Me and Orson Welles

"This is the story of one week in my life. I was seventeen. It was the week I slept in Orson Welles's pajamas. It was the week I fell in love. And it was the week I changed my middle name—twice." With this beginning, Robert Kaplow sweeps readers into a break-neck romantic farce that reads like a Who's-Who of the classic American theater. At center stage is the twenty-two-year-old Orson Welles, about to launch his debut production of Julius Caesar. Enter Richard Samuels, an achingly sincere teenager who literally walks into his first acting job. What he finds is a whirlwind of comedy and pathos, self-absorbed celebrities and their outsized egos, art and love. Me and Orson Welles is a joy.