Just in time for Halloween, The Museum of Classic Chicago Television has uncovered Orson Welles at the Magic Castle, a 1978 TV special featuring Orson Welles performing magic tricks.
According to the YouTube posting, the Columbia Pictures Pay Television Presentation aired on Showtime in September 1978.
A remembrance by magician and longtime Welles friend Abb Dickson from the book Orson Welles Remembered: “I picked up the phone, I called Orson, I said, “Look, I’ve written this magic special …” I said, “I need for you to do the introduction and the in-and-out. It will probably be one day of shooting, at the most two, and I’ve only got, I think, $25,000. Will you shoot this?” And he said, ‘Sure! But I get the extra film’.”
“We go across the street to Columbia Pay Television and in less than an hour we have sold a special called Orson Welles at the Magic Castle. Orson and I worked out all of the intros and outros. So he showed up, we did our tape, we did our intros, we shot for that one day, and the next morning we were to finish the outside shots where Orson arrived at the castle — full of fog — and he gestures and the doors open and he walks into the castle. ”
“Well, Orson called me at about 7 o’clock in the morning and said, ‘I’m not coming. I’ve shot everything they need, you can shoot the rest of it. I’ll send you my wardrobe, but you’re going to have to have a hat made because your head is smaller than mine and my hat won’t fit you.’ So I’m the one outside, gesturing in the cape and wandering through the fog, and I was the one who finished the shot.”
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