Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: Wayne died of lung cancer in Santa Monica, California. He was 81.

  John Wayne

  (MARION ROBERT MORRISON)

  Born May 26, 1907

  Died June 11, 1979

  The Duke. One of the giants of the cinema in more ways than one, 6́4½˝ Duke Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa. He was named after his grandfathers Marion Mitchell Morrison and Robert Emmett Brown. When he was four, following the birth of his brother, Robert Emmett Wayne (b. December 18, 1911, d. St Joseph’s Hospital, Burbank, July 25, 1970), his middle name was changed to Mitchell. His middle name was never Michael although he did like to tease people by claiming it was. Duke Wayne – the nickname came from an Airedale dog he owned as a boy – was the American hero who made the cinematic West safe for decent folks. Duke was raised in Glendale, California, from 1916 and, being a sporty lad, won a football scholarship to the University of Southern California where he was part of the famous ‘Thundering Herd’ side, the team that, legend has it, rampaged on Clara Bow’s lawn and in her bedroom. During the summer holidays Wayne worked as a general handyman on the Fox lot where he came to the attention of director John Ford, who was to have a pivotal effect in making Duke Wayne a star. Wayne began appearing in films in 1925 as an uncredited extra in Brown Of Harvard (1925) playing a Yale footballer, Bardelays The Magnificent (1926) as a spear-carrying guard and The Great K & A Train Robbery (1926). Two years later, he began playing bit parts in Ford’s films, usually billed as Duke Morrison. In 1930 Ford mentioned Wayne to his friend Raoul Walsh, resulting in him being cast in his first leading role in a film The Big Trail (1930) as Breck Coleman. However, Duke’s career seemed to be over before it had really begun as the public didn’t really take to him and although he appeared in over 60 films, stardom remained elusive. It was his role in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) in which Wayne played Henry, the Ringo Kid, that made him a star. (Trivia note: if you look carefully you can see rubber tyre tracks on the salt flats during the Indian chase.) From then on, often in tandem with Ford, Wayne became one of the biggest stars ever seen in America. His films included: Allegheny Uprising (1939) as Jim Smith, Dark Command (1940) as Bob Seton, Three Faces West (1940) as John Phillips, Seven Sinners (1940) as Lieutenant Dan Brent, Lady For A Night (1941) as Jack Morgan, Lady From Louisiana (1941) as John Reynolds, Reunion In France (1942) as Pat Talbot, Reap The Wild Wind (1942) as Captain Jack Stuart, In Old California (1942) as Tom Craig, Flying Tigers (1942) as Jim Gordon, A Lady Takes A Chance (1943) as Duke Hudkins, In Old Oklahoma (1943) as Dan Somers, Tall In The Saddle (1944) as Rocklin, Back To Bataan (1945) as Colonel Joseph Madden, Dakota (1945) as John Devlin, Without Reservations (1946) as Rusty Thomas, Desert Command (1946) as Tom Wayne (!), Angel And The Badman (1947) as Quirt Evans, which he also produced, Tycoon (1947) as Johnny Munroe, Fort Apache (1948) as Captain Kirby York, Red River (1948) as Thomas Dunson, The Fighting Kentuckian (1949) as John Breen, which he also produced, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949) as Captain Nathan Brittles, Sands Of Iwo Jima (1949) as Sergeant John M. Stryker, Rio Grande (1950) as Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke, Flying Leathernecks (1951) as Major Dan Kirby, the title role in Big Jim McLain (1952), Trouble Along the Way (1953) as Steve Williams, Island In The Sky (1953) as Captain Dooley, Blood Alley as Captain Tom Wilder, which he also produced, and The Searchers as Ethan Edwards, which prompted John Ford to quip, “I never knew the big son of bitch could act.” (Historical trivia point: in the film, Ethan Edwards gives a medal to his niece that he says was awarded him by the Confederate government. The Confederates didn’t give medals.) The Conqueror (1956) is undoubtedly one of the silliest movies ever made. Wayne playing Moghul Emperor Genghis Khan was not the most sensible or inspired piece of casting ever to hit Tinseltown. (It could have been worse. The original choice was Marlon Brando!) The critics were unanimous in their condemnation of the film. Leonard Maltin described it as “the silliest role of John Wayne’s career” while Leslie Halliwell called it, “[A] solemn pantomime [with] too many dull spots.” Jack Smith in The Los Angeles Times opined: “John Wayne as Genghis Khan – history’s most improbable piece of casting unless Mickey Rooney were to play Jesus in King Of Kings.” Robert Hatch of The Nation wrote, “A substandard horse opera featuring John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Susan Hayward as his hot but reluctant bride and almost all of the Utah beyond Salt Lake City as the Gobi Desert. History has not been served well and neither has the popcorn public.” Duke himself said, “The Conqueror is a Western in some ways. The way the screenplay reads, it is a cowboy picture and that is how I’m going to play Genghis Khan. I see him as a gunfighter.” One of Wayne’s less forgettable lines was “I am Temujin – barbarian – I fight! I love! I conquer – like a barbarian … The world? I will take it! The woman? I will tame her!” Other classic lines include this from Agnes Moorhead as Temujin’s mum: “My son has won the world; still he must conquer that redheaded Jezebel!” The Conqueror has to be seen to be disbelieved. The screenwriter Oscar Millard had been recommended to bashful billionaire producer Howard Hughes as being an expert on Genghis Khan. Millard later admitted, “I was such an authority on Genghis Khan that when I prudently looked him up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the half hour before the meeting I had trouble finding him because I couldn’t spell his name.” Hughes was so impressed by Millard’s erudition he spent $6 million making The Conqueror, but the film was a flop in America (it returned just $4.5 million). The public may have hated the movie but Hughes loved it and watched the film again and again. He lashed out a further $12 million buying up all the prints. The film was not shown publicly for 17 years (1957–1974). This was not because it was so bad, but rather because Hughes owned all the copies. It was the last film he personally produced before he began to develop strange ideas about personal hygiene. It was also RKO’s most expensive film up to that time. John Wayne came up with the inspiring idea of holding the première in Moscow. However, when it was shown to the Soviet Embassy not only did they nix the idea, but they also banned the film throughout the USSR. Filming of The Conqueror took place in Utah’s Escalante Desert where three of the mountains were renamed Mount Wayne, Mount Hughes and Mount Powell (after director Dick Powell). Unfortunately, it was also very near the site of 11 atomic bomb tests that had taken place three years earlier. One of the bombs was almost four times as powerful as that which devastated Hiroshima. It was only later that the area was discovered to be still replete with radiation poisoning. To add fuel to an already smouldering fire, Howard Hughes arranged for the shipment to Hollywood of 60 tons of (radioactive) soil so that filming could be completed. Horribly, many members of the 220-strong cast and crew began to suffer illnesses as a result of filming The Conqueror. Over 100 of them suffered from cancer, including director Dick Powell, Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead and Pedro Armendariz. Undeterred, Wayne marched on gallantly in Jet Pilot (1957) as Colonel Shannon, The Barbarian And The Geisha (1958) as Townsend Harris, Rio Bravo (1959) as Sheriff John T. Chance, The Horse Soldiers (1959) as Colonel John Marlowe, The Alamo (1960) as Colonel Davy Crockett, which he also produced (watch out for caravans in the battle sequences and a stuntman falling onto a mattress), North To Alaska (1960) as Sam McCord, in which Duke’s toupee falls off and then miraculously reappears, The Comancheros (1961) as Jake Cutter, The Longest Day (1962) as Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Vandervoort, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) as Tom Doniphon, Hatari! (1962) as Sean Mercer, How The West Was Won (1962) as General William Tecumseh Sherman, Donovan’s Reef (1963) as Michael Patrick ‘Guns’ Donovan, Circus World (1964) as Matt Masters, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) as The Centurion, The Sons Of Katie Elder (1965) as John Elder, El Dorado (1967) as Cole Thornton, The Green Berets (1968) as Colonel Mike Kirby (Wayne’s directorial paean to the Vietnam War. At the end Wayne tells Hamchunk, the orphaned Vietnamese boy, “You’re what this is all about” and walks off east into the setting sun!) and True Grit (1969) as one-eyed Western marshal Reuben J. ‘Rooster’ Cogburn. The film won Wayne his only Osca
r and only his second nomination, the first being for Sands Of Iwo Jima. When he accepted the golden trophy, he joked: “Wow. If I’d known, I’d have put that eyepatch on thirty-five years earlier.” He starred in Rio Lobo (1970) as Colonel Cord McNally, Chisum (1970) as John Simpson Chisum, Big Jake (1971) as Jacob McCandles, Cahill: United States Marshal (1973) as J.D. Cahill, McQ (1974) as Detective Lieutenant Lon McQ, Rooster Cogburn (1975) reprising the role that won him the Oscar as Rooster Cogburn, Brannigan (1975) as Jim Brannigan and he won great acclaim for playing yet another cowboy, this time one dying of cancer (a disease he was to succumb to in real life) in The Shootist (1976), his last film. On screen he was the embodiment of the all-American dream. Off screen Wayne was a hard-drinking right-wing conservative who saw pinko commies everywhere and publicly admired the barking mad Senator Joe McCarthy. He was married three times. His first wife, Josephine ‘Josie’ Saenz (June 24, 1933–December 25, 1945) accused him of cruelty and drunkenness. They had two sons (Michael Anthony, b. November 23, 1934, and Patrick John, b. July 15, 1939) and two daughters (Mary Antonia ‘Toni’, b. February 26, 1936, and Melinda Ann, b. December 3, 1940). On January 17, 1946, he married Esperanza Diaz Cellabos but they divorced on November 1, 1954. That same day he married Peruvian actress Pilar Palette Weldy and by her had three more children: Aissa (b. St Joseph’s Hospital, Burbank, California, March 31, 1956), John Ethan (b. Encino, California, February 22, 1962) and Marisa Carmela (b. San Fernando, California, February 22, 1966). They separated six years before his death but they never divorced. Wayne found solace with his secretary, Pat Stacy. Some criticised the lack of diversity in Wayne’s roles, but he rejoindered: “I play John Wayne in every picture regardless of the character, and I’ve been doing all right haven’t I ?”

  CAUSE: In 1964 Wayne contracted cancer from smoking three or four packets of cigarettes a day but made a successful recovery after a relapse. The public were initially told he was having surgery for an old ankle injury, as the studio believed that announcing he was suffering from cancer would be bad for his image. (When Wayne contracted cancer, he told his eldest son he had “the big C;” his son thought he meant he had the clap.) On March 29, 1978, he flew to Boston and was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he underwent surgery to replace the mitral valve in his heart with one from a pig’s heart. When he left hospital, Wayne joked he could “oink with the best of them”. On April 9, 1979, he made his last public appearance at the Oscars. Nine days later, he was admitted to Hoag Hospital with pneumonia. He was discharged after a week on April 25. During his enforced stay in hospital Wayne asked his son Michael to bring his .38 pistol to the hospital. When Patrick refused, Duke asked Pat Stacy, his boon companion, but she also demurred. On May 1, he was taken to UCLA Medical Center where he underwent an operation for a blocked intestinal passage on May 2. On May 23, 1979, Congress debated the awarding to Wayne of a special medal. Not long before his death Duke converted to Catholicism. On June 5, Wayne’s doctors stopped feeding him intravenously. He died at 5.23pm in Los Angeles, California, aged 72. On June 15, he was buried in an unmarked grave in Pacific View Memorial Park, 3500 Pacific View Drive, Newport Beach, California 92663.

  FURTHER READING: The John Wayne Story – George Carpozi, Jr (London: Coronet; 1977); Duke: The Life And Times Of John Wayne – Donald Shepherd And Robert Slatzer With Dave Grayson (New York: Doubleday, 1985); Duke: A Love Story – Pat Stacy With Beverly Linet (London: Corgi, 1985); John Wayne: My Life With The Duke – Pilar Wayne With Alex Thorleifson (London: New English Library, 1989).

  Johnny Weissmuller

  (PETER JONAS WEISSMULLER)

  Born June 2, 1904

  Died January 20, 1984

  Wet star – the only Tarzan. Born at 6.30pm in Freidorf, Rumania, the son of German Swabian parentage, he and his parents emigrated to America in 1908. (Later Weissmuller would tell people he was born in Windber, Pennsylvania, if anyone questioned his eligibility for the US national swimming team.) Weissmuller’s father landed a job as a miner, a job that was eventually to kill him when he contracted tuberculosis. On July 9, 1922, Weissmuller became the first man to swim 100m in less than a minute, achieving the feat in 58.6secs. On February 17, 1924, he went one better and lowered his time to 57.4secs. This world record would last for ten years. On July 18, 1924, he won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics for 400m freestyle and two days later added the 100m freestyle and 4x200m relay golds and a bronze in the water polo to his collection. Four years later, in Amsterdam on August 11, 1928, he retained his 100m gold, the fourth of his five Olympic golds. In 1930 while training for the 1932 Olympics, 6́ 3˝ Weissmuller was spotted by the BVD Underwear Company who offered him $500 a week to model their male lines. One of his pictures was spotted by Cyril Hume, a Hollywood writer who was adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs’ works for MGM and he was invited to audition for the role of Tarzan. The rest is history. He had made a couple of films prior to donning the famous loincloth, but his generally acknowledged film début came with Tarzan The Ape Man (1932). Weissmuller was called “the only man in Hollywood who’s natural in the flesh and can act without clothes” by MGM’s publicity department. He was the sixth actor to play Tarzan, the first in talkies and the first of four Olympic medallists to assume the role (the others being Buster Crabbe, Herman Brix and Glenn Morris). Over the next 16 years, Weissmuller donned the Lord of the Jungle’s loincloth 11 more times, in Tarzan And His Mate (1934), Tarzan Escapes (1936), Tarzan Finds A Son! (1939), Tarzan’s Secret Treasure (1941), Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942), Tarzan’s Desert Mystery (1943), Tarzan Triumphs (1943), Tarzan And The Amazons (1945), Tarzan And The Leopard Woman (1946), Tarzan And The Huntress (1947) and Tarzan And The Mermaids (1948). When he finally hung up his vine, Weissmuller took on the mantle of Jungle Jim in a series of films for Columbia: Jungle Jim (1948), The Lost Tribe (1949), Pygmy Island (1950), Captive Girl (1950), Mark Of The Gorilla (1950), Jungle Manhunt (1951), Fury Of The Congo (1951), Voodoo Tiger (1952), Jungle Jim In The Forbidden Land (1952), Valley Of Head Hunters (1953), Killer Ape (1953), Savage Mutiny (1953) and Jungle Man-Eaters (1954). His last movie job was playing a stage-hand in Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976). Weissmuller was married five times. His first wife was actress Bobbe Arnst, whom he married on February 28, 1931, two weeks after they met. They were divorced on October 4, 1932, after she told the hearing that Weissmuller rarely went home for dinner. On October 8, 1933, he married Mexican Spitfire Lupe Velez. Theirs was a fiery match with many separations. They finally divorced on August 15, 1938. On August 20, 1939, he married socialite Beryl Scott, by whom he had three children: John Scott (b. September 23, 1940), Wendy Ann (b. June 1, 1942) and Heidi Elizabeth (b. July 20, 1943, k. 1962 in a car accident). The couple was divorced on January 29, 1948. Five hours later, he married golfer Ailene Gates. They divorced after 14 years. On April 23, 1963, he married Maria Block at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas.

  CAUSE: He died at his home in Acapulco, Mexico, aged 79 following a series of strokes.

  Orson Welles

  Born May 6, 1915

  Died October 10, 1985

  Wunderkind. Born at 463½ Park Avenue, Kenosha, Wisconsin, George Orson Welles was the precocious enfant terrible of the American cinema and theatre. His thinly disguised roman-à-clef Citizen Kane (1941) based on the figure of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst has been acclaimed as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, films of all time. Welles’ career began when he was still a teen, writing and directing plays. In the 1930s he became a radio star, his mellifluous voice being perfect for the medium. Welles had a distinguished reputation as an actor-writer-producer-director but nothing was able to prepare America for an Orson Welles radio production that took to the air on October 30, 1938. It made him a household name. The Mercury Theater On The Air produced a large number of classic shows, including adaptations of Heart Of Darkness, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist and Around The World In 80 Days. Welles was a voracious reader of fiction, always on the lookout for a po
ssible new production. He had prepared R.D. Blackmore’s classic Lorna Doone for broadcast but as the show date approached he began to have his doubts about it. The only other piece that Mercury had bought the rights to was H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel The War Of The Worlds. The original story took place in England around the turn of the century and the script retained those details. Welles decided the story needed modernisation. He changed the location to the United States and brought the chronology up to date. A second draft was prepared and still Welles made changes and more changes. The date scheduled for the broadcast – Hallowe’en Eve – was perfect for his plans. It should be remembered that world events at the time were in tumult. The Munich crisis was at its height. Jews were being systematically murdered and Hitler was claiming the Sudetenland while in the Far East Japanese behaviour was disturbingly menacing. It was in this climate that Welles chose to broadcast what became the most famous radio show of all time. A final draft was sent to the bigwigs at CBS, who were horrified by the show’s realism and insisted that 28 changes be made before it took to the air. At 7.58pm Welles took his place in the studio. He drank an entire bottle of pineapple juice, clamped his headphones in place, loosened his tie and gave the signal for the show to start at exactly 8pm. Announcer Dan Seymour made his usual introduction before Bernard Herrmann’s Orchestra played the show’s theme tune from Tchaikovsky’s well-worn B-flat-minor piano concerto. The show was under way. A weather report was followed by dance music. Suddenly, the music was interrupted by a newsflash that a Professor Farrell of Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, had noticed a series of gas explosions on Mars. The show went over live “to the world-famous astronomer” Professor Richard Pierson (played by Welles) in Princeton, New Jersey for up-to-the-minute information. As Pierson is being interviewed, he is told that an earthquake-sized shock has hit Grovers Mill, New Jersey, 22 miles from Trenton. A glowing object of yellowish-white metal 30 yards in diameter has been observed. Meanwhile, the programme returned to dance music courtesy of Bobby Millette and his orchestra. Next, the listener was taken to Wilmuth Farm in Grovers Mill where Carl Phillips, an “on-the-spot reporter,” was waiting with the latest news. As the ‘reporter’ spoke, the object gave off a hissing sound. Said Phillips, “This end of the thing is beginning to flake off! The top is beginning to rotate like a screw! The thing must be hollow.” Something crawls out of the top. “I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks … Are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be … good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a grey snake.” Suddenly, the creatures are at large; 40 people are killed. Screams are heard and the broadcast stopped “due to circumstances beyond our control.” It was estimated that approximately 12 per cent of the radio audience (six million people) were listening to the show at this point and many really believed the earth was being invaded by Martians. Soon CBS’ switchboard lit up with concerned listeners wanting to know if the show was real or a dramatisation. Two policemen even turned up at the studio to seek verification and one tried to barge his way in for further information but was stopped by a burly actor. People began to panic. In Harlem many fled to churches to pray while others believed (hoped?) they would be safe from the Martian’s deadly gas in the countryside. Many dug out the gas masks they had been issued during the First World War. The roads to Philadelphia and New York were jammed with cars. The Associated Press issued a bulletin: “Note to Editors: Queries to newspapers from radio listeners throughout the United States tonight, regarding a reported meteor fall which killed a number of New Jerseyites, are a result of a radio dramatisation. The A.P., 8.48pm.” The panic was at its highest in Trenton itself where people believed they had just minutes before they were annihilated by Martians. In New York City two women who had heard the broadcast rang a cinema and demanded their husbands be alerted to the danger. This caused further panic and soon the place was empty. In Rhode Island people urged the power station to cut the state lights so the Martians wouldn’t be able to see where they were going. Students at a North Carolina university jammed the city exchange ringing their parents and begging to be collected. In Pittsburgh a man returned home to allegedly find his wife about to take poison saying, “I’d rather die this way than that.” A small town called Concrete in Washington was unfortunate enough to suffer a power cut, which only served to further convince the townsfolk that the Martians were at hand. In Hillside, New Jersey, a frantic man dashed into the police station and begged for a gas mask as protection against “the terrible people spraying liquid gas all over the Jersey Meadows”. In San Francisco volunteers poured into the local army headquarters ready to take up arms against the fiendish invaders. Even some members of the fourth estate were taken in. The photographers of the New York Herald Tribune donned gas masks in preparation for going into the streets to take pictures of the advancing invaders. As more police arrived at the CBS studios Welles was aware that the show had been noteworthy but didn’t realise just how sensational had been its effect. At the end of the broadcast he read a statement: “This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that The War Of The Worlds has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theater’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! Starting now, we couldn’t soap all your windows and steal all your garden gates, by tomorrow night … so we did the next best thing. We annihilated the world before your very ears, and utterly destroyed the CBS. You will be relieved, I hope, to learn that we didn’t mean it, and that both institutions are still open for business. So goodbye everybody and, remember, please for the next day or so, the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian … it’s Hallowe’en.” CBS were furious at Welles and the cast were locked in a back room at the station until every copy of the script was either destroyed or locked away. They were released in the early hours of the morning. After just a few hours’ sleep, Welles was dragged before the press to explain his actions. Unsurprisingly for America, lawsuits worth $750,000 were issued against Welles and CBS by people who claimed to have suffered emotional distress and injuries. Cleverly, Welles had ensured beforehand that he was exempt from personal liability so CBS had to fight all the cases itself. The company settled many of them out of court, believing it cheaper than fighting the suits. Over the next few days newspaper columnists wrote editorials criticising the “incredible stupidity” and “gullibility” of the American public. Oddly, the people least fooled by the broadcast were children, who recognised the voice of Orson Welles from his portrayal of their hero, The Shadow. On the stage Welles was fêted for his voodoo production of Macbeth in Harlem. RKO rushed to sign Welles up and promised him artistic and creative autonomy over his films. Welles’ first major film was his biopic of William Randolph Hearst. It made his reputation but also nearly killed off his professional life. Welles’ career stalled after Citizen Kane – most believe he was stymied by the power of Hearst but even Louis B. Mayer of MGM tried to buy the print and bury it, literally. The film was a critical but not a commercial success; it garnered just one Oscar for Best Screenplay. Welles directed but didn’t appear in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) supplying his voice for the narration. New bosses at RKO were not impressed by the film and had it recut without Welles’ knowledge. With his contract at an end Welles found work difficult to come by. He appeared in Jane Eyre (1944) as Edward Rochester, Tomorrow Is Forever (1946) as John A. MacDonald/Erik Kessler which he also directed and The Stranger (1946) as Charles Rankin/Franz Kindler. Following The Lady From Shanghai (1948) in which he played Michael O’Hara and co-starred with then wife Rita Hayworth. (Welles thought up the title because he was being hounded by studio bosses. In fact, there is no character from Shanghai in the movie.) He also made a low-budget version of Macbeth (1948), playing the title role himself. Believing his career
in America to be over, Welles migrated to Europe where he appeared as Harry Lime in the massively successful The Third Man (1949). He began filming Othello but ran out of money and the film wasn’t completed until 1955. In June of that year he played Captain Ahab in a production of Moby Dick at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London. Welles so hated his own nose that he always wore a false one on stage. During a performance of the play the proboscis began to come loose during an integral part of the play. Co-star Kenneth Williams (Elijah) tried to warn Gordon Jackson (Ishmael) about the imminent fall, but it was too late and as Welles delivered the line “Get that white whale, men,” the nose fell to the floor, where he neatly drop kicked it into the stalls. It was during rehearsals for the same production that Welles called out, when Jackson delivered the opening line, “Call me Ishmael,” “And if a man answers, hang up!” In the Fifties Welles spent much of his time trying and failing to get various projects off the ground. One notable success was Touch Of Evil (1958), a brooding film noir thriller set in a Mexican border town; Welles directed and also played the part of maverick police chief Hank Quinlan. He also appeared in, among others, Trent’s Last Case (1952) as Sigsbee Manderson, Napoléon (1955) as Sir Hudson Lowe, Moby Dick (1956) as Father Mapple, Compulsion (1959) as Jonathan Wilk, and Ferry To Hong Kong (1959) as Captain Hart aka Singapore Cecil. In the 1960s and later in his life, Welles began to balloon in size and was known to a new audience not for his work in the past but for advertising Paul Masson wine. His later films included: Waterloo (1970) as King Louis XVIII, 12 Plus 1 (1970) as Markan, Catch-22 (1970) as General Dreedle, Necromancy (1972) as Mr Cato, Treasure Island (1973) as Long John Silver, Voyage Of The Damned (1976) as Estedes, The Muppet Movie (1979) as Lew Lord, Butterfly (1981) as Judge Rauch, History Of The World: Part I (1981), Where Is Parsifal? (1983) as Klingsor and Someone To Love (1987) as Danny’s friend. Welles was married three times.