In My Father's Shadow

September 21, 2009
Feder, the daughter of Orson Welles and his first wife, Virginia, tells the story of her search for a relationship with her famous father as well as creating an independent identity through a childhood and adolescence influenced by a list of affectionate guardians and brilliant but dysfunctional grownups. The latter category included her own parents: the author was still a child when they separated and her father married Rita Hayworth; her mother, meanwhile, went on to her own second and third marriages. Feder found affection at times, but it was her years in Illinois with her father's former headmaster and the headmaster's wife that provided her first experience of domestic stability. Her peripatetic life resumed, however, while her father arrived irregularly for extended one-on-one visits that shaped his daughter's budding intellect, but left her hungry for a deeper, more permanent connection. Her story conveys a powerful, intimate sense of Welles's creative struggles and her own part in preserving his artistic legacy.

August 15, 2009
One of Orson Welles's daughters spins a sad, self-serving story about her few but intense times with her globetrotting father.

Feder—the author of the Brain Quest series for children—is the daughter of Welles and his first wife, Virginia Nicholson, who divorced two years after she was born. Feder remembers most agreeably the years when her father was married to Rita Hayworth, who frequently invited the little girl over to swim and play. The author met celebrities, visited the sets where her father was working, listened to the initial read-through of Macbeth, visited other continents, stayed in the best hotels, ate the best food and felt both intimidated and inspired by her charismatic father. Feder writes that at her public school, her bitter classmates taunted her with cries of"Hollywood brat!" and later, when she was the only girl in a boys' school, some of the nastier ones called her"Orson's little brat." Years would pass between paternal visits, and her mother, remarried, became increasingly resentful of her daughter's patent affection and preference for Welles. So she said mean things and denied her daughter a college education by not paying for it. (Readers may wonder why the author didn't attempt to pay her own way.) Still, the author was brilliant, beautiful and talented, as we hear many times throughout, often via Welles himself. Feder ends her account with a standing ovation she and her late father received at a recent tribute to him in Italy.

Another dull tale by a celebrity's child.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from September 1, 2009
Orson Welles may be the most discussed and analyzed figure in the history of American theatrical entertainment. Yet with countless biographies and critical works already on the shelves, there has never been a book as intimately in tune with the man himself as this beautifully written memoir by his daughter. The author, who writes for the Brain Quest series of educational children's products, possesses a natural gift for writing that is ever present here. Her story is all the more poignant because she was largely separated from her father after her parents divorced when she was three. From her warm childhood recollections of her time with Welles's second wife, Rita Hayworth, to the story of her belated meeting with his devoted partner at the end of his life, Oja Kodar, Feder presents a fuller, more essential portrait of the man than has ever been published before. VERDICT This tender and elegant work is highly recommended to any admirer of Orson Welles. [See also "Editors' Fall Picks," p. 24.]Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA

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