If we want to mistake success in Hollywood for a state of grace, then Welles is our Lucifer — the archangel closest to the Almighty whose beastly arrogance is to blame for whatever hell he woke up in. But what if Hollywood, and Welles, are neither of those things? What if his life was about something else entirely?
On May 6th, Orson Welles would have turned a century old. To celebrate, the Los Angeles Review of Books has an excerpt from F.X. Feeney’s new biography of the director.