By RAY KELLY
The estate of Orson Welles is working toward a home video or streaming release of a trio of the celebrated film director’s seldom-seen TV projects — the award-winning Fountain of Youth, an early 1970s direct-to-video short and the unsold talk show pilot.
Preliminary talks have been conducted with a streaming service and a U.S.-based home video label. However, Orson Welles LLC is also looking at possible European distribution deals, according to David Reeder of Reeder Brand Management, which handles licensing deals for the Welles estate.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to reacquire high-quality titles that have largely been unavailable to Welles fans,” Reeder said. “Despite being from different decades, collectively, these programs provide a unique look in to how Welles creatively interpreted the television medium.”
The estate is also combing through videotapes of other Welles projects recently found in storage in Arizona, where Welles lived in the early 1970s.
The three Welles television projects Reeder is presently representing are:
Fountain of Youth — A witty 26-minute short backed by Desilu. It was filmed in 1956 with the hope it would lead to a Welles-hosted anthology series, which never happened. Based on a John Collier short story, Welles narrated a tale about a romantic triangle and an elixir granting 200 years of youthful appearance. Fountain of Youth starred Dan Tobin (The Other Side of the Wind), Joi Lansing (Touch of Evil) and Rick Jason (Combat!). Welles scholar Joseph McBride has likened the storytelling to the First Person Singular style of his Mercury Theatre on the Air and Campbell Playhouse radio series. It was televised only once in September 1958 as part of the NBC Colgate Theatre. It was honored with a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting.
Two Wise Old Men: Socrates and Noah — One of six shorts Welles filmed with cameraman Gary Graver in 1970 for Avco Broadcasting’s fledgling Cartrivision home video line. The shorts were sold in 1972 by Sears, Roebuck & Co. before Cartrivision went out of business. (This was in the days before Betamax or VHS.) The 19-minute Socrates and Noah contains two separate solo performances. Welles recounts the trial of Socrates in 399 B.C. from a tastefully furnished living room. His stirring recitation touches on obedience to the law, the pursuit of money over truth and the generation gap. The Noah segment was shot outdoors in Southern California. Welles starts by recounting his lifelong interest in Noah, noting his recitation draws from his own unproduced work, Two by Two. The estate acquired copies of some of the Cartrivision shorts at auction in late 2021, but only Two Wise Old Men was in suitable condition for transfer.
The Orson Welles Show — The unsold pilot for a Welles-hosted talk show. The 74-minute program features an interview with Hollywood leading man Burt Reynolds, Muppet masters Jim Henson and Frank Oz and a bit of magic with Angie Dickinson. Welles, Graver, assistant cameraman Michael Little, key grip Michael Stringer and assistant director Stanley Sheff began shooting the pilot in September 1978 at KCOP-TV in Hollywood. According to Sheff, who worked on the editing, the Reynolds segment was videotaped using three cameras; the Henson / Oz segment utilized two cameras, and all of the magic tricks were shot single camera film. Sheff guarded the rights and footage for years after Welles’ death to prevent it from falling into public domain.
Taken together, the three short TV projects have a total running time of about two hours, and supplementary materials are available to add to its commercial appeal.
Wellesnet had the opportunity to watch the three television programs.
The image quality of Fountain of Youth and The Orson Welles Show are vastly superior to the inferior, watermarked bootleg copies posted on YouTube and elsewhere online. Two Wise Old Men: Socrates and Noah was scanned from a Cartrivision tape bought at auction and not been shared in collector circles. While the visual quality is not on the same par as Fountain of Youth and The Orson Welles Show, it is a nonetheless a remarkable piece of Welles history.
__________
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.