Citizen Welles

By Frank Brady

Book Overview

A decade in the research and writing, biographer Frank Brady's Citizen Welles is the first comprehensive life story, definitive for our time, of Orson Welles through to his death in 1985. Welles's influence on several generations of American filmmakers, from Kubrick to Spielberg, for example, is incalculable. Welles's creative achievements, from the best known --- his all-time great movie Citizen Kane and his notorious radio show The War of the Worlds --- to his pioneering presentations in the popular theater of the classics of Shakespeare, Shaw, Ionesco, and his stardom as an actor are at the heart of Brady's biography. But Brady tells, too, the more personal side of Welle's life, such as his amours with Rita Hayworth and Dolores Del Rio and the confounding tragedy of Welles's sad final years, in part, Brady shows, the consequences of tee early success. The young Welles toured with Katherine Cornell; starred on Broadway in Shaw's Heartbreak House, when he made the cover of Time; acted in Hamlet in the Gate Theatre in Dublin. His films such as The Magnificent Ambersons, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight (his Falstaff may well be the greatest of all Falstaffs) were among the best of all time. Brady clarifies the whys and wherefores of Welles's extraordinary success and his end, when Welles was uniformly rejected by Hollywood as a noncommercial iconoclast. The great continuing popular interest in posthumous Orson Welles is vivid evidence of the shortsightedness of that view. ------ “Brady encircles his outsize subject with equal parts of anecdote and scholarship. He does not attempt the intimate tone of Barbara Leaming’s authorized 1983 biography or try for the high-skid fashion of Charles Higham’s Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius (1985). Citizen Welles covers more ground and digs deeper, revealing an artistic nomad whose life had too many ups, downs and lateral movements to be treated as a sales chart.” Time Magazine “Citizen Welles may well be definitive.” The New York Times Book Review “Brady’s quiet but unrelenting passion for his subject pulsates beneath his variegated and vastly human portrait of stage, radio and film genius Orson Welles.” Publishers Weekly “Orson Welles has been called a genius so often it seems like his middle name. But Frank Brady’s Citizen Welles is the first book in the huge Welles bibliography to thoroughly document that claim.” Playboy “An excellent piece of work.” Charlton Heston -------------- Frank Brady is the author of ten books, including five biographies delving into the lives of such fascinating subjects as shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, singer-actress Barbra Streisand, newspaper tycoon Paul Block, chess champion Bobby Fischer, and movie director and actor Orson Welles. All of Dr. Brady’s works have been published by distinguished houses (Scribners, Macmillan, Grosset & Dunlap, Crown, etc.) and all have also been published in paperback, and translated and published in several countries. Some of his books have been optioned for the screen and others have been book club selections. His biography of Bobby Fischer, Endgame, became a New York Times bestseller and has been published in eleven countries. Dr. Brady has also been involved in broadcasting as a behind-the-scenes and on-air personality for both radio and television. A New Yorker by birth, Dr. Brady lives in Manhattan and is a professor of the Communications, Journalism and Media Studies Department of St. John’s University. He studied at Columbia University and New York University, where he was awarded a Ph.D. in communications. His wife, Maxine, is an editor and also a best-selling author.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385267592
• ISBN13: 9780385267595
• Release Date: March 1990
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 655 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Orson Welles was a genius!

I had always heard that Orson Welles was eccentric and weird. Having read this book I realize that he was extremely talented and energetic. His mind was always working. His genius was stifled by the movie studios who most times failed to recognize his vision. This book is a detailed telling of the many projects, most of them overlapping, of Orson Welles. From radio, to the stage, to screen, back to radio, back to the stage, back to screen. Even when he didn't claim critical success, there was always something magical about his work. If you are looking for sordid accounts of love affairs---this isn't the book for you. By reading this book you will gain an even greater appreciation for the passion Orson Welles had for acting and directing. Very well written.

Citizen Welles is a Fine Biography

Frank Brady is a professor who knows how to write interesting prose about the fascinating figure of Orson Welles. Welles was a prodigy as a child who reach the heights of film glory with Citizen Kane! Brady points out that Welles excelled in radio, television, the movies and on the legitimate stage. Welles was a man of Falstaffian stature whose appetites weregargantuan whether it be wine, women, song and brilliant productions of his creative mind. This book is not a candidate for the E True Hollywood Story or the National Enquirer! Brady provides a detailed account of the reason Welles will be remembered-his work in popular culture for several decades. Anyone wishing to know more about Welles, media in America or the difficulty of being a genius maverick in Hollwood will derive profit from this excellent biography. Highly Recommended!

Brady's bio a lively yet academic examination of Welles

Frank Brady's "Citizen Welles" is one of the most well-respected biographies of Welles, and still one of the most underrated. Let me explain. Brady's book actually qualifies as a very early examination of Welles' life, beating Bogdanovich's "This is Orson Welles" and Simon Callow's "Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu" onto the shelves by many years. It perhaps is not thought of as an early work because its publication was delayed several years due to trouble Brady's publishers had, not him. If it had been released when Brady first completed it, it probably would have earned much more acclaim than it already has. Brady anticipates much of the interest surrounding Welles and answers many key questions surrounding the man. He also thoroughly examines many areas of the famous man's life previously ignored by Welles historians, including Welles' abortive South American trip, which damaged Welles in Hollywood far more than "The Magnificent Ambersons" trauma or the battle Welles had to fight to get "Citizen Kane" released. Brady also avoids the awful bias of earlier works by Houseman and Kael that so macerated Welles, telling the man's story with frankness and understanding. It should be the first book anyone reads about Welles, and the book referred to by anyone reading any other work on the mythic director. With movies on Welles in production for HBO and the big screen (Tim Robbins' "The Cradle Will Rock"), interest in Welles only increases with time. That makes Brady's exhaustively-researched and smoothly-written book a keeper.

A well-researched, objective account of a fascinating artist

Frank Brady's biography dismantles the endless rumors and fabrications surrounding the life of Orson Welles. It is different from most of the other biographies on Welles in that it relies very heavily on research. Other biographies seem to subjective, and pay too much attention to the lies Welles sometimes told about himself. Ladies and gentleman, if you're into Welles, this is the one. A class 'A' "Mercury Theatre" production.