The Boy Wonder, Still Unspooled

‘Orson Welles: Revised and Expanded Third Edition’By Joseph McBrideSticking Place Books, 540 Pages‘Orson Welles’ Commercial Break’By Robert KrollBearManor Media, 300 PagesOrson Welles may be the most famous film director and actor whose films most of the public has not seen. Even “Citizen Kane,” lauded by critics as perhaps the greatest American film, received minimal distribution at the time of its release in 1941, due to the opposition of its putative subject, William Randolph Hearst, depicted as the very epitome of the oligarch determined through his newspapers, political activity (including running for high office), and movie production, to dominate American culture.Welles’s courage in taking on Hearst, groundbreaking productions for the Federal Theatre Project, especially his so-called “voodoo Macbeth” with an African American cast, solidified him as a symbol of righteous political activity and artistic probity. That is why, in the latter days of his celebrated esthetic sainthood, his television commercials for Paul Masson, situating his gargantuan presence in the American home, with that cultivated voice extolling “We will sell no wine before its time” outraged the connoisseurs of his legend as the sacrificial victim of the very commercial and corrupt establishment he was supposed to oppose.Joseph McBride and Robert Kroll agree that the mockery that greeted the commercials did not take into account that virtually from the beginning of his career Welles did radio commercials — as did many other actors, first on the wireless and later on television. For both Mr. McBride and Mr. Kroll, such shilling seemed inevitable for an actor/director attempting to finance ambitious films such as “Othello” and other high culture productions.If you are mainly interested in Welles as cineaste, Mr. McBride, whose book was first published in 1972, is the unimpeachable source. Not only has Mr. McBride distinguished himself as a screenwriter, critic, and biographer, he has the advantage of knowing and working with Welles. This includes a role in “The Other Side of the Wind,” playing a film critic squabbling with another Welles friend, Peter Bogdanovich.The chapter titles alone will give you some idea of Mr. McBride’s range: “Citizen Kane and The Screenplay as Genre,” “Welles and Shakespeare: Macbeth and Othello,” “Around the World with Orson Welles and Don Quixote,” as well as individual chapters on his notable films: “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “Journey into Fear,” “The Stranger,” “Touch of Evil,” “The Trial,” and his extraordinary documentary, “F for Fake.”Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, and Everett Sloane in ‘Citizen Kane,’ 1941. Via Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesIn Mr. McBride’s book, an epigraph from renowned film director Jean Renoir refutes the cant that deplores Welles’s participation in productions supposedly beneath his greatness: “Orson Welles is an animal made for the screen and the stage. When he steps before a camera, it is as if the rest of the world ceases to exist. He is a citizen of the screen.” That was exactly my response to those Paul Masson commercials. It was the same watching him on Johnny Carson and many other late night television shows.As Robert Kroll observes, Orson Welles was always there to be Orson Welles, giving all of himself to every medium he appeared in. In that sense, he was the huge embodiment of a culture — its highs and lows that were inseparable from who he was: An artist who enjoyed collaboration, even if he could be petulant and overbearing. In the main, Mr. Kroll shows, Orson Welles was, in and of himself, an industry, employing many who got their start or were boosted by their work with him.To gauge how different Mr. Kroll’s book is from Mr. McBride’s just look at the chapter titles: “Talk Show Host,” “Paul Masson I: Fine Wine Exists,” “Paul Masson II: The Taste of French Champagne,” “First National Bank of Shreveport: Not about to Stop,” and Appendix I: “Adography,” an effort to compile all the commercial work, with a list of the crews, some of whom also appear as witnesses to Welles’s modus operandi. Even his film trailers are catalogued.Although Welles had an enormous ego, he deployed self-deprecation as self-defense even as it unfortunately perpetuated the legend that he was a failure and sellout. So he would say: “Began at the top and have been working my way down ever since.” With these two Welles volumes you get all the octaves on the epic scale of his life and career.Mr. Rollyson is the author of biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Dana Andrews, Walter Brennan, and Ronald Colman, with a life of Eve Arden forthcoming.

The Boy Wonder, Still Unspooled

The Boy Wonder, Still Unspooled

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