WELLESNET MESSAGE BOARD

In the AFI write-up of JOURNEY INTO FEAR, it is alleged that an adaptation of Huey Long's Louisiana Hayride: The American Rehearsal for Dictatorship by Harnett T. Kane was a project Welles contemplated directing and starring in during his brief RKO period. I was of course aware of HEART OF DARKNESS and THE SMILER WITH A KNIFE, as well as the bible story Welles hoped to follow up AMBERSONS with, but this is the first I've heard of such a project.

Long is the kind of character who inspires strong opinions, and given his close relationship with FDR, Welles must have had more than a few thoughts on the Louisiana senator, to the point where I'm surprised the subject never seems to have come up in interviews. Seeing him depict Long on-screen would have been something.

The Huey Long project certainly sounds like something that would interest Welles, but was he really keen to make another film involving a political figure as a follow-up to Kane?

That AFI write-up also notes that RKO held back Journey into Fear from release after a single tradeshow screening in August 1942. If this is accurate, I'm amazed that print survived to be screened regularly in Europe decades later and even issued on DVD! I had been under the impression that RKO did a limited release before pulling the film from distribution in order to allow Welles to do his re-edit (a limited release would logically increase the chances of a rogue print staying in circulation in additional to the official release of 1943).

The timeline is a little fuzzy, but it sounds like the Long movie might have been contemplated around the same time as KANE. I agree after KANE it would have felt a little redundant. THE SMILER WITH THE KNIFE would also have run along similar themes, especially given that Welles was planning to relocate the story to America, making the aspiring strong-man a homegrown threat. The idea of an American bigshot with fascist/dictatorial potential seems to have been something Welles was coalescing around for his first movie, and KANE ended up being the material that delivered on it to his satisfaction.