Despite the System : Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios

'Everything about me is a contradiction.' Orson Welles

Orson Welles was all too aware, in his later years, that posterity would judge his life to have been essentially a failure: that it would construct a neat parabola of decline that would arc down from his youthful masterpiece, Citizen Kane, to the wine adverts he used to fund his latterday imbibing. In Despite the System Clinton Heylin shows brilliantly how Welles was undone by real people, with real motives, and by the circumstances found in a single time and place—Hollywood at the end of its golden era.

Through shooting scripts and internal memos, on-the-record interviews, private correspondence, Welles's own articles and his lectures to the public at large, Heylin grippingly reconstructs the career and life of a man who, by his own admission, was either a compulsive faker or a genius—or something in-between.

Praise for Despite the System:

'This is the book Orson Welles always hoped for: one that would, as he put it, "set the record straight." It was a labyrinthine record. Clinton Heylin has done an extraordinary job of groundbreaking research on his subject and come up with complicated layers of fact as well as all the necessary paperwork to back these up. Written with humor and compassion in a non-academic style, this book is nonetheless authoritative and convincing. Also, I can recognize here the Welles I knew.'

Peter Bodganovich

‘This is nitty gritty stuff for the real film buff and appropriately riveting.’

Launceston Examiner

Orson Welles has earned a place in the pantheon and this is certainly the best entry in the visitor’s book for quite some time.’

Hobart Mercury

'Heylin performs the equally useful task of gumshoe, digging up archive and source material to re-establish facts superseded by legend.'

Sydney Morning Herald