When he needed money to support passion projects, Orson Welles saw few things — maybe no things, for all we know — as unworthy of his time. From documentary narration to a frozen peas commercial to a Transformers cartoon to champagne ads, he became, for better and for worse, a cultural Swiss army knife that could be applied to the highest and lowest forms alike. Somewhere along the line was a form of work he’d probably be well-suited for: talk show host, which he got to try out in 1979’s one-time-only The Orson Welles Show. The problem is that, when this series never even made it to air, he never got to do much of anything with such a title.
You can sort of understand why if you give the thing a watch — but that’s not necessarily a reflection on its quality. To my mind, this is pretty great stuff right out of the gate, what with a mixture of stock muzak, garish lighting, unnecessary cuts, jittery camera moves, the host’s clear exasperation, gales of canned laughter, and other aural incongruities veering the program from banal into surreal. There’s almost nothing to be gleaned from its first section, an interview with Burt Reynolds — notwithstanding the fact that both host and guest are wearing the same shirt-jacket combination — but his bits with The Muppets, Jim Henson, and Frank Oz are great; the show peaks at its climax, wherein Welles performs magic tricks with Angie Dickinson (!), including a stage performance not at all unlike Russian Roulette. (The great man shouting “Target! Target, TARGET!” as he’s tied up and blindfolded is a genuinely jaw-dropping bit of work.) And then things conclude with its host reciting a poem about a girl named Jenny. Although The Orson Welles Show is a bit long in the tooth, you can skip through a whole middle section and find treasures elsewhere — the sort of segments that amaze in their mere existence.
Have a look at the whole thing below (via Henson Rarities and Open Culture):