Glenn Anders: "While in exile, I came across an interesting interview with Richard France, a Welles scholar who worked on THE BATTLE OVER CITIZEN KANE. France, one of George Romero's original "Living Dead," dwells on his varied career, and about half way through the hour comes up with a couple of surprising conclusions about Orson Welles, given how distorted the CITIZEN KANE documentary is. First, as we might expect, he tells us Welles did not write the original radio play for "The War of the Worlds," and he tells a story of being granted search rights to a pile of throwaway scripts at CBS, one of which turned out to be Howard Koch's own draft of the famous Mercury Production, with interlining and emendations by Koch. France carried the script off and gave it to Koch in Hollywood, who subsequently sold the manuscript at auction, according to France, for over $100,000. [The fact gives him some chagrin.] The real surprise is that France says, without a doubt, Orson Welles was responsible for the creation of CITIZEN KANE. How France's conviction was so turned around in THE BATTLE OVER CITIZEN KANE is, I suppose, in the nature of the collaborative process, which he also comments upon. "
http://indianapublicmedia.org/profiles/richard-france/
On the same page is a good interview with James Naremore, author of THE MAGIC WORLD OF ORSON WELLES. Naremore doesn't discuss Welles specifically, but he does discuss his new book on Film Noir.
Also, Thanks to Larry French, for printing Richard France’s entertaining, and at times hilarious intro to his play, OBEDIANTLY YOURS, ORSON WELLES. He has a venomous wit, somewhat reminiscent of the ranting Harlan Ellison, but his research into the lesser known areas of Welles’s career has been invalueable. The only book of his that I’ve read is THE THEATRE OF ORSON WELLES, but I’m looking forward to reading the play, especially since the chances of seeing it performed in the U.S., as he notes, are not too good.
http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=1409
