Orson Welles, that whirlwind showman from Kenosha, Wis., is already the subject of more than a dozen biographies...He has also proved an alluring figure for writers of fiction...Jerome Charyn is at least the third novelist to pay him such tribute, in the cinematic and bittersweet 'Big Red,' which spans the years 1943 to 1958 and pivots on the marriage of flame-haired movie star Rita Hayworth and 'the boy wonder' she nicknamed Orsie...Mr. Charyn, a veteran novelist, biographer and essayist, subtly evokes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 'The Great Gatsby' in telling his saga of star-crossed charismatics through the eyes of an all-seeing peripheral figure, an outsider-insider named Rusty Redburn.
The book includes delicious cameos by real-life Hollywood players besides Cohn, among them the conniving gossip columnist Louella Parsons and, hauntingly, a coked-up Errol Flynn.
Thanks to Charyn’s lifelong obsession with Welles’ Citizen Kane and fascination with Hayworth’s fragility, readers benefit from a probing analysis of their seminal films while being treated to an intimate, fly-on-the-wall look at a legendary, tumultuous romance.
