What a whirl, what a world! High schooler Richard Samuels lucks into a role in a daring Broadway production of Julius Caesar. Cues, staging, rehearsals, romance, rivalries; he has a lot to learn. And the first thing to learn is never upstage Mercury Theatre's genius director, 22-year-old Orson Welles.

In the history of American popular culture, there is no more dramatic story - no swifter or loftier ascent to the pinnacle of success and no more tragic downfall - than that of Orson Welles. In this magisterial biography, Patrick McGilligan brings young Orson into focus as never before. He chronicles Welles's early life growing up in Wisconsin and Illinois as the son of an alcoholic industrialist and a radical suffragist and classical musician, and...

"Narrated by a starry-eyed lesbian, Big Red reimagines the tragic career of Rita Hayworth and her indomitable husband, Orson Welles. Set amidst the noir glamour of Hollywood's Golden Age, Big Red reenvisions the life of one of America's most enduring icons: Gilda herself, Rita Hayworth, whose fiery red hair and hypnotic dancing helped make her the quintessential movie star of the 1940s. With narrator Rusty Redburn-a feisty second-string gossip columnist...

In Citizen Kane, following the death of a publishing tycoon, news reporters scramble to discover the meaning of his final utterance. In RKO-281, Orson Welles produces his greatest film, Citizen Kane, despite the opposition of the film's de facto subject, William Randolph Hearst.