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Too Much Johnson (1938 film)

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Too Much Johnson
File:TooMuchJohnson.jpg
Virginia Nicholson, Joseph Cotten and
Ruth Ford in Too Much Johnson (1938)
Directed byOrson Welles
Written byWilliam Gillette (play)
Orson Welles
Produced byJohn Houseman
Orson Welles
StarringJoseph Cotten
Mary Wickes
Arlene Francis
CinematographyPaul Dunbar
Harry Dunham
Edited byWilliam Alland
Orson Welles
Richard Wilson
Production
company
Running time
40 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$10,000

Too Much Johnson is a 1938 comedy film written and directed by Orson Welles. The film was made three years before Welles directed Citizen Kane, but it was never publicly screened. The film was believed to be lost, but a print was rediscovered in 2013 in an Italian warehouse.[1][2] The film is scheduled to be released in October 2013 and will be available online as well.[2]

The film was not intended to stand by itself, but was designed as the cinematic aspect of Welles's Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy about a New York playboy who flees from the violent husband of his mistress and borrows the identity of a plantation owner in Cuba who is expecting the arrival of a mail order bride.[3]

Welles planned to mix live action and film for this production. The film was designed to run 40 minutes, with 20 minutes devoted to the play's prologue and two 10-minute introductions for the second and third act. Welles planned to create a silent film in the tradition of the Mack Sennett slapstick comedies, in order to enhance the various chases, duels and comic conflicts of the Gillette play.[4]

This was not the first time that Welles directed a film. In 1934, while still attending The Todd School for Boys, he co-directed (with friend William Vance) a short avant garde film called The Hearts of Age.[5]

Cast

Production

Welles cast Joseph Cotten in the lead role, with other parts going to Mercury Theatre actors including Eustace Wyatt, Edgar Barrier, Ruth Ford, Arlene Francis and Mary Wickes. Welles's wife, Virginia Nicholson, appeared in the film under the name Anna Stafford. Bit parts were given to Welles' Mercury Theatre producer John Houseman, assistant director John Berry, composer Marc Blitzstein and the New York Herald Tribune's drama critic Herbert Drake; Welles gave himself a small role as a Keystone Kop.[3] Among the uncredited extras for a crowd sequence was a young Judy Holliday.[6]

Paul Dunbar, a newsreel cameraman for Pathé News, was the film's cinematographer. Location photography took place in New York City's Battery Park and Central Park. Additional shooting took place on a Hudson River day-trip excursion boat and at locations in Yonkers, New York, and Haverstraw, New York.[3] Interior shots were set up at a studio in the Bronx, New York.[7] For the Cuban plantation, Welles created a miniature structure next to a papier-mâché volcano, with store-bought tropical plants to suggest the exotic Caribbean flora.[3]

Post-production and exhibition problems

Welles spent ten days shooting Too Much Johnson, which resulted in approximately 25,000 feet of film. He edited the footage on a Moviola in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City, and John Houseman later recalled visitors had to "wade knee-deep through a crackling sea of flammable [nitrate] film."[8]

During post-production, Welles ran into financial problems relating to his cast (who were not originally paid for the film shoot) and the film laboratory (which refused to deliver the processed film until it received payment). Welles also received an attorney's letter from Paramount Pictures informing him that the studio owned the film rights to Too Much Johnson, and that public presentation of his film would require payment to the studio.[8]

Welles initially planned to present the stage-and-film mix of Too Much Johnson at the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut as a pre-Broadway trial run, but discovered that the theater's ceiling was too low to allow for film projection. The show opened on August 16, 1938, without the filmed sequences. Audience and critical reaction to the show was poor and Welles opted not to attempt a Broadway version of the show.[8]

Loss and rediscovery

Welles never completed the editing of Too Much Johnson and put the footage in storage. He rediscovered the footage three decades later at his home outside of Madrid, Spain. "I can't remember whether I had it all along and dug it out of the bottom of a trunk, or whether someone brought it to me, but there it was", he later recalled. "I screened it, and it was in perfect condition, with not a scratch on it, as though it had only been through a projector once or twice before. It had a fine quality. Cotten was magnificent, and I immediately made plans to edit it and send it to Joe as a birthday present."[3]

Welles, however, never allowed the footage to be seen publicly, stating the film would not make sense outside of the full context of the Gillette play.[9]

In 1971, a fire broke out at Welles's home and the only known complete print of Too Much Johnson was destroyed.[1]

The film print was found by a Padua courier company in 2005 and sent to the Cinemazero art house cinema in Pordenone, 50 miles north of Venice. Cinema staff tossed the box in its warehouse and only realised that it had a rare piece of Hollywood history when a projectionist checked the box in 2008. The previously only known copy of the film was lost in a fire that destroyed Welles' home near Madrid in 1970. No-one is sure how the film made its way to Italy but Cinemazero has just completed a long process of restoration with the George Eastman House museum of film and photography in the US, the National Film Preservation Foundation and experts from the Netherlands. The restored copy will have its world première at the Giornate del Cinema Muto annual silent film festival in Pordenone on 9 October 2013 and a US première a week later.[10][11][2]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Film Threat's Top 10 Lost Films". Film Threat (filmthreat.com). January 25, 2001.
  2. ^ a b c Kehr, Dave. "Early Film by Orson Welles Is Rediscovered". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  3. ^ a b c d e Brady, Frank, "The Lost Film of Orson Welles"; American Film, November 1978, pp. 61–69
  4. ^ “Orson Welles” by Charles Higham, Google Books
  5. ^ “The Hearts of Age,” Senses of Cinema
  6. ^ “What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?” by Joseph McBride, Google Books
  7. ^ Cowie, Peter. "The Cinema of Orson Welles." 1973, A.S. Barnes & Co.
  8. ^ a b c Brady, Frank. "Citizen Welles." 1989, Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 0-684-18982-8
  9. ^ “Welles Before Kane” by Joseph McBride, University of California Press
  10. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10230843/Unfinished-Orson-Welles-film-found-in-Italy.html
  11. ^ "Lost Orson Welles Film Restored by George Eastman House". George Eastman House. Retrieved 8 August 2013.


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