The thought-to-be lost Orson Welles’ silent film Too Much Johnson (1938) was found in an abandoned shipping company warehouse in Italy. It was the last film Welles directed before making what has been called the perfect film, 1941’s Citizen Kane. Welles supposedly gave up on Johnson after production. It’s a slapstick comedy that was assumed to have been destroyed in a 1970 fire at Welles’ Madrid home. Too Much Johnson will be out in October.
The actual film was restored at George Eastman House.
A 1974 Orson Welles interview relative to now, “It took a lot of electronic work to get that kind of information.”
