Simon Callow made his stage debut in 1973, and came to prominence in a critically acclaimed performance as Mozart in the original stage production of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus at the Royal National Theatre in 1979. He is well known for a series of one-man shows that have toured internationally and featured subjects including Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Jesus, and Richard Wagner. Among his many film roles is the much-loved character Gareth in the hit film Four Weddings and a Funeral. Callow simultaneously pursued careers as a director in theater and opera and an author of several books, including Being an Actor, Love Where It Falls, and a biography of Charles Laughton.
"Supremely intelligent. . . . Callow is giving Robert A. Caro a run
for his money. . . . he's right to suspect that the conventional
career Welles botched might have turned him into 'just . . .
another filmmaker.' . . . no previous biographer has so expertly
and convincingly analyzed Welles the creative dynamo. . . .
Considering how often this period of Welles's life has been
portrayed as one frustration or defeat after another, the fecundity
of what he did achieve is astonishing."
--Tom Carson, The New York Times Book Review "Simon Callow's Welles
books are an astonishing achievement, the full equal of Robert
Caro's granular investigations of Lyndon Johnson . . . . In the
years since Welles's death in 1985, many books about him have
filled their pages with varying degrees of pedantic journalism, but
Simon Callow's prose is something to bask in. The distinguished
actor and director understands Welles the way Welles understood
Falstaff. His tone is sympathetic, often amused and occasionally
aghast. 'One senses something archaic about him, ' Mr. Callow
writes. 'He behaves like some great tribal chieftain, a warlord of
art, riding roughshod over the niceties of conventional behaviour.'
. . . Cumulatively, Mr. Callow's books imply that Welles's
Achilles' heel, other than a chronic psychological bias toward
chaos, might have been a fear of intimacy. There is almost nothing
in these books about Welles having any deep emotional attachment to
any of his three wives--let alone the mistresses who arrived and
departed via revolving door. . . . One-Man Band is the richest as
well as the best of Mr. Callow's three books on the protean rogue
he chose as his subject. It is the author's monument, his Chimes at
Midnight."
--Scott Eyman, The Wall Street Journal "For would-be biographers,
Orson Welles is the colossus on the horizon that grows larger--and
more incomprehensible--the nearer you approach. [One-Man Band is]
richly detailed and immensely readable [and] emphasiz[es] the
significant artistic achievements of this period and the reasons
why they were undervalued . . . . What makes Callow's biography so
exciting is that he's not willing to reduce Welles to a formula:
misunderstood genius, for example, or self-destructive
egotist."
--Charles Matthews, The Washington Post "There is a special risk in
writing about Orson Welles. The dimension may get a little out of
hand, as if they had to mime the physical size and imaginative
reach of the subject. . . . Callow's version of Welles as an
epistemological teaser is a sort of celebration: 'It is acutely
enjoyable to watch Welles in the process of working up his version
of his own history, trying on the variants for size, until he
settles on the most colorful one.' . . . Callow is a very good
critic. . . . He wants to 'describe' Welles, not 'judge' him, but
his biographical quest is more romantic, its object a 'great
natural phenomenon, ' and his view has 'changed somewhat, ' he
says, since his first volume. Then he was correcting myths about
Welles, now he is 'inclined to believe that the man was the
myth--or rather that he grew into his own myth.' The myth over time
becomes less of a disguise and more of a piece of evidence."
--Michael Wood, The New York Review of Books "Simon Callow has
become the preeminent chronicler of the life and times of Orson
Welles. Over three sprawling biographies, Callow has traced Welles'
rise, fall, and years in the Hollywood wilderness. Orson Welles:
One-Man Band, Callow's latest book, follows the multihyphenate from
1948 to 1965. It's a period of self-exile, one that finds the
Citizen Kane director scrambling to cobble together money in Europe
for films such as Macbeth and Othello that are daring and
intermittently brilliant, but often show signs of their troubled
birth and shoe-string budgets. It also recounts the making of two
of Welles' signature films--the pulpy and galvanizing Touch of Evil
and the revelatory Chimes at Midnight, perhaps the most kinetic
Shakespeare cinematic adaptation of all time."
--Brent Lang, Variety "During that time. . . . Welles was something
of a chameleon and certainly a contradictory figure in both private
and public life, which Callow doesn't shy away from. Other books on
Welles continue to come out, each with its own raison d''tre, but
it is unlikely anyone will attempt a biography as detailed or
intimate as this one in our lifetime."
--Leonard Maltin, IndieWire "Callow is acutely qualified to
elucidate the professional obstacles Welles faced. . . . Welles may
have been half-mad, but he was also a genius, brimming with ideas.
When he played Harry Lime in The Third Man, he came up with the
'cuckoo clock' speech his character gives at an amusement park,
arguably the most memorable scene in the movie. And when Universal
hired him to direct a potboiler, he spun straw into gold with Touch
of Evil, a stylish indictment of racism and police brutality in a
border town that is even more timely today. . . . At heart, Welles
was an independent filmmaker, the granddaddy of them all, perhaps.
He preferred chaos and freedom to the security and conformity of
the studio system. Usually this required him to demean himself to
raise money. . . . Still, one has to praise the commitment to his
personal art, which remained unflagging despite multiple setbacks.
. . . Callow sees him as a one-man band, and that he was, indeed.
But Jean Cocteau offered a more revealing description, capturing
the loneliness of a misunderstood visionary: 'a solitary surrounded
by humanity.'"
--Ariel Gonzalez, The Miami Herald "Most of what's written about
Orson Welles--the Kenosha-born giant of theater, radio and
movies--centers on his boy-genius period. . . . In many ways, the
period covered in One-Man Band shows Welles at his most
interesting, and most frustrating. He was on his own, free at last.
Unfortunately, getting the financing to make that viable was as big
a challenge as the work itself, and it didn't help that his need to
be larger than life made him as many enemies as it did admirers.
Like many of the people and players in Welles' orbit, Callow
wrestles with his fascination with Welles, in whom flashes of
genius are balanced against really, really bad behavior--like a
king in exile 'who still considered himself king, ' according to
one Hollywood director Welles worked with, Richard Fleischer. In
this period of his life, more than any other, Welles' fevered mind
cooked up productions that seemed to defy the laws of arts and
pop-culture physics. . . . Through it all, Callow shows that Welles
defied easy analysis or explanation. 'It is characteristic of many
of Welles' commentators that they select one or other of the many
Welleses as quintessential, ' Callow accurately writes, 'but the
mystery of the man is that all the Welleses co-exist; all are
true.'"
--Chris Foran, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "The literature of Orson
Welles is, by now, almost as large as the man himself used to be.
In the large Wellesian library, he is usually under consideration
by film intellectuals. . . . What makes Callow so special in the
bursting Wellesian canon is the point of view of a British working
repertory actor - a fellow who, according to fable, first came to
the theater to work in Olivier's box office. . . . [after Citizen
Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles] was a symbol of
self-indulgence and chaotic decline, which is why Callow is so
valuable about this period of Welles' life, from 1947 to 1964. It
was during this period that Welles made Touch of Evil, sometimes
playfully hyperbolized as the greatest B movie of all time, and the
Falstaff film that is often considered Welles' masterpiece
(especially by actors), Chimes at Midnight. It is both Callow's
chutzpah and cunning to imagine Welles from the inside. Take this
about Welles' misbehavior after appearing in Richard Fleischer's
Compulsion 'He behaves badly; he apologizes. It is a recurring
pattern, though he rarely apologizes to anyone without power.
Mostly, what it is is a matter of status. He is being humiliated,
diminished, disrespected in some way.' Callow GETS Orson
Welles."
--Jeff Simon, Buffalo News (Editor's Choice) "These are rich days
to be a fan of Orson Welles. . . . Thirty-one years after his
death, Welles' reputation as an innovative director of film and
theater has never been greater. At least a dozen books have been
published on his life and art in the past two years. Perhaps the
most critically acclaimed has been the enthralling, obsessively
detailed multi-volume biography by Simon Callow. . . . The most
important achievement of this biography is that it upends the myth
of the post-Kane slide into irrelevance. The chapter on Touch of
Evil, for example, helped me to appreciate that complex crime film
in thrilling new ways. One-Man Band concludes with the release of
Chimes at Midnight, the glorious amalgamation of 'history plays'
that showcase Shakespeare's greatest comic creation, Sir John
Falstaff. Boisterous and magniloquent, a thorn in the side of
authority, Falstaff was the role Welles seemed always destined to
play."
--Sam Shapiro, Charlotte Observer "Hugely entertaining . . . The
frantic pace at which Welles lived his life and produced his
art--the good, great and frustratingly unsuccessful--is a roller
coaster ride of ego, appetite and genius. What gives Callow's work
such vivid life is not only the man, Welles, and his fantastic
ideas, projects, and unending search for some kind of perfection,
it is how Callow realizes and relates that in so many ways Welles
was his own worst enemy. But perhaps--I think the author would
agree--that was all to the best, in the end? Orson Welles would not
have been nearly as fascinating disturbing, thrilling and motivated
had everything turned out exactly right--the financing, the actors,
the un-ending resistance from studios. Callow's chapters on Touch
of Evil alone are worth the price of this colorful, extraordinarily
intelligent and deliciously realistic glimpse at a genuine
visionary who was perhaps too inspired for his own good."
--Liz Smith, New York Social Diary "Riveting and wonderfully
wrought . . . An immersive, engaging, and immensely readable
portrait of Welles, revealing a complicated man and innovative
artist whose own life mirrored the Shakespearian tragedies of which
he was so fond."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Juicy, provocative latest
installment in the comprehensive life of a self-destructive genius.
. . . Callow, with his own extensive theatrical background, remains
Welles' most astute observer, with an unerring sense of both his
subject's brilliance as a visual artist and the comparable
limitations of his (often hammy) performances. Welles rightly
imagined that people would never stop writing about him after he
died. Callow continues to set the standard in this increasingly
crowded field."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Despite the endless volumes
written on the legendary Orson Welles, no one has captured his life
in such detail and intimate perspective as acclaimed film and
theater actor/director Callow. . . . Callow's remarkable approach
renders a more personally guided and analyzed survey of Welles's
accomplishments than a traditional chronicle. Applying his
knowledge of film and theater, he supplies a viewpoint that is
different from other biographers. . . . The audience for an
intense, multivolume portrait of Welles [will] devour this literate
and engaging book."
--Library Journal "In this third volume of his robust biography,
Simon Callow states that the bulk of his subject's work was 'an
exercise . . . in gigantism'. Everything about Welles--his
appetites, his energies, his stature--was vast, the marks of a man
who filled space without needing heels. In tribute, Callow has
allowed his writing to expand, resulting in a biography as huge as
if it had been fed a Welles-style diet of roasted chicken and foie
gras. . . .In every way, Callow has captured his subject as he
wants him: not a shadow in a doorway, not an actor behind a
prosthetic nose, not a dying big beast, but 'alive and kicking'
and, as Dietrich says in Touch of Evil, 'some kind of a man.'"
--Victoria Segal, The Sunday Times (UK) "This still unrolling
biography is a magnificent achievement. Never does a word seem out
of place. Callow illuminates strange byways as well as giving
fresh, rounded assessments of the key projects. As you would expect
from a stage interpreter of Dickens, he is a master of revealing
character -- and Welles, for all his flaws, was not short of
that."
--Christopher Silvester, Financial Times "[One of] the year's most
entertaining biography is Orson Welles: One-Man Band. . . . This
wonderfully vivid account of Welles's tireless exploits in theatre,
radio, film, television and even ballet is compulsive reading. Only
an actor, director and writer as gifted and ebullient as Callow
could have found the nerve to do this. Callow becomes Welles and,
strangely, Welles almost becomes Callow."
--Robert McCrum, The Observer (Books of the Year 2015) "Callow
writes with energy and purpose . . . Welles in his middle years is
a more engaging prospect than most artists at a similar point,
because he always appears much larger than life--seems, indeed,
more of a fictional character than a real one. He has been lucky to
have Callow as a biographer, balancing warmth with scepticism,
fondness with reproof. . . . His account of Welles, perhaps
inadvertently, illustrates a truth about some actors: they are
essentially children, raised on encouragement and endearments,
spoon-fed their lines which they perfect in the creche of
rehearsal, then perform for the approval of their adult audience. .
. . Callow calls him an 'Infant Prodigy', with a temperament to
match: he never learned to play nicely with others. It was Orson's
show, or no one's."
--Anthony Quinn, The Guardian "[Callow] is as critically astute
about [Welles's] good performances in bad films, even his bad
performances in good films, as anyone. But he is doing something
else. He is taking the man for all he represents in the culture of
Hollywood and Europe, in the theatre of his day, as a pioneer of
television arts programmes and chat shows, and as a force of
nature, a phenomenon, an incomparable bravura personality (as
Kenneth Tynan called him), a walking (just about) compendium of
enthusiasms, obsessions, friendships, frustrations and sheer lust
for spinning out a ribbon of dreams with, as he said, 'the best
electric train set a boy ever had'. And Callow does this by
recognising in Welles someone so rare, and so reprehensibly
admirable, that his modus operandi--guzzling, drinking, travelling
from Rome to the South of France by cab for a party, spending money
he doesn't have, smoking implausibly long cigars, wheedling,
harrumphing, shooting and editing through the night, romancing and
revelling--is as marvellous as the best of his work; the life, in
fact, is the work, and inseparable from it. . . . Callow
continuously strikes to the quick and the essential in Welles."
--Michael Coveney, The Independent (UK) "Simon Callow's third
volume of his definitive biography, spanning a typically busy
period between 1947 and 1966, shows the
actor-director-writer-magician-raconteur at his most charming and
his most obnoxious. He had so many enemies, it seems, because he
made them compulsively. His bullshit threshold was low, unless the
bullshit was his own bullshit."
--Yo Zushi, New Statesman (UK) "Riveting and wonderfully wrought .
. . An immersive, engaging, and immensely readable portrait of
Welles, revealing a complicated man and innovative artist whose own
life mirrored the Shakespearian tragedies of which he was so
fond."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review) Praise for Orson Welles,
Volume 2: Hello Americans "Animated by a brisk intelligence . . .
He shapes and interprets his material and with panache places his
story in rich context."
--The Atlantic Monthly "Mr. Callow, a divine and witty actor, is
also a gifted writer. . . . The sparkling second volume is a
rollercoaster."
--The Wall Street Journal "Unfailingly intelligent and well written
. . . Callow's portrait is so vivid and three- dimensional."
--Variety Praise for Orson Welles, Volume 1: The Road to Xanadu
"This riveting, revealing portrait of the legendary director and
star is unlikely to be surpassed."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review "A wonderfully readable, sharp,
shrewd and evenhanded biography . . . Callow is a witty and feeling
biographer."
--Chicago Tribune "Callow is in control all the way."
--The New York Times Book Review
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