Orson Welles was too fat for Wolfgang Puck’s Spago

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck lost a fine diner in Orson Welles when he opened his first Spago restaurant in Hollywood, because the actor was too big to get to the front door.
The Citizen Kane star was one of Puck’s biggest fans when the Austrian cook worked at Ma Maison in Los Angeles and encouraged the young chef to open his own place.
But when he did just that in 1982, Welles couldn’t stomach the climb to the restaurant.
“When he walked to the restaurant, because it was on a hillside and he was so big, he couldn’t walk up the hill, so he couldn’t come to the restaurant,” Wolfgang tells U.S. news show Access Hollywood Live.
The master chef will be cooking up treats for Oscar nominees, winners, presenters and other stars at the post-Academy Awards Governors Ball on Sunday night (28Feb16), but admits he wasn’t always a big hit among the big party planners.
Puck reveals he encouraged Hollywood super agent Swifty Lazar to hold his annual post-Oscars bash at his Spago restaurant, and for 10 years, the biggest names went there instead of the Governor’s Ball.
The chef explains, “Everyone at the Academy was upset because every big star used to come to Swifty’s party.”
And not all his big name guests were happy with where they sat in the restaurant: “We had eight tables at the window and we had the view over Sunset Boulevard and you could see the whole city; those were the tables everybody wanted.
“If they did not get a table like that they were upset. I remember Sammy Cahn, the famous singer/songwriter, he came up to me and said, ‘What the heck, you put me in the second row…? I won three Oscars!'”