Here are several articles detailing the production of Journey Into Fear from the pages of The New York Times.� Especially interesting is the story by Thomas Brady, on a “Genius under Stress.” Ironically, it appears Welles was actually quite worried about spending so much of RKO’s money! ����
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SCREEN NEWS HERE AND IN HOLLYWOOD
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�Magnificent Ambersons� and �Journey Into Fear� to be Made by Orson Wells for RKO �
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By Douglas W. Churchill � July 23, 1941 �
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After several weeks of conferences RKO and Orson Welles today announced the program for the actor-writer-producer-director for the new season.
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All conflict between Welles and the studio has been ironed out by Joseph L Breen, new head of production, and Welles will begin preparation immediately of the first screen story, Booth Tarkington�s novel of American transition, �The Magnificent Ambersons,” which will go before the cameras in September. It will be followed by “Journey Into Fear,” an Eric Ambler novel which Ben Hecht has adapted to the screen.
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Michele Morgan, RKO’s French import, had been announced for the latter picture, but the Welles office said that he will discard the RKO plans for the production and start afresh. Welles third venture will be “It’s All True,” a photoplay about which no information was divulged. Mystery also surrounded the nature of Welles connection with each project; which he will appear in and which he will direct was not disclosed.
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His office announced, however, that negotiations had been resumed with the Mexican government for permission for the producer-writer to make a picture there with Dolores Del Rio. Mexico previously had banned the film.
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SCREEN NEWS HERE AND IN HOLLYWOOD
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Orson Welles Will Appear In �Journey Into Fear��Lead role for Joseph Cotten
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August 14, 1941�
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Orson Welles next screen appearance will be in �Journey Into Fear,� with Michele Morgan at RKO, it was learned today. What type of role Welles will play was not disclosed, but Cotten has been named for the lead, and it is understood that the producer-actor-director will be seen in a character part.
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Cotten will also have a leading role in Booth Tarkington�s �The Magnificent Ambersons�� which will precede �Journey Into Fear� on Welles�s program. Welles will direct both pictures, and they will be filmed in immediate sequence, with �The Magnificent Ambersons� scheduled to start on Sept 16. The producer has acquired another property, �Love Story� by John Fante and Norman Foster, for probable Spring production.
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GENIUS UNDER STRESS
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Spending RKO�s Money Worries Orson Welles
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By Thomas Brady �� November 6, 1941
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Orson Welles declared openly the other day that his second venture as the cinema’s universal genius, “The Magnificent Ambersons,” which he adapted in nine days from Booth Tarkington�s novel and is producing, directing and narrating for RKO, has him worried. “Gargantus,” he says, “is only good for a one-night stand.
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He will not appear in the film but his voice will be heard in a commentary, which begins and ends the picture and introduces every sequence. The visible members of the cast are Dolores Costello as Isabel Amberson, Joseph Cotten as Eugene Morgan, Tim Holt as George Amberson, Richard Bennett as Major Amberson, Anne Baxter as Lucy Morgan, Agnes Moorehead as Aunt Fanny Minafer, Ray Collins as Uncle Jack Amberson and J. Louis Johnson as Sam, the butler.
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Unlike �Kane� �Ambersons� will be a normal, sequential picture without startling innovations, according to Welles. The scenario he says, adheres closely to the novel, presenting the baroque mushrooming of mid western life at the turn of the century.�
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Soon after he began �The Magnificent Ambersons,� Welles startled his company with the vehement statement that “time is money.”� He explained later that he was troubled because he is making the picture with RKO�s funds and working for the company on a salary. Though RKO paid for “Citizen Kane” too, Welles worked for a percentage of the profits,�and so he felt as if he were spending his own money. He insists, however, that he has always been a cautious man financially. He even devoted his dally epigram to the subject. “David O. Selznick,� he said, “talks about money and worries about art; I talk about art and worry about money.”
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A contract adjustment made by RKO last summer�is the reason Welles is working as a hired hand. Soon after his arrival in Hollywood two yeas ago, the producer-director-writer-actor agreed, as a gesture, to do a free picture for the company. An older and wiser man when the time came to fulfill the contract, he threatened not to make any picture at all. RKO compromised on a moratorium on the old deal, during which Welles would do two pictures as an employee of the studio�the first to be “Ambersons” and the second �Journey Into Fear.” Welles will not disclose his salary, but says he is being underpaid. After “Journey” RKO will gets it�s free picture, which will be “It�s All True,” a group of factual incidents combined in a feature (as the short subjects are) too long for double bills. Then Welles will make Joseph Conrad�s “Heart of Darkness,” his favorite project, on the same basis as “Citizen Kane”�a guarantee of �$150,000 against�25 per cent of the profits.
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Besides Mr. Bennett and Miss Costello, whose appearance in “The Magnificent Ambersons” marks their emergence from retirement, two other former stars, John Boles �and Harry Langdon, are returning to the screen, each having completed a picture this week for Monogram.�
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SCREEN NEWS HERE AND IN HOLLYWOOD
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�Journey Into Fear,’�Third Orson Welles Film Production, Begins
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January 7, 1942
Orson Welles’s third film production, “Journey Into Fear,” went before the cameras this morning at RKO with Dolores Del Rio playing the feminine lead opposite Joseph Cotten and Norman Foster, a former actor, directing.
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Welles will himself appear in the film as a Turkish secret police agent, it was announced, and the cast will also include Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead, Edgar Barrier, Eustace Wyatt, Frank Readick, Jack Durant and Richard Bennett.
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“Journey Into Fear” was adapted to the screen by Welles and Cotten from a novel by Eric Ambler involving a gunnery expert on a mission to Turkey. The start of the picture was unexpected because Welles previously had directed his own films and he is still engaged with “The Magnificent Ambersons.”
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Karl Strauss has been signed as a cameraman for “Journey.” Michele Morgan, RKO’s French import, previously had been announced for the role Miss Del Rio is playing.
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SOME DOUBLERS IN BRASS
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March 14, 1943
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One of Orson Welles’s major ambitions is being realized these days�he has achieved in his Mercury Productions a gathering of citizens with manifold talents, each of whom doubles, and sometimes triples, in brass. No single-threat man himself, the 26-year-old figures that all his associates should get in on the fun. So it happens that in “Journey Iota Fear” the credit billing on the screen will read, “Screen Play by Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten”�thus making a doubler in brass out of Joe. For himself Welles chose a supporting role.
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On the list is Jack Moss, Orson’s business partner in assorted endeavors. Moss has no fame at all as an actor, but in “Journey Into Fear” he plays a vicious, monosyllabic and somewhat unsightly gent who is set to wipe out Cotten�in other words, a killer. It took Welles to hit on the notion of using his mild-mannered business associate as the man to play the part; Moss, by way of explanation, has produced several pictures himself and for years has been confidential adviser to Gary Cooper and other stars.
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Then there is Orson’s secretary, a young unsuspecting lady named Shifra Haran, who is more�accustomed to transcribing shorthand notes than to facing cameras. Her fate overtook her the day Orson fixed her with the Welles piercing glance and said, “You’re going to play Mrs. Haller.” There was no appeal from the maestro’s verdict. Shifra is now an actress.
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Another in the cast is Robert Meltzer, who, until his entanglement with� this Wellesian world-to-itself, was a radio and screen writer. With, practically no warning at all, Meltzer found himself playing the role of a steward on the smelly tramp steamer aboard which much of the adventurous story takes place.
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Consider the matter of Norman Foster, who directed. Foster one was a highly popular leading man, then turned to directing, with some success in the “B” production field. Unable to circumvent the rigid laws against using any imagination in that sort of production, Norman said a loud “Phooey� and went to writing screen plays. He too found himself associated with Welles, as a writer for both screen and radio.
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Presently Orson needed a man to ‘go to Mexico to supervise shooting on a project to be finished later, and Norman was selected. The results were excellent�the reward the director’s job on “Journey Into: Fear.”
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Among the players who appeared in Welles�s first production for RKO, “Citizen Kane,” and who repeat in this one, are Cotten, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorehead and Ruth Warrick. Cotten and Miss Moorehead repeated in Welles’s second, “The Magnificent Ambersons.” From� Broadway,� where they appeared in nearly every Welles show, came Eustace Wyatt, Edgar Barrier, Vladimir Sokoloff and Stephan Schnabel.
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What marks the Welles method of operation as distinctive is the fact that a leading player of one production may do only a small part in the next. For this the protean young pater familias sets the pace himself. He starred in “Kane,” did not appear in “Ambersons,” plays a featured part in “Journey Into Fear.” �
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Further illustration is Richard Bennett. His role in “Ambersons” is one of the most important in the film. This time he’s playing the captain of the previously mentioned tramp steamer�and he never says a word. Just giggles. It’s a choice opportunity for good acting, of course, but only in a Welles production would you find an actor of Bennett’s caliber doing it.
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To what lengths this unorthodox casting goes is best illustrated perhaps by the case of Eddie Howard, known to one and all in his capacity as Orson’s chauffeur and general handyman as “Alfalfa Bill.” He, too, suddenly found himself in a movie one day�playing a chauffeur to Cotten In “The Magnificent Ambersons.” He performs a similar bit of Thespian bravery in “Journey Into Fear.”�
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REVIEW: Welles�s ��Journey Into Fear� arrives at the Palace
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March 19, 1943�
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Out of Eric Ambler’s thriller, “Journey Into Fear,” Orson Welles and his perennial Mercury Company have made an uneven but generally imaginative and exciting tale of terror. Less ambitious than any of the company’s previous productions, the new film at the Palace is nevertheless many notches above the garden variety regularly sent to Broadway. Although Norman Foster has directed it, Mr. Welles, in collaboration with Joseph Cotten, who plays the central role, has written the adaptation and either directly or indirectly it is Welles’s fine flair for melodrama that is stamped on every scene. Mr. Foster is no mean pupil; although his style is still more derivative of Welles than it is vigorously individual, he is a director worth watching closely.
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Certainly it is a story well fitted to the Welles technique. The bizarre adventure of an American ordnance expert caught in the web of international intrigue, it pursues its frightened protagonist from his first encounter with death at a sleazy Istanbul night club, across the Black Sea in a stinking Greek cattle boat to the final desperate showdown above the streets of Batum. Strange and indeterminate characters confront the fleeing expert�Nazi spies, Turkish secret police, a second-rate dance team, henpecked political theorists, a filthy old Greek sea captain, and bespectacled killers. In short, the odd sort of flotsam that melodrama is made of.
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But it is in the characters that the lapses of the film are caused. Vividly executed, they become too much of a good thing; Mr. Foster sometimes lets them get out of hand in irrelevant talk. At his best, however, Mr. Foster proves that Hitchcock isn’t the only director with an instinct for the twist or atmospheric trick that sets an audience’s pulse pounding. The fright of the ordnance expert is constantly underscored by an uncanny use of light and distorted shadows in the ratty corridors of the ship; in a blacked-out cabin one senses the terror of the hidden expert as footsteps echo from the pitch-dark screen. And in that final duel in the beating rain on the ledge of a Batum hotel Mr. Foster has directed a melodramatic climax that is breathless and intense.
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To select outstanding performances would be to name practically the entire cast�in which Mr. Welles’s characterization of the Turkish police chief is the only one which is overdrawn. Joseph Cotten gives a deftly suggestive performance as the pursued expert; Agnes Moorehead adds another exacerbating portrait of a shrewish woman, and Jack Moss�also Welles’s business manager�nearly steals every scene in which he appears as the pudgy-faced killer. Despite its lapses, “Journey Into Fear” is still a terse invitation to heart failure by fright.�
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