The long-awaited renovation of the Stony Creek Theatre, where Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre staged the ill-fated Too Much Johnson in 1938, will get underway Thursday, June 6, in Branford, Connecticut.
Once a chapel-turned-movie house near the Thimble Islands, the Stony Creek Theatre became a home for community theater and summer stock productions during the Great Depression. It served as a parachute factory during World War II and in the early 1960s became known as the Stony Creek Puppet House.
The town of Branford condemned the building in January 2007 for building and fire code violations and its future looked bleak.
The Stony Creek Puppet House was acquired for $475,000 by Legacy Theatre, which has labored in recent years to raise funds to save the historic theater.
“This has been a journey filled with ups and downs, patience, perseverance, and most of all, support from our friends. It is truly exciting to see the shovel break the ground!” Stephanie Stiefel Williams, chair of the Board of Legacy Theatre, told WTNH-TV, Channel 8, in New Haven.
The performance center will have seating for 127 people once the restoration is completed.
Owners expect the renovated theater will showcase professional plays, musicals, children’s shows, cabarets, and visiting Broadway performances and workshops.
Too Much Johnson opened at the Stony Creek Theater on August 16, 1938.
Welles had planned to run 40 minutes of silent film to accompany the William Gillette stage comedy about a New York playboy who flees to Cuba to avoid a jealous husband. A 20-minute prologue and two 10-minute bits, which would run before the second and third acts, were filmed in New York City with Joseph Cotten, Arlene Francis, Virginia Nicolson and other members of the Mercury.
At Stony Creek, Welles discovered the theater’s low ceiling did not make projection feasible. The production flopped and Welles opted not to bring it to New York.
The 40 minutes of partially edited film was never screened and was long presumed lost.
“I wish you could have seen Too Much Johnson, Welles once told film historian Joseph McBride. “It was a beautiful film. We created a sort of dream Cuba in New York. I looked at it four years ago and the print was in wonderful condition. You know, I never fully edited it. I meant to put it together to give to Joe Cotten as a Christmas present one year, but I never got around to it.”
Too much fanfare, it was revealed in August 2013 that the 10 reels of Too Much Johnson footage had been found in an Italian warehouse in remarkably good condition.
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