Orson Welles acted in a series of advertisements for Paul Masson's California wine from 1978 to 1981, best known for their slogan "We will sell no wine before its time," becoming a much-parodied cultural trope of the late 20th century. Years later, the commercials regained notoriety when a bootleg recording of out-takes was distributed, showing an apparently inebriated Welles on the set of one of the commercials.
Background In 1978, Paul Masson's California wines hired actor-director Orson Welles to make a commercial for their "Emerald Dry" white table wine. Although Paul Masson's winery had been producing California wines since 1892, they had long catered to the lower end of the wine market. The commercial was part of an effort to rebrand as a higher-end wine producer, tying in with a period of diversification, when they were seeking to expand from the sparkling wines which had first brought them success, and to sell more of their other wine ranges, including chablis, burgundy, riesling, chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, port and sherry. As The New York Times noted in 1990, Paul Masson's long-term problem remained the same: "While many consumers know them—who can forget Orson Welles's breathy incantation of 'We will sell no wine before its time' for Masson—they lack cachet."
After the success of the commercial, Welles was signed to a Paul Masson contract worth $500,000 a year plus residuals, making further ads for the brand on television and in print, which continued for three years until his sacking by the company in 1981. Despite Welles's poor behavior on set, Paul Masson was described as "a very happy client", with sales of their wine reportedly rising by 30% during the Welles advertising campaign.
By this stage in his career, Welles found it nearly impossible to obtain work as a director (his last directorial credit to be released in his lifetime was a television movie in West Germany, which aired in 1978). From the mid-1970s onwards, his only acting credits were cameo appearances, mostly low-budget. He was heavily dependent for his income on ads for products of variable quality. These included Carlsberg beer, Domecq sherry, Sandeman's port (playing the "Sandeman Don" in a TV advertisement), Jim Beam bourbon whisky, Nikka Japanese G&G whisky, Perrier mineral water, Nashua photocopiers, Vivitar instant cameras, Preview pay-per-view television, the board game Dark Tower, Eastern Air Lines, Texaco, Post's Shredded Wheat, Hayden Flour Mills, Lone Star Cement, Walt Disney World, Uniroyal tyres, and Findus frozen foods. Although Welles had made ads for his entire career, beginning when he was a well known radio actor in the 1930s, by the late 1970s these had become his staple, and he was often anonymously directing them as well. John Annarino, the advertising executive handling the Paul Masson account at the time, remembered that Welles "was eager for almost any kind of work in the early 1980s, hoping to complete a film that was languishing in some European vault (The Other Side of the Wind)." Welles was often dismissive of the work, pointing out that he tended to be hired "to give a little class" to such productions.
Offscreen, Welles was dismissive about the Paul Masson commercials' claims to high culture. When asked during shooting to liken a Paul Masson wine to a violin by Stradivarius, he complained, "Come on, gentlemen, now really! You have a nice, pleasant little cheap wine here. You haven't gotten the presumption to compare it to a Stradivarius violin. It's odious." Welles was not alone in mocking the pretensions of the adverts—even crew members on the set would spout spoofs such as, "We will sell the swine no more wine until it's brine!"
Tensions between Welles and DDB Needham The advertising campaign was marked by animosity between Welles and the advertising agency which commissioned the ads, DDB Needham. Welles once complained to his regular lunching companion, the director Henry Jaglom, "I have never seen more seedier, about-to-be-fired sad sacks than were responsible for those Paul Masson ads. The agency hated me because I kept trying to improve their copy." The DDB Needham executive who handled the Paul Masson account, John Annarino, responded to the 2013 publication of Welles transcripts describing the commercials by sharing his own reminiscences with his local paper, The Desert Sun, and recalling of the experience, "It was no picnic." This acrimony was underlined by the assistant director, Peter Shillingford, who recalled:
Shillingford notes that during the infamous drunken outtake, "The agency men were furious. They were talking about suing him, talking about firing him. They hated him anyway." However, he went on to describe how the adverts usually proceeded:
Crew Producer: John Annarino Director: Jim Hallowes Production Supervisor, assistant director and Clapperboard Assistant: Peter Shillingford (first five adverts only) Cinematographer: Mike Chevalier First assistant camera: Randall Robinson
Ad synopses
1978: Original ad—Beethoven, Emerald Dry
The first Paul Masson ad had Welles listening to the opening of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 on a record player and remarking:
John Annarino recalls that Welles could be difficult on set, and wrote:
A brief out-take survives from the first advert, of Welles scowling upon being told, "Action!", holding his hand up and saying, "Do you mind not saying 'Action'?"
Subsequent commercials
1978: Dressing room, Rhine Castle
The second ad showed Welles with a bottle of Rhine Castle riesling in a theatre dressing room, in theatrical costume and makeup, telling the camera:
The setting of a theatre was a somewhat incongruous one—at the time of shooting, Welles had neither acted in nor directed any plays for 18 years. Annarino remembers filming the commercial:
1978: House party, "Champagne"
This showed Welles hosting a party, supposedly in his home (actually filmed in a rented Los Angeles mansion), with background piano accompaniment, telling the camera,
It was during the filming of this ad that Welles complained about the extras hired for the scene. Welles's biographer Barbara Leaming describes the occasion:
1979: Gone With the Wind, Emerald Dry
Reading a copy of Gone with the Wind at a table in the garden of his real-life house at 1717 North Stanley Avenue, off Hollywood Boulevard, Welles says:
This ad was reportedly a last-minute improvisation by Welles after he dismissed the original script he was given, which compared Paul Masson wine to a Stradivarius violin.
1980: "French" "Champagne"
In what inadvertently became the most famous Paul Masson ad due to the leaked out-takes (see below), Welles was found sitting at a drinks party with two unnamed young people, announcing,
Welles's apparently drunken inability to get through this script without severely slurring his speech, visibly swaying as he propped himself up at the table, formed the basis of the out-takes.
1980: Chateau tasting party, Chablis
This had Welles seated in the gardens in front of the portal of Paul Masson's chateau (the entrance to an eighteenth century Spanish church, imported to Saratoga, California) in the San Francisco Bay Area, surrounded by young people:
1980: Barbecue, Burgundy
The penultimate time Welles appeared in a television ad in the series, this one had Welles seated at a barbecue, surrounded by young people:
1981: Park, Emerald Dry
This was Welles's last physical appearance in a Paul Masson television advert, and was restricted to one brief shot at the end of the ad, although he narrated. The advert has the minuet from Boccherini's String Quintet in E major playing in the background, and after a brief opening shot of the Paul Masson chateau, there follows a montage of rural landscapes and pouring wine, finishing on Welles in a park, as he narrates throughout:
1981: Europeans, Carafe Welles simply provided the voiceover for his last Paul Masson television ad—he did not appear in person. The ad sought to promote a range of Paul Masson wines, focussing on the distinctive "carafe"-shaped bottle they came in, complete with jam-jar top, and portrayed various European families drinking wine with meals. The voiceover backed by guitar music stated:
This was the only Paul Masson television ad Welles did in which he did not say the phrase "will sell no wine before its time"—although a caption at the end does repeat this motto.
It appears that this version of the advert was short-lived. After Welles was sacked by Paul Masson, later in 1981 the commercial began running in a re-dubbed version, using the voiceover of a different narrator.
1980-1981: Print ads, Pinot Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon The last of Welles's adverts for Paul Masson were two print adverts featuring the director smiling over a glass and a bottle, released to tie in with the television adverts; one for Pinot Chardonnay, the other for Cabernet Sauvignon.
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Out-takes Drunken out-takes The best-known series of out-takes consists of three takes for the "French champagne" advertisement. In the first, an off-screen voice yells "Action," but Welles does not react for eight full seconds. "Action Orson, please," the offscreen voice says after a pause. "He doesn't do anything?", asks Welles, referring to the actor holding the champagne bottle, seemingly unaware he himself was intended to act first.
The second and third takes consist of Welles attempting his monologue, though his words are slurred:
Welles was interrupted by an offscreen voice shouting "Cut!" before finishing his lines. Throughout the takes, Welles appears to be having trouble remaining upright, clearly propping himself up on the table while tapping his fingers impatiently, and several of the extras are visibly struggling not to laugh.
As part of his Paul Masson contract, Welles was given elaborate lunches prior to filming in the afternoon. John Annarino, the DDB Needham advertising executive handling the Paul Masson account, recalled that at these pre-shoot lunches, "Welles found it "barbaric" not to begin a meal with soup," and noted of Welles's lunchtime drinking, "Orson liked Paul Masson's cabernet. He often called the ad agency and instructed, 'Send more red.' The agency sent more red." It has been speculated that this is what may have led to his state during the recording session. However, Assistant Director Peter Shillingford disputed this: "I've read that he'd demand these huge meals, but he never ate lunch on the shoots I did with him. I'd sit with him and have a snack and he'd tell stories of old Hollywood and they were outrageous."
In 2021, Shillingford went on the record for the first time, to give a far fuller account of the day than had previously emerged:
Shillingford went on to describe what happened after the out-takes:
The final advert aired managed to avoid embarrassment about Welles's state, though it does not fully bear out Shillingford's insistence that Welles had wholly sobered up by the afternoon. The broadcast version used a combination of retakes (a close-up of Welles holding a champagne flute), cuts away from Welles to close-ups of the wine bottle, and some (not entirely synchronized) dubbing made by Welles later, when he was in a more sober state, over some of the footage shot when he was still evidently inebriated. Jim Hallowes, the director of the advertisement, observed on his personal website in 2009 that it was a "challenge...in dealing with a quite different side of Mr. Welles."
For decades, the clip was only available in blurry, faded Nth-generation copies circulated on VHS cassette, several of which were circulated by voice actor Maurice LaMarche, who regularly impersonated Welles' voice. In recent years, high-quality versions can easily be found on YouTube, having been uploaded by the advert's director.
Beethoven out-takes