˜Theœ Films of Orson Welles

When war broke out in December 1941, Welles's position at RKO was uncertain. Citizen Kane had opened to a rather shaky public reception, and it had closed quickly in many theaters. The Magnificent Ambersons was nearing completion. To finish his three-picture contract and get on to It's All True in Rio (see Chapter 5) he had to fit in yet another production in a hurry. Somewhere in his mountainous reading amid half-a-dozen projects he found Eric Ambler's Journey into Fear and decided that he could make this quickly. But obviously, with Ambersons to finish and cut, he had no time to direct it himself. So he took the drastic step of recalling Norman Foster from My Friend Bonito (see chapter 5) to direct the film and hired Joseph Cotten to help him write the adaptation. Dolores del Rio, then involved in a stormy affair with Welles, was to star. The sets, supervised by Welles himself, were partly made over from those prepared for Heart of Darkness, partly from other RKO films. The cameraman was the veteran Karl Struss, who had helped photograph Sunrise. Mark Robson was selected as editor (by that time, Robert Wise was fully engaged on Ambersons). Welles shot scenes, did retakes and inserts and cut Ambersons in the daytime; then, sometimes after lunch, sometimes as night fell, he turned up on the Journey into Fear set to oversee Foster and appear in the part of Colonel Haki. No special incidents marked the shooting (which was entirely within the studio), except for one brief moment of near-tragedy when the stand-in for Jack Moss, who This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived