A highway marker will be placed in Petersburg, Virginia, to honor one its favorite sons – Mercury Theatre actor Joseph Cotten.
Cotten worked with Orson Welles on stage, radio and film and remained a close friend of the director until Welles’ death in 1985.
In addition to their work together in the Mercury Theatre movies Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and Journey Into Fear, Cotten appeared with Welles in Carol Reed’s The Third Man and Welles’ own Touch of Evil and F For Fake.
Cotten, who died in 1994, is buried in the city’s Blandford Cemetery. His second wife, Patricia Medina Cotten (Mr. Arkadin), died in 2012 and is buried beside him.
The commemorative marker is one of 13 recently approved by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, according to WVIT-TV, NBC 29. The highway marker was sponsored by Whitworth W. Cotten Jr., the late actor’s nephew and a Petersburg High School graduate who now lives in Florida.
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