Alternate "Journey Into Fear" Edit Discovered

[Store Hadji]

What does Howard's letter from Colonel Haki say? Kuvetli gives it to him and Howard glances at it, but Kuvetli talks for the rest of that scene. Did the letter just confirm Kuvetli was one of Haki's men and tell Howard to do what he says?

It could be that Welles wanted his name removed from JIF, as Benny Herrmann did with Ambersons. However, Koerner's "Showmanship" campaign is so singularly and deliberately pointed towards Welles, it could well have been his idea instead.

Is Mr. Higham still around? He has a legion of disgruntled Welles fans to deal with, so tread lightly.

[mteal]

On the imdb database it says Higham was born in 1931, which would make him 75. If he's still alive, he's probably retired. His RISE AND FALL OF AN AMERICAN GENIUS, though mean-spirited and inaccurate in many places, contains some amazing research, including a tracing of Welles's family tree all the way back to the 18th century. I didn't find the book any more anti-Welles then Callow's ROAD TO XANADU, and certainly not as offensive as Thomson's ROSEBUD. Sure, I would tread lightly if I could find any email address on the net, but I haven't, so there probably won't be much treading at all.

[Glenn Anders]

Charles Higham was interviewed two years ago on Art Bell's "Coast to Coast" concerning a book he had recently written on Lincoln's Assassination.

Glenn

[mteal]

I noticed that he also made an appearance in the History Channel program NAZI AMERICA - A SECRET HISTORY (2000). It was shown on the UK's History Channel. I don't know whether it ever aired in America or not, but it is available on DVD. I'm sure Higham was invited to be on the program because of TRADING WITH THE ENEMY, probably his most highly respected book, written the same year (1984) as his second Welles book. I wouldn't mind reading that sometime, as it sounds like it touches on some of the same concerns that Welles had when he was writing his political columns and making JOURNEY INTO FEAR and THE STRANGER.

Higham has also written alot of Hollywood bios besides the Welles books, but judging from the reviews at Amazon.com, most of them are considered trash.

[Jeff Wilson]

More on Higham, from Contemporary Authors, Gale 2002:


Charles Higham

1931-

Nationality: English
Place of Birth: London, England
Genre(s): Poetry; Film; Biography


Award(s):
Poetry prizes from Poetry Society of London, 1949, and Sydney Morning Herald, 1956; Prix des createurs for biography, Academie Francaise, 1977.

Personal Information: Family: Born February 18, 1931, in London, England; emigrated to Australia in 1954; came to the United States in 1969; son of Sir Charles Frederick (a publicist and author) and Josephine (Webb) Higham; married Norine Lillian Cecil (deceased). Education: Studied privately. Avocational Interests: Rare old movies, health foods, physical fitness, Nautilus weightlifting, literary detection, old English murder cases. Addresses: Home: Hollywood, CA Agent: Barbara Lowenstein, 250 W. 57th St, New York, NY 10107.

Career: Literary and film critic in London, England, and then in Sydney, Australia, 1954-63;
Bulletin (weekly), Sydney, literary editor, 1963-68; University of California, Santa Cruz, Regents Professor, 1969; KPFK Radio, Los Angeles, CA, film critic, 1969-71; Hollywood correspondent for New York Times, 1970-80, and Us (magazine), 1977--. Official historian for audio history of the movies presented to the American Film Institute in 1973, Time-Life Books.

WRITINGS:

A Distant Star (poems), Hand & Flower Press, 1951.

Spring and Death (poems), Hand & Flower Press, 1953.

(Translator of poems of Marc Chagall) H. F. S. Bauman, editor, Eight European Artists, Heinemann, 1954.

The Earthbound and Other Poems, Angus & Robertson, 1960.

(Editor with Alan Brissenden) They Came to Australia: An Anthology, F. W. Cheshire, 1961.

Noonday Country: Poems, 1954-1965, Angus & Robertson, 1966.

(Editor with Michael Wilding) Australians Abroad: An Anthology, F. W. Cheshire, 1967.

(Editor) Australian Writing Today, Penguin, 1968.

(With Joel Greenberg) Hollywood in the Forties, A. S. Barnes, 1968.

(With Greenberg) The Celluloid Muse: Hollywood Directors Speak, Angus & Robertson, 1969, Regnery, 1971.

The Films of Orson Welles, University of California Press, 1970.

Hollywood Cameramen: Sources of Light, Indiana University Press, 1970.

The Voyage to Brindisi and Other Poems, 1966-1969, Angus & Robertson, 1970.

Hollywood at Sunset, Saturday Review Press, 1972.

Ziegfeld, Regnery, 1972.

The Art of the American Film, Doubleday, 1973.

Cecil B. De Mille: A Biography, Scribner, 1973.

Ava: A Life Story, Delacorte, 1974.

Warner Brothers, Scribner, 1975.

Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn, Norton, 1975.

Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography, Doubleday, 1975.

The Adventures of Conan Doyle, Norton, 1976.

Marlene: The Life of Marlene Dietrich, Norton, 1977.

The Changeling: A Fairy Tale of Terror (novel), Simon & Schuster, 1978.

Celebrity Circus, Delacorte Press, 1979.

(With Hal Wallis) Star Maker: The Autobiography of Hal Wallis, Macmillan, 1980.

Errol Flynn: The Untold Story, Doubleday, 1980.

Bette: The Life of Bette Davis, Macmillan, 1981.

Trading with the Enemy, Delacorte, 1983.

Princess Merle: The Romantic Life of Merle Oberon, Coward, 1983 (published in England as Merle: A Biography of Merle Oberon, New English Library, 1983).

Audrey: The Life of Audrey Hepburn, Macmillan, 1984.

Sisters: The Lives of Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, Coward, 1984.

American Swastika, Doubleday, 1985.

Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius, St. Martin's, 1985.

Lucy: The Life of Lucille Ball, St. Martin's Press, 1986.

(Co-author) Palace: My Life in the Royal Family of Monaco, Atheneum Publishers, 1986.

The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life, McGraw-Hill, 1988.

(Co-author) Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.

(Co-author) Elizabeth and Philip: The Untold Story of the Queen of England and Her Prince, Berkley Books, 1993.

Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, Putnam's, 1993.

Merchant of Dreams: Louis B. Mayer, M.G.M., and the Secret Hollywood, D. I. Fine, 1993.

Rose: The Life and Times of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Pocket Books, 1995.

Sidelights:
"Charles Higham told CA that his first love is verse. Higham is best known, however, for his biographies of Hollywood celebrities. Praised by some reviewers, these books have roused indignation in others because of their sensational nature. For example, New York Times Book Review contributor Foster Hirsch takes exception to Higham's Sisters, which chronicles the feud between movie star siblings Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland. Hirsch declares that Sisters "implies that people who made it big in movies are of course unsavory." Yet he allows that "Mr. Higham can be droll; he knows how to keep his story moving, and he works up some tension, even if it's only wondering what petty monarch will take the next pratfall." Bette, Higham's book on actress Bette Davis, is a "cheesy, tattletale excuse for a biography," according to Washington Post Book World reviewer Elliott Ivan Sirkin, but the same book is described as "tightly focused" by a Chicago Times Book World writer, who adds that "from start to finish [Higham] writes a detailed, fascinating book."

Higham's most controversial work is certainly his biography entitled Errol Flynn: The Untold Story. The dashing Australian actor played the noble hero in many adventure films of the 1930s and 1940s, including "Captain Blood," "Robin Hood," and "The Sea Hawk." Offscreen, Flynn built a formidable reputation as a hard-drinking libertine. But Higham contends that Flynn was not only an alcoholic womanizer; he claims to have evidence proving that the actor was a Nazi spy and a homosexual. His case is built upon Flynn's connections with Dr. Hermann Friedrich Erben, an admitted member of a Nazi spy ring in Asia. Upon uncovering this friendship, Higham traced Erben to a leper colony in the Philippines and hired a Filipino associate to tape record an interview with Dr. Erben. The Untold Story is based on this interview and on 12,000 pages of declassified federal documents detailing government surveillance of Flynn.

The accusations of Nazism enraged many of Flynn's former companions. Nora Eddington Black, Flynn's wife during World War II, stated in Maggy Daly's Chicago Tribune column: "I resent Higham's book because it is a fraud. He hasn't come up with a single document about Errol's supposed tie-in with the Gestapo, but continues to go around the country saying he has." "I don't have a document that says A, B, C, D, E, Errol Flynn was a Nazi agent," Higham explained to Robert Lindsey in the New York Times. "But I have pieced together a mosaic that proves that he is."

Some reviewers are critical of the methods of reportage used in compiling The Untold Story, including Lawrence S. Dietz, who in a New York Times Book Review article calls the book "a standard job of celebrity scandal-mongering, in which Mr. Higham, with a certain moral fervor, details Flynn's obsessive sexual behavior and drug habits. Unfortunately, no one seems to have bothered to tell Mr. Higham that the rules for serious investigative reporting are far different from those for uncovering ancient Hollywood peccadillos." Chicago Tribune contributor Richard Phillips states that "documentation, . . . the litmus test of any credible scandal, is about as tangible as a hole in a doughnut. Alleged bribes are completely unsupported, an assertion of flagrant antisemitism by Flynn is backed up by only one quote in the entire book (the quote itself is of questionable harm), and the author's case for espionage is--in its most favorable light--circumstantial. Aside from that, the untold story of Errol Flynn is a `good read."' Higham told Phillips that he was surprised by the outcry over his book. "[Flynn's] reputation was dirt, anyway," he noted.

In a letter to CA, Higham described himself as "a poet, of the Romantic school, out of sympathy with most American and British verse of my period, but very much in sympathy with the poetry of Australia, where I lived for fifteen years. I deeply admire Patrick White (a poet-novelist), A. D. Hope, W. Hart-Smith, James McAuley, and other Australian poets; American poets I do warm to are Elizabeth Bishop, Howard Moss, James Dickey, and W. S. Merwin. I write biographies for a professional occupation, much as some poets might teach or practise law or medicine, but my biography of Conan Doyle provided a rare opportunity to provide a book of literary content and (I hope) quality. I like writing, and am restless and unhappy only when not busy on a new project. I have never had writer's block; writing is my holiday. Now I have found a way to blend my poetic and more commercial talents; I have discovered, rather in the middle of life, a gift for fiction. This has been the greatest joy of my life.

"My view of literary criticism is that like so much cultural activity today it is fighting a rearguard action against the force of mass culture. . . . The result is that literary critics are increasingly nervous, tense and mistrustful; they tend to prefer fragmented, collapsed narrative structures and books which deal in mental breakdown and disorder because, in American culture, they can identify with plights rather than triumphs, with disease rather than health. I have preferred the Victorian solution: prose is made to earn the right to the luxury of verse; all work is valuable, if seriously and sincerely intended; life and humanity are to be encouraged and nurtured; progress is a reality, though man has preferred that progress to be toward his general medical and social welfare rather than that of an intellectual elite; humankind is fundamentally a species to be optimistic about; let us write solid, worthwhile, straight-forward stories about people; let us not be cynical, disruptive, destructive, elliptical, abstruse, obscure, or inverted, when we embark on the voyage of literature. I admire the novelists of security and substance: the Bronte sisters, Dickens, Balzac, Flaubert, Svevo, rather than those of breakdown and despair, Kafka, Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Celine, Sartre.

"In 1983, I returned to writing poetry after a brief interval; poems based on Rilkean and Leopardian themes, all of which are reflective and contemplative in mode."

[mteal]

That's interesting info, Jeff. So Higham was a poet until nearly age 40, then decided to make his living with books about Hollywood. Quite a change.

I write biographies for a professional occupation, much as some poets might teach or practise law or medicine

Sounds like Robert Graves' statement that his novels were the dogs that he sold in order to keep his cats (the poems). Or Welles acting in order to direct.

But Higham contends that Flynn was not only an alcoholic womanizer; he claims to have evidence proving that the actor was a Nazi spy and a homosexual. His case is built upon Flynn's connections with Dr. Hermann Friedrich Erben, an admitted member of a Nazi spy ring in Asia. Upon uncovering this friendship, Higham traced Erben to a leper colony in the Philippines and hired a Filipino associate to tape record an interview with Dr. Erben. The Untold Story is based on this interview and on 12,000 pages of declassified federal documents detailing government surveillance of Flynn.

That's a wierd mental image of an ex-Nazi being interviewed in a Philipine leper colony. Sounds like something out of a movie. In RISE AND FALL OF AN AMERICAN GENIUS, Higham contends that Flynn was constantly drunk while Welles was filming LADY FROM SHANGHAI aboard his boat, and there was a horrible episode where Flynn beat a Jewish bartender to a pulp while shouting anti-semitic slurs at him. But "in spite of this incident, Welles remained friendly with him". Flynn later sent Welles an enormous bill filled with unnecessary charges from the use of the boat.

[Tony]

Store wrote: "Did Higham interview Foster, or is that his own interpretation?"

It's a good question, isn't it- can we ever trust a writer who has gotten so much wrong, who doesn't footnote properly, and who is responsible for the single most ridiculous and damaging theory about Welles that was ever put forth? Should we ever quote the likes of Charles Higham?

???

[mteal]

True, Higham doesn't have footnotes (and his "fear of completion" theory is rediculous, as you say), but he does name his sources on occasion. One interesting example is when he claims that Jeanne Moreau TOLD him personally that Welles never sent the plane tickets to her to go to Paris and complete the looping for THE DEEP. This is in direct contrast to the commonly held notion that she refused to do the looping for Welles (thereby putting the film in limbo). Higham also claims that Lucille Ball TOLD him that, at the end of filming THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH, Welles threw a huge party at Desilu's expense that cost more then the show itself. Those are the kind of things that, like the Norman Foster story, are worth quoting from Higham, until they get definitively refuted.

[Tony]

Lucy might well have meant that comment in a hyperbolic way; mere quoting often gets the spirit wrong, and as you know when irony is misunderstood, the opposite intent is sometimes taken as gospel.

[mteal]

Yes, I'd like to think she may have been kidding when she said that, but then, she and Welles never did work together again. My overrall impression from reading Higham's second ('84) Welles book is that he knew that Welles had parodied him in TOSOTW, and that Higham was thrilled and delighted to be in a dirtslinging contest with the great man. Some of the dirtballs are interesting (and seem like the result of scrupulous research), most are just nasty.

But enough about Higham, back to JOURNEY. Here are some loose notes I took from a somewhat hasty perusal of the original screenplay at Lilly:

DINNER SCENE
(Howard feels his tooth)
Stephanie: 'Your mother's too young to have her teeth pulled from rhuemetism.'
Kopeikin: 'Your husband and I have some "affairs" to discuss'.
(Evil-looking Turks in uniform in the shadows, start to trail Kopeikin and Graham)
Graham calls Kopeikin 'Serge'. The uniformed Turks are still trailing them as they enter the caberet.

CABERET SCENE
Kopeikin: 'You should see the girlies' (changed to 'You should see the chorus', to soften the implication that the nightclub is really a whorehouse in disguise)
Kopeikin: 'They got plenty of girlies'.
*** RED INK NOTE: 'Shoot (this line) so it can be cut without hurting the rest of the scene.'.
Pavlik, the Russian owner of the 'nightclub', speaks Russian with Kopeikin. A girl sits down.
Kopeikin: 'Ah, my little Jane, a Eurasian, she's recovering from a sore neck'.
Girl wants tip too. Graham gives her 100 piastres.
Kopiekin: 'Fifty would have been plenty' This line was cut as a possible insult to Turkish critics. Fifty piastres was then the equivelent of about 37 cents.
Josette joins them.
Kopeikin (to Josette and Graham): 'I drink to you both. You're both going to Tiflis. You're both friends of mine so you have (pats his stomach) much in common'
*** RED INK NOTE: 'Please cut this action (patting his stomach)'
During the magic act, an angled cross is brought on stage, resembling 'a relic of the Inquisition', as the magician prepares a trick tought to him 'in the mountains of India'. Also, a coffin is brought out.
MY NOTE: Interesting that Kopeikin wants Graham to assist the magician.
Graham is fastened to the cross. Graham winds up in the coffin, the magician dead on the cross. (Graham comes out of the coffin (a mock resurrection?). Kopeikin takes Graham to

HAKI'S OFFICE
Kopeikin: 'Haki was a deputy in the provisional government in '19, one of Atakurk's men.'
CHANGED ON 1/24/42: All the people waiting for Haki were at the nightclub. They were all rounded up for questioning.
'Col. Haki will see Mr. Howard Graham' (Before, they just went into Haki's office alone and unannounced)
Graham (to Haki): Nobody tried to kill me.'
Haki looks quickly at Kopeikin
Kopeikin: ' I didn't tell him anything! He thinks I'm hysterical.'
Haki: 'It's the fate of you Russians to be misunderstood.' (to Graham) 'Iyi dir! The military situation demands that the new equipment and torpedoes be in our dockyards by Spring. Suppose you had been on the magician's cross when the shot was fired. If a new man is sent, the spring will be here and the ships in Izmir and Galipoli will not have their guns and torpedoe tubes. Alive, you're worth something to the Turkish republic.'
A plot to kill Graham was discovered in Galipoli.

MISSING SCENE: Brief scene of Stephanie crying because Howard is missing (Kopeikin tells her).

HAKI'S OFFICE
Banet is a Roumanian province, obviously not his real name. They traced his activities from Sophia. By train, Graham would have gone to Tiflis. By boat, Batum (boat is called "Persephone").
Josette and Gogo speak to each other in Basque.
Haki mentions that Graham will have Josette for company. Graham replies 'I'm a married man'. Haki: 'The American point of view- one cannot reason, one can only stand amazed.'
THIS LINE WAS ORDERED CUT AS IT 'PRESENTS A TURKISH RANKING OFFICIAL AS BEING WITHOUT MORALS'.

ON SHIP
As Graham enters boat, a Cockney man and a French woman are heard argueing about whether the sheets are damp or merely cold.
INSERT CUT OUT: Graham looks at his revolver, which says 'Made in U.S.A.', by an American typewriter manufacturer (storyboards indicate REGAS).
Josette and Graham together: Josette says she and Gogo will starve if they can't get a dancing engagement in India. Many dance places are closed because of the war. Josette philosophises that 'Starving is good for the figure. One grows fat in Istanbul.'
Graham tells Josette he is married in LINES CUT.
*** RED INK NOTE: 'If Josette does NOT know Graham is married, the censorship problem is vastly reduced.'
Josette: 'I tell you everything. Abut you I know nothing, except that you have a nice house.'

DINNER SCENE
Kuvetli introduces himself to Graham as a tobacco seller.
LINES CUT:
Josette (to Graham): 'They are heathen animals, these Turks. In the last war (America) fought against them. They killed babies with their bayonets.'
Graham: 'Personally, I like the Turks.'
*** RED INK NOTE: 'Mr. Breen cautions that not only censorship, but our own State Dept. will strenuously object to this!'

MISSING SCENE: Haki implies to Stephenie that Howard has run off with another woman.

AT DINNER
Dr. Holler: 'The French lady called me a filthy Boche. Greek cooking is monotonous without conversation.'
Graham: 'I agree'
Holler came from Persia, investigating pre-Islamic cultures. He says he has proof that 'the tribes that moved into Iran 4,000 years ago preserved and assimilated Sumerian culture intact and preserved it after the fall of Babylon...but the world is too preoccupied with it's own destruction to worry about such things. A condemned man is only interested in himself. I helped in the search for a logic of history. We should have made of the past a mirror with which to see around the corner that seperates us from the future. Unfortunately, it no longer matters what we might have seen. We are returning the way we came.'
Gogo: 'War! Makes it difficult to earn money. Let Germany have all the territory she deserves. Choke herself with it. Then let us go to Berlin and enjoy ourselves.'
*** RED INK NOTE: 'Again, Mr. Breen cautions about State Dept.. The contention being that the picture will be seen by thousands in Latin America where agreement with speeches could bring applause and then riot.'
Gogo's 'I take no sides' was originally, 'In the (Spanish) Civil War, I took no sides.'
Breen obviously did not want Gogo marked as a Spaniard.
Mathews: 'But if the Reds had won...'
Mrs. Mathews: 'The Reds violated nuns and murdered priests.'
*** RED INK NOTE: 'The Church Legion of Decency will object to the end on this. Also, very delicate (politically). Reds are our allies.'
Mathews: 'War is the last refuge of the capitalist.'
Mrs. Mathews: 'Take no notice. He is a good Englishman.'

GRAHAM AND JOSETTE WALKING ON SHIP
Graham tries to get Josette to go with him and Kuvetli as she probably knows the ports well. She is insulted by this as she didn't know he meant her dancing.'
Josette and Graham talk about Gogo's attitude that 'Humans are animals'. He is amoral, indifferent to morality.
Josette: 'He (Gogo) says it was the people who are safe and well-fed who invent good and evil so they don't have to worry about those who are hungry and unsafe.'
The boat docks and Graham gives the steward a letter for Stephanie saying he loves only her.'
Haller and Graham talk about Kuvetli while Banat's French record is heard.'
When Mrs. M talks about the Greek woman's husband who was shot by soldiers, she says it was the 'will of God'. To which Mathews replies, 'He (God) is a comedian. I have noticed it before.'
*** RED INK NOTE wanting this statement rephrased as a question: 'He is a comedian. Don't you agree?'
Mrs. Mathews: 'Don't blaspheme.'
Mathews: 'It is you who blasphemes. You talk of God as if he were a waiter with a flyswatter...but the good God is not like that. He does not make wars and tragedies. He is of the mind.' Mathews then says how the Greek woman is the heroine of a tragedy. But she tells the story of her son to ease her mind with an audience.
Mathews: 'Without an audience, there is no tragedy.'

CAPTAIN'S ROOM
The Captain thinks Banat is a Greek businessman, and tells Graham they cannot radio Haki as they are no longer in Turkish territorial waters.'
The Captain speaks only Greek in the script. In the movie he speaks several languages.
Just as Breen did not want Gogo marked specifically as a Spaniard, he also did not want the Captain marked specifically as a Greek.

DINNER SCENE
Mathews: 'Banking! What is it but usery? Today the userers are the Gods of the Earth, and the only mortal sin is to be poor.' CUT FROM THE FINAL SCRIPT: 'Bankers want banking to be a mystery too difficult for ordinary men to understand. How else can they make two plus two equal five? The bankers are the real war criminals. Others do the killing while they sit in their offices and make money.'
Gogo imitates an aristocratic Englishman while ordering a drink. Josette tells him to stop, but Graham defends him: 'Many Englishman who've never been to the Pyrenees think all Basques smell of Garlic.'
Banat originally had a couple of lines with Kuvetli about where he was going.

GRAHAM AND JOSETTE
Graham and Josette discuss her stealing Gogo's gun as Graham's is now missing. Josette says Gogo will play cards with Banat while Graham searches Banat's room. They kiss.
Graham searches Banat's room, comes back to find Holler in his room with Banat's gun.
Holler: 'My only embarrassment is the half-wit Armenian lady posing as my wife.'
Holler tells Graham that, thanks to earthquakes, Turkey has a Typhus epidemic, so Graham can be scuttled away, pretending to have it.' Holler promises Graham that Josette can be made to come to if he agrees to the 'six-weeks holiday.'

GRAHAM AND KUVETLI
Kuvetli, in his conversation with Graham, takes it in stride that Graham is fooling around with Josette. He threatens Graham with the accusation that he took bribes to sabotage Turkish naval preperations.
Kuvetli: 'I fought with Gazi for my country's freedom. Could I let one man endanger the great work we have done?'

BATUM
Holler (to Graham): 'This matter of the Adonis myth...the weeping for Tammuz was always a focus of pre-historic religions. Tammuz, Osir, Adonis are the same Sumerian diety, but the Sumerians call him Dumizida. So did the pre-Islaamic tribes of Iran. They had their own variation on the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.'
The Catholic Legion of Decency had problems with Josette and Gogo being married. So they made them partners instead.'
Batum is in Russia.
Stephanie says she has a dinner date with Haki, who travelled all the way from Istanbul with her.

[Glenn Anders]

It would seem that many of these lines would have made JOURNEY INTO FEAR a kind of SHIP OF FOOLS.

Funny and sad, all the censorship.

I wonder what Joe Breen would think of Martin Scorsese's THE DEPARTED, which I've just seen? In the 151 minute film, the f-word occurs about 250 times -- and that's just for starters. Let's not talk about what Jack Nicholson's character says to priests and nuns!

Glenn

[mteal]

The censorship in some instances seems almost like power for power's sake. I still can't fathom why they didn't want Kopeikin to pat his stomach in the Caberet scene. I guess all that censorship power started after the Fatty Arbuckle scandal. The Legion of Decency condemned ROSEMARY'S BABY as late as 1968.

Haven't seen THE DEPARTED yet, but that kind of profanity is so prevelant now I barely even get fazed by it anymore.

[Tony]

someone was writing how it was MASH which liberated the "F" word, but I'm not sure. I am 99% sure it was never used in the swingin' sixties. :O

[mteal]

By 1976 the 'F' word had even broken the PG barrier, with ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. Shows what a significant time the late 60's/early 70's were for film and society.

[ToddBaesen]

Given the frame grabs and posts Store and Roger have posted in another thread, I wanted to bring this older thread about JOURNEY back into view. One of the amazing things about this film, is the portrait it gives us of Welles Mercury theater. Whether he directed it or not, it is quite clearly a MERCURY production, and offers us the the only time we get to see many Mercury theater actors on film.

What I also find fascinating, are the references in the cut portions of the script, set in Turkey and the Middle East, and how topical they still are today, given that they relate to Iraq and Iran (Persia), which of course are very much a major part of the current political discourse in this election year.

_______


DR. HALLER: The French lady called me a filthy Boche. Greek cooking is monotonous without conversation.

GRAHAM: I agree.

Dr. Haller has come from Persia, investigating Pre-Islamic cultures. He says he has proof that 'the tribes that moved into Iran 4,000 years ago preserved and assimilated Sumerian culture intact and preserved it after the fall of Babylon.

DR. HALLER: The world is too preoccupied with it's own destruction to worry about such things. A condemned man is only interested in himself. I helped in the search for logic of history. We should have made of the past a mirror with which to see around the corner that separates us from the future. Unfortunately, it no longer matters what we might have seen. We are returning the way we came.

____

Here is The New York Times review for JOURNEY INTO FEAR from 1943:


JOURNEY INTO FEAR arrives at the Palace

By T. S.


The New York Times - March 19, 1943

Out of Eric Ambler's thriller, "Journey Into Fear," Orson Welles and his perennial Mercury Company have made an uneven but generally imaginative and exciting tale of terror. Less ambitious than any of the company's previous productions, the new film at the Palace is nevertheless many notches above the garden variety regularly sent to Broadway. Although Norman Foster has directed it, Mr. Welles, in collaboration with Joseph Cotten, who plays the central role, has written the adaptation and either directly or indirectly it is Welles's fine flair for melodrama that is stamped on every scene. Mr. Foster is no mean pupil; although his style is still more derivative of Welles than it is vigorously individual, he is a director worth watching closely.

Certainly it is a story well fitted to the Welles technique. The bizarre adventure of an American ordnance expert caught in the web of international intrigue, it pursues its frightened protagonist from his first encounter with death at a sleazy Istanbul night club, across the Black Sea in a stinking Greek cattle boat to the final desperate showdown above the streets of Batum. Strange and indeterminate characters confront the fleeing expert—Nazi spies, Turkish secret police, a second-rate dance team, henpecked political theorists, a filthy old Greek sea captain, bespectacled killers. In short, the odd sort of flotsam that melodrama is made of.

But it is in the characters that the lapses of the film are caused. Vividly executed, they become too much of a good thing; Mr. Foster sometimes lets them get out of hand in irrelevant talk. At his best, however, Mr. Foster proves that Hitchcock isn't the only director with an instinct for the twist or atmospheric trick that sets an audience's pulse pounding. The fright of the ordnance expert is constantly underscored by an uncanny use of light and distorted shadows in the ratty corridors of the ship; in a blacked-out cabin one senses the terror of the hidden expert as footsteps echo from the pitch-dark screen. And in that final duel in the beating rain on the ledge of a Batum hotel Mr. Foster has directed a melodramatic climax that is breathless and intense.

To select outstanding performances would be to name practically the entire cast—in which Mr. Welles's characterization of the Turkish police chief is the only one which is overdrawn. Joseph Cotten gives a deftly suggestive performance as the pursued expert; Agnes Moorehead adds another exacerbating portrait of a shrewish woman, and Jack Moss—also Welles's business manager—nearly steals every scene in which he appears as the pudgy-faced killer. Despite its lapses, "Journey Into Fear" is still a terse invitation to heart failure by fright.

Addenda: A small item called "Silver Skates" as the second feature, otherwise simply a hopelessly boring ice revue which must have been shot from a camera bolted to the floor. It never moves.


JOURNEY INTO FEAR; screen play by Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten; from the novel by Eric Ambler; directed by Norman Foster; a Mercury Production released by RKO Radio Pictures.

THE CAST:

Joseph Cotten as Howard Graham
Orson Welles as Colonel Haki
Ruth Warrick as Stephanie Graham
Dolores del Rio as Josette Martel
Jack Durant as Gobo
Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Matthews
Frank Readick as Mr. Matthews
Eustace Wyatt as Prof. Haller
Shifra Haran as Mrs. Haller
Jack Moss as Peter Banat
Edgar Barrier as Kuvetli
Everett Sloane as Kopeikin
Frank Puglia as Colonel Haki’s assistant
Richard Bennett as the Ship’s Captain
Stefan Schnabel as The Purser
Hans Conreid as Oo Lang Sang, the Magician
Robert Meltzer as Ship’s Stewart with mustache
Herbert Drake as a Ship’s Stewart
George Sorel as a Hotel Desk Clerk