Mary and the Moor: The Precious Memories of Orson Welles’s Secretary from the Set of Othello

Chicagoan Mary Alcaide was Orson Welles’s secretary for over a year between October 1949 and December 1950. Her letters from that time, along with a recent interview (the only one in her life), cast a new light on the hectic production of Othello and on the personality of its director: a superstitious man who was a terrific dancer as well as a genius. Her words and writing also fill in some gaps about the troubled story of the film, which may be useful to historians who are trying to reconstruct the entire venture and also discover some traces of the filmmaker’s other projects. Alcaide additionally offers a fascinating glimpse of film production in Italy, as seen from an American perspective.