Noted film historian Joseph McBride dropped us a note about an American Cinematographer article from September 1998 that contains a few seldom-seen color photographs of Orson Welles shooting Touch of Evil.
A Cop Gone Wrong: Touch of Evil by George E. Turner is available online without subscription. It delves into the Universal Pictures shoot by Welles and cameraman Russell Metty in early 1957, as well as the acclaimed Rick Schmidlin and Walter Murch led reconstruction undertaken four decades later.
Touch of Evil suffered a troubled post-production history, as Universal took creative control from Welles, re-editing and reshooting the film against his wishes, ultimately releasing it as a poorly received B-movie in the United States in 1958. Forty years later, a 1998 reconstructed version, guided by Welles’ own 58-page memo to Universal, was released and is now considered the definitive cut, restoring the motion picture to its intended glory and cementing its status as a film noir masterpiece
The American Cinematographer article is generously illustrated with two dozen photos taken by Universal during the shoot. It also contains four color photos from the Bison Archives. Those images were photographed around the vicinity of Windward Avenue in Venice, California, with two of them showing Welles at work on the set.
Those four photos are reproduced below, but the full article and photographs can be found at theasc.com/articles/cop-gone-wrong-touch-of-evil
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