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Orson Welles
Volume 2: Hello Americans
by Simon Callow
Callow's second installment (following "The Road To Xanadu") of a massive biography of the legendary filmmaker traces the six years immediately following the premiere of "Citizen Kane."
Viking, 528 pages
08/17/2006
$32.95
ISBN: 0670872563
Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs
Entertainment & Media
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
New York Observer Scott Eyman
A ravishing read, brilliantly allusive, with lightning leaps of insight. It eerily replicates the experience of watching Welles at his dazzling best.
Wall Street Journal Paul Mazursky
Reading Hello Americans at times is like reading "Oedipus Rex" -- you know much of the story, you know the sad ending, the bitter ironies, yet you keep on reading, almost hoping that this time the story will turn out with a happy ending.
The Observer Philip French
In dealing with this bizarre excursion to South America, Callow brilliantly sifts conflicting evidence from various sources to produce a vivid, lucid narrative out of this complex affair.
The Guardian Alan Warner
Callow's enterprise is one of the rarest in publishing. It leaves the reader dry-mouthed with anticipation for his final, third volume.
The Independent Tom Dewe Mathews
Rather than being a tawdry kiss-and-tell account of an actor, this is an inspiring political biography.
Library Journal Michael Rogers
Welles is complex, and Callow has come neither to praise nor to bury him, providing a balanced, well-crafted portrait that brings him to life--you can all but smell Orson's cigar smoke wafting off the pages. [1 July 2006, p.79]
Publishers Weekly
Scintillating...Manages to shape the "Orsonic tornado" into an engrossing tragicomedy. [19 June 2006, p.55]
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Edmund Fawcett
Detail is occasionally dense, but Callow is too good a storyteller and too shrewd an observer to let the narrative flag for long. The end of the book invites not “Ouf!”, but “What happens next?”.
The New York Times Book Review Gary Giddens
Far more levelheaded and illuminating work than its predecessor.
Washington Post Charles Matthews
He gives us a play-by-play of their production and their mangling by the studios, as well as some fine-tuned critical commentary on each movie. He also has valuable insights into Welles's life, including the marriage to Rita Hayworth that fizzled almost at the altar.
Los Angeles Times Richard Schickel
Sometimes exhausting detail.
Atlantic Monthly Benjamin Schwarz
I’ve never read accounts of long-vanished stage productions that equal the immediacy and precision of Callow’s...Far more crucial, Callow loses his sure touch when he examines the film work of Welles, which is, after all, that genius’s supreme artistic achievement.
The Spectator Anne Applebaum
Although brutally frank about Welles's failings, which he catalogues in great and eloquent detail, Callow retains a good deal of sympathy for his subject, as biographers often do (and, perhaps, as a great actor speaking of a great director inevitably would). [10 June 2006]
Entertainment Weekly Chris Nashawaty
Callow's pokiness is maddening.
The Independent Jonathan Gibbs
What's missing from his thorough and eloquent book is any serious attempt to square the circle of how Welles gave up so easily on his later films.
Daily Telegraph Catherine Shoard
Hello Americans is surprisingly light-footed for such a fattie.
Daily Telegraph David Flusfeder
Much of what he reports is fascinating. Unfortunately, however, some of it is just too detailed: when Welles decides he has to investigate all of Brazilian culture in order to shoot the carnival section of the never-completed portmanteau film It's All True, he gets bogged down in the process, and so does Callow, and so do we.
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