Eccentric biography of an even more eccentric genius. Following scores of biographies and critical analyses on legendary filmmaker Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, etc.) with yet another life story must have been a daunting task, even for so clever and prolific a film historian as Thomson (Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, 1992, etc.). Notably, Rosebud has been closely preceded by the massive first volume of Simon Callow's two- volume biography (Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu, 1996). Thomson, in his far shorter single volume, can't begin to compete with the dense details of Callow's work. Instead he tries a different tack: He blends biography with quirky digressions and diversions. Sometimes he directly addresses the reader (occasionally in the sonorous tones of a Wellesian narrator), and sometimes he conducts imaginary conversations with his ``publisher''--all in an attempt to fathom the compelling, self-destructive personality of his subject. Unfortunately, these asides are often coy, superficial, or redundant. But as he moves deeper into Welles's film work, the digressions begin to drop away, as if Thomson were only distracting himself while dealing with Welles's theater and radio work, in which he's clearly not terribly interested (and on which Callow is brilliant). When he reaches the films Thomson begins to shine. He richly conveys the excitement that the films still generate, and gives provocative insights into their meanings. History and analysis deftly merge in an effective presentation of Welles's erratic final years. Still, the result is more satisfying in patches than as a whole. Perhaps Thomson should have found a forum other than biography in which to express his love of Orson Welles. A mulligan stew of a book that is best read as a complement to, rather than as a substitute for, other books on Welles. (69 photos) (First printing of 50,000)

Welles dreamed his life as he lived it and passed down his fanciful interpretations of that life to all who would listen, for example to Barbara Leaming, his personal biographer. Some of Welles' most famous stories, about his production of Macbeth with a black cast in Harlem, the writing of Citizen Kane, all that film footage of carnival in Brazil, Dolores Del Rio and Lena Horne, his betrayal by studio executives on The Magnificent Ambersons project, have been retold many times in search of what happened to the boy genius who steadily fell from grace after the making of Kane when he was 25. Simon Callow (Orson Welles [BKL O 15 95]) sidestepped Welles' stories to concentrate on the evidence of his achievements; Thomson trots out the myths and reinterprets them in Welles' favor, which he fits into his ingenious conceit of Welles as the antihero Kane. He effectively replaces William Randolph Hearst with George Orson Welles as the model for Kane. Thomson's reiterations, tastefully placed, that Welles died alone on October 10, 1985, "without nurse, companion, camera or recorder," suggest his commitment to his argument. Throughout, Thomson is engaging and humorous, particularly in working with another masterful conceit. On a controversial interpretation or on an exquisite insight, the publisher enters the narrative and converses with the author. Prettily done. Thomson summarizes that Welles was, at once, "magnificent and a poor bastard." And this is, at once, a brilliant and maddening inquiry. --Bonnie Smothers

Thomson, author of the terrific Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (LJ 11/1/92) and many other film books, weighs in here with his own take on another legendary film figure. It must inevitably be compared with Simon Callow's ambitious Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu (LJ 11/15/95), which, as the first of two volumes, covers only through the 1941 release of Citizen Kane. Unfortunately, Thomson's single volume on an entire life seems rushed by comparison‘only 50 pages are devoted to the last 27 years. Little new ground is broken here; even Thomson's usually bright insights seem secondhand and pedestrian. Unless your patrons are begging for more Wellesiana, this is an optional purchase.‘Thomas J. Wiener, editor, "Satellite DIRECT" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Welles is certainly enjoying a boom; soon after the first volume of Simon Callow's Orson Welles (Forecasts, Nov. 20, 1995) comes this study by the author of The Life of David O. Selznick and A Biographical Dictionary of Film. Thomson does not pretend to have done vast scholarship or delved extensively into original sources. As a boy in England, he says, he fell under Welles's spell, and his book is a sort of vast, almost novelistic examination of the showman's rich and ultimately deeply frustrating life; it is an attempt to come to terms with the fascination Welles continues to exert, although it is generally agreed that his last 40 years were an anticlimax. Determined to be compulsively readable, Thomson indulges in highly tendentious asides, interrupts himself with questions he imagines his publisher asking and works in chunks of scenes from Welles's movies and snippets from the interviews the star tirelessly gave all his life. The result is a vivid patchwork, a swift, impressionistic take on Welles that is also an often moving tribute to his oblique mix of genius and charlatanism. Not by any means the only book on Welles to read, but a stimulating and diverting one, with some unusual judgments: that his Macbeth, for instance, is better than his Othello, and that the late F for Fake is a neglected masterwork. Illustrated. 50,000 first printing. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

At key stages of this idiosyncratic, absorbing biography, Thomson asserts his powerful identification with his exceptional subject. Thomson never met Welles but was mesmerized by him, an effect he traces to his London moviegoing boyhood. At age 14, Thomson attended a rare revival-house screening of Citizen Kane: "I had never imagined that movies needed to be followed.... But I struggled with Kane because I knew that [it] was more intense than anything I had seen ... because the shining young Kane was so entrancing ... and because the investigator in the film had my name ... I had been called there.... I can see now that my future was taken care of, and ruined maybe." Much later, Thomson writes: "I fear I'm like him. That Orson Welles took my life. By the time I realized it, it was too late to go back." Such cryptic--such Wellesian--self-indulgence, though intermittently trying, functions as one of several exhilarating elements that distinguish this life of Welles from Simon Callow's Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu (CH, Nov'96), the first volume in a projected two-part biography. Inevitable overlap of detail and interpretation occurs, but Thomson is generally more forgiving of Welles. His penetrating analyses of Welles's pictures attest to the fact that he is a gifted film writer, despite the dour career stocktaking evident in these pages. Exceptional indeed is the subject who attracts two superb biographies in the space of a year. All collections. M. W. Estrin Rhode Island College