Mercury Theatre great Joseph Cotten may be the subject of a new biography.
WTVR-TV, CBS 6, recently reported that writer Marya E. Gates was in Cotten’s hometown of Petersburg, Virginia, for a week researching the life of the late actor, whose screen credits include Citizen Kane, The Third Man and Shadow of a Doubt. Gates, a film critic, works as a social media specialist for TCM and runs the blog Cinema-Fanatic.com
She told the Richmond, Virginia-based television station that Cotten, who died in 1994 at the age of 88, is often overlooked.
“He is a guy whose name isn’t as well known as Orson Welles, you can picture Kane, as soon as you say the films that he is in, people say ‘Oh yeah that guy,” Gates told WTVR. “So, hopefully, he will go from being that guy, to a guy you remember his face and his work.”
She said she hopes to publish her biography of Cotten in the next few years.
Cotten published his autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere, in 1987.
As a member of the Mercury Theatre, Cotten was directed by Orson Welles on stage, radio and film. The two enjoyed a 50-year friendship. In addition to their work together on the Mercury Theatre movies Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and Journey Into Fear, Cotten also appeared with Welles in Carol Reed’s The Third Man and Welles’ own Touch of Evil and F For Fake.
Cotten was buried in Blandford Cemetery in 1994. His second wife, actress Patricia Medina (Mr. Arkadin), joined him there in 2012.
In May 2016, a historical marker honoring Cotten was placed on the grounds of the Appomattox Regional Governor’s School for the Arts and Technology on West Washington Street in Petersburg, once the site of the Petersburg High School that Cotten attended.
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