Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane - Hardcover

McGilligan, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062112481 ISBN 13: 9780062112484

Publisher: Harper, 2015

Synopsis

On the centennial of his birth, the defining wunderkind of modern entertainment gets his due in a groundbreaking new biography of his early years from his first forays in theater and radio to the inspiration and making of Citizen Kane.

In the history of American popular culture, there is no more dramatic story no swifter or loftier ascent to the pinnacle of success and no more tragic downfall than that of Orson Welles. In this magisterial biography, Patrick McGilligan brings young Orson into focus as never before. He chronicles Welles s early life growing up in Wisconsin and Illinois as the son of an alcoholic industrialist and a radical suffragist and classical musician, and the magical early years of his career, including his marriage and affairs, his influential friendships, and his artistic collaborations.

The tales of his youthful achievements were so colorful and improbable that Welles, with his air of mischief, was often thought to have made them up. Now after years of intensive research, McGilligan sorts out fact from fiction and reveals untold, fully documented anecdotes of Welles s first exploits and triumphs, from starring as a teenager on the Gate Theatre stage in Dublin and bullfighting in Sevilla, to his time in the New York theater and his fraught partnership with John Houseman in the Mercury Theatre, to his arrival in Hollywood and the making of Citizen Kane. Filled with intriguing new insights and startling revelations including the surprising true origin and meaning of Rosebud Young Orson is a fascinating look at the creative development and influences that shaped this legendary artistic genius.

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Review:

“[Young Orson] takes the directorial hero from his birth to the threshold of ‘Citizen Kane.’ I’ve only just started it and can so far confess to fascination and pleasure; the wealth of detail and the measured tempo are up to the Shakespearean complexity of Welles’s character.” (New Yorker)

“McGilligan’s Orson is a Welles for a new generation. . . .McGilligan’s book vibrates with uncertainty and risk, and it hums with the possibility that talented people actually can realize their dreams in the forms they choose.” (BookForum)

“No one writes biographies of film legends like Patrick McGilligan. . . . It is a meticulous recreation of Welles’s life and achievement up to 1941.” (Daily Beast)

“Welles’s native brilliance and his ascent from producing plays as a boy at the Todd School to his conquest of New York theater and radio as an adult has seldom been documented with more clarity.” (Library Journal (starred review))

“To read this book is to be taken with just how much meaningful work [Welles] packed into his youth, and awestruck by the self-assurance with which he approached his burgeoning career. . . With McGilligan’s superb biography, we have the definitive portrait of Welles in his youth.” (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review)

“Engrossing . . . Exhaustively researched but well-paced and stuffed with beguiling detail, this is a vivid, sympathetic portrait of Welles’s youthful promise and achievement, before the misfires and compromises of his later years.” (Publishers Weekly)

“A richly detailed, often nuanced study of Welles’ life and work. It’s a welcome addition to the burgeoning shelf of books on one of America’s most distinctive talents. . . . Although Young Orson reads easily, it is powered by an evenhanded, almost scholarly rigor.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

“Must reading for anyone interested in the history of film.” (Mark Levine, Booklist (starred review))

“Exhaustively researched but well-paced and stuffed with beguiling detail, this is a vivid, sympathetic portrait of Welles’s youthful promise and achievement, before the misfires and compromises of his later years.” (Publishers Weekly)

“An indefatigable reporter and masterful biographer, McGilligan has unearthed endless revelations that will change our view of Welles’s. This book is a constant joy to read, showing that the truth about Welles’s upbringing and youthful artistic triumphs is even more remarkable than the legend.” (Joseph McBride, author of What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? and Searching for John Ford)

From the Back Cover:

“A remarkable, eye-opening biography . . . McGilligan’s Orson is a Welles for a new generation, [a portrait] in tune with Patti Smith’s Just Kids.”—A. S. Hamrah, Bookforum

No American artist or entertainer has enjoyed a more dramatic rise than Orson Welles. At the age of sixteen, he charmed his way into a precocious acting debut in Dublin’s Gate Theatre. By nineteen, he had published a book on Shakespeare and toured the United States. At twenty, he directed a landmark all-black production of Macbeth in Harlem, and the following year masterminded the legendary WPA production of Marc Blitzstein’s agitprop musical The Cradle Will Rock. After founding the Mercury Theatre, he mounted a radio production of The War of the Worlds that made headlines internationally. Then, at twenty-four, Welles signed a Hollywood contract granting him unprecedented freedom as a writer, director, producer, and star—paving the way for the creation of Citizen Kane, considered by many to be the greatest film in history.

Drawing on years of deep research, acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan conjures the young man’s Wisconsin background with Dickensian richness and detail: his childhood as the second son of a troubled industrialist father and a musically gifted, politically active mother; his youthful immersion in theater, opera, and magic in nearby Chicago; his teenage sojourns through rural Ireland, Spain, and the Far East; and his emergence as a maverick theater artist. Sifting fact from legend, McGilligan unearths long-buried writings from Welles’s school years; delves into his relationships with mentors Dr. Maurice Bernstein, Roger Hill, and Thornton Wilder; explores his partnerships with producer John Houseman and actor Joseph Cotten; reveals the truth of his marriage to actress Virginia Nicolson and rumored affairs with actresses Dolores Del Rio and Geraldine Fitzgerald (including a suspect paternity claim); and traces the story of his troubled brother, Dick Welles, whose mysterious decline ran counter to Orson’s swift ascent. And, through it all, we watch in awe as this whirlwind of talent—hailed hopefully from boyhood as a “genius”—collects the raw material that he and his co-writer, the cantankerous Herman J. Mankiewicz, would mold into the story of Charles Foster Kane.

Filled with insight and revelation—including the surprising true origin and meaning of “Rosebud”—Young Orson is an eye-opening look at the arrival of a talent both monumental and misunderstood.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0062112481
• ISBN 13: 9780062112484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 832