Too Much Johnson
Encyclopedia
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. No complete print of the film survives.
The film was not intended to stand by itself, but was designed as the cinematic aspect of Welles' 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.
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.
This was not the first time that Welles directed a film. In 1934, he co-directed (with William Vance
) a short avant garde film called The Hearts of Age.
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' 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. Among the uncredited extras for a crowd sequence was a young Judy Holliday
.
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
. Interior shots were set up at a studio in the Bronx, New York. 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.
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."
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.
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.
, 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."
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.
In 1971, a fire broke out at Welles's home and the only known complete print of Too Much Johnson was destroyed. However, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley
, California presented an incomplete print of the film prior to a screening of Chimes at Midnight
on October 14, 2010. The partial print had been saved by an associate of Welles who had provided financial support to the Mercury Theatre.
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
written and directed by Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
. The film was made three years before Welles directed Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
, but it was never publicly screened. No complete print of the film survives.
The film was not intended to stand by itself, but was designed as the cinematic aspect of Welles' Mercury Theatre
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was a theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and John Houseman. After a string of live theatrical productions, in 1938 the Mercury Theatre progressed into their best-known period as The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio series that included one of the...
stage presentation of William Gillette
William Gillette
William Hooker Gillette was an American actor, playwright and stage-manager in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who is best remembered today for portraying Sherlock Holmes....
'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
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
who is expecting the arrival of a mail order bride.
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
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...
slapstick comedies, in order to enhance the various chases, duels and comic conflicts of the Gillette play.
This was not the first time that Welles directed a film. In 1934, he co-directed (with William Vance
William Vance
William Vance, the pen name of William van Cutsem, born 8 September 1935, is a Belgian comics artist widely known throughout a long career for his distinctive style and work in Franco-Belgian comics.- Biography :...
) a short avant garde film called The Hearts of Age.
Cast
- Joseph CottenJoseph CottenJoseph Cheshire Cotten was an American actor of stage and film. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair...
as Augustus Billings - Virginia Nicholson as Lenore Faddish
- Edgar Barrier as Leon Dathis
- Arlene FrancisArlene FrancisArlene Francis was an American actress, radio talk show host, and game show panelist...
as Mrs. Dathis - Ruth FordRuth Ford (actress)Ruth Ford was an American model and stage and film actress. Her brother was the bohemian surrealist Charles Henri Ford. Their parents managed the Tennessee Hotel in Clarksville, Tennessee.-Life and career:As a model she posed for Harper's, Town and Country and Mademoiselle...
as Mrs. Billings - Mary WickesMary WickesMary Wickes was an American film and television actress.-Career:Wickes was born as Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser in St. Louis, Missouri, of German Irish Protestant extraction. She graduated at the age of eighteen with a degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, where she...
as Mrs. Battison - Eustace Wyatt as Faddish
- Guy Kingsley as MacIntosh
- George Duthie as Purser
- Orson WellesOrson WellesGeorge Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
as Keystone Kop - John HousemanJohn HousemanJohn Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who 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...
as Duelist
Production
Welles cast Joseph CottenJoseph Cotten
Joseph Cheshire Cotten was an American actor of stage and film. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair...
in the lead role, with other parts going to Mercury Theatre actors including Eustace Wyatt, Edgar Barrier, Ruth Ford, Arlene Francis
Arlene Francis
Arlene Francis was an American actress, radio talk show host, and game show panelist...
and Mary Wickes
Mary Wickes
Mary Wickes was an American film and television actress.-Career:Wickes was born as Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser in St. Louis, Missouri, of German Irish Protestant extraction. She graduated at the age of eighteen with a degree in political science from Washington University in St. Louis, where she...
. Welles' wife, Virginia Nicholson, appeared in the film under the name Anna Stafford. Bit parts were given to Welles' Mercury Theatre producer John Houseman
John Houseman
John Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who 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...
, assistant director John Berry
John Berry (film director)
John Berry was an American film director, who went into self-exile in France when his career was interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist.-Early Life:...
, composer Marc Blitzstein
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...
and the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
s drama critic Herbert Drake; Welles gave himself a small role as a Keystone Kop. Among the uncredited extras for a crowd sequence was a young Judy Holliday
Judy Holliday
Judy Holliday was an American actress.Holliday began her career as part of a night-club act, before working in Broadway plays and musicals...
.
Paul Dunbar, a newsreel cameraman for Pathé News
Pathe News
Pathé Newsreels were produced from 1910 until the 1970s, when production of newsreels was in general stopped. Pathé News today is known as British Pathé and its archive of over 90,000 reels is fully digitised and online.-History:...
, was the film's cinematographer. Location photography took place in New York City's Battery Park
Battery Park
Battery Park is a 25-acre public park located at the Battery, the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City, facing New York Harbor. The Battery is named for artillery batteries that were positioned there in the city's early years in order to protect the settlement behind them...
and Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
. Additional shooting took place on a Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
day-trip excursion boat and at locations in Yonkers, New York
Yonkers, New York
Yonkers is the fourth most populous city in the state of New York , and the most populous city in Westchester County, with a population of 195,976...
, and Haverstraw, New York
Haverstraw, New York
Haverstraw is the name of two locations in Rockland County, New York:*Haverstraw, New York, a town*Haverstraw , New York, a village located entirely within the townIt may also refer to:*West Haverstraw, New York*Haverstraw Bay*Haverstraw Indians...
. Interior shots were set up at a studio in the Bronx, New York. For the Cuban plantation, Welles created a miniature structure next to a papier-mâché
Papier-mâché
Papier-mâché , alternatively, paper-mache, is a composite material consisting of paper pieces or pulp, sometimes reinforced with textiles, bound with an adhesive, such as glue, starch, or wallpaper paste....
volcano, with store-bought tropical plants to suggest the exotic Caribbean flora.
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 MoviolaMoviola
A Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924.-History:...
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."
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
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
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.
Welles initially planned to present the stage-and-film mix of Too Much Johnson at the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
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.
Rediscovery and loss
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 MadridMadrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, 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."
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.
In 1971, a fire broke out at Welles's home and the only known complete print of Too Much Johnson was destroyed. However, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, California presented an incomplete print of the film prior to a screening of Chimes at Midnight
Chimes at Midnight
Chimes at Midnight, also known as Falstaff and Campanadas a medianoche , is a 1965 film directed by and starring Orson Welles. Focused on William Shakespeare's recurring character Sir John Falstaff, the film stars Welles himself as Falstaff, Keith Baxter plays Prince Hal , and John Gielgud plays...
on October 14, 2010. The partial print had been saved by an associate of Welles who had provided financial support to the Mercury Theatre.