In Defense of Welles

In his response to the recent article about Marlon Brando’s film career, Burt Prelutsky (Letters, Feb. 16) tried to draw a comparison with the actor to Orson Welles, claiming that “both soon lost interest and wound up as 300-pound grotesqueries, devoting the last 30 or 40 years of their lives to overpriced cameo appearances in lousy movies.”

The only thing Welles lost interest in was catering to the Hollywood studio system. To the end of his life, he passionately pursued significant projects in both theater and film despite being constantly frustrated by the difficulty of raising money and his unwillingness to compromise his own vision.

In the period that Prelutsky describes, Welles devoted his energies to films like “Othello” and the aborted “Don Quixote” and directed major stage productions of “King Lear” and “Moby-Dick” as well as the stage and film versions of “Chimes at Midnight.” Hardly the output of a “grotesquerie.”

JON MULLICH

Sherman Oaks