Young Orson, by Patrick McGilligan (Harper, 2015)

Young Orson is subtitled  The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane and is the story of Orson Welles's life from birth through the making of Citizen Kane in 1940, when Welles was twenty-five.  As I have previously said, I read biographies to learn how some people, with all their neuroses and problems, can accomplish so much.  As McGilligan says, one answer is a combination of luck and genius.  But McGilligan's book also demonstrates quite clearly that Welles had the help of many sympathetic people, from his parents (his mother died when he was nine, his father when Orson was fifteen) to his guardian Dr. Maurice Bernstein; his headmaster at the Todd School for Boys, Roger Hill; his stage producer John Houseman and many of the actors and actresses he brought into the Mercury Theatre.  When it came time to make his first film he had the unstinting support of George Schafer, head of RKO, and the artists Perry Ferguson (art direction), Gregg Toland (cinematography), Bernard Herrmann (music), Robert Wise (editor), Vernon Walker and Linwood Dunn (special effects), Maurice Seiderman (makeup) and, of course, Herman Mankiewicz to help with the screenplay.

I wrote when I started this blog how important Citizen Kane was to me when I saw it at the Museum of Modern Art in 1968; it had the incredible impact of causing me to realize, almost instantaneously, how great movies could be.  I strongly disagree with Chaplin that the film did not have enough "human emotion" in it; it dazzles on many technical levels but it also moves one with its stories of love and loss.  McGilligan makes quite clear that this film did not come out of nowhere, it was extensively prepared for by Welles's ground-breaking theatre experiments and radio work.  I know McGilligan could not see the plays, obviously, but it is not clear how much of the radio work he actually listened to. Most of Welles's radio work -- everything from Moby Dick to King Lear --is available (I use https://www.otrcat.com but there are numerous other sources and various formats).

There's been much written about Welles, and McGilligan did extensive research, with the help of other Welles scholars -- especially Joseph McBride -- to separate truth from fiction, not an easy job, since Welles himself often gave contradictory accounts of his early life.