Baby Joe's Lost Johnson

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Did you know Orson Welles first full-length-ish film was never properly finished or screened? Even better it was called Too Much Johnson, but he didn't come up with the title - it was a 1894 play by William Gillette. It really never was a proper "movie" though -- you can read the whole sordid and strangely complicated story of the "film" over at the National Film Preservation Archive, where they've also assembled all of the footage.

Anyway I only bring all this up because Too Much Johnson was also Joseph Cotten's first film (this was a couple of years before Citizen Kane for the both of them) and today is the 112th anniversary of Cotten's birth, and we're celebrating him with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" over at The Film Experience. We're talking about Shadow of a Doubt with Alfred Hitchcock there, but I thought Joe looked pretty adorable in these Johnson pics (he never seemed "young" but these are the closest I've ever seen him come to it) so here we are.