Orson Welles: The Lean Years

 

A guy’s got to do what a guy’s got to do.

Mostly everybody knows that Orson Welles is famous for arguably the greatest movie ever made.

Citizen Kane has topped the annual list of monumental movies for decades. It’s well known that Welles drunkenly endorsed Paul Masson wines in the later part of his career.

But, most people don’t know what happened in between when Welles had trouble finding financing for his movie projects. He alienated studio bosses and television executives.

Here are a few facts about what Welles did during that time to facilitate fundraising for his projects.

Welles supplemented his income by being the training jockey of Secretariat. It’s been said that is the reason the horse was fast enough to win the triple crown with a regular jockey.

Orson was a stand-in at Sea World if some attractions became ill.

He was a popular seat filler at televised award shows because he could fill two seats instead of only one, cutting down on the cost of paying multiple people.

Welles could cast as much shade as 10 umbrellas making him an asset to resorts and outdoor parties.

His ability to portray multiple planets made him popular with mobile live action planetariums.

Orson was an emergency fill-in at the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and received an award of merit for saving the day by replacing a punctured Bullwinkle seamlessly without the attendees knowing.

Two of his screen appearances were as the Stay Puft marshmallow man in Ghostbusters and Welles also portrayed the Death Star in the movie Star Wars.

He once stood in as the country of Australia that was obscured by the smoke of wildfires during a televised flyover by Skylab in 1977.

The Rolling Stones employed Welles as a concert stage when the official one didn’t arrive in time in Mexico City.

Welles saved much of the environment of the coast of Alaska when he volunteered and was able to plug the hole in the Exxon Valdez.

Orson single handedly blocked and narrowly stopped an avalanche from destroying Zermatt Switzerland.

And that’s only a few.

The jobs Welles did paid for his independent film projects that he would complete during his years in the entertainment wilderness of the 1960's and ‘70’s. We are all beneficiaries of his vision. His life was a lesson in perseverance.

Photo via Robert Drew, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons