Too Much Johnson

Independent Films, Film Profiles

Too Much Johnson is a 1938 comedy film written and directed by Orson Welles. The film was made three years before Welles helmed Citizen Kane, but it was never publicly screened. No print of the film survives.The film was not intended to stand by itself, but was designed as the cinematic aspect of Welles' Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette’s 1894 comedy about a New York playboy who flees from the violent husband of his mistress and borrows the identity of a plantation owner in Cuba who is expecting the arrival of a mail order bride.Welles planned to mix live action and film for this production. The film was designed to run 40 minutes, with 20 minutes devoted to the play’s prologue and two 10-minute introductions for the second and third act. Welles planned to create a silent film in the tradition of the Mack Sennett slapstick comedies, in order to enhance the various chases, duels and comic conflicts of the Gillette play.This was not the first time that Welles directed a film. In 1934, he co-directed (with William Vance) a short parody of avant garde cinema called The Hearts of Age.