Here is a firsthand portrait of the flamboyant American genius who became a titanic figure in twentieth-century popular culture. Orson Welles revolutionized theatre, terrified a nation of radio listeners, and made cinematic history with Citizen Kane, regarded by many as the greatest American film ever made. Building on two years of uninhibited, in-depth interviews with Welles, and on painstaking research in archives and among Welles's contemporaries, Barbara Leaming tells the full story - from Welles's childhood to his glory days in New York and Hollywood, through the years of European exile to his haunting twilight and, in a new epilogue, his death. Publication of this book was, and is again, a major event.