Genre: Melodrama Characters: 12m, 2f An ingenious idea is employed to accommodate the sweep of this classic story on the stage. A Shakespearean company puts down their rehearsal sides of Lear and curiously take up those of a new play entitled Moby Dick. On the rehearsal stage of platforms, the teasers overhead suddenly become yardarms with sails and a tall ladder becomes a mast. The platforms become the decks of the ship on which the cast sails through the storms and tribulations of the Pequod hunting for Moby Dick. "Admirably bold and imaginative." - The New York Post "An adventure in theatre going. As I left the first performance I felt myself rather oddly shaky and breathless...There is nothing else anywhere near like Moby Dick in the theatre." - The New York Daily News

The only novel by Orson Welles, a witty, madcap, pulp-noir adventure of international intrigue, blackmail, and murder

The mysterious Mr. Arkadin claims he cannot remember anything of his life prior to the moment in 1927 when he found himself alone in Zurich with two hundred thousand Swiss francs in his pocket, a sum with which he subsequently built a vast fortune. Now a fabulously wealthy and influential financier, he enlists the services of one Van Stratten, a small-time smuggler and racketeer, charging him with the task of investigating Arkadin's forgotten past. Traveling across the world--and through the seedy underworld of postwar Europe--Van Stratten begins piecing together information for his confidential report. But for some unknown and sinisterly suspicious reason, everyone he speaks to soon turns up dead.

The work of an acknowledged genius of the stage and cinema, Mr. Arkadin: Aka Confidential Report is the basis for the controversial motion picture written, directed by, and starring Welles himself--the movie the great auteur bemoaned as "the most butchered film of my career." Welles's hauntingly strange and exhilarating novel remains an enigmatic expression of his intentions and an enduring example of his storytelling brilliance.

Before The Cradle Will Rock, before War of the Worlds, before Citizen Kane—there was Marching Song. At the age of 25 Orson Welles co-wrote, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane, widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. But this was not the first achievement in the young artist’s career. A few years earlier he terrorized America with his radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. And even before he conquered the airwaves, Welles had made a name for himself in New York theatre, with his dynamic stagings of Shakespeare classics and the politically charged musical The Cradle Will Rock. But before all of these there was Marching Song—a play about abolitionist John Brown—that Welles had co-written at the age of 17. While attending the Todd School for Boys, Welles collaborated with Roger Hill, the schoolmaster at Todd, to produce this full-length drama. Marching Song: A Play is a work by one of America’s true geniuses at an early stage of his creative growth. Steeped in historical detail, the play chronicles Brown’s fight against slavery, his raid on Harper’s Ferry, his capture, his conviction for treason, and his execution. In addition to the entire text of the play, this volume features a biographical sketch of Welles and Hill—written by Hill’s grandson—during their days together at Todd. A fascinating dramatization of a pivotal event in American history, this play also demonstrates Welles’ burgeoning development as social commentator and an advocate for human rights, particularly on behalf of African Americans. Featuring a foreword by noted Welles biographer, Simon Callow, Marching Song: A Play is an important work by an American icon.

Innovative film and theatre director, radio producer, actor, writer, painter, narrator, and magician, Orson Welles (1915-1985) was the last true Renaissance man of the twentieth century. From such great radio works as "War of the Worlds" to his cinematic masterpieces Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Othello, Macbeth, Touch of Evil, and Chimes at Midnight , Welles was a master storyteller, as expansive as he was enigmatic. This Is Orson Welles , a collection of penetrating and witty conversations between Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, includes insights into Welles's radio, theatre, film, and television work Hollywood producers, directors, and stars and almost everything else, from acting to magic, literature to comic strips, bullfighters to gangsters. Now including Welles's revealing memo to Universal about his artistic intentions for Touch of Evil, (of which the "director's edition" was released in Fall 1998) this book, which Welles ultimately considered his autobiography, is a masterpiece as unique and engaging as the best of his works.

The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman, who is best known for his Oscar-winning performance as Professor Charles Kingsfield in the "The Paper Chase." After a series of acclaimed stage productions, Welles and his Mercury Theatre were offered their own weekly hour-long radio program over the CBS radio network. Here Welles along with Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, Alice Frost, Martin Gabel, and others presented powerful adaptations of literary classics with Bernard Herrman as composer and conductor.

Considered by many critics as the finest dramatic hour on radio, "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" was without a sponsor until a single broadcast changed all that: "The War of the Worlds.""