfighting * Ireland Guymas * Citizen Kane * Hearst * Preston Sturges * Herman J. Mankewicz * Music * Deep Focus * Gregg Toland * Ceilings and Camera Placements * Parents * Dr. Bernstein * Roger Hill * Makeup * The March of Time * Color vs. Black and White * Kanes Release * Oscars * Grand Detour New York * The Magnificent Ambersons * Tarkington and Twain * Don Quixote * The Deep * Chimes at Midnight * Black Magic * Greta Garbo * Cyrano de Bergerac * Alexander Korda * Russian Writers * Around the World in 80 Days Van Nuys * Charlie Chaplin * Monsieur Verdoux * Greta Garbo * W.C. Fields * Frank Capra * Federico Fellini * Jean-Luc Godard * Censored * Kenji Mizoguchi * Vittorio de Sica * Directing * James Cagney * Eisenstein and Ivan the Terrible * Carl Dreyer * Harry DArrast * Cecil B. de Mille * Sternberg and Stroheim Its All True * Robert Flaherty * The RKO Takeover * Journey Into Fear * Seeing Films Beverly Hills * The Other Side of the Wind * The Stranger * Jayne Eyre * The Mercury Wonder Show * Magic * Follow the Boys * Tomorrow is Forever * FDR * Duel in the Sun * The Lady from Shanghai * Memo to Harry Cohn * Camera Angles * Jacques Tati * Fools, Felines, Martyrdom Hollywood * Macbeth in Twenty Three Days * Shakespeare * Jean Renoir * Movie Audiences * Reviews: Europe vs. America * The Third Man * David O. Selznick * Othello * Mr. Arkadin Paris * The Trial * Sets * Chimes at Midnight * The Immortal Story * Isak Dinesen * Cutting * Teaching Film * The Angle of the Mirror * Acting for the Money * Treasure Island * Pier Paolo Pasolini * Yiddish Theatre * Dreams Carefree * The Fountain of Youth * Other TV Pilots * Twilight in the Smog * Aristocracy * Compulsion * Touch of Evil * Julius Ceasar * Howard Hughes * Working With Actors * Drugs * Marlene Dietrich * Working in America

About the Author

Peter Bogdanovich is the award-winning director of The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What's Up Doc?, Mask, and others he is also the author of John Ford, Pieces of Time, The Killing of the Unicorn, and Who the Devil Made It. He lives in New York City. Jonathan Rosenbaum is the co-author of Midnight Movies, author of Moving Places, Placing Movies, and Movies as Politics and film critic for the Chicago Reader.

Reviews

This is the transcript of interviews with Welles that filmmaker Bogdanovich conducted over a ten-year period. Throughout, Welles reminisces about his remarkable career. But along with his memories of the entertainment world, he offers his thoughts on everything from writers and literature to comic strips, bullfighting, and gangsters. The book also contains over 500 black-and-white photos, a year-by-year chronology of Welles's life, and a lengthy excerpt from the original script of The Magnificent Ambersons that was deleted from the film. With his revolutionary work in radio and film, Welles proved himself to be one of the greatest creative and visionary talents of his time, but these conversations also reveal him to be a true Renaissance man. Bogdanovich and editor Rosenbaum have done a great service by making this material available after years in storage. It was worth the wait. Absolutely essential for all film collections, and biography collections should strongly consider.-- Michael Rogers, ``Library Journal''

This title is a potpourri of material by and about Welles (1915-1985), who wrote, directed and starred in the classic Citizen Kane , played a masterful Harry Lime in The Third Man and wrote, directed and acted in other films that have garnered a devoted if relatively small following. The bulk of the book consists of a series of interviews conducted by director/author Bogdanovich with Welles (interspersed with letters, memos and telegrams), as well as a chronology of Welles's life and career, a description of the scenes and dialogue cut by studio bosses from Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons and notes by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum (which often correct Welles's entertaining but sometimes inaccurate stories). Welles and Bogdanovich's conversation develops interestingly--like the conversation in Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre --and is sprinkled with discussions of Welles's radio career, movies and observations on film and other directors. For example, about Alfred Hitchcock, Welles says: ``There's a certain icy calculation in a lot of Hitch's work that puts me off. He says he doesn't like actors, and sometimes it looks as though he doesn't like people .'' Photos . (Oct.)