You're right to be suspicious of Barbara Leaming's biography, I think.  She
was quite clearly entranced and taken in by Welles's account of his life,
although much Welles biography is conditioned by his own myth-making.  For
word direct from the mouth of the Horse Eats Hat (a pretty tortured and
obscure reference, sorry), I'd recommend This is Orson Welles, Peter
Bogdanovich's book drawn from his interviews, which also includes extensive
introductory and biographical material by Jonathan Rosenbaum.  Associated
with this project, I also recommend the "book-on-tape" of the same title,
about four hours of material drawn from the actual interview tapes.

Simon Callow's Orson Welles:  The Road to Xanadu is a very thorough and not
at all sycophantic account of Welles's life and career up to the release of
Citizen Kane.  Volume Two is in the works, I guess.  Callow valuably offers
the perspective of a working actor examining the life of an actor and
director of an earlier generation, but he is also a thorough researcher.
I've also found Frank Brady's book Citizen Welles useful, though I've never
read it through, and I haven't looked at Rosebud, the biography David
Thomson published the same year as Callow's.

Blaine.

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