For Orson Welles fans, Too Much Johnson is the Holy Grail. The film was made years before his first feature, Citizen Kane, for an ill-fated Broadway production and has never been seen or found, until now. Somehow, a print landed in Italy and the first screening of the film will take place during a silent film festival there in October.
Welles’ first experiment with filmmaking happened in 1934 with The Hearts of Age, an eight-minute avant garde short. That has amazingly survived, but in 1938 he made his professional filmmaking debut by directing Too Much Johnson. According to The New York Times, Welles had hoped to screen the 40-minute film during a 1938 revival of the 1894 play of the same on Broadway with his Mercury Theatre troupe.
Welles was just 23-years-old when he made Too Much Johnson, which he planned to screen in between the three acts of the William Gillette play. Music and live sound effects were set to accompany it.
The film included Mercury regulars Joseph Cotten, Arlene Francis, Howard Smith, Edgar Barrier, Mary Wickes and Welles’ first wife, Virginia Nicholson. A very young Judy Holliday was even an extra. The Broadway revival was cancelled after a disastrous test run in Connecticut and it was assumed for 50 years that no print existed.
Welles told Frank Brady in a 1978 American Film article that he did have a copy at his Spanish villa in the 1960s, but when the building burned down, so did the nitrate print of Too Much Johnson. It was assumed to be lost forever.
But, according to Variety, the Pordenone, Italy arthouse Cinemazero staff discovered a print, which they sent to the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY to be restored. The silent film festival Le Giornate del Cinema Muto will screen the film on Oct. 9 and the George Eastman House will host the first U.S. screening on Oct. 16.
image: Wikimedia Commons
