The Voice of Orson Welles

“Orson Welles had, by some confluence of a peripatetic childhood, a precise ear, radio and theater experience, and sheer genetic luck, the most singularly beautiful speaking voice in American film. That instantly recognizable ‘mighty Wurlitzer of a voice’,” as critic Tom Shales called it, was virtually considered a national resource; the ways he used and (in some views) misused it were critiqued all his life and well after he died. Welles earned so much derision for his Paul Masson wine ads that nearly every major obituary writer managed to tut-tut over it when he died in 1985.”

From “The Voice of Orson Welles” by Smith Nehme for Criterion; Portrait by Richard Avedon 

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