By RAY KELLY
The RKO corporate archive Welles material that was presumed lost in the sale to Turner has now been restored in a workable digital version and should be available online soon, Wellesnet has learned.
Wellesnet has reached out to WarnerMedia, the current rights holder, for further details.
Orson Welles was signed by RKO Radio Pictures in 1939 and fired three years later. During his tenure there, he directed and produced Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons and produced and co-starred in Journey Into Fear. He also filmed the unfinished It’s All True and left behind scripts for unrealized projects like Heart of Darkness, The Smiler with a Knife and The Way to Santiago.
In addition to script notes, the archive would likely contain correspondence among studio executives regarding Welles’ hiring, film projects and eventual dismissal.
Following RKO’s decline in the 1950s, its film library and related documentation — including matters pertaining to Welles — repeatedly changed hands.
The film library was first acquired by C & C Television Corp. (later known as TransBeacon) in December 1955 — two years before RKO ceased production.
When TransBeacon went bankrupt, the film library rights were sold at auction in 1971 and split between United Artists and Marian B. Inc.
In 1986, MGM-United Artists’ considerable film library, including RKO, was acquired by media mogul Ted Turner for his new Turner Entertainment division.
That same year, RKO General repurchased the portion of the rights held by Marian B. Inc.’s Marian Pictures. Later, Turner acquired many of the distribution rights that had returned to RKO via Marian Pictures.
In 1996, Turner Entertainment was merged into Time Warner, now WarnerMedia. It controls distribution of the RKO library in North America.
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