Too Much Johnson (1938 film)

Too Much Johnson
Joseph Cotten and Edgar Barrier in Too Much Johnson (1938)
Directed byOrson Welles
Screenplay byOrson Welles
Based onToo Much Johnson
by William Gillette (play)
Produced byJohn Houseman
Orson Welles
StarringJoseph Cotten
Virginia Nicolson
Edgar Barrier
Arlene Francis
CinematographyPaul Dunham
Edited byWilliam Alland
Orson Welles
Richard Wilson
Music byPaul Bowles
(Music for a Farce)
Production
company
Distributed byWarner Bros. Pictures
Release date
  • 1938 (1938)
Running time
66 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$10,000

Too Much Johnson is a 1938 American silent comedy film written and directed by Orson Welles. An unfinished film component of a stage production, it was made three years before Welles directed Citizen Kane, but it was never publicly screened. It was shot to be integrated into Welles's Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy, but the film 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.

The film was believed to be lost, but in 2008 a print was discovered in a warehouse in Pordenone, Italy.[1][2] The film premiered on October 9, 2013, at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival.[2] In 2014, the work print and a modern edit of the film were made available online by the National Film Preservation Foundation.[3]

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.

  1. ^ "Film Threat's Top 10 Lost Films". Film Threat (filmthreat.com). January 25, 2001.
  2. ^ a b Kehr, Dave (7 August 2013). "Early Film by Orson Welles Is Rediscovered". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  3. ^ "Preserved Films: "Too Much Johnson" Work Print (1938, 66 min.)". National Film Preservation Foundation. Retrieved 2014-08-21.