“What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career”
We have Four Books to Giveaway this Month!
CMH is happy to announce our first 2022 Classic Movie Book Giveaway as part of our partnership with University Press of Kentucky! This time, we’ll be giving away FOUR COPIES of “What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career“ by Joseph McBride.
In order to qualify to win this book via this contest giveaway, you must complete the below entry task by Saturday, Jan 29, 2022 at 6PM EST. Winners will be chosen via random drawings.
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We will announce our four lucky winners on Twitter @ClassicMovieHub on Sunday, Jan 30, around 9PM EST. And, please note that you don’t have to have a Twitter account to enter; just see below for the details.
To recap, there will be FOUR WINNERS, chosen by random, all to be announced on Jan 30.
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And now on to the contest!
ENTRY TASK (2-parts) to be completed by Saturday, January 29, 2022 at 6PM EST
1) Answer the below question via the comment section at the bottom of this blog post
2) Then TWEET (not DM) the following message*:
Just entered to win the “What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?: A Portrait of an Independent Career” #BookGiveaway courtesy of @KentuckyPress & @ClassicMovieHub – #EnterToWin here http://www.classicmoviehub.com/blog/what-ever-happened-to-orson-welles-book-giveaway-jan/
THE QUESTION:
What is your favorite Orson Welles film and why? And, if you’re not familiar with his work, why do you want to win this book?
*If you do not have a Twitter account, you can still enter the contest by simply answering the above question via the comment section at the bottom of this blog — BUT PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU ADD THIS VERBIAGE TO YOUR ANSWER: I do not have a Twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.
NOTE: if for any reason you encounter a problem commenting here on this blog, please feel free to tweet or DM us, or send an email to clas…@gmail.com and we will be happy to create the entry for you.
ALSO: Please allow us 48 hours to approve your comments. Sorry about that, but we are being overwhelmed with spam, and must sort through 100s of comments…
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Don’t forget to check our chats in our Screen Classics Discussion Series with University Press of Kentucky and @CitizenScreen. You can catch them on Facebook and YouTube:
Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn’t Help It — with Author Eve Golden
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Vitagraph: America’s First Great Motion Picture Studio – with Author Andrew Erish:
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Jane Russell and the Marketing of a Hollywood Legend – with Author Christina Rice:
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Growing Up Hollywood with Victoria Riskin and William Wellman Jr:
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About the Book: In this intimate and often surprising personal portrait, Joseph McBride challenges the conventional wisdom that Welles’s career after CitizenKane, widely regarded as the greatest film ever made, fell into a long decline. The author shows instead how Welles never stopped directing radical, adventurous films and was always breaking new artistic ground as a filmmaker. McBride is the first author to provide a comprehensive examination of the films of Welles’s artistically rich yet widely misunderstood later period in the United States (1970–1985), when McBride knew the director and worked with him as an actor on The Other Side of the Wind, Welles’s personal testament on filmmaking. To put Welles’s later years into context, the author reexamines the filmmaker’s entire life and career. This newly updated edition rounds out the story with a final chapter analyzing The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed in 2018, and his rediscovered 1938 film, Too Much Johnson.McBride offers many fresh insights into the collapse of Welles’s Hollywood career in the 1940s, his subsequent political blacklisting, and his long period of European exile. What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? serves as a major reinterpretation of Welles’s life and work. McBride’s revealing portrait changes the framework for how Orson Welles is understood as a man, an actor, a political figure, and a filmmaker.
Click here for the full contest rules.
Please note that only United States (excluding the territory of Puerto Rico) and Canada entrants are eligible.
Good Luck!
And if you can’t wait to win the book, you can purchase it on amazon by clicking below:
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–Annmarie Gatti for Classic Movie Hub
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I do not have a Twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT is my favorite Welles’ film. THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI is a close second but it is Falstaff who breaks my heart.
Well, I’ll need to go with the obvious answer of Citizen Kane. It’s the first film I teach to my high school students every September (with a couple of Touch of Evil clips and the Welles scene in Ed Wood). I’ve always been a fan of Kane. Besides all of the incredible creativity in the cinematography, lighting, set design, etc., I love the themes that run throughout, the idea that we can never truly know a person, that a person can’t be defined by a simple word, that what we have left when people are gone are their objects and our memories. A brilliant film, firing on all cylinders.
The Magnificent Ambersons. First time I watched I had no idea the studios had edited it down, angering so many people. I went to a bookstore and searched for the Booth Tarkington novel, had to order a university copy back then. I love the story, the family dynamics, the journey through history, how technology affected the family, the silver camera work, the music. And the cast! Dolores Costello, Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten. Still love it, streamed last month on the Criterion Channel.
My favorite Orson Welles film is actually the very first one I saw him star in as a child, and that was 1943’s Jane Eyre.
His performance in that film captivated me and led me to seeing more of his works, including his radio adaptation of War of the Worlds, but seeing him in Jane Eyre really left an impression on me as a child and still does to this day as an adult.
The scene at the end where he is blind and holding Jane’s face, and is so happy she’s there with him again, moved me to tears even as a kid.
I really wish we had that level of acting and audience connection in today’s films.
-Twitter username: @wishisabish
Love that movie too. Yes, brilliant performance.
Touch of Evil. It’s the greatest film noir out there. Magnificent cast, and the cinematography is beyond superb.
I do not have a Twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.
My favorite Orson Welles movie is Chinese at Midnight.
I love the translation of Shakespeare into this wild and versatile film and how well suited Orson Welles is to play the character of Falstaff. I also really appreciate the creative and inventive camera angels and how engrossing the story and characters which all lead up to the very mournful ending.
I have read other books about Orson Welles but I’ve always been curious about what he did after his success and then rejection from Hollywood and his life as the “first independent director.”
I do not have a Twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.
My favorite Welles film Is Touch of evil. I love The lighting, The shadows and The sardonic humour of The entire film.
I love The Magnificent Ambersons—RKO hack job and all. The cinematography is superb and my heart just aches for poor Aunt Fanny. Agnes Moorehead deserved an Oscar. Tim Holt delivers a fabulous performance as a completely deplorable character. I also loved Joseph Cotten and Anne Baxter. I really hope that filmmaker Joshua Grossberg’s mission to find Orson Welles’ rumored final cut in Brazil is successful and we’ll be seeing Welles’ true vision on TCM for the film’s 80th anniversary this summer.
I had no idea there was a possibility of finding the proper ending of the movie! Such exciting news! But I agree, even the butchered version we got is a masterpiece.
My favorite movie with Orson Welles is The Long Hot Summer. I love the entire cast and I think his performance as the Patriarch of the family is fabulous!
I’m not as familiar with some of his older works other than Citizen Kane so would love to learn more about him.
I love Citizen Kane. Every time I watch it I see new things that I’ve never seen before. It’s the film that keeps on giving :^) Thanks!
Citizen Kane. It is the film of his I saw first and the one that I have seen most often. It never gets old and reveals new things that I haven’t seen before in previous viewings. Always a treat to rewatch this classic.
: I do not have a Twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.
Lady from Shanghai!
The Chimes at Midnight is my favorite film, The Lives of Harry Lime is my favorite radio performance.
His interpretation of falstaff is as wonderful as Shakespeare could have hoped, and embodies the man in his later years. The Lives of Harry Lime is fun and silly, and full of ridiculous adventure. Welles sounds like he’s having a good time mucking about as a different version of the character.
Twitter: @thesmallharvey
I have yet to met an Orson movie/movie with Orson that I do not like. I come from a movie loving family and don’t remember the first time I saw CITIZEN KANE, but it’s a favourite. Even a non film student must appreciate the direction, cinematography, acting of this gem.
The absolute best villain portrayal was Orson Welles in The Third Man. His performance was superb as the arrogant, self-absorbed criminal Lime.
My favorite Orson Welles film is Citizen Kane (The Charlie Kane dance is one of the best scenes in film history) The fact that he did all that at age 25!!!!!!!
The Lady from Shanghai is a very close second—I love virtually all of his work.
His radio work is so amazing as well. I listen to The War of The Worlds every October and many other radio shows as well.
I would just devour this book!
The Third Man because of the unlikeliness of the story.
My favorite OW film is Othello. His location filming and cast are perfect. Macliammoir’s Iago may be perfect.
Citizen Kane is without a doubt a complete masterpiece, but his entrance in The Third Man is out of this world. The build up is incredible. The chemistry between Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten is extraordinary. The Third Man is one of the greatest boots ever made.
My favorite is Citizen Kane, a movie I find endlessly rewatchable and rejuvenating. My twitter handle is @Cinedaze.
There are so many favorites but the one I’m going to choose is The Long, Hot Summer from 1958. It’s Tennessee Williams, so you know there’s a lot of dysfunctional family elements there and Welles as the overbearing Southern Patriarch is perfect. I love how you can see he almost enjoys it when Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward spar with him. And the chemistry between him and Angela Lansbury is so awesome and has a lot of humor. He’s a tyrant, but not one you can despise.
Thanks for the opportunity to enter!
Thought you might want to know I got an email from Twitter that 368 people saw the tweet when I put it up on Twitter :-). I actually gave up being active on Twitter last year, but put it up for this giveaway. It’s probably the most views I’ve had on any of my tweets (ironically). So glad for you!
Oh thank you so much for letting me know. That is so nice of you 🙂
My favorite film of mr orson welles is: the third man, such a great performance in the film.
It has to be The V.I.P’s, an all star cast and he stood out.
I love the story idea he sold to Charlie Chaplin which Chaplin made into the film Monsieur Verdoux, about a bluebeard who married and murders women for their money in order to care for his ailing wife.
I know it’s the obvious answer, but my favorite Orson Welles movie, and one of my favorite movies, has to be Citizen Kane. Having heard so many times that it was considered “the greatest film ever made”, I was actually disappointed on my first viewing because nothing can live up to that. I think that’s a common reaction, but after I got past that, I grew to appreciate its brilliance on so many levels. The writing, the acting, the makeup, the set design, the cinematography, so many groundbreaking techniques. And the story so perfectly blends the personal and political, painting a portrait of one of the most fascinating characters in cinematic history.
Hi, so this is something of a tough question. I haven’t seen that many orson welles films to be fair. But I’ve seen citizen Kane like 3 or 4 times now and every time it’s like oh yeah that’s the greatest film ever made. But to be a contrarian I’m going to say lady from Shanghai. It’s this amazingly over complicated film with all these twists and turns and despite all those twists and turns even if you didn’t follow it all you can still follow it and then every subsequent viewing you get it more and more. Every little bit starts to add up more and more and you start to understand there was no mistakes you just didn’t get it the first go around. I don’t know I described it the best way but it’s fantastic and I hope you watch it if you haven’t before!
Touch of Evil. For the brilliant, amazing opening scene, for a wonderful and very scary Welles as a villain, a great Heston as a Mexican policeman and for the disturbing atmosphere that makes you suffer all through the film. Noir at its best!
Citizen Kane. Still gets me. One of my favorite performances from Mr. Welles personally is his portrayal of the returned love of Claudette Colbert’s life and guardian of little Natalie Wood in the film Tomorrow Is Forever.
F for Fake, probably because it was the first of his films that I saw.
The Other Side of the Wind is my favourite Orson Welles film as it encompasses many things which appeal to me. I am always interested in films about the film industry and this adventure shared by desperate men certainly satisfies my hunger. That era of “New Hollywood” fascinates me and I was curious of how Welles would express himself with this film. I love the blend of humour and drama with the daring of Welles to explore subjects previously untouched in his previous works. The frankness of the non PC dialogue was an eye opener which made me realize how today’s films have been afraid to lay it on the line for today’s audiences. To see how Welles was using the various cameras, film stock, and editing style was a treat for my eyes as this film was the best film school I could have attended. Can’t wait to watch it again!
I loved his performance in “Touch of Evil”. Great cast with Charlton Heston, Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, and a small role of Dennis Weaver (3 years before “Gunsmoke”). Orson was great as the police captain in “Touch of Evil”.
I know it’s the obvious choice, but I have to go with Citizen Kane. Excellent writing, many great performances, and such innovative film techniques.
I want to win because i love Orson Wells. Such a diverse complex artist. Favorite Citizen Cane. Such a dark movie . Favorite scene.with the dancing girls
I love Citizen Kane. The writing, the acting. A true classic
Twitter @beingjoebeaver
I love Citizen Kane but found his role in The Stranger far more intriguing. (I also loved him in I Love Lucy).
Citizen Kane has to be my favorite, but there are so many great ones (Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, The Third man). Kane is just such a complicated story about a complicated man. It also has some of the best single lines ever, “You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars THIS year. I expect to lose a million dollars NEXT year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… 60 years.” and “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.” and (maybe my favorite) “Well, it’s no trick to make a lot of money if all you want to do is to make a lot of money.” I have watched Kane more times than I can count and I always get a new appreciation. It took me five times to see the point where – when Welles is knocking over the snow globes – he winces because he actually – in real life – cut himself and then jambs his hand in his pocket. And yes, in the end, I feel sorry for him. Unlike Harry Lime in The Third Man who is such a charming bit of pure evil. I remember where I was when I heard Welles had died. I was standing in line at a bank and someone just mentioned it – out of the blue – I turned, walked out to my car and just sat and cried.
Citizen Kane is my favorite Orson Welles movie. Orson Welles does a great job in this movie.
I do not have a twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.
Citizen Kane (1941) is the best! He put in a lot of hard work to make this movie a masterpiece.
Hafta name the singular Citizen Kane. Would enjoy gleaning a deeper understanding of his undone works – either undone by editing beyond his control, or simply unfinished.
My favourite film from Orson Welles is ‘F for fake’. I just got to see a bit of it on TV (I was in high school and not allowed to stay up that late). It took years till I had another chance of seeing it entirely and it was as mesmdrizing as I remembered. The film is so modern even for today’s standards. I also love when films play a game of smoke and mirrors with fiction and reality and this one is a top player.
My favorite film is Citizen Kane because it was shown to us when I was young and I was amazed by the depth of field magnificent compostions of the shots. Then “Rosebud” became my favorite word for many years to come.
I dont have Twitter : I would like to have the book because I saw excerpts of Don Quixote in a theater festival in France, the film that he was not able to finish. Mr Welles is a mystery to me. The book will help me understand his creativity and thinking. Where and when did his genius start to open… ??? It may inspire me this time of lockdown
I’m a huge fan of all things Orson, especially his Shakespeare adaptations, but my favourite may be “F for Fake.” That’s perhaps his best example (even more than Kane) of pushing the form of cinema and challenging what it can do and be.