Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius

This full-scale, illustrated biography provides an in-depth profile of the visionary actor/writer/director whose prodigious talents, gargantuan appetites, and personal demons contributed to a tumultuous life and career marked by brilliant accomplishments and abysmal failures.

This is the second full-length biography of one of the most colorful and controversial figures in 20th-century show business. The other, Barbara Leaming's recent study ( LJ 8/85), had the advantage of Welles's cooperation. Not only that, but it is better written and better researched and provides a generally more reflective look at its subject. Higham's book is curiously shaped; it spends an inordinate amount of time tracing Welles's genealogy, but gives a mere 30 pages to the last 35 years of his life. Only an exceptionally comprehensive collection would require this. Thomas Wiener, ``American Film,'' Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.