A Foot And A Half A Second

The Mercury Wonder Show is not where one would expect this review to start: a 1943 magic-and-variety show, directed, and compeered by Orson Welles, who dubbed himself, flatteringly, as "Orson the Magnificent", and largely for the morale of US troops about to head abroad, it would have remained a footnote of Welles' guilt in not being able to serve, a compulsion leading back to hounding on Citizen Kane' s press tour, and his life-long fascination with magic, but for one reason. Welles' co-star, at least for the opening night, would be forces sweetheart, Rita Hayworth, though Welles had been writing her fan-mail for months, whilst working in Brazil. Welles would marry her barely a month into the show's run, the two polar opposites-the mercurial Welles, the bankable Hayworth craving stability after divorce from the domineering promoter, Edward C Judson,  drawing Welles and Hayworth together in a relationship the press would label "Beauty and the Brain...