Legendary filmmaker Orson Welles long missing 1938 short film "Too Much Johnson" has been found in Italy.
A slapstick comedy, the long-missing silent film has been restored for an October premiere.
The 35mm nitrate work print was discovered in a warehouse in Pordenone and turned over to the George Eastman House for restoration and preservation, reported Deadline.
Shot three years before Welles made his famous classic "Citizen Kane", the film was one of three shorts starring Joseph Cotten, Arlene Francis and Ruth Ford that were planned. They were to be shown as prologues to each act of a Mercury Theater stage production of William Gillette's 1894 play 'Too Much Johnson'. Welles could never complete the movies and his stage show did not do well.
The only known print of the film was thought to be lost more than four decades ago in a fire at Welles' Madrid-area home until the discovery of this print.
Welles' is counted among world's greatest filmmakers and his film "Citizen Kane", which he wrote, directed, produced and starred.
The film was voted the greatest film of all time in five consecutive Sight & Sound's polls of critics, until Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" replaced it in 2012.
