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Stevens started in the entertainment industry at 15 with Orson Welles' theater company, but he is best known for creating the TV show The Outer Limits, which ran from 1963-1965. He died April 24 at age 74 after heart surgery. From This is True for 26 April 1998 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: François ThomasJean-Piere Berthomé List Price: $75.00 Amazon Price: $54.60 Editorial Review: ORSON WELLES AT WORK is an in-depth, behind-the-camera survey of the entire career of Orson Welles (1915-85), the esteemed actor, producer, narrator, and director. This book provides a fresh and insightful view of Welles and his work, examining the entirety of his career from his theatrical beginnings to his very last years. It offers analyses of all his creative works, including his feature films, short films, unfinished works, and television programs. The discussions of his films, including CITIZEN KANE (1941), THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942), and TOUCH OF EVIL (1957-58), are supported by over 400 illustrations of screenplays, scripts, contracts, sketches, storyboards, models, production reports, memos, letters, and correspondence uncovered by new research in European and American archives. This book is a must for any cinema scholar and any fan of Welles' work.  By: Arthur Conan Doyle List Price: $26.95 Amazon Price: $17.79 Editorial Review: It’s elementary that any Conan Doyle fan will want this splendid set of Sherlock Holmes mysteries—twelve timeless classics performed as radio theater, linked by violin music interludes. The great Sir John Gielgud stars as the sleuth of Baker Street, with Ralph Richardson as his venerable companion, Dr. Watson, and Orson Welles as the nefarious Professor Moriarty. With three giants of the theater in such colorful roles, it’s no mystery why this collection was so popular on cassette. Includes:  By: Simon Callow List Price: $18.00 Amazon Price: $12.24 Editorial Review: Now in paperback, Callow's vastly entertaining chronicle of Welles's first 26 years seems even finer than it did in 1995. The author's ability to skewer his subject's evasions and lies while retaining critical affection for him is perhaps explained by the fact that Callow, an actor himself, understands the need to mythologize. Welles's innovative theatrical work in the 1930s has never been better described or analyzed. Even such oft-told sagas as the War of the Worlds broadcast and the filming of Citizen Kane gain new dimension from Callow's intelligent treatment.In this first installment of his masterful biography, Simon Callow captures the chameleonic genius of Orson Welles as only an actor/director deeply rooted in the entertainment industry could. Here is Welles’s prodigious childhood; his youth in New York, with its fraught partnership with John Houseman and the groundbreaking triumph of his all-black Macbeth; the pioneering radio work that culminated in the notorious 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds; and finally, his work in Hollywood, including an authoritative account of the making of Citizen Kane. Rich in detail and insight, this is far and away the definitive look at Orson Welles—a figure even more extraordinary than the myths that have surrounded him.  By: Orson WellesPeter BogdanovichJonathan Rosenbaum List Price: $24.00 Amazon Price: $16.32 Editorial Review: In 1992, the first publication of This Is Orson Welles brought a priceless document to light. In the late '60s and early '70s, filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich had conducted extensive interviews with Welles, but a number of circumstances--including the director's decision to compose an autobiography that he never got around to writing--kept the interviews out of the public eye. Edited and annotated by Jonathan Rosenbaum, these conversations give wonderful insights into Welles's craft and personality. He discusses his forays into acting, producing, and writing as well as directing, his confidences and insecurities, and his plans for film projects that were either never made or only partially completed. He also offers insights into the triumph of Citizen Kane and later masterpieces like The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight. His defense of his controversial adaptation of Kafka's The Trial is so fascinating that readers might want to rush out and rent the film. While the book is worth owning just for this 322-page interview, it is also full of other material that is equally revealing. Rosenbaum presents a meticulous chronology of Welles's life, closely following his day-to-day activities from his birth in 1915 to his death in 1985. Anyone who thinks that Welles was an essentially lazy and profligate artist will be astonished at how hard he worked and how much he accomplished, even after the completion of Citizen Kane. Another treat found in the book is a detailed description--complete with rare photographic stills--of the original Magnificent Ambersons, Welles's impressive follow-up to Kane, which can now be seen only in a tragically truncated version. This 1998 reissue of the volume contains a fond new introduction by Bogdanovich and another crucial piece of Welles minutia, excerpts from his 58-page memo to Universal Pictures about the editing of Touch of Evil. Forty years after its composition, the material in this memo has been used to create a restored "director's cut" of the film. With such grand material between two covers, This Is Orson Welles is the most informative and entertaining book available on one of the 20th century's greatest artists. --Raphael ShargelInnovative film and theater director, radio producer, actor, writer, painter, narrator, and magician, Orson Welles (1915–1985) was the last true Renaissance man of the twentieth century. From such great radio works as "War of the Worlds" to his cinematic masterpieces Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Othello, Macbeth, Touch of Evil, and Chimes at Midnight, Welles was a master storyteller, as expansive as he was enigmatic. This Is Orson Welles, a collection of penetrating and witty conversations between Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, includes insights into Welles's radio, theater, film, and television work; Hollywood producers, directors, and stars; and almost everything else, from acting to magic, literature to comic strips, bullfighters to gangsters. Now including Welles's revealing memo to Universal about his artistic intentions for Touch of Evil, (of which the "director's edition" was released in Fall 1998) this book, which Welles ultimately considered his autobiography, is a masterpiece as unique and engaging as the best of his works.  By: Robert Kaplow List Price: $13.00 Amazon Price: $10.40 Editorial Review: “This is the story of one week in my life. I was seventeen. It was the week I slept in Orson Welles’s pajamas. It was the week I fell in love. And it was the week I changed my middle name—twice.” With this beginning, Robert Kaplow sweeps readers into a break-neck romantic farce that reads like a Who’s-Who of the classic American theater. At center stage is the twenty-two-year-old Orson Welles, about to launch his debut production of Julius Caesar. Enter Richard Samuels, an achingly sincere teenager who literally walks into his first acting job. What he finds is a whirlwind of comedy and pathos, self-absorbed celebrities and their outsized egos, art and love. Me and Orson Welles is a joy. |
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