This is the story of a young Marine's struggle through unwanted separation from friends and family caused by the consequences of the Great Depression and by the demands of World War II. During the twenty-two plus months my brother, Cpl. Buel Wesley Bray, served as a Marine in World War II, he wrote more than sixty letters to Bobbie Waren, a young woman whose sister had married his older brother. Bobbie saved fifty-seven of those letters and made them available in 2007. The substance of his letters and the recollections that emerged from a number of conversations with Bobbie formed a theme upon which to build an account of Buel's military and nonmilitary experiences, both factual, as well as fictional. In addition, his military personnel records, obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, included a schedule of movement and location of training and combat during his tour of duty. Utilizing information from these sources as the story unfolds, especially from the letters, relationships were encouraged to develop and grow, attitudes were permitted to surface and change, and events were identified and described. The places Buel and his Ordnance Company visited for training and combat duty are valid. While the events that occurred at these various locales are largely fictional, the activities in which the characters of the story engaged were those experienced by marine trainees and later on, when trainees became combatants. Perhaps the merging of facts with fiction can best be exemplified by the equator-crossing activities that occurred when his battalion sailed into the South Pacific war zone. Buel's personnel records document his initiation as a Shellback on 20 March, 1943, therefore the last part of Chapter IX describes this ship-wide event that included activities that were prevalent during the late 1930's and early 40's. Research validated the participation of polliwogs (inductees) in assisting ship's company crewmen in preparation for the "mutiny" and in the construction of initiation obstacles. This was a necessity aboard ships carrying several thousand troops. However, polliwogs were barred from the final stage of preparation. They discovered that when they mastered the obstacle themselves. While all individuals referenced in Buel's letters were real people influencing his life, the only other person who actually played a role in the story is First Sergeant Charles V. Bomar, the author of the final letter in the book. All others are fictional. Ulmon C. Bray November 11, 2009 Fresno, California

Fleeing a Hollywood that spurned him, Orson Welles arrived in Italy in 1947 to begin his career anew. Far from being welcomed as the celebrity who directed and starred in Citizen Kane, his six-year exile in Italy was riddled with controversy, financial struggles, disastrous love affairs, and failed projects. Alberto Anile's book depicts the artist's life and work in Italy, including his reception by the Italian press, his contentious interactions with key political figures, and his artistic output, which culminated in the filming of Othello. Drawing on revelatory new material on the artist's personal and professional life abroad, Orson Welles in Italy also chronicles Italian cinema's transition from the social concerns of neorealism to the alienated characters in films such as Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, amid the cultural politics of postwar Europe and the beginnings of the cold war.

"...[A] beautifully researched, valuable study of one of America's most influential and mysterious artists. ...[What] makes this book remarkable is Welle's own contribution. His comments, opinions, interviews cut in and out of the narrative with an almost cinematic force." -Patricia Bosworth

This is an encyclopedic reference work to 1,802 radio programs broadcast from the years 1924 through 1984. Entries include casts, character relationships, plots and storylines, announcers, musicians, producers, hosts, starting and ending dates of the programs, networks, running times, production information and, when appropriate, information on the radio show's adaptation to television. Many hundreds of program openings and closings are included.

George Orson Welles (1915–1985) is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. At just twenty-five years old, he cowrote, produced, directed, and starred in his Academy Award–winning debut film Citizen Kane (1941). His innovative and distinctive directorial style—nonlinear narratives, unusual camera angles, deep focus shots, and long takes—continues to be emulated by directors and cinematographers to this day. The brilliant yet provocative Welles won multiple Grammys, a Golden Globe, and the greatest honor the Directors Guild of America bestowed: the D. W. Griffith Award. His final film, The Other Side of the Wind, was released in 2018, 33 years after his death. In Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles, author Frank Brady presents a comprehensive and complete picture of the artist and auteur. Painstakingly researched, Brady delves into Welles's creative achievements, from his critically acclaimed film Citizen Kane and controversial radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds" (1938) to his starring turn on Broadway in Shaw's Heartbreak House (for which he made the cover of Time). Brady also explores other notable films, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958), and Chimes at Midnight (1965). This all-encompassing work also details the personal side of Welles's life, including his romances with Rita Hayworth and Dolores Del Rio and the confounding tragedy of his final years. Presented is a captivating and compelling encapsulation of the revered and respected artist.

In this intimate and often surprising personal portrait, Joseph McBride challenges the conventional wisdom that Welles's career after Citizen Kane, widely regarded as the greatest film ever made, fell into a long decline. The author shows instead how Welles never stopped directing radical, adventurous films and was always breaking new artistic ground as a filmmaker. McBride is the first author to provide a comprehensive examination of the films of Welles's artistically rich yet widely misunderstood later period in the United States (1970–1985), when McBride knew the director and worked with him as an actor on The Other Side of the Wind, Welles's personal testament on filmmaking. To put Welles's later years into context, the author reexamines the filmmaker's entire life and career. This newly updated edition rounds out the story with a final chapter analyzing The Other Side of the Wind, finally completed in 2018, and his rediscovered 1938 film, Too Much Johnson. McBride offers many fresh insights into the collapse of Welles's Hollywood career in the 1940s, his subsequent political blacklisting, and his long period of European exile. What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? serves as a major reinterpretation of Welles's life and work. McBride's revealing portrait changes the framework for how Orson Welles is understood as a man, an actor, a political figure, and a filmmaker.