Too Much Johnson is a 1938 American silent comedy film written and directed by Orson Welles. An unfinished film component of a stage production, the film was made three years before Welles directed Citizen Kane, but it was never publicly screened. The film was shot to be integrated into Welles's Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy, but the motion picture sequences could not be shown due to the absence of projection facilities at the venue, the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut. The resulting plot confusion reportedly contributed to the stage production's failure.
Two previous films had been made of this play, a short film in 1900 and a feature-length Paramount film in 1919 starring Lois Wilson and Bryant Washburn. Both of these films are now lost.
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.[6][7]
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.[8]
"The multi-media concept was a throwback to the early age of cinema when vaudeville shows were punctuated by quick cinematic vignettes," wrote Welles biographer Bret Wood.[9]:51 The alternation format stage-and-screen hybrid—scenes of live performance linked together by film segments—dates back to 1896.[10]
Welles thought highly of Joseph Cotten as a comic actor,[11]:166 and cast him as the lead in the farce. Other Mercury Theatre actors included Ruth Ford, Arlene Francis, Howard Smith, Mary Wickes and Eustace Wyatt. Welles's wife, Virginia Nicolson, appeared in the film under her professional pseudonym Anna Stafford. Bit parts were given to Welles's Mercury Theatre producer John Houseman, assistant director John Berry, composer Marc Blitzstein, and Herbert Drake,[6] the New York Herald Tribune drama reporter who became the Mercury Theatre's publicist and, later, vice president.[5][12] Although writer Frank Brady reported that Welles gave himself a small role as a Keystone Kop,[6] Welles is not seen in the film.[13] Among the uncredited extras for a crowd sequence was a young Judy Holliday.[14]
Harry Dunham, a newsreel and documentary cameraman who was an old friend of Paul Bowles, was the film's cinematographer.[4] 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.[6] Interior shots were set up at a studio in the Bronx, New York.[15] 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.[6]
Guy Kingsley, Virginia Welles, Eustace Wyatt and George Duthie
Joseph Cotten on the sailing to Cuba
Orson Welles directing
Stage manager Walter Ash and (holding the sign) John Houseman
Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten
Post-production and exhibition problems
Welles and his crew 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."[16]
Welles was assisted by John Berry, who had been hired by the Mercury Theatre as an apprentice and extra for Caesar and worked with Welles on subsequent Mercury productions, including Too Much Johnson. Years later he recalled building the sets on a vacant lot in Yonkers, and organizing a crew that literally held them up against in the wind during filming.[17]:62, 64–65
"Orson had a wonderful time making the film," Berry said, reporting that Welles was so absorbed in the cutting that he took little note when the film caught fire in the projector. "What I remember, most remarkably, is me running with the projector in my hand, burning, trying to get out of the door into the goddamn hallway, and Houseman racing for the door at the same time … while Orson, with absolutely no concern whatsoever, was back inside, standing and looking at some piece of film in his hand, smoking his pipe.[17]:65
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.[16]
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.[16] Most modern sources report that audience and critical reaction to the show was poor and caused Welles to abandon the production, but a search of press coverage at the time indicates no negative published reports and no reviews from major critics. The Branford Review reported that interest in the stage production was strong as it began its second week.[18]
Loss and rediscovery
Welles never completed editing the film component for Too Much Johnson and put the footage in storage. He rediscovered it 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."[6] 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.[19] In August 1970,[20]:439 a fire broke out at Welles's villa and the only known complete print of Too Much Johnson was destroyed.[21]
A copy was discovered in Italy in 2008,[2][22] and on August 5, 2013, the George Eastman House museum of film and photography in the U.S. announced that it had completed a long process of restoration together with Cinemazero, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and laboratory experts in the U.S. and the Netherlands. Cinema Arts, a Pennsylvania film laboratory, performed most of the preservation work.[23] "The next step was to begin the actual photo-chemical preservation", said Tony Delgrosso, Head of Preservation at George Eastman House. "For that we turned to a lab called Cinema Arts who are world famous for the quality of their black-and-white photo-chemical preservation and restoration."[24]
Too Much Johnson premiered October 9, 2013, at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival.[25] The film's North American premiere was held October 16, 2013, at George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre, and the film's New York City premiere took place on November 25, 2013, at the Directors Guild of America Theater.[26]
On August 21, 2014, the complete 66-minute work print of the film was posted online by the National Film Preservation Foundation.[3] An edited version running about 34 minutes including intertitles, with new music composed and performed by Michael Mortilla, was also made available.[27] "If this edit is only a guess, it strives to be an educated one," stated the foundation, "informed by research into the unpublished play scripts left behind by Welles and the Mercury Theatre company."[28]
On February 5, 2015, Too Much Johnson was screened and performed for the very first time as a complete stage performance at the Film Forum in New York City, in association with George Eastman House, as Welles originally intended. The filmed portions were shown as prologues to the play's three acts which were performed as a staged reading by the Film Forum Players. The staged reading was directed by Allen Lewis Rickman, who adapted the play from both the Welles and Gillette versions. It was produced by Bruce Goldstein. Steve Sterner composed and performed the soundtrack for the film. The footage was re-edited by William Hohauser to fit a coherent narrative structure in conjunction with the play. Sequences already edited by Welles were left intact.[29]
Reception
Demand to see Too Much Johnson at its world premiere at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival warranted two additional showings.[30] Reporting the "snaking queues outside the auditorium", The Guardian described the film as "a gleeful experiment in silent cinema pastiche":
And while it is a work print, not a finished film, Too Much Johnson offers breathlessly enjoyable viewing. Joseph Cotten makes a tremendous movie debut as the play's philandering lead, displaying unimagined guts and agility in a series of tumbles and leaps across Manhattan rooftops, pursued by a prancing, moustache-twirling Edgar Barrier. And Too Much Johnson is itself an affectionate romp through Keystone two-reelers, Harold Lloyd's stunt slapstick, European serials, Soviet montage and, notably, Welles's favoured steep expressionist-influenced camera angles.[31]
Variety called the unedited footage "an unanticipated delight":
There are moments of ultra-broad comedy — Arlene Francis, looking ravishing, hams it up with evident delight at the start — yet the outdoor footage, much of it shot in the Meatpacking District and further south, is a delightful spin on slapstick chase conventions, and a dashing Joseph Cotten, in Harold Lloyd mode, demonstrates a remarkable lack of vertigo along with physical grace. Genuinely funny rather than derivative, the film as seen, complete with multiple takes, feels fresh and spirited up until the last section, when scenes meant to take place in Cuba (but shot near the Hudson, with a few rented palm trees) lose a bit of steam before the amusing final shots.[32]
a youthful tribute not only to the spirited tradition of exuberant low comedy but also to the past of the medium he was about to enter. Welles was always enamored of the past, though more, he said, of the mythical past we prefer to revere in fantasy than the actual messy past that was, e.g., “Merrie Old England” and “Camelot” rather than the real England of those days. He explores that theme in deeply personal ways in The Magnificent Ambersons and Chimes at Midnight, and Too Much Johnson is also reflective of his obsession with bygone times, cultural mores, and means of expression.[33]
Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair.
George Orson Welles was an American actor, director, screenwriter and producer who is remembered for his innovative work in radio, theatre and film. He is considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
John Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and producer of theatre, film, and television. He became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane and his collaboration, as producer of The Blue Dahlia, with writer Raymond Chandler on the screenplay. He is perhaps best known for his role as Professor Charles W. Kingsfield in the film The Paper Chase (1973), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He reprised his role as Kingsfield in the 1978 television series adaptation.
The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also released promptbooks and phonographic recordings of four Shakespeare works for use in schools.
The Stony Creek Puppet House is a theater on the shoreline of the Stony Creek section of Branford, Connecticut, near New Haven, a stone's throw away from the famed Thimble Islands. Built in 1903 as a movie theater, it became the home for community theater and summer stock productions. Orson Welles staged his short-lived stage production, Too Much Johnson, at The Stony Creek Theatre in 1938. After operating as a parachute factory during World War II, it became a puppet theater. The building is a Connecticut Historical Landmark that awaits renovation and restoration.
Paul Stewart was an American character actor, director and producer who worked in theatre, radio, films and television. He frequently portrayed cynical and sinister characters throughout his career.
Le Giornate del cinema muto is an annual festival of silent film held in October in Pordenone, northern Italy. It is the first, largest and most important international festival dedicated to silent film and also is present in the list of the top 50 unmissable film festivals in the world according to Variety. The Pordenone Silent Film Festival is a non-profit association, whose president is Livio Jacob. The director from 1997 until 2015 was David Robinson. In 2016, Jay Weissberg became director. Other members of the festival board are Paolo Cherchi Usai, Lorenzo Codelli, Piero Colussi, Luciano De Giusti, Carlo Montanaro, Piera Patat.
Around the World is a musical based on the 1873 Jules Verne novel, Around the World in Eighty Days, with a book by Orson Welles and music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It involves an around-the-world adventure by Phileas Fogg. The expensive musical extravaganza opened on Broadway in May 1946 but it closed after 75 performances.
Don Quixote is an unfinished film project written, co-produced and directed by Orson Welles. Principal photography took place between 1957 and 1969. Test footage was filmed as early as 1955, second-unit photography was done as late as 1972, and Welles was working on the film intermittently until his death in 1985. The film was eventually edited by Jesús Franco and was released in 1992, to mixed reviews.
The Mercury Wonder Show for Service Men was a 1943 magic-and-variety stage show by the Mercury Theatre, produced by Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten as a morale-boosting entertainment for US soldiers in World War II. Directed by Welles, the show starred Welles, Cotten, Agnes Moorehead and Rita Hayworth, whose part was later filled by Marlene Dietrich. Jean Gabin also worked on the show backstage, as a propman. The show ran to 150 minutes.
Horse Eats Hat is a 1936 farce play co-written and directed by Orson Welles and presented under the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project. It was Welles's second WPA production, after his highly successful Voodoo Macbeth. The script, by Edwin Denby and Welles, was an adaptation of the classic French farce The Italian Straw Hat by Eugène Marin Labiche and Marc-Michel.
Ceiling Unlimited (1942–1944) is a CBS radio series created by Orson Welles and sponsored by the Lockheed-Vega Corporation. The program was conceived to glorify the aviation industry and dramatize its role in World War II.
This is a bibliography of books by or about the director and actor Orson Welles.
The Citizen Kane trailer is a four-minute, self-contained, "making of" promotional featurette by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre, released in 1940 to promote the film Citizen Kane. Unlike other standard theatrical trailers of the era, it did not feature a single second of footage of the actual film itself, but was a wholly original pseudo-documentary piece. It is considered by numerous film scholars such as Simon Callow, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum to be a standalone short film, rather than a conventional "trailer", and to represent an important stage in the development of Welles's directorial style.
Too Much Johnson is a lost 1919 American silent comedy film produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Donald Crisp during his phase as an important film director. This film stars in the leads Bryant Washburn and Lois Wilson.
Native Son is a 1941 Broadway drama written by Paul Green and Richard Wright based on Wright's novel Native Son. It was produced by Orson Welles and John Houseman with Bern Bernard as associate producer and directed by Welles with scenic design by John Morcom. It ran for 114 performances from March 24, 1941 to June 28, 1941 at the St. James Theatre.
This is a comprehensive listing of the theatre work of Orson Welles.
There isn't one person, I suppose, in a million, who knows that I was ever in the theatre.
The Comedy Theatre was a Broadway theatre located at 110 West 41st Street in Manhattan that opened in 1909. It presented the first Broadway appearances of Katharine Cornell and Ruth Draper, as well as Eugene O'Neill's first Broadway play. Shuttered in the wake of the Depression, it reopened in 1937 as the Mercury Theatre — the venue for Orson Welles's groundbreaking adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and other productions for the Mercury Theatre repertory company. In 1939 it began presenting classic Yiddish theatre. The building was demolished in 1942.
Caesar is the title of Orson Welles's innovative 1937 adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a modern-dress bare-stage production that evoked comparison to contemporary Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Considered Welles's highest achievement in the theatre, it premiered November 11, 1937, as the first production of the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented an acclaimed series of productions on Broadway through 1941.
The authorship of the screenplay for Citizen Kane, the 1941 American motion picture that marked the feature film debut of Orson Welles, has been one of the film's long-standing controversies. With a story spanning 60 years, the quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a fictional character based in part upon the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold McCormick. A rich incorporation of the experiences and knowledge of its authors, the film earned an Academy Award for Best Writing for Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles.
↑ McBride, Joseph, What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006 ISBN978-0-8131-2410-0page 103
↑ Cowie, Peter. "The Cinema of Orson Welles." 1973, A.S. Barnes & Co.
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