Decades after the Orson Welles champagne commercial aired, Mel Magazine spoke with Peter Shillingford, who operated the clapperboard one can see in the outtakes. He explained how it all began, starting with Welles arriving several hours after he was supposed to. Shillingford met him in his limousine, where it was abundantly clear he was off. Welles mentioned how he had driven from a late shoot in Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and he had taken a sleeping pill to get some rest in the car, but it had only begun kicking in. They tried filming it anyway, with Welles obviously being out of sorts and slurring his speech.
Shillingford realized Welles needed to rest, so they gave him a bed to sleep it off for a while. He stated how things then got testy, “The agency men were furious. They were talking about suing him, talking about firing him. They hated him anyway, so they’d be happy to be rid of him, but I thought, if we maybe gave him a couple of hours, we could salvage the day.” After a quick rest, they went back to shooting, with Welles able to do his part magnificently.
But the outtakes were there, and thanks to the internet, they spread further than anyone likely could’ve imagined at the time. Numerous memes and remixes have emerged, including a video from Charles Cornell where he plays the piano in sync with Welles’ ramblings. The Orson Welles champagne commercial outtakes have officially become one of the most referenced things in the actor’s resume, right up there with Rosebud from “Citizen Kane.”
