Orson Welles' Batman

[akio]

Article on Welles' Batman movie project

"The embryonic superhero concept wasn't even ten years old when perhaps the most illustrious director of his day, Orson Welles, seriously considered doing a Batman picture and even got as far as production designs, an early draft of a script and some casting photographs featuring various friends and colleagues in prototypes of what would eventually become the finished costumes. A pal of mine called Lionel Hutton, both a movie critic and respected film historian, was given unprecedented access to the Welles estate as research for his upcoming biography (out next Easter) and came across these startling facts in a huge pile of clippings and notes other people hadn't even bothered to report. This all stems back to the complete irrelevance of comics in even the popular arts and the complete disdain for the subject matter mentioned earlier. The fact that Orson Welles was contemplating a Batman picture in 1946 is both glorious and fascinating to people like me, but embarrassing and crass to the Welles officionados."

[Wilson]

This was a hoax. We talked about it at some point in the past, if you want to search for the thread...

[Roger Ryan]

I thought this "Batman" thing was exposed as a fraud a couple of months ago. The claim that Welles was in a snit over not getting the lead sounds especially bogus, given that Welles would have certainly realized that The Joker was a much juicier role. I also question that Welles afficionados would find the project crass or embarassing in retrospect. What is crass is the fact that this supposed "put-on" has cropped up again.

P.S. Ah, Mr. Wilson, I see you beat me to the punch...good for you.

[R Kadin]

How long before the Welles' "Moonraker" hoax resurfaces, then? Any bets? Takers?

[mteal]

How about this one? Sound plausible?

http://web.archive.org/web....53.html

[Cole]

The internet archive is pretty nice. I’ve had it bookmarked since Mteal first mentioned it a long time ago. For instance, the Pocket Essentials guide to the films of Orson Welles is still available at the internet archive site even though it was pulled from the net. Here’s the link that no longer works, but plug it into the internet archive and you can still view the full text of the book:

http://www.pocketessentials.com/film/orsonwelles/welles-essay.html

Not that the Pocket Essentials guide is all that interesting, but it does give a nice overview of Welles’ films for those who haven’t seen all of them.

But as to that tierranet web site, I’d have to think that anything posted there is presumptively bogus. It may have been a good web board at one time, but later on it became outrageously bad. For those of tender sensibilities, I wouldn’t fish around at the internet archive site for old postings made to the tierranet board.