The Legacy Theatre Independent Film Festival will run September 23-25, 2024 at the former Stony Creek Theatre in Branford, Connecticut, where Orson Welles staged his ill-fated production of Too Much Johnson. Submissions for the three-day festival will be accepted through July 8, and those selected for the fest will be notified by August 30.
The festival categories include Short Drama Award, Short Comedy Award, Short Documentary Award, Feature-length Drama Award, Feature-length Comedy Award, and Feature-length Documentary Award. Additional award categories include Best Young Filmmaker Award, Best Actor Overall Award, Best Actress Overall Award, CT Filmmaker Award, National Filmmaker Award, International Filmmaker Award, and Overall Legacy Theatre Film Festival Winner. Day passes will be available for purchase to attend the festival events. To submit a film for consideration for the fest, visit FilmFreeway.com/LegacyTheatreFilmFestival.
Once a chapel-turned-movie house near the Thimble Islands, the Stony Creek Theatre became a home for community theater and summer stock productions during the Great Depression. Welles and his Mercury Theatre staged Too Much Johnson opened at the Stony Creek Theater on August 16, 1938.
Welles had planned to run 40 minutes of silent film to accompany the William Gillette stage comedy about a New York playboy who flees to Cuba to avoid a jealous husband. A 20-minute prologue and two 10-minute bits, which would run before the second and third acts, were filmed in New York City with Joseph Cotten, Arlene Francis, Virginia Nicolson and other members of the Mercury Theatre.
At Stony Creek, Welles discovered the theater’s low ceiling did not make projection feasible. The production flopped and Welles opted not to bring it to New York.
The 40 minutes of partially edited film was never screened and was long presumed lost Too much fanfare, it was revealed in August 2013 that the 10 reels of Too Much Johnson footage had been uncovered in an Italian warehouse in remarkably good condition.
Following the Depression, the Stony Creek Theatre served as a parachute factory during World War II and in the early 1960s became known as the Stony Creek Puppet House. The town of Branford condemned the building in January 2007 for building and fire code violations and its future looked bleak until it was renovated in 2020.
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