Photograph by Bert Hardy/Picture Post â€" Getty Images In The New York Times Book Review, Maureen Dowd reviews two new books that unearth vintage conversations with the Hollywood legends Orson Welles and Ava Gardner. Ms. Dowd writes about “My Lunches With Orsonâ€:
Even washed up and so heavy and arthritic he had to use a wheelchair, the 68-year-old Welles knew he was more interesting than anyone else in Hollywood. So he asked his pal Henry Jaglom, an indie filmmaker, to tape their lunch conversations at Ma Maison â€" with his ill-tempered toy poodle Kiki at the table â€" discussions that indolently roamed from chicken salad capers to chic romantic capers. The tapes span 1983 to 1985, when Welles died of a heart attack with a typewriter in his lap writing a script; they languished in a shoe box for years until Biskind learned about them in the 1990s and started bugging Jaglom to transcribe and publish them.
On this week’s podcast, Mr. Biskind and Mr. Jaglom discuss “My Lunches With Orsonâ€; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Brett Martin talks about “Difficult Men,†his book about TV antiheroes; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.
