After a recent discussion on Notablog that examined cancel culture and comedy, I was watching the film “Touch of Evil” (1958), starring Orson Welles, and I got a kick out of the fact that Welles—who also directed and wrote the screenplay for the film—incorporated a jab at his own weight gain, by way of dialogue with Marlene Dietrich:
Hank Quinlan (Welles): “I’m Hank Quinlan.”
Tanya (Dietrich): “I didn’t recognize you. You should lay off those candy bars.”
Check out this exchange here [YouTube link].
Twenty years later, in 1978, “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast: Frank Sinatra“, “Mr. Warmth” himself, Don Rickles, took it one step further [YouTube link].
Looking at Welles on the dais, Rickles says:
“And Orson Welles, thirty years ago you were handsome and now we’re gonna put Goodyear on your face and fly you over the beach for a half hour.”
Welles laughed out loud … but Welles clearly had had the first laugh, and the last laugh. For Welles, as for another star in another film: “It was my joke, you see? They were laughing with me, not at me.”
At a time when laughs are hard to come by, this gave me a much-needed chuckle today.
