Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles

Brady's quiet but unrelenting passion for his subject pulsates beneath his variegated and vastly human portrait of stage, radio and film genius Orson Welles. In addition to vivid behind-the-scenes accounts of such acknowledged Welles landmarks as his innovative Mercury Theatre productions, the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast and film masterpieces Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons , Brady, biographer of Streisand, Hugh Hefner et al., unsparingly chronicles Welles's professional descent in a commercially oriented Hollywood that consistently turned a blind eye to the iconoclastic artist in its midst. Ironically, like his most enduring character, Charles Foster Kane, whom he once described as ``fighting a losing battle with the twentieth century,'' Welles, in Brady's candid depiction, ends up a somewhat embittered, bewildered victim of the same fate. Photos. (Apr.)