Never one to shy away from publicity, Orson Welles was nearly always delighted to accommodate the legions of interviewers, profilers, and biographers clamoring after his "story." Early in his career he courted and wooed the press shamelessly, happily doling out tidbits to reporters, who were just as happy to gobble them up. Yet when he died, he left behind more questions than answers. So thoroughly had he embroidered, exaggerated, and invented the details of his life that no one knew where the truth ended and the myth began. This first in a proposed two-volume biography examines Orson Welles through the people and events he tried so hard to remove from his own self-invented history. Penetrating the smoke screen of legend, the author reconstructs Welles's youth in New York, his troubled partnership with John Houseman, the triumphs and disasters of the fledgling Mercury Theater of the Air, and the crowning success of his life: the one and only Citizen Kane. Black-and-white photos.