“He’s become a joke with a celebrity wife”: Every actor Orson Welles bitterly hated
He may be regarded as one of the most naturally gifted and influential filmmakers of all time, but Orson Welles could have realistically enjoyed a much greater career than he ultimately did had he not developed the recurring habit of becoming his own worst enemy.
By the time his unforgettable War of the Worlds radio show aired in 1953, he may have only been 23 years old, but he’d already gained experience mounting acclaimed stage productions. When he decided to try his hand at feature films, he only went and debuted with one of the greatest ever made.
Welles was only 26 when Citizen Kane was released, and after writing, directing, producing, and starring in an instant classic, the cinematic world was his oyster. There were intermittent flashes of greatness in between, but his desire to maintain complete creative autonomy over his work led to countless false starts, repeated money troubles, and the latter decades of his career being dedicated to a slew of uninspiring projects.
Having been welcomed into the Hollywood machine at a very early age before opting to turn his back on it entirely, Welles ended up forming some vicious opinions about many of his peers and contemporaries. A lot of them were the biggest names of their era and many of them ranks among the most famous stars there’s ever been, but he was more than happy to blast them with both barrels.
Peter Biskind’s book My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles was created from tapes that were discovered long after his death in 1985, offering an illuminating insight into what a maverick talent saw when he cast his eyes across the state of cinema during his time spent navigating its treacherous waters.
Laurence Olivier? “Stupid”. Spencer Tracy? “Hateful”. He referred to the former’s production of King Lear for the BBC as “the worst things I ever saw in my life” while he found himself “having a hard time trying to think of a great Tracy performance” as it applied to the latter. He called Charlie Chaplin “arrogant”, branded James Stewart a “bad actor,” and that was only the tip of a venomous iceberg.
In Welles’ estimation, Joan Fontaine only had “two expressions, and that’s it”, Norma Shearer was “one of the most minimally talented ladies to ever appear on the silver screen,” Academy Award winner Jennifer Jones was “hopeless,” but was nothing compared to how he felt about Bette Davis. Welles “never could stand looking at” her, which in his mind meant “I don’t want to see her act.”
John Wayne does get a pass for having “some of the best manners of almost any actor I’ve ever met in Hollywood,” but Richard Burton does not. “Burton had great talent,” Welles offered before adding a barbed addendum. “He’s ruined his gifts. He’s become a joke with a celebrity wife. Now he just works for money, does the worst shit.”
Suffice to say, Welles was not interested in playing the celebrity game, although it begs the question as to whether or not the subjects of his fury had any idea how he really felt about them when they travelled in the same circles.
