When Mel Brooks overpaid Orson Welles for his voice work
While Orson Welles‘ acting and directing talents remain undoubted, his work as a voice actor also brought him widespread acclaim. After all, it was Welles’ voice on the radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds that led listeners to believe that there was a genuine invasion of Earth from another lifeform.
When Mel Brooks wrote his History of the World, Part I, he only had one person in mind to narrate its chapters. He immediately contacted Welles, knowing he had the experience and excellence in delivering the lines in his iconic booming voice. However, upon reflection, Brooks admitted that he made a slight mistake in his dealing with Welles, not because he hired the wrong man, but because he paid him way too much money as an agreed fee. Brooks was under the belief that Welles would work from nine to five for five days.
“I paid him for five days,” he told the BFI. “He was like, ‘I want $5,000 a day,’ right? So he started at, like, to test his voice out. This is about 10 to nine in the morning. By 11:30, 12 o’clock, he had done all of the narration; it was all perfect.” Welles’ prior experience meant that he could burn through the script and have all his work done by midday.
Brooks continued: “He said, ‘Any changes? I’ll do anything you want, Mel.’ I said, ‘It’s flat-out perfect,’ you know? I said, ‘My god, I could have paid you $5,000!'” So Brooks could have saved himself a fortune for sure. However, it should be said that the money spent certainly wasn’t a waste of money, as Brooks knew he wanted Welles, and he got his man.
When Brooks was asked what Welles wanted to spend his excess cash on, he replied: “He said, ‘Cuban cigars and Sevruga caviar’. He said, ‘I would have included women, but I’m getting just a little too heavy for that kind of athletic…'” Welles was known to have fine taste and loved a cigar, so it’s unsurprising.
Brooks continued: “So he was gonna buy [them] — I said, ‘Well, how many, you know, you can get about a hundred Cuban cigars,’ and he said, ‘A lot of Sevruga. I could’ve bought beluga, but Sevruga is just as good and half the price.’ You know, he was an incredible man”.
He was an incredible man, indeed, and Welles lent History of the World, Part I his inimitable voice. We highly doubt that Brooks would have been disappointed with the result, even if he did feel slightly short-changed.
