A lost, unfinished memoir by Orson Welles has been found by archivists at the University of Michigan thirty years after the film legend’s death in 1985 at the age of 70.
Titled ‘Confessions of a One-Man Band’, the book details the Welles’ relationships with ‘frenemy’ Ernest Hemingway, one-time wife Rita Hayworth, and the influential though polarizing director D.W. Griffith.
University archivists uncovered the material after Welles’ longtime partner Oja Kador sent them eight boxes of Welles’ items from her home in Croatia.
Unfortunately for Welles die-hards or for anyone who wants to read about Welles’ and Hemingway’s escapades, there are currently no present and likely no future plans to release the text, reports tribecafilm.com.
The discovery marks the latest in a conveniently timely series of developments related to Welles, who would’ve been 100 this year.
Welles’ infamously unfinished film and rumored “comeback movie” ‘The Other Side of the Wind’ (shot on-and-off between 1970 and 1976) is at the center of a two-million-dollar crowd funding campaign that hopes to aid in the film’s long-delayed completion, with blessings from Welles’ daughter, Beatrice, and Kador.
It is still the only one in a long line of at least another dozen projects, including undeveloped scripts and unfinished footage for film adaptations of ‘Don Quixote’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice’, left behind by one of Hollywood’s most profound, pioneering, and gloriously perverse cinematic visionaries.
