Orson Welles and Josef von Sternberg

I just finished reading John Baxter's Von Sternberg (The University Press of Kentucky, 2010) and My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles (Metropolitan Books,2013), two stories about Hollywood mavericks.  Josef von Sternberg always insisted on doing things his own way and the results include many beautiful movies, from the silent The Last Command to the sound films with Marlene Dietrich.  But when von Sternberg no longer had Dietrich as a star he fell on hard times and had trouble finding financing for his films. And we all know the story of Welles, doing endless "roasts" and commercials in order to finance his films, many of which remained unfinished at his death.  Baxter's book is an intelligent survey of von Sternberg's career, while in the Jaglom book Welles comes across as a pompous blowhard, always looking for money for movies that never quite comes through.  My suggestion is just to see their movies, many of them glorious.  I am fortunate enough to have seen Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1965) and von Sternberg's Anathan (1952), movies both personal and beautiful, that the directors were able to make at the end of their careers and that sum up their personal visions.