Through his radio and film works, such as The War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane, Orson Welles became a household name in the United States. Yet Welles’s multifaceted career went beyond these classic titles and included lesser-known but nonetheless important contributions to television, theater, newspaper columns, and political activism. Orson Welles in Focus: Texts and Contexts examines neglected areas of Welles’s work, shedding light on aspects of his art that have been eclipsed by a narrow focus on his films. By positioning Welles’s work during a critical period of his activity (the mid-1930s through the 1950s) in its larger cultural, political, aesthetic, and industrial contexts, the contributors to this volume examine how he participated in and helped to shape modern media. This exploration of Welles in his totality illuminates and expands our perception of his contributions that continue to resonate today.
Author(s): James Naremore, James N. Gilmore, Sidney Gottlieb
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 232
City: Bloomington
Cover
ORSON WELLES IN FOCUS
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Totality of Orson Welles
1 The Death of the Auteur: Orson Welles, Asadata Dafora, and the 1936 Macbeth
2 Revisiting “War of the Worlds”: First-Person Narration in Golden Age Radio Drama
3 Old-Time Movies: Welles and Silent Pictures
4 Orson Welles’s Itineraries in It’s All True: From “Lived Topography” to Pan-American Transculturation
5 Orson Welles as Journalist: The New York Post Columns
6 Progressivism and the Struggles against Racism and Antisemitism: Welles’s Correspondences in 1946
7 Multimedia Magic in Around the World: Orson Welles’s Film-and-Theater Hybrid
8 “The Worst Possible Partners for Movie Production”: Orson Welles, Louis Dolivet, and the Filmorsa Years (1953–56)
9 Presenting Orson Welles: An Exhibition Challenge
Index
