Volume Two of Simon Callow's planned 3-part biography of Orson Welles is just as meticulously researched and engagingly written as the first volume. Unlike previous Welles biographers, Callow neither elevates his subject to a godlike status nor denigrates him as a talentless egomaniacal bully. ...
I am a voracious reader of biographies, the most recent being the fantastic BOGART, by Ann Sperber. That one really made you feel that you were a fly on the wall, with visceral language and enough emotion to allow the reader to relate. This one, however, does not. Callow has a stilted, very co...
The creator of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Henry VIII and Captain Bligh, Charles Laughton's career spans 50 films and 40 stage roles. This entralling biography follows him from his parents' hotel in Scarborough to his climactic assumption of the role of King Lear in Statford at the end of his li...
Perry Ferguson shrewdly suggested that since they were attempting so many new things, it might be a good idea to shoot the first few scenes under the guise of screen tests. Welles can only have been relieved by the suggestion; RKO were planning to make a great to-do about the first day of shootin...
The morning after, they read the brilliant notices at Le Bourget airport, hopped on the plane, and returned to London to start rehearsing The Cherry Orchard in the Waterloo Road that afternoon. This breathtaking and rather enviable itinerary – wrapping one movie, attending the glittering première...
I refused immediately, not just because of my vow to keep out of the theatre but because I felt that the play was inextricably bound up with his unique personality. I wrote this piece about him and it for the Sunday Telegraph in 1997. To a remarkable degree, my adolesc...
He had many plans for films; none of them would fall within Hollywood’s remit. He was now, in effect, an independent film-maker, a very exposed position in 1942. His passion to communicate was undimmed; he was brimming with ideas about society and about life. In particular, he was full of what he...