Too Much Johnson, Orson Welles’s first large scale film, previously thought lost, has been found in a warehouse in northern Italy. The film is a a silent slapstick comedy that has never been shown and thought to have been destroyed in a fire. The film was shot in three parts, and designed to be projected as part of a Mercury theatre production of the same name in 1938.

The film was made when Welles was 23 years old, and edited by him on a Moviola in a New York hotel room. The cast of the original theatrical production all take their respective parts in the movie: Joseph Cotten in the lead role, supported by Mercury regulars Arlene Francis, Howard Smith, Edgar Barrier, Mary Wickes and Welles’s first wife, Virginia Nicholson. Welles allegedly appears as a bumbling Keystone Cop figure – but the George Eastman House restorers could not identify him among the crowd. Composer and author Paul Bowles was to provide music for the film.

For some reason the film was never shown or incorporated into the theatrical production: the Mercury theatre’s ceiling was too low to accommodate a projector; others have said the actors demanded more money to play in a film.  Regardless, the play, unaccompanied by the film, bombed on an out-of-town tryout in Stony Creek, Connecticut, in August 1938, and Welles moved on to his legendary radio broadcast, “War of the Worlds.”  The film was set aside when the play closed, though Welles acknowledged he had a nitrate print in the 1960s.  However, that print was destroyed by a fire at his Spanish villa.

This copy of the film was discovered last December in a warehouse in the port city of Pordenone, Italy, which coincidentally is the home of Cinemazero, an organization dedicated to the preservation and exhibiting of classic films. The print has been turned over to George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, where restoration is proceeding with funding from the National Film Foundation.

The 40-minute “Too Much Johnson” will have its premiere in Pordenone at this year’s Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, a silent film festival beginning October 5, and will screen stateside October 16 at Eastman House.