The partnership with Houseman was an enterprise that worked through a shared faith in Welles’s genius, hence mutual trust, with all their powers in full operation. No wonder they inspired loyalties. And no wonder John Houseman in his memoir has a story to tell. This is a story of artistic satisfactions. Families can die or divorce, marry, move away, or end by boring the very guts out of you. But an artistic result achieved through common effort and publicly attested does not fade. It does not fade because there never could have been, never was any doubt about it. And so the telling of how it came to be becomes an act of history. Not a theory about history or a meditation on its meaning, but an act regarding it, like your grandmother, who lived through the Civil War, telling you exactly what it was like.

Houseman wouldn’t kid you; for him the Orson years are glorious enough told right. And that they are told right I can bear witness, because I was there, in many moments a participant, in virtually all the rest John Houseman’s confidant as well as daily housemate in five New York residences shared.