User Reviews

Long thought lost, "Too Much Johnson" has been found and restored. Never intended as a standalone film, it is rather a collection of three filmed segments meant to introduce acts of a stage play, a farce from the late 19th century. It was never used that way, and Welles did not finish editing it for that purpose. What survives is a very rough cut, including multiple takes of the same shot, no titles (which probably would have been used), and material that seems very likely to be out of order.

The first segment is the longest and the best. It's primarily a farcical chase out of the silent comedy era, featuring an enraged husband chasing his wife's lover (Joseph Cotten) through New York, particularly over rooftops and up and down streets in the market district. This material was essentially stolen footage, filmed without permits on location as time allowed. Some of it is fairly funny, but in the version that survives, it doesn't hold together well. One must admire the grit of Cotten and the other actors, who are doing their own work here up on some rather dodgy rooftops.

The second segment is not very interesting. All important characters have taken a ship to Cuba and the husband is still chasing the lawyer. In this segment, we get shots of Cotten traveling to the plantation of a friend who proves to be dead, shots of the dead friend's servant at the graveside, and shots of the new plantation owner walking around.

The third segment is a slight improvement. It primarily consists of an extended duel between the husband and the plantation owner, who has been mistaken for the lover. The lover seeks to break up the duel. It goes on over cliffs and up and down hills, ending with the furious plantation owner trouncing both the husband and the lover and dumping them in a pond, where they sit bedraggled and hangdog.

So it was never intended to be a complete film, and even what there is does not represent a coherent, careful assembly of what was shot. However, there are certainly elements that suggest that Welles had pretty good understanding of directing for the camera before he ever got to Hollywood. He makes clever use of camera angles, clearly planned some interesting intercutting, and has elaborate shots with important elements in both the foreground and background.

Welles obviously gave thought to expressing plot cinematically, as in an extended sequence in which the husband runs around knocking hats off the heads of passers-by to match their faces against a torn photo showing only the forehead and hair of the lover. He use a variety of angles, including high overhead shots and reaction closeups from the victims, to build this sequence. Neither this sequence nor most of the others was fully edited, so it's not easy to tell how Welles really envisioned it, but it is clear that he had a pretty elaborate plan for how it would play on screen.

In summary, this is not a film one sees for the entertainment experience, but rather because one has a deep interest in Orson Welles and wants to get a sense of what his own raw talent was like before he got to Hollywood, carefully studied film, and worked with experienced film professionals.

It's always a miracle when a lost film is discovered, or an unreleased one or whichever, and for those looking for the scraps of what Orson Welles left behind and have never been able to see, the most prized missing stuff is... The Magnificent Ambersons, of course! But among the films thought lost to the ashes of time, one of them was Too Much Johnson, an experimental work that Welles made in conjunction with a play by William Gillette. I haven't read the play, but I've read about it, and it basically concerns a man who goes to Cuba, but also has a dalliance of some kind with a woman. And then there's a chase, and wackiness ensues about infidelities and husbands and wives and so on.

Actually, I may be confusing the play with what Welles filmed, which were, according to history, supposed to be bridging-segments during scene changes on stage. Also, Welles wanted to possibly try to convince Hollywood he could direct film - prior to this he'd done one really amateur short, The Hearts of Age, and this was either before or around the time that War of the Worlds happened, which got him his carte-blanch deal anyway - and what better way than to go another step further past his theatrical experiments (Macbeth with voodoo, Julius Caesar in modern dress) and make a true-blue independent film?

The problem in seeing Too Much Johnson today are two-fold at least: 1) Welles never left behind a fully finished cut, even in the form of what the segments would've really looked like edited together for the stage hybrid, and 2) what the Turner Classic Movie channel decided to do (in conjunction I suppose with an Italian restoration from the discovered footage from 2013) is just throw on TV at the end of a Welles 100th birthday celebration... everything. One might get the wrong idea tuning in in the middle of the night (which is when it officially aired) trying to get a potential glimpse at the Boy Wonder a few years before Kane to see what kind of work he was capable of - AND think, without the proper research, that it's a completed feature. It isn't.

What was shown on TCM is a work-print, basically anything that Welles and company shot; multiple takes included, many moments of Joseph Cotten just looking around or something taken a second time like characters on a horse carriage, and the coverage of angles. And, on top of this, the footage is scored with new music by some dude that is rather inappropriate, even for an unfinished product. If one is trying to watch it outside of the confines of stuffy film history, as, you know, an entertainment experience, it's all music that should be meant for some modern thriller (at best), NOT a Keystone Kops style comedy featuring the kind of set pieces that would later be emulated by Scooby Doo and Benny Hill.

Now, this isn't to say it isn't without some interest to watch this or seek it out if you may have also DVR'd it or, by chance, it finds its way online or whatever: Welles clearly shows, years before he met Greg Toland and the legend of the "You can learn everything about filmmaking in a few hours", that he already knew where to put the camera and direct actors. This isn't to say it all works; even the segments where things do cut together cohesively, it all moves super fast and oddly, and most of what's shown is just an extended chase (again, bridging the gaps of the play and experimenting).

But if you are looking at this and want to see some fun material, certainly Cotten in the lead, and women players Arlene Francis, Mary Wickes and Edgar Barrier (complete with giant mustache), plus Welles' wife at the time Virginia Nicholson, deliver on physical comedy, BIG expressions and gestures, and Welles accomplishes a lot of very daring physical feats and action. That he got away with so much - I don't know if they had those things called 'film permits' back in 1938 - is nothing short of remarkable. And considering how jumbled things are put together like this, I was surprised how much I COULD tell was going on.

But, again, all of the context about what this was counts. Watching this is for historical, cinephile-like, Welles-junkie reasons most of all. Compared to what's presented here, It's All True is a whole product. You're basically getting a series of glimpses into what was already apparent about this filmmaker, of his sense of play and imagination and just trying things out (a sequence involving knocking off hats, and how each man comes together to form a gang, is hilarious even in this rough form). If you go into it thinking it's a full feature you'll not merely be mistaken, you'll probably want to turn it off before it ends out of the monotony of multiple shots and jarring takes (plus raw footage that wasn't quite cleaned up).

So, needless to say, at 66 minutes long (!) this may be, ahem, too much Johnson, and whoever chose the music should be ashamed of themselves. But in this world where his unfinished works have attained a legend of their own, it's another piece of the puzzle. Last thing, though you may see a '7 out of 10', I really give no rating to this, as it wouldn't be fair - akin to grading a student film.

In the mid-1960s, I met Orson Welles while I was working for Lew Grade's ITC television organisation. Welles wanted Grade's backing for a film or TV project, and he was very eager to ingratiate himself. I had heard a rumour that 'Citizen Kane' was not actually Welles's film debut, and that he had directed some short films before 'Kane'. When I asked him about this, he graciously arranged for me to screen two brief films which he had directed pre-'Kane'. One of these was 'Too Much Johnson'.

Before I describe this movie, let me explain its source. 'Too Much Johnson' was originally an 1890s stage farce written by and starring William Gillette, an actor-playwright now remembered only for having written the first play about Sherlock Holmes. The main character in 'Too Much Johnson' is Augustus Billings, an American businessman who travels to Cuba with his wife and his termagant mother-in-law Mrs Batterson. Also aboard the steamship are a hot-tempered Frenchman and his wife, and some dim-witted Canadians. En route, Billings's wife discovers an embarrassing letter in his possession. To avoid divulging the truth, Billings claims that the letter was written by a Mr Johnson (who doesn't actually exist). In Cuba, the Billings party encounter an American named Joseph Johnson. Mrs Billings and her mother assume that this man is the author of the letter. Comic complications ensue ... but they're not very funny and certainly not believable.

Now, the film: the footage that Welles made (and which he allowed me to screen) was NOT a film version of Gillette's play. (His film ran only two reels, whilst Gillette's farce is a full-length play.) Nor is it an incomplete or abbreviated version of the stage play. Welles told me that he and the Mercury Theatre players had intended to stage a production of Gillette's play, directed by Welles. (I'm not certain if this production ever actually took place.) As an innovation, Welles and his cast filmed some bridging material, which would have been projected onstage during the scene changes. Welles cheerfully admitted that he had shot these sequences as an entree to Hollywood, in order to persuade the movie-studio executives that he could handle the disciplines of film direction.

Bearing in mind that this footage was never meant to be a complete film, it consists of several brief unlinked scenes. We see Joseph Cotten, Ruth Ford and the very funny Mary Wickes boarding a gangway at a wharf. (There's supposed to be a large ocean liner berthed just out of frame, but there obviously isn't; the quay is clearly too small -- and in water too shallow -- to harbour an ocean liner.) We also see the Frenchman and his wife (Edgar Barrier, Arlene Francis) in an unconvincing 'shipboard' sequence. We see some shaky hand-held footage of Joseph Cotten rushing about in the 'Cuban jungle', but the local flora don't look remotely tropical ... and Cotten's clothing, as well as his lack of perspiration, indicate that this footage was shot well north of the Tropic of Cancer. Welles told me that these scenes were filmed in Connecticut, but he didn't recall precisely where and I'm not even certain that he was being truthful. (During the same conversation, Welles told me that he had been a personal friend of Bram Stoker ... who in fact died three years before Welles was born.) None of the distinctive traits of 'Citizen Kane', such as Gregg Toland's depth-of-focus shots, or Welles's ceiling compositions, are in evidence here.

Welles also permitted me to see a brief clip of silent-film footage, shot mostly out of focus, consisting of some blurry close-ups of Joseph Cotten grinning outdoors in three-quarter view, a hand tugging a door-pull, and a brass bell spinning on a pavement. These clips seemed to be the result of Welles larking about with a camera, rather than increments of any sort of coherent film narrative. Judging from Cotten's appearance, and the general ineptitude of Welles's direction, these shots were filmed many months before 'Too Much Johnson' ... and they probably constitute Welles's debut as a film director.

The footage which I saw on this occasion has very little entertainment value except as a curiosity, and no significance except as a footnote to Welles's career ... and perhaps as a reminder that even geniuses have to start out completely ignorant of their disciplines. 'Citizen Kane' is definitely a masterpiece, but none of that genius is on offer in these film clips.

This is a rough assembly of the footage--a cut down version could pretty easily be made and why no one bothered to do so or TCM didn't show a version like that if it exists is a shame. There is much more movie here than I expecting---having heard about this film for years, I thought it would be a few short sequences of only a few shots each, not such an elaborate chase sequence.

Most of the material is in very good shape--not scratched or marked up, there is one section that is badly damaged but most of it is clean and clear. Joseph Cotton does most of his own stunts and some of these rival those of Keaton, Chaplin, Lyold and this is no small feat.

But what you are watching is not a finished film so the fact that much of it is quite funny and impressive and done on a pretty large scale of probably "stolen' locations makes it captivating---if you turn off the god awful music--which you can easily do. What were they thinking putting this music on the film it's terrible vaguely European sounding Philip Glass rip off stuff. Really unbearable.

Also rather poor, but perhaps intentionally so, is the opening sequence shot on a set that is clearly being lit by the sun--as an early early silent film would be, and this may be done on purpose. This scene sets up the rest of the film and does feature funny performances and a bit with a blowing plant.

Despite this being a silent comedy it also features some very fast cutting at times and shows--as you can see in his later films--some lack of a sense of screen direction. Characters who are supposed to be talking to each other are looking the wrong direction--this may well be a factor of parts being shot separately and with different people behind the camera. There is real filmmaking here in what was supposed to just be filler for a stage production--I've seen stage shows do this type of thing with filmed sections and rarely are they this elaborate even today.

So let's get someone to cut this down, by about a third, put in a few titles to explain roughly what is missing in between sections and put on some good music and it would fill an interesting gap in Welles filmography as he never did a silent film elsewhere or an outright comedy.

Joseph Cotton fans should also take note of this film too, it's not just for Welles completest.

5 of 10 stars. This movie is worth watching as it is the 1st Film that Orson Welles ever Directed, and it is the only Silent Film he ever Directed; and it's the 1st Film that Joseph Cotten ever starred in, and the only Silent Film he ever starred in. And we know what they became, Welles, one of the most celebrated Director's in history; and Cotten having a great Acting career.

The film is mainly unedited, so I have scenes back to back, Cotten coming around the corner...then Cotten coming around the corner. So keep this in mind when you watch it, it's not a mistake or a bad copy you are watching...it's unedited. So keep that in mind.

It is filmed and Directed good, some of the shots and uses of shadows are extremely good, shots that aren't at a 90 degree or straight angle, all the stuff we now know about Welles that came later.

Cotten does a good job too, has a good physical presence that works in a Silent Film. It was only 3 years later that he starred alongside Orson Welles in the Welles Directed Masterpiece 'Citizen Kane'; and the year following Citizen Kane, Cotten starred in the Orson Welles Directed Masterpiece 'The Magnificent Ambersons'. It all happened so quick.

At the end of the day this is just an average film, and a film that Welles and Cotten never thought would go unedited; but it's a must see as it is a 1st for both, and an 'only' Silent for both.

A lot of the user reviews here are for the work print that was shown on TCM. That's about an hour. In 2014 people tried to edit the movie into something more functional which I found online and that's what I watched. And it's really fun.

It's a quirky movie. The early scenes involve an affair and it's Discovery and there's some surprisingly close close-ups and a lot of movements, like a background tree that flutters and shakes the entire time people are arguing. It's exactly what you would expect Orson Welles to do in his early experimental phase.

The biggest chunk of the film is a chase sequence mainly over the roofs of Manhattan. It is a wonderfully chaotic sequence in which a man grabs everyone's hats, and people barrel through a whole slew of empty crates that fall in huge towers. As the editors note Welles probably didn't plan for it to go on nearly this long but it's so entertaining that it is absolutely what they should have done.

One of the most surprising things of the film is how good Joseph Cotton, who always played dapper and rather sedate individuals, is at slapstick comedy. He really could have done that for a living.

The scene after on the boat is similarly chaotic with possibly more people than I've ever actually been on a boat.

The last bit of the film isn't actually very good but the chase sequence is enough to make this well worth watching.

Without ever having made a full-length film, Orson Welles made "Citizen Kane" in 1941. Before this, he made a handful of shorts--none of which showed the genius he'd show with "Citizen Kane". This is genius.

As far as reviewing "Too Much Johnson" goes,however, there is an inherent bias in some reviews...and many seem to be reviewing what Welles BECAME versus what he was when he made this film. Yes, "Citizen Kane" was an amazing achievement...but that does not mean that "Too Much Johnson" is. In fact, I'd say that "Too Much Johnson" is pretty much unwatchable for 1938 and is a terrible film. Its only value is for Welles fans so they can see Welles learning his craft....and by the end of this film he seems to have learned little. How he got from this to "Kane" is beyond me! It's some sort of miracle.

Why am I so harsh about "Too Much Johnson"? Well, if you didn't know it was an Orson Welles film, folks would say it stank. After all, the film is a silent....even after even Chaplin Himself switched to talking pictures. It also features some amateurish camerawork and edits which are beyond amateurish to the point of being, at times, terrible. Now this is not to say all of this film is all bad. There are some nice crane shots (or what look like crane shots), Welles improved his skills by making the film and it gave Joseph Cotten his first acting credit. But for the folks who gave this movie scores like 8...for shame. Judge the film on its own merits...not as some sort of endorsement for Welles' genius. Here in "Too Much Johnson", there is little genius and the overall product looks not much better than a home movie combined with a 1910 era D.W. Griffith picture! Only for the most ardent Welles fans.

It's a misnomer to call Orson Welles' 1941 "Citizen Kane" his first movie he had ever directed. "Kane" was his first feature film, but prior to handling what is now recognized as cinema's top classic the young Welles had already notched four short movies under his directorship. His third, 1938's "Too Much Johnson" was his most ambitious of the four. Although not fully completed and is a silent, Welles' movie introduced many of the camera angles and editing techniques the director would use throughout his career.

"Too Much Johnson" wasn't designed to stand alone. Welles, 23, was already a wunderkind on the Broadway stage as a director and on the radio as both an announcer and a writer. His forte was Shakespeare, but he also delved into contemporary as well as classical works. His repertory company called the Mercury Theatre, formed in 1936, consisted of a regular group of actors, including Joseph Cotton, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins, performing on the stage as well as in his dramatic radio presentations.

"I think he was the greatest directorial talent we've ever had in the American theater," described Mercury actor Norman Lloyd. "When you saw a Welles production, you saw the text had been affected, the staging was remarkable, the sets were unusual, music, sound, lighting, a totality of everything."

Welles always had a love for movies, and brought his imagination onto the screen first in a now lost 1933 'Twelfth Night' rehearsal sketch, then the following year in 'The Hearts of Age,' a school project with his wife Virginia Nicolson for the Todd School. In "Too Much Johnson," Welles designed his movie to be shown in three parts, interspersed with a stage production of the 1894 William Gillette comedy of the same name. The combination of a live show and a film harkened back to the vaudeville days when stage acts were interspersed with short silent films to make an evening's entertainment. Trouble was Welles' ambition to present the hybrid never came to fruition when he was planning to present it at the Stony Creek Theatre in Branford, Connecticut. The theater failed to secure a projector for "Too Much Johnson," so the audience saw only the play. Welles' failure to pay Paramount Pictures, who held the rights to Gillette's play, also put a halt to Orson's idea.

If anything, creating "Too Much Johnson" was a good exercise in filmmaking for the young Welles. There are hints of the style of direction he would display three years later in "Citizen Kane." He places a number of shots with the camera aiming downward as well as several shots looking up on his subjects. His mix between close-ups and medium shots are also unusual. The movie took ten days to shoot, ripping through nearly 25,000 feet of film for the intended 40 minutes in length. "Orson had a wonderful time making the film," remembered future director John Berry, who was assisting Welles in the production. He recalled Welles editing the movie in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City when a fire broke out, "What I remember, most remarkably, is me running with the projector in my hand, burning, trying to get out of the door into the hallway while Orson, with absolutely no concern whatsoever, was back inside, standing and looking at some piece of film in his hand, smoking his pipe." After the failure to show "Too Much Johnson," Welles took what he had edited and other additional footage and placed it in storage. Welles later came across the movie thirty years later at his home in Spain. "I can't remember whether I had it all along and dug it out of the bottom of a trunk, or whether someone brought it to me, but there it was. I screened it, and it was in perfect condition, with not a scratch on it, as though it had only been through a projector once or twice before." A 1970 fire in his house destroyed that copy, and everyone thought the movie was lost until another copy was miraculously found in Italy.

Welles was very busy during this period of his life. In his series on CBS Radio, 'The Mercury Theatre on the Air' broadcasted classical works dramatized over the airwaves. One episode Welles' produced was a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' 'The War of the Worlds.' The broadcast simulated a fictional radio news report he and his cast gave on the October 30, 1938 show focused on the landing of Martian space ships. A number of listeners failed to hear the disclaimer at the beginning stating the broadcast was a dramatization of the Wells' novel on the Martian invasion of Earth, and became hysterical at the thought they were being attacked.

Welles' worldwide fame bubbled overnight from the broadcast. Several Hollywood studios, already familiar with his inventiveness on the New York City stage, proposed lucrative offers to get him to produce movies. The most generous was RKO Pictures, consisting of a two-picture contract of any subject of his choice. He could write the script, produce, direct and act in the movies, and he was given the right to edit the movies' final cut. Welles signed with RKO on July 22, 1939, launching one of Hollywood's most unusual directorial and acting careers.

I have to judge Orson Welles's real first effort at cinema by what I saw. If he was 20 years older I would say he understudied with Mack Sennett. But the reels of Too Much Johnson were disjointed and the lack of cards in this silent effort made it incoherent.

The Citadel Film Series book on Orson Welles says that the film was forever lost. Apparently not so. The filmed sequences were part of a prologue to a stage version of a Victorian era play Too Much Johnson that actor William Gillette wrote. An experiment in a multi-media presentation that Orson's Mercury Theater was trying.

In the prologue film you'll see familiar Mercury names like Joseph Cotten in the film. It's Cotten showing a great talent for slapstick that one would never associate with him. I loved that scene with Cotten knocking off all the hats he can find with the gusto of a Charlie Chaplin.

But honestly I could not follow what was going on. Maybe Had Orson completed the project and we saw it as he saw it, the results would be better.

As it is I wonder what Mack Sennett would have thought of Too Much Johnson.

If you aren't a movie scholar, and don't know the full history of this long-lost Orson Welles film, and don't know the summary of the play that this film was made to support, can you still enjoy it? Yes. I watched the film without reading any reviews or much background, and not knowing the play at all. And I seem to have enjoyed it far more than other reviewers.

I found the music, and the images, hypnotic. It was like watching a French expressionist/surreal film. The imagery of the film is striking - Welles' uses building angles and shadows in a way I have never seen in any silent film before. It's striking to see a tiny character walk across the vast landscape of the roof of a building, a white suit against a dark background - like a dot moving erratically across the screen.

Every take of each scene is used, so you see the same scenes, over and over, from different angles, each slightly different, or entirely different. Sometimes, you even see what were obvious outtakes, such as someone breaking character, or people screaming over and over, with the original intention being that only one of those screams would have been used - instead, we get them all. And that just makes the film all the more mesmerizing. Most reviewers seem to not like the music - I thought it was perfect, adding to the surreal, foreign feeling of the film - repetitive, like the scenes. It's by Remate, a contemporary music group out of Spain.

Joseph Cotton pulls off a wonderfully physical performance, with breath-taking stunts - if you enjoy nothing else, you will enjoy that. And the obvious fun the company had putting this together (look at the faces in the crowd scenes).

If you watch it, don't have any distractions - no laptop, no smart phone, no tablet. Just watch the film.

Too Much Johnson was originally intended to be used in conjunction with Welles's stage adaptation of play from 1894 by William Gillette. You don't need to know a thing about that play at all to understand most of the film, except for the ending and the secondary story which is barely there at all anyway. This movie is actually three short films, and Welles' Mercury Theatre planned to show each as prologues to each act of the play. It was meant to be shown not only with music but also with live sound effects.

A dirty pun. Because the lead clairette (arlene francis) is married. But has taken a lover, augustus billings (cotton). And the lover must try to escape before he is discovered by the returning husband (barrier) . And it's actually all silent, so this one is for the patient viewer. The first few scenes have dialog cards, but none after that. Omg, the chase scene with the keystone cops just goes on forever! The ladder bit on the roof looks like something from harold lloyd. Lots of running around rooftops, fire escapes, mountains. Editing is terrible.. as described in the trivia. People mouth words to the camera, but mostly no cards showing what they are saying. Lots of repetition, since little editing was ever done. Early early role for mary wickes. Directed by orson welles. Unfinished work from william gillette's play of 1894. Please read the trivia items in imdb to have a full understanding of the challenges of having this sixty six minute film ever presented, in any form. It really is a silent film.

Too Much Johnson (1938)

Orson Welles shot this film three years before CITIZEN KANE and it was never publicly shown. Welles had a print of the film but when he died he believed the only copy had burned in a fire but much later another print did turn up. Currently this film is available in a 66-minute workprint version as well as an edited 34-minute version, which apparently contains intertitles. It's worth pointing out that Welles himself never edited his "version" of the film.

Since I just viewed the workprint there's really no point in "reviewing" the film because what I viewed was pretty much every bit of footage that remains of the movie. When this was shown on Turner Classic Movies they decided to show this version because, I'm guessing, it contained the most footage and I'm sure most Welles fans wanted to see everything that was shot. The story itself is pretty simple as a man (Edgar Barrier) learns that the woman he loves is seeing another man (Joseph Cotten). Throughout the film Barrier chases Cotten around trying to catch him.

This was shot silent and was obviously a homage to the likes of Keystone and especially Harold Lloyd. Fans of the silent cinema will certainly want to watch this but those expecting to see something here that would predict the talent of Welles would eventually make something like CITIZEN KANE are going to be disappointed. Again, it's impossible to really judge a workprint but there are a few interesting things scattered throughout but I personally didn't see anything that would show early greatness from the director.

I thought the performances were quite good and especially Cotten who really does look like a silent film star. He manages to run around, climb buildings and fall over is a very believable and at times funny manor that really reminds you of some of the silent greats. The Lloyd influence is obvious. The film contains some good cinematography but without any intertitles it's really hard to follow the story. Perhaps the shorter, edited version takes care of this. As is, TOO MUCH JOHNSON is a film that Welles fans will want to watch but if you're unfamiliar with the genius then it would be best to start somewhere else first.

I was wondering why he named this movie like that and after watching it I figured it out. Interesting is that it was his first movie, longer one, and that he already had that picture of the world. He understood all very fast and tried to clear eyes of the others! :)