Unfinished Orson Welles film found in Italy
A long-lost film directed by Orson Welles in 1938 has been found in a warehouse in a small town in north-eastern Italy where it will be shown for the first time in October.
By Josephine McKenna, Rome
“Too Much Johnson”, starring a young Joseph Cotton as a playboy who flees the violent husband of his mistress, is one of the first films made by the legendary director and was due to be screened at the Mercury repertory theatre in New York but it was never finished.
The film print was found by a Padua courier company in 2005 and sent to the Cinemazero art house cinema in Pordenone, 50 miles north of Venice.
Cinema staff tossed the box in its warehouse and only realised that it had a rare piece of Hollywood history when a projectionist checked the box in 2008.
The previously only known copy of the film was lost in a fire that destroyed Welles’ home near Madrid in 1970.