1905-1994
Actor of all trades in the Golden Age of Hollywood Joseph Cotten (Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr.) was born on this day in Petersburg Virginia. While he first came to world wide attention in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, he was actually in another Orson Welles film 3 years prior. He was the star of Welles filmed remake of Too Much Johnson in 1938. Despite it's late date, the film was a silent. In fact, the film was actually a side project of Welles' production of the play in live theater. It was also a famously "lost" film until 2013, when a copy of it turned up in Italy (previously the only known copy of the film was in Welles' possession and thought lost in a house fire in 1970). Right now, I am not going to go into the merits of the film as it has come down to us as basically a "work print"--what I will say is that Cotten is pretty damn brilliant in his slapstick performance! Suffice to say, this was Cotten's only silent film performance and his career was a long and storied one, so there is little point in attempting to detail it here. I will mention that he made his television debut in 1954 in the State Of The Union feature length episode of the once a month series Producer's Showcase. In 1955 he was "given" his own series The Joseph Cotten Show: On Trial (original title simply On Trial). After this point, he made tons of appearances on television (far more than I ever thought for sure!). He also appeared in a number of horror films--not a genre associated with him at all. Probably--aside from Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte with Bette Davis--my favorite would have to be the Mario Bava entitled Baron Blood in English. In fact, Cotten's last film appearance came in 1981 in a horror film directed by David Hemmings, featuring Jenny Argutter of An American Werewolf in London fame: The Survivor. Curiously, the film is an Australian production. Not long after the wrapping of filming, Cotten suffered a heart attack that led to a stroke that left him disabled, with speech difficulty. Lucky to be alive at all, he retired from acting, but began writing instead. He also spoke weekly with his old partner in crime, so to speak, Orson Welles. He actually had one such call the night before Welles' own death in 1985. By 1990 Cotten had developed cancer and had surgery because of it; despite this, he lived a further 4 years dying at the age of 88 of pneumonia on the 6th of February. His body was shipped back to his home town in Virginia, where he is buried at the Blandford Cemetery.
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| [source: Arthur Koykka via Find A Grave] |
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