Tag: 16. September 2014

[Too Much Johnson (1938)… ]

In 1938, Orson Welles‘ Mercury Theater group shot some film footage to integrate between act breaks in a William Gillette stage show called „Too Much Johnson.“ The project was abandoned mid-way, the footage was never fully cut together & assumed lost for many years. In 1941, Welles would go on to make „Citizen Kane“ with his Mercury Theater & „Too Much Johnson“ leading man, Joseph Cotten. This footage was preserved through an National Film Preservation Fund grant to George Eastman House, with the Cineteca del Friuli and Cinemazero. The music was composed and performed by Michael D. Mortilla. …

Too Much Johnson is a 1938 American 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 in 2008 a print was discovered in a warehouse in Pordenone, Italy. … Writing for Bright Lights Film Journal, film historian Joseph McBride categorizes Too Much Johnson as Welles’s pre-Hollywood filmmaking experiment … | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Much_Johnson

„Lost and Found: Mercury Theatre Films“
As a member of the Mercury Theatre [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Theatre], Orson Welles planned three comic silent movies as part of the troupe’s innovative 1938 multimedia revival of Too Much Johnson, William Gillette’s late 19th-century martial farce. …
http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/lost-and-found-mercury-theater-films

„Too Much Johnson“ Work Print (1938, 66 min.) >> http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/too-much-johnson-work-print

„Eastman House restores lost Welles film“ (07.08.2013)
Eastman House discuses the recovery of Mercury Theatre’s long-lost Too Much Johnson, directed by Orson Welles in 1938. >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwfxH2r7SS0

Impuls via http://www.openculture.com/2014/08/download-footage-from-orson-welles-too-much-johnson.html