Who could demur? Welles had an IQ of 185 (well on to genius terrain), but he never understood that the cinema isn’t first and foremost an art. If, on the other hand, you wanted a picture brought in on time and under budget - steer well clear. If you wanted an aesthetic visionary, bursting with last-minute, off-the-wall ideas, Welles was your go-to guy. Men like him are ‘too involved with creating to be bothered by such minor matters as paying’.Īnd there you have him, the Hollywood big boys would say. ‘It’s OK lady,’ a waiter comforted the weeping Ribolla. When it arrived Welles passed it over, saying, ‘Leave a large tip for these nice waiters.’ ‘But Mr Welles, I can’t afford meals like this.’ Welles turned sulphurous: ‘How dare you go out with me with not enough money?’, he said as he stormed out. Ribolla smiled and waited for him to get the bill. After eating enough food for ‘a dozen hungry people’ and sinking ‘one glass of wine after another’, all the while enchanting his guest with gossip and conjuring tricks, Welles downed his coffee and said it was time to go. Filled with intriguing new insights and startling revelations-including the surprising true origin and meaning of “Rosebud”-Young Orson is a fascinating look at the creative development and influences that shaped this legendary artistic genius.One day in May 1948 in the Frascati hills southeast of Rome, Orson Welles took his new secretary, Rita Ribolla, to lunch. Now after years of intensive research, McGilligan sorts out fact from fiction and reveals untold, fully documented anecdotes of Welles’s first exploits and triumphs, from starring as a teenager on the Gate Theatre stage in Dublin and bullfighting in Sevilla, to his time in the New York theater and his fraught partnership with John Houseman in the Mercury Theatre, to his arrival in Hollywood and the making of Citizen Kane.

The tales of his youthful achievements were so colorful and improbable that Welles, with his air of mischief, was often thought to have made them up.

He chronicles Welles’s early life growing up in Wisconsin and Illinois as the son of an alcoholic industrialist and a radical suffragist and classical musician, and the magical early years of his career, including his marriage and affairs, his influential friendships, and his artistic collaborations. In this magisterial biography, Patrick McGilligan brings young Orson into focus as never before. In the history of American popular culture, there is no more dramatic story-no swifter or loftier ascent to the pinnacle of success and no more tragic downfall-than that of Orson Welles.

On the centennial of his birth, the defining wunderkind of modern entertainment gets his due in a groundbreaking new biography of his early years-from his first forays in theater and radio to the inspiration and making of Citizen Kane.

Young Orson by Patrick McGilligan