By SETH THÉVOZ
Anyone interested in Orson Welles’ work has sooner or later chuckled along at ‘Frozen Peas’, the notorious out-take in which the actor-director tetchily took to task his director and sound engineer, whilst recording a series of commercials for Findus Frozen Foods. But what was the full story behind it?
Background
The Scandinavian company Findus began selling frozen foods in 1945. They were a client of the London office of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency as early as 1960, and continued hiring JWT until 1980. Welles was only one of a string of 1960s celebrity spokespersons for Findus ads – as late as 1967, TV character Alf Garnett had fronted an advert, and in 1968 TV game show host Michael Miles was used as a narrator.
Jonathan Lynn already shed some light on the background of Welles’ association with Findus. Back in 2016, he allowed me to share a preview from his memoirs, and what Welles told him in 1970:
“An ad agency called and asked me to do a voice over. I said I would. Then they said would I please come in and audition. ‘Audition?’ I said. ‘Surely to God there’s someone in your little agency who knows what my voice sounds like?’ Well, they said they knew my voice but it was for the client. So I went in. I wanted the money, I was trying to finish Chimes At Midnight [sic – Lynn may well have been mistaken about the project]. I auditioned and they offered me the part! Well, they asked me to go to some little basement studio in Wardour Street to record it. I demanded payment in advance. After I’d gotten the cheque I told them ‘I can’t come to Wardour Street next week, I have to be in Paris.’ I told them to bring their little tape-recorder and meet me at the Georges Cinq Hotel next Wednesday at eleven am. So they flew over to Paris, came to the hotel at eleven – and were told that I had checked out the day before.” He chortled happily. “I left them a message telling them to call me at the Gritti Palace in Venice. They did, and I told them to meet me there on Friday. When they got there I was gone – they found a message telling them to come to Vienna.” Now he was laughing uproariously. “I made them chase me all around Europe with their shitty little tape recorder for ten days. They were sorry they made me audition.”
Archives
The papers of the J. Walter Thompson agency are held by Britain’s History of Advertising Trust, who graciously shared copies of the adverts’ original production papers, which offer several interesting insights.
They were clearly recorded in a London studio, equipped to screen the visual elements identified – probably the “little basement studio in Wardour Street” in London’s Soho district, then still the centre of London’s film industry. The building was very likely the Pathé Studios at 103-109 Wardour Street, which was a functioning studio for hire from 1910-70, and hosted a myriad of recording sessions for different media. By 1970, the building was shabby, with closure looming.
What survives in the JWT archives are post-production scripts, matching Welles’ changes to the copy. The “Lincolnshire” segment from “Frozen Peas” was typed up on 19 January 1970.
That the post-production scripts reflect Welles’s final delivery is confirmed by comparing the scripts with Welles’s out-take readings – although the phrase “crumb crisp coating”, which apparently caused Welles so much annoyance, still appeared.
Another detail emerges from the papers. Most of Welles’s 1969 Findus ads were farmed out by JWT to Les Films Pierre Remont. A 1959 listing in Business Screen Magazine shows they had been based in Paris’ affluent 8eme arrondisement since 1949, specialising in filming adverts, with clients including JWT. Dimitri Dimka, the credited director of Welles’ 1969 Findus adverts, moved in similar circles to Welles – he had been a cinematographer on a 1959 documentary short by Montenegrin director Frédéric Rossif, who went on to co-direct with François Reichenbach the flattering 1968 ‘Nouvelle Vague’ French documentary Portrait: Orson Welles – one wonders if Rossif effected an introduction. Dimka directed Welles’s first six Findus adverts, although one was through a different company, the Geneva-based Listar International.
When it came to the fraught January 1970 recording session, the adverts were filmed by a new company, Film Fair, with a young director, Maurice Stevens. Welles’s obvious displeasure in the recordings was thus likely aggravated by dealing with a new director.
As noted, several of the adverts survive and have been digitised – dates are for post-production script write-ups:
- 30 January 1969: “Picking” (peas)
- 27 February 1969: “Sliced Braised Beef”
- 27 February 1969: “Braised Beef II”
- 6 March 1969: “Fish Portions”
- 6 May 1969: “Fresh Caught” (fish fingers)
- 4 August 1969: “Beefburger”
- 16 January 1970: “Fish Fingers” (Source of “Norway” out-takes)
- 19 January 1970: “Far West” (Source of “Beefburgers” out-takes)
- 19 January 1970: “Lincolnshire” (Source of “Frozen Peas” out-takes)
- 1970: “France”
- 1970: “Highlands” (sliced beef)
- 1970: “Normandy”
- 1970: “Shetland”
- 1970: “Sweden” (cod portions)
The documentation bears out the director’s comment in the out-take, “Orson, you did six [Findus commercials] last year”.
Two credits remained constant: J. Walter Thompson producer Roger Holland, and lighting/cinematographer Bob Zubouwitch.
Real people?
Lincolnshire’s “Mrs. Buckley”, Norway’s “Jon Stangeland” and the American West’s “Charlie Briggs” are listed as “artistes” in paperwork discussing visual advert elements, suggesting that they may have been real people rather than actors.
The format of the adverts made it clear that real people were being captured; typically farmers and fishermen, and surviving clips support this. I have been able to ascertain that the Buckleys of Lincolnshire are a long-standing agricultural family, and indeed that they still grow peas there today!
When was ‘Frozen Peas’ recorded?
The transcriptions of the three adverts in the out-take are dated three days apart. 16 January 1970 was a Friday, and 19 January 1970 was a Monday, suggesting some of the transcription work was simply left until after the weekend. It is therefore likely that ‘Frozen Peas’ was recorded sometime in the week up to and including 15 January 1970.
Jumps in production numbers lend credence to all eight commercials having been recorded together, in one mammoth recording session. This is doubly likely, as the 1970 voiceovers all follow the same structure: introducing a locale and person, discussing the Findus product, and finishing on “people like [person], who can taste the difference.”
Findus advertising after Welles
After the 1970 adverts, Findus reverted to rotating narrators. A 1972 commercial with English comedian Sam Kelly is so dated with its obnoxious materialism and casual sexism, it looks uncannily like the spoof advert in Michael Winner’s 1967 film I’ll Never Forget Whatsisname – which coincidentally featured Welles as the jaded, unscrupulous advertising executive producing such tripe. By 1974, Findus had a longer-term narrator, the dulcet Scottish tones of Gordon Jackson, best known for Upstairs, Downstairs. Two decades earlier, Jackson had worked for Welles, in the London stage production Moby Dick, Rehearsed.
Where do the Findus adverts fit in to Welles’s career?
At the time of these adverts, Welles was living with his wife and youngest daughter at the Mori family villa in Fregene, outside Rome, although he continued working all over Europe. He had three major projects underwayL The Deep, Orson’s Bag, and his long-standing Don Quixote. Of this period, Jean-Pierre Berthomé and Francois Thomas write in Orson Welles at Work (2006, trans, 2008):
In 1970, with The Deep, Orson’s Bag and also Don Quixote, Welles found himself with three pieces of work on which filming was more or less complete, but which he could not finish for lack of money. The negatives and positives were scattered in different places while continuity demanded the filming of shots in which the actors were present.
Welles’s therefore found himself doing more lucrative but intellectually “unrewarding” commercial voiceovers.
This period also saw his abrupt departure from Italy, in the wake of an Italian tabloid scandal. Thanks to Alberto Anile’s scholarly Orson Welles in Italy (2006, trans. 2013), we can trace his departure to February 1970, from the date of the offending article (17 February 1970). Thus ‘Frozen Peas’ was recorded just a month prior to this major upheaval in Welles’ life on several levels (including the rushed departure seeing all the reels of Don Quixote negative left behind). A February move to London was temporary, ahead of his move to America by July 1970. Thus the Findus commercials were at the very tail-end of his long European sojourn.
Swinging London
It seems highly likely the 1969 Findus recording dates in London would have coincided with filming the first ‘Swinging London’ scenes from Orson’s Bag, centred around Carnaby Street.
The Findus commercials were recorded in Soho’s Wardour Street, a short walk from Carnaby Street. These ‘Swinging London’ scenes were shot sometime between November 1968 and February 1969 – something I was able to confirm with the late Tim Brooke-Taylor, who in 2016 sent me his recollection of working with Welles. (Much of the material he sent me is reproduced in this 2017 interview here.)
Welles had first seen Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden in a (now mostly lost) TV comedy, Broaden Your Mind, which first aired on 28 October 1968. Brooke-Taylor recalled watching the first episode:
As the show finished the phone rang in Graeme’s flat. Graeme talked for a while, put the phone down and said, “That was Orson Welles.”
“Funny you should say that”, I said, “I was expecting a call from the Pope.”
“No, it really was him.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Welles asked Brooke-Taylor and Garden to write as well as perform several of the ‘Swinging London’ scenes, including ‘Carnaby Street’ and ‘Aristocrats’. Garden also narrated the ‘Churchill’ segment.
Intriguingly, while Brooke-Taylor and Garden would achieve fame as ‘The Goodies’ trio from 1970 along with Bill Oddie, and while Oddie was attached to the ‘Swinging London’ project, they were not all working on it at the same time. Brooke-Taylor recalled, “I don’t remember the ‘one-man band’ being part of it, though we certainly knew it as one of Bill Oddie’s songs.” When I asked Bill Oddie, he told me:
This is one of those lost events. I didn’t work with Orson Welles and I never met him. I was aware that Tim and Graeme did something, but I have no knowledge of [the song] One Man Band being incorporated. I wrote that for radio for [I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again, 1964-73], and as far as I recall it went no further.
It therefore seems likely the ‘One Man Band’ sequence was a belated addition by Welles (with or without Oddie’s knowledge), shot circa 1970, and edited into the 1969 footage. Welles was therefore juggling these reinventions of the material all through ‘Frozen Peas’.
Reputation
I recently spoke to Peter Shillingford, assistant director on several of the Paul Masson adverts, (including Welles’ other well-known out-take). Apparently, by the late 1970s, Welles bemoaned that he was having difficulty getting voiceover work.
Shillingford had three lunches with Welles at Ma Maison in 1979. What prompted their first meeting was Shillingford’s offer to help him secure more voiceover work. During the first lunch, it emerged that Welles had heard of the existence of a bootleg recording of him in circulation, but had not heard it himself. Shillingford had access to a copy, and played it to him over a subsequent lunch in Ma Maison, the two of them laughing along.
It appears that Shillingford’s efforts were not in vain – Welles’ credits in 1980 show a significant rise in the voiceover work Welles undertook compared to the late 1970s. Nonetheless, the ‘Frozen Peas’ bootleg tape continued to have a life of its own.
(Editor’s note: Seth Thévoz has written for Wellesnet about the Merchant of Venice restoration and Around the World stage show. Read more about Findus Frozen Peas story at sethalexanderthevoz.com/blog/
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