Orson Welles: Great Actor, Great Director, Great Eater

The What Looks Good? Hall of Fame is dedicated to the celebration of the best and brightest food dishes the culinary world has to offer, yet I have made the decision to open up non-food entities to nomination and induction. The Hall of Fame should be as much a celebration of eating as it is a celebration of that which is eaten, and with that in mind I am creating a Hall of Fame Eater category. Inductees must be wholly committed to the art of eating, so much so that it defines a large part of who they are as people. Also, these people will more than likely all be very, very fat--though that is far from a strict criteria, the Hall of Fame allows eaters of all shapes and sizes. These eaters will be individuals committed to acts of consumption that go above and beyond normal human gastronomic limits. With that in mind, I can think of no better inaugural inductee than one of the greatest eaters--and one of the greatest actor/directors--of all time: Mr. Orson Welles.

Welles' size in the later years of his life show us that he was committed to eating, but how committed he was, most people do not know. In fact, he worked with great diligence to attain his later size, eating amounts most people can scarcely imagine. One of his greatest feats was accomplished while filming Citizen Kane, where it is said that he regularly ate a dinner that consisted of two steaks, each with a baked potato, a whole pineapple, triple pistachio ice cream, and a bottle of scotch. On many occasions I've thought about attempting to copy this feat, but I quickly change my mind whenever I really think about how much food that is. That act alone is enough to seal his place in the What Looks Good? Hall of Fame, and it is just one of the many reasons why he is one of my idols.

Welles' love for food has been captured most accurately in the brilliant-but-cancelled Jon Lovitz animated show, The Critic, which blends together his love for food with his famous fussiness, once captured in an outtake of a radio commercial about frozen peas. Here are a few wonderful Welles lines from the show:

Spoken while exiting a frozen peas commercial:
"Oh, what luck--there's a french fry stuck in my beard."
After quitting a fish stick commercial and taking "a few for the road":
"Mmm...yes...oh, yes...they're even better raw!"

Welles is famous for other things, of course: Citizen Kane, the War of the Worlds broadcast, interviewing Mike Douglas on his own show. But since this is a forum only for food discussion, I will limit my praise for the man to his digestive prowess. Here's to you, Orson Welles, one of the greatest eaters in modern history and a fitting inductee to the Hall of Fame.