DVD Tuesday When Charlton Heston met Orson Welles in praise of Touch of Evil one wild and sleazy ride through the darkness at the edge of border townsWhen you think Charlton Heston you think Ben-Hur Planet of the Apes The Omega Man the nuttier of two precursors to Will Smiths I Am Legend The Ten Commandments and Soylent Green spoiler alert Soylent Green is people But one of my favorite Heston movies is one of his less well-known the thriller Touch of Evil directed by and costarring Orson Welles along with Janet Leigh Marlene Dietrich Joseph Cotten and Zsa Zsa Gabor now thats a cast And it opens with one of the most justly famous tracking shots in movie history a sinuous three-minute and 20-second glide through the crowded streets of seedy Los Robles following behind a white convertible en route to the US border with an ominous tick tick tick always audible through the clamor of ambient noise and Henry Mancinis ominously jazzy
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Question: A strange subject came up at work the other day. Who was the actor on the Paul Masson wine commercial of several years ago who said, "Drink no wine before its time?" Thank you.
Answer: Actually, Chris, that's sell no wine, as in, "We will sell no wine before its time." And that was no mere actor, mind you. That was the late, great Orson Welles, who, together with writer Howard Koch, scared the bejesus out of the entire country by convincing listeners of the too-real radio production War of the Worlds that we really were being invaded by aliens in 1938.
Welles, who was overweight and being treated for a heart condition and diabetes at the time of his death in 1985, was an actor, producer, writer and director who worked on 60 movies in his lifetime after kicking off his long showbiz career on the stage. He shilled for Masson and other companies for what he termed "grocery
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