A full year before the 100th anniversary of Orson Welles’ birth, the Toronto International Film Festival Cinematheque has something special planned for fans of the late director. TIFF Cinematheque will feature a special screening of the recently rediscovered silent footage of Too Much Johnson, as part of a mini-retrospective entitled Orson Welles: Lost & Found […]
The long lost footage Orson Welles shot for the Mercury Theatre stage production of “Too Much Johnson” will get its first West Cost showing on March 3. Paolo Cherchi Usai,senior curator of moving image at George Eastman House and cofounder of the Pordenone Silent Film Festival, will introduce the footage at the University of California […]
In recent years, an increasing number of unfilmed screenplays by Orson Welles have turned up online in pdf or text formats. Just as rare videos have popped up on YouTube, these scripts have found their way to the popular website Scribd.com, where they can be read or downloaded. Wellesnet.com has combed through the Scribd archives […]
Editor’s note. This article first appeared on New York Arts on December 4, 2013 and is reprinted here with their kind permission. By MICHAEL MILLER Simon Callow, in his biography of Orson Welles, cites the Mercury actor, William Alland, on Welles’ personal devastation caused by the failure the company’s 1938 revival of William Gillette’s (1853-1937) […]
The seemingly impending completion of Orson Welles’ unfinished “The Other Side of the Wind” is a familiar story to fans. Sketchy reports surface online that a deal has been reached, or Welles’ confidantes hint its world premiere is just around the corner. Hopes are raised, then dashed. Director Peter Bogdanonich, who co-starred in the film […]
Updated on Oct. 14, 2013: The Guardian weighed in on the screening. “While it is a work print, not a finished film, ‘Too Much Johnson’ offers breathlessly enjoyable viewing. Joseph Cotten makes a tremendous movie debut as the play’s philandering lead, displaying unimagined guts and agility in a series of tumbles and leaps across Manhattan […]
By RAY KELLY With the discovery in Italy of 40 minutes of previously lost film footage intended for the Mercury Theatre’s “Too Much Johnson,” interest is high in this failed Orson Welles’ stage production. A two-week tryout of “Too Much Johnson” commenced at the Stony Creek Theatre in Branford, Connecticut in August 1938. Technical problems […]
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Wellesnet.com fields many questions from Orson Wellles’ fans, but our most recent query was quite intriguing. “I have located a 43-foot wooden sailing boat for sale in Croatia. The sellers say that the boat was used in the filming of an Orson Welles movie in early 70s… for some reason the film was never brought […]
The June issue of Harper’s provides a first look at Peter Biskind’s upcoming book “My Lunches With Orson,” based on taped conversations between Orson Welles and friend Henry Jaglom. The excerpt in Harper’s, “Pitches and Moan,” recounts a disastrous lunchtime meeting in 1983 the pair had with an unidentified HBO executive. Welles pitched a story […]
“Jaded,” the 1989 cinematic effort by Orson Welles’ partner Oja Kodar has never been released on home video and has remained unseen by most Welles fans. Now, the trailer for the film, which was included in a Gary Graver documentary, is available online. The preview trailer heavily promotes her connection to Welles and utilizes scenes […]
YouTube user Citizen Welles has added another rarity to his impressive online collection. Ninety minutes of audience interview footage for the never completed “Filming The Trial” is online at youtube.com Shot by Gary Graver at the University of Southern California after a screening of “The Trial” in 1981, “Filming The Trial” finds Welles fielding questions […]
By RAY KELLY Filmmaker Henry Jaglom, whose recorded conversations with Orson Welles form the basis of an upcoming book, graciously agreed to field a few questions about his late, great friend. Jaglom’s relationship with Welles dates back to his freshman 1971 film “A Safe Place.” In the interview, he discussed those legendary lunches with Welles […]
By LAWRENCE FRENCH Orson Welles had completed most of the principal photography on The Other Side of the Wind by 1976, and shortly afterwards the film became embroiled in legal entanglements with it’s Iranian backers. As a result, Welles found himself once again forced to abandon a cherished project, in this case the movie that […]
By LAWRENCE FRENCH Having seen a nearly complete rough cut of The Other Side of the Wind, I can easily see why it has baffled so many people. But having studied the script in some depth, and having seen many of the clips in isolation many times, (including the material recently posted by Henry Jaglom […]
There is one town that would be better than Aranjuez to see your first bullfight in if you are only going to see one and that is Ronda. That is where you should go if you ever go to Spain on a honeymoon or if you ever bolt with anyone. The entire town and as […]
“An Adventure Shared By Desperate Men (That Finally Came to Nothing)” will be published in winter 2013 by St. Martin’s Press.
UPDATED ON JAN. 12, 2013: The OSOTW footage has been deleted from vimeo.
UPDATED: Wonderful news. We have been told by Peggy Daub at the University of Michigan that “The Deep” papers were purchased for the Special Collections Library. U-M is already home to “The Orson Welles – Chris Welles Feder Collection” and the “The Alessandro Tasca di Cutò – Orson Welles Collection.” By RAY KELLY A collection […]
By RAY KELLY Paul Bradbury of the website Total Hvar has been generous in sharing with Wellesnet several rare photographs of Orson Welles filming his unfinished thriller “The Deep” (also known as “Dead Reckoning”). According to Bradbury, the photographs were taken in 1967 on the beautiful Croatian island of Hvar. These black and white photographs […]
