Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane (137 page)

Three reputed lovers who were probably more like soul mates for sympathetic pillow talk: ballerinas Vera Zorina (
RIGHT
) and Tilly Losch (
BELOW
LEFT
), and Irish-born actress Geraldine Fitzgerald (
BELOW
RIGHT
).

Orson made the cover of
Time
magazine on May 9, 1938, at the age of twenty-three—in an era when that distinction signaled the arrival of true celebrity (though the profile was relegated to the magazine’s theater section).

A (retouched) family publicity photograph with new baby Christopher, born in 1938. By now, the relationship between the little girl’s parents was deeply strained.

The surviving segments of the never-completed
Too Much Johnson
reveal Orson’s filmmaking savvy and his slapstick soul.
FROM
TOP
: the ebullient director; Mercury partner John Houseman, rapidly fading in importance at the Mercury, as a Keystone Cop; and Joseph Cotten in a Harold Lloyd–type scene.

Orson, arms upraised, during the
War of the Worlds
broadcast. Composer Bernard Herrmann conducts the orchestra at right; actor Ray Collins is in the foreground near microphone. The clock says 9 P.M.: the broadcast is nearly over.

The next morning, Welles explained himself to a gaggle of reporters.

With the legendary actor John Barrymore (
LEFT
), whom he went out of his way to befriend, on Rudy Vallée’s radio show. Barrymore died the following year.

Orson (
LEFT
) relished his brief vaudeville stint hamming it up in
The Green Goddess
.

Poolside with typewriter at his Brentwood mansion, sporting his notorious beard.

Despite the sniping of the gossip columnists, Orson was warmly welcomed to Hollywood by old-guard filmmakers, including RKO director George Stevens (
with pipe
), the nephew of Orson’s old friend Ashton Stevens. Ashton later visited the set of
Citizen Kane
with his wife, Florence (FloFlo).

A rare photograph of Welles with screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. To Welles, the cowriter of
Citizen Kane
was “a great, monumental, self-destructing machine” whom he loved and admired.

Old Rosebud, the Kentucky Derby–winning horse of 1914, was the inspiration for the mysterious mantra of
Citizen Kane
.