Lady from Shanghai outtakes

[Terry]

Extraordinarily rare takes of Elsa following Michael as he flees through Chinatown (with Welles' double thoroughly unconvincing - his gait is all wrong,) a few tantalizing seconds from what should be the long sequence of Michael and Grisby climbing the hill, and second-unit stuff of the Circe sailing past. Fascinating. If the footage presented before this stuff is also from Shanghai, I don't recognize any of it.

https://archive.org/details/pet1089r5

[RayKelly]

Extraordinarily rare takes of Elsa following Michael as he flees through Chinatown (with Welles' double thoroughly unconvincing - his gait is all wrong,) a few tantalizing seconds from what should be the long sequence of Michael and Grisby climbing the hill, and second-unit stuff of the Circe sailing past. Fascinating. If the footage presented before this stuff is also from Shanghai, I don't recognize any of it.

Terry,
This is a great find. I have noted it on the main site.
https://www.wellesnet.com/lady-shanghai-outtakes/

[Le Chiffre]

Great job, Terry! Fascinating footage. I wonder what that first part with the fire trucks and the fire is. Maybe not Welles-related, although some takes seem shot in the angular, corner-to-corner style that Welles liked. Maybe there is other Wellesian outtake footage out there on Archive, waiting to be discovered.

[Roger Ryan]

I agree with Karl Morton IV's Facebook observation that these "outtakes" appear to be excised from the original footage for use as stock footage for other Columbia films (such as The Three Stooges' 1948 short Acapulco Antics - just kidding!). To that end, the value was preserving the extraneous moments that didn't feature a recognizable star, or even a specific action, happening in the frame.

Re-watching The Lady From Shanghai last night, I noticed that the shot filmed in Acapulco represented in the "outtakes" by the slate and a few seconds of background action before Welles enters the frame is, in fact, featured in the released film. It's the first shot of what's left of the sequence showing O'Hara and Grisby discussing Grisby's proposition as they climb the hill to the lookout point. The shot, in the released version, appears to be truncated since there is a cut about ten seconds into it to a studio shot of Glenn Anders with rear projection (the many studio-bound rear projection shot inserts in the film were nearly all used to abridge longer takes that Welles shot on location).

I also spotted one of the second unit Chinatown shots in the released film - Rita Hayworth's double crossing an intersection (it appears to be a take similar to the one seen at the 5:35 minute mark in the archive.org footage). One brief shot of Welles' double can also be seen as he runs towards the Chinese theater.

I'm curious about David Wiegleb's Facebook comment "The most interesting is an alternate take of Grisby’s body in the streets". His comment implies that there is more footage than what has been uploaded. Is this true or is Mr. Wiegleb simply mistaken?