By RAY KELLY

Compared to other Orson Welles projects, relatively  little has been written about Too Much Johnson, the Mercury Theatre’s ill-fated 1938 stage comedy, which would have included his first use of film in a commercial project.

A two-week tryout of  Too Much Johnson commenced at the Stony Creek Theatre in Branford, Connecticut in August 1938. Welles was forced to abandon the silent film introduction and transitions with Joseph Cotten, Arlene Francis and other members of the Mercury. That footage was lost for 40 years before it turned up in Italy, where it was eventually screened in 2013.

Massimiliano Studer (Olymoia, Le maschere di Eyes Wide Shut) has probed the history of the project in his new Italian-language book, Alle origini di Quarto potere. Too much Johnson: il film perduto di Orson Welles (At the Origins of Citizen Kane. Too Much Johnson: Orson Welles’ Lost Movie). It is available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.it

Studer, co-founder of Formacinema, was the first to report that 600 reels of lost Welles footage contained in 13 trunks are now in Gemona. Footage included Too Much Johnson, Don Quixote, In the Land of Don Quixote and Portrait of Gina.

Studer generously took time to field several questions about  Too Much Johnson and his book for Wellesnet.

 

With so many unfinished or unrealized Orson Welles projects to choose from, what attracted you to Too Much Johnson.

My decision to participate in the world premiere at Pordenone is due to Wellesnet.  On August 7, 2013, I was at home, where I read a post on Wellesnet about the discovery of Too Much Johnson. The next day I called Pordenone to get accredited.

During the screening, I felt captivated by the film, mostly because I was seeing a real film. Welles’ claims about his film inexperience before Citizen Kane were disavowed by what was being projected onto the screen. The day after the world premiere, I was lucky enough to see (noted film scholar) Ciro Giorgini and I immediately asked him if he was available to be interviewed. This meeting  created the foundations of the research.

Months later, in fact, I met in Rome with Ciro and conducted a very long interview — two hours!. Among the many things he told me, Giorgini pointed to two topics that I have developed in my book: The U.S. Communist Party membership of John Berry (Welles’ assistant for Too Much Johnson) and the false stories surrounding the fire at the villa in Madrid.

The year 1938 also marked the release of Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl, on which I had already worked for a book focused on this sports documentary.  I had discovered, among other things, that the famous lights of Nuremberg (see expression that Norman Lloyd uses to about the lights of Julius Caesar) obviously refer to the other film by Riefenstahl, The Triumph of Will. In any case, Leni Riefenstahl had come to New York in November 1938 to promote this documentary on the Berlin Olympics and I had already studied this historical period. Many members of the U.S. Communist Party had mobilized against her and I noticed that in New York, in 1938, the party was very strong, organized and able to attract many intellectuals and artists. In short, it fascinated me to be able to deepen the political, artistic and cultural environment of New York in the late ’30s. And Too Much Johnson was perfect for this.

As for the fire in the villa in Madrid, I must admit, after all the research I have done, Ciro was right. Following Giorgini’s suggestions, I looked for direct sources that talked about the fire not after years, but the next day. So I found two Spanish articles the day after the fire. Both said that the fire had hit only the library of the villa and that the flames had been tamed in a few minutes.

Before starting serious research, I asked Piero Colussi (Cinemazero), Livio Jacob (Cineteca del Friuli) and Paolo Cherchi Usai (George Eastman Museum) if there was someone who was already working on such a project. I already knew these people because in May 2014 (precisely on May 6, Welles’ birthday), Formacinema, a cultural association that I founded a few years ago, had organized in Milan one of the very first projections, worldwide, of Too Much Johnson. Almost 400 people watched the screening, a small record for a silent film!  Nobody was working on a book, so I contacted Pierre Dalla Vigna, head of Mimesis Edizioni, the publisher with whom I had published the book  Olympia. I guaranteed the publisher a series of news and unpublished documents worldwide. Pierre accepted and I immediately went to Gemona to see the materials of Too Much Johnson. When I finished writing the book, I asked Paolo Mereghetti to write the preface. Paolo accepted without hesitation and wrote a magnificent text. For Wellesnet readers, I can say that Mereghetti played a key role in Italy for the knowledge and study of Welles. Paolo has, in fact, organized in 1977 the first complete review of Welles cinema in Italy. He chose the cineclub founded by my father, Alessandro, the Obraz Cinestudio of Milan as a place to make this famous event. Ciro Giorgini had confessed to me that his love / obsession with Welles had begun when he came specifically to Milan to see this legendary review.

The stage production of Too Much Johnson had its tryout in Connecticut, but it never made it to Broadway. What went wrong?

Many things did not go the right way for the staging of Too Much Johnson. First of all, Welles was always very busy on too many fronts: Theatrical performances, radio broadcasts and political commitments absorbed him 12-14 hours a day. For Too Much Johnson, then, he had invented this strange operation of creating a filmed part of the show. This was the coup de grâce. First of all, the realization costs had risen enormously compared to the other shows. In addition to the actors, the technicians (electricians and cameramen) had to be paid and, above all, it was necessary to buy the film and print the shot. At some point, filming ends because Mercury no longer pays for the film development lab. While he assembles, as best he can, the film, Welles receives a warning from Paramount, which had the movie  rights to Too Much Johnson. Finally, the Mercury technicians carry out the rehearsals for the screening of the film at the Stony Creek Theater only a few days before the start of the show. But they realize that there is not enough space for a projection. At this point, Welles decided not to project the film. But the stage show, without the filmed part, was incomprehensible and the audience became very angry. Too Much Johnson went on stage for 15 days just because he had sold out before the first performance.

But Welles was very attached to Too Much Johnson and when he was hired by RKO, he showed the film to its directors. It was part of his artistic curriculum, already  solid in the theater and radio. And he often showed it to his friends, who were visiting him in Madrid. Joseph Cotten used to say “Too much Johnson!” Before going on stage at the theater, it was perhaps one of the most obvious failures of Welles’ career, but he was very attached to his first young film experience.

What were your research sources for a stage show that took place 80 years ago?

The sources I used to reconstruct the story of Too Much Johnson were, almost all, first-hand. First of all, I was able to consult Gemona, thanks to the availability of Jacob and Colussi, the original envelopes where Too Much Johnson‘s reels were kept. The archivist Alice Rispoli gave me all the support I could ask.  I took a lot of photos, some of which are in the book. Paolo Cherchi Usai gave me photos of the head/end tails of the nitrate copy of the film, where there are a lot of important information. One of these concerns the almost certainty that Welles (worked on the footage of)  Too Much Johnson during the very first days of Citizen Kane… On one head tail of a reel of TMJ, I found this date: 7/1/1940.

I studied the biography of Paul Bowles, where he speaks widely of Harry Dunham, the cameraman of Too Much Johnson. I gathered a lot of information about this bizarre and whimsical character. A researcher from New York University, Bleakley McDowell, helped me a lot and thanks to him I had the chance to see a surrealist-inspired short film that Dunham had filmed in New York in 1936.  Venus and Adonis (this is the title of the short) has music by Bowles and has many similarities with TMJ. Some scenes are shot on the roofs of Manhattan and the final plays in the port with the ships in the background. Dunham had a degree in architecture and I would not rule out that certain shots of TMJ are his own and not Welles’.  During the work of writing the book, I was able to identify four frames of Too Much Johnson in which you can clearly see the face of Harry Dunham.

A fundamental source for my book was found by a friend of mine of the University of Turin, Professor Franco Prono. In fact, I discovered thanks to him an archive of Welles materials at the National Cinema Museum of Turin. In this archive, created with great expertise by Carla Ceresa, there is a folder specifically dedicated to the burning of the villa in Madrid with some letters that clearly say that such a devastating fire has never happened. I also found confirmation of everything thanks to the book Two Cheers for Hollywood by Joseph McBride, where the recollections of Beatrice Welles are reported. It further confirmed the information.

I retrieved the 1938 articles of theater magazines about the working of TMJ. Finally,I recovered the treatment that Welles did for the play… (at) the Lilly Library — 555 pages that, with difficulty, I analyzed. How Welles had all that energy is a real mystery!

Steven North, who  was introduced to me by Dennis Berry (John’s son), also helped me to analyze the FBI files on Welles. His contribution was fundamental and I thank him very much for this. He also helped me understand the concept of the Popular Front. As a European, I could not understand how it was possible for this political movement to be in the USA too. But Steven made me understand it perfectly. Finally, I would like to say that I managed to recover a piece of the correspondence between Eisenstein and Welles thanks to a Russian researcher, Sergej Kapterev. Readers will find the letters in the book. I also have to thank Claudio Valentinetti, who has constantly followed the writing project and who encouraged me to deepen the topics that, from time to time, I discovered.

The silent film footage was missing for 40 years until it turned up in Pordenone, Italy. How did it end up there?

This is one of the many mysteries of Too Much Johnson. From the surveys I have carried out, the path, more or less, was this. Welles brings all the reels from the USA. He purchases the villa in Madrid where he remains for some time. In 1970, Welles left Italy after a newspaper article that referred to his affair with Oja Kodar. The fire broke out in August 1970 and Welles wants to sell the villa at all costs. The villa is sold in the mid 1970s. Beatrice was sent to the villa to make an inventory before moving. (Longtime secretary) Ann Rogers, then, collects all the material  in Madrid and sends it to Rome under the name of Paola Mori to the firm Interdean.

For a long time, nobody pays the rent to store the materials (not just films, but also furniture) to this company. Interdean went bust, but is bought by Roiatti. For a very long time no one claims the materials at the Roiatti. Many Roiatti employees, with the passage of time, retire and lose the historical memory of who owned the trunks. If you look at these wooden wrappers, as I did, you cannot understand who they belonged to. There is no written “Owned by Orson Welles”!

In short, until 2003, these trunks remain in Roiatti’s warehouse until a young film lover, who works for both Roiatti and Cinemazero, thinks that there may be something interesting and that they should not be thrown into landfills. Mario Catto, calls Cinemazero who goes to collect the boxes. Cinemazero since 1976 deals with recovering and preserving film materials. The crates, however, remain sealed for another six years. There are no external signs that those crates are from Welles. To discover the rest of the story, I invite you to read the book …

What else was found in Pordenone?

The 13 trunks, recovered first from Cinemazero and now kept in Gemona, contain 600 reels. In addition to Too Much Johnson, as you know, were found reels of The Merchant of Venice, Portrait of Gina, and other material related to the processing of Nella terra di Don Chisciotte and something from Don Quixote. I cannot say more because my research has focused on Too Much Johnson and the rest had little relevance to my project.  I did not study those materials in depth. I would like to add that I hope that other scholars will visit the archive and further study those materials.

Can we expect an English-language version of your book soon?

I can tell you that the book has just been published in Italy with the publisher Mimesis Editore on March 1, 2018. I would very much like to publish an edition in English and I hope that some American or English publisher is interested in the translation. I have already received many appreciations, even at an academic level, for the job. I must confess that I wrote the text already thinking of a potential reader of English. Almost all the bibliographic sources are of American authors. Certainly the interest shown by Wellesnet and yourself has confirmed to me that a research like the one I did on Too Much Johnson is interesting for an international audience.

What’s next for you as an author?

At the moment I am a PhD student at the University of Udine and my next research is focused on The Other Side of the Wind. The project was received with great interest by this University, above all thanks to the rediscovery of the Welles archives deposited at the National Cinema Museum of Turin, where there are many materials on the film, which no one has ever consulted, much less studied.

I chose to focus on The Other Side of the Wind because there are so many connections with Too Much Johnson. Welles, for example, met Hemingway for the first time while both working on a documentary on the Spanish Civil War (I am talking about the voice over for The Spanish Earth), which is one of the very first international political laboratories of the Popular Front movement, about which I mentioned  earlier. And then there is the theme of the political exile of Welles, who has very strong ties with his political commitment that becomes evident in 1938. For the book on Too Much Johnson, for example, I managed to recover a rare article of Welles published by the Daily Worker, a communist newspaper printed in the USA, in April 1938 entitled Theater and Popular Front.

In the work, which I have just started, I am supported by Professor Francesco Pitassio, director of the Ph.D. program in Art History, Film and Media Studies, Music at University of Udin. He has already shown considerable enthusiasm for the project and will be, for the next three years, my supervisor, together with Professor  Andrea Mariani. Even Steven North is helping me a lot in the research work. He is the son of the famous composer Alex North, and as a young man he played an active role in New Hollywood. He has supported me in every way and with a generosity that always leaves me speechless and that flatters me.

I do not know what I will find out, but I learned from my previous experiences that the surprises are around the corner and that I will have the opportunity to learn while having fun.

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