By RAY KELLY
Noted author-actor and all-around Renaissance man Simon Callow is enduring the COVID-19 shutdown like the rest of us. But Wellesians will be delighted to know he is using this time to write the fourth and final installment in his Orson Welles biography series.
Wellesnet has fielded more than a few queries in recent months from those anxious for Volume 4 to arrive.
Reached by email, Callow reported, “I am at present, confined to quarters and socially distanced as I am, beginning work on the book known hereabouts as Fourth and Final.”
He began research for this volume in early 2018. Since then, he has conducted in-depth interviews with those close to Welles in the final two decades of his life.
“It’s strange to write about a twenty-year period which should, perhaps, have been his most productive, and have only two completed films to discuss,” Callow said. “But trying to envisage the dozens of films which he wanted to make, and in a few cases so very nearly did make, is a rather exciting project in itself — very touching, in fact. Quite humbling to find him generating vast amounts of energy and enthusiasm and invention on projects that never quite make it.”
He added, “Please do tell those kind souls who want to know about Vol. 4 that I am at it more or less full time now.”
Callow began his Welles book series with The Road to Xanadu in 1995, followed more than a decade later by Hello Americans.
In the five years since the publication of Orson Welles: Volume 3: One-Man Band, Callow has kept busy with his stage work; written the biography Being Wagner; appeared in more than a dozen films and television programs; and contributed his views on Welles to the Criterion Collection releases of Chimes at Midnight and Othello.
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