Italian archivists found a never-before-seen, long-lost Orson Welles flick that been been languishing in a warehouse for decades, film historians announced yesterday.
Welles’ 1938 slapstick comedy “Too Much Johnson” was supposed to be shown as a prologue to a Connecticut stage production of William Gillette’s 19th century farce of the same name.
The silent 35mm movie – found in a warehouse in Pordenone, Italy – never made it through post production and was never shown.
Archivists found “Too Much Johnson” footage in three segments, one in 20 minutes and two in 10 minutes.
The raw footage is now being restored at the George Eastman House film and photography museum in Rochester, in hopes of saving all 40 minutes.
A musical score was written for “Too Much Johnson” but never recorded. Welles also never got around to drawing up captions for the silent flick.
Rumors have swirled for decades about why “Too Much Johnson” never screened, according to Barbara Gibson, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based National Film Preservation Foundation.
“There’s a lot of myths going around,” Gibson said. “One of them is the theater didn’t have the space to do it. Another is that the actors didn’t think they were paid enough.”
The long-lost work is considered an important artifact because “Too Much Johnson” was done two years before Welles came to Hollywood and made his landmark “Citizen Kane.”
“It got him interested in the process of doing film and all its potential,” Gibson said.