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My holiday reading for my recent trip, if you are at all interested, which I am sure you’re not, was the second volume of Simon Callow’s biography of Orson Welles, which I’d picked up in a remaindered book shop a while ago, added to the reading pile, and never got around to actually reading. Still, as I fussed around trying to pick out a book to take with me, its title “Hello Americans” kind of leapt out at me as being appropriate to where we were going.

Normally these days, if I do take a book along with me, I find that I either end up buying another one that interests me slightly more at the airport, so that I don’t actually end up reading the original, or that I simply don’t find any actual time for reading in the general hubbub of holiday adventures. Airport bookshops are treasure troves of temptation, I find, what with all the volumes as yet unavailable in the high street and that glorious freedom of the option to pay the full whack because you have very little option if you want to actually read the thing on the flight that you’re about to take. Strangely, however, I didn’t find anything to buy in the Departure Lounge outlets this time around, although I did come very close to buying a book about the periodic table of the elements. Luckily I didn’t as, when I mentioned this thought, it turned out that we already had a copy of it at home.

Another bullet dodged there, eh...?

Nevertheless, on this trip, not only did I actually find the time to do some reading, but I also found that I not only did manage to read this book in its entirety, and indeed, that it rather precisely and neatly book-ended the entire holiday as I started it as we set off on the first outward-bound flight of the trip, and I read the last few pages as the aircraft was on its final approach to my home airport.

Simon Callow’s now-to-be three volume biography of Orson Welles is turning out to be something of a labour of love project for him, but also a bit of a marathon rather than a sprint. This one has been out for five years and I seem to recall reading the first volume at least a decade ago, and I don’t have a clue when the third one is expected. I hear on the grapevine that these books have provoked something of a mixed reaction, but I’ve found both of them rather fascinating so far.

As to the life of Orson Welles himself, or “Obediently yours, Orson Welles…” as he humbly used to sign off as, well it remains a rather intriguing one. After all, his astonishing early successes in the theatre, radio and, of course with that movie “Citizen Kane” which is often still voted the greatest film ever made by those in the know (less so by the “Star Wars” fans...), would be enough of a career for most of us, but to have achieved so much before he was thirty and then spend the rest of his life somehow not quite living up to that early promise makes for a mesmorising life story. This volume deals with the years immediately after “Kane” and Mr Welles’ apparent intention to burn as many of his Hollywood bridges as possible over the course of the next decade. This almost pathological dedication to paving the path of destruction, and towards sowing the seeds of his own downfall is what makes up the bulk of this volume of the work, and at times it makes for a both massively painful and intriguing story, but also can be quite maddening when you consider the opportunities missed or lost, sometimes simply because of a lack of communication, or understanding or just plain old-fashioned human decency on the part of so many parties, no least Mr Welles himself. Perhaps sometimes he just took the role of “everyman” far too seriously for his own good.

That in itself is a fascinating tale, but I was most moved by the chapter regarding the incident Welles himself referred to as the case of “Officer X” which told the story behind a dark chapter in the fight for civil rights and equality in post-war America. Basically a returning war veteran was beaten and blinded by a racist cop in the deep south, and Mr Welles was so incensed by this story that he turned over a series of his radio broadcasts completely over to the topic and vented his ire in the direction of the policeman he dubbed “Officer X” and seemed to not care one jot for the risk to his own person that taking should a stand might entail. The intolerance and racism still evident in that nation so shortly after it had won the war against fascism is a truly disturbing thing to read  about, and it was truly a brave thing to do for a public figure like Mr Welles to hold up his head and speak out against an issue that still much divided his fellow countrymen. Some of the deeply racist beliefs that come across in some of the letters that he received (and which were quoted at length in the book) after his broadcasts are truly shameful and speak of a level of hatred that modern readers would (hopefully) find totally abhorrent.

On a happier and more personal note, it’s somewhat appropriate that during our own little trip, we did stop to have lunch at the place which Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth bought during their brief marriage; Nepenthe. It is a rather beautiful, unforgettable place, overlooking one of the most magnificent parts of Big Sur on the California coast. Whether Mr Welles bought this place because William Randolph Hurst had his “castle” at the other end of that particular stretch of coastline, in an “anything you can do” kind of a way is for more psychologically qualified observers to ponder upon, but it was a passing thought that struck me as I looked at the horizon on that pleasantly blissful afternoon.

So, as I sign off for another day with that most pleasant of memories at the forefront of my mind, I bid you a pleasant farewell, and indeed, if I may be so bold, I shall remain “Obediently yours, Martin A W Holmes…”