Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane by Patrick McGilligan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane by Patrick McGilligan Alyssa L. Reil Patrick McGilligan, Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. 832 pp. $40.00. Young Orson: The Years of Luck and Genius on the Path to Citizen Kane, is a detailed account of Orson Welles' early life by prominent biographer, Patrick McGilligan. Published in 2015, the centennial anniversary year of Welles' birth, the text explores the people, places, and events that shaped Welles into an American icon. In his acknowledgements, McGilligan explains his aims of presenting a "more balanced … more sympathetic," Welles, and the "backstory of his life and early career" (749) that ultimately realized the man and his artistic products. General readers will appreciate McGilligan's humanization of Welles and the new light it sheds on his classic productions. For the midwesterner, McGilligan's exploration of Welles is a celebration of homegrown talent. McGilligan organized Young Orson chronologically, with the second to last chapter ending at the start of Welles' filming of Citizen Kane. The final [End Page 83] chapter of the biography documents the reception of Citizen Kane, Welles' death, and his legacy. This unique approach stresses Welles' early life as the key to greater understanding of his famous works. McGilligan exerts objectivity throughout the biography, interjecting notes and facts when necessary without disrupting the flow of the text. The book is dense with information, yet written in a way that reaches a broad audience. Selective photographs accompany the text and add dimension. For the scholar, McGilligan lists the many individuals and organizations that aided in his research and writing process, and provides extensive notations of his sources, both primary and secondary. Primary sources range from public items such as Kenosha newspaper articles and screenplays, to personal documents like memoirs and correspondence. The breadth and depth of McGilligan's research is impressive, with the final product of Young Orson as evidence of McGilligan's carefully honed craft. McGilligan offers an intricate portrait of Welles that is complex and sometimes stark, yet fluid in its development. His writing style mimics this portrayal in an unusual manner for a written history. Young Orson does not begin with a preface or introduction to announce its place within historiography, nor does it make any claims or arguments. Instead, McGilligan's organic approach begins with "The Backstory to 1905," the first of twenty-one detailed chapters. The reader is immediately introduced to Welles' Citizen Kane and common filming techniques of the period, then swiftly transitioned to his birth in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on May 6, 1915. Although Welles was born into a privileged family, his parents subscribed to a progressive agenda that embraced suffrage and lent a sympathetic ear to the issues of education and poverty within their midwestern city. Readers also learn of Welles' constant exposure to the arts by his mother, and their seemingly charmed relationship built upon music and literature. Welles' childhood did not remain picturesque for long, however, as his father's affairs separated the once adoring couple, followed closely by their deaths. McGilligan expends a significant amount of time painting these juxtapositions that colored Welles' youth. In McGilligan's interpretation, Welles was a product of both privilege and tragedy, and his art reflected those experiences. Throughout the text, McGilligan provides a sense of time and place to contextualize events in Welles' life. His emphasis on Welles' childhood purposefully includes elements of the Midwest. He asserts that Welles was "shaped by his roots, and no matter where he roamed he insisted in interviews [End Page 84] that he was a proud 'Middle Westerner'" (5). McGilligan draws connections between the places of Welles' upbringing, such as the Todd School, and his films. Welles also maintained ties with the people of his formative years, as McGilligan points out, both through collaborations and by creating characters out of their likeness. Readers living in the Midwest, or interested in midwestern culture, will appreciate McGilligan's inclusion of Welles' sense of place interspersed in this work. It is clear that Young Orson will be a cornerstone piece in its field as both...