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Biography
Early life and career
Born in Petersburg, Virginia, Cotten worked as an advertising agent after graduating from the Washington, D.C., Hickman School, where he studied acting. His work as a journalist, specifically a theatre critic, inspired him to become more involved in theatre productions, first in Virginia, and later in New York. Cotten made his Broadway debut in 1930, and soon became friends with up-and-coming actor/director/producer Orson Welles. In 1937 he joined Welles' Mercury Theater Company, with which he starred in productions of Julius Caesar and Shoemaker's Holiday.
Cotten made his film debut in the Welles-directed short Too Much Johnson, a comedy based on William Gillette's 1890 play. The short was occasionally screened before or after Mercury productions, but never received an official release. Cotten returned to Broadway in 1939, starring as C.K. Dexter Haven in the original production of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story as well as the 1953 production of Sabrina Fair.
Citizen Kane
Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, and Everett Sloane in Citizen Kane.
After the success of Welles' infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast, Welles received inked an impressive contract with RKO Pictures. The two-picture deal promised full creative control for the young director, and Welles made sure to feature his Mercury players in whatever production he chose to bring to screen. However, after a year, production hadn't yet started on any of Welles' prospective projects. It took a meeting with writer Herman J. Mankiewicz for Welles to find a story to bring to the screen.
In mid 1940 filming began on Citizen Kane, a back-handed jibe at media mogul William Randolph Hearst, which portrayed the life of a flawed genius, played by Welles, who starts out as an idealist but eventually turns into a corrupt, lonely old man. The film featured Cotten prominently in the role of Kane's friend, a drama critic for Kane's print empire.
Thanks to Orson Welles' attention to detail and cinematography, Gregg Toland's innovation, Citizen Kane revolutionized many new technical standards. The film utilized “deep focus”, use of a camera lens that allowed to for the entire viewing field to appear crisp and in focus, as well as long takes, that allowed action to unfold in one long take rather than quick cuts.
Despite its technical mastery and the quality of Welles' and Cotten's performances, the film almost never made it to screens. Hearst railed against the film, complaining that it portrayed him and his mistress, Marion Davies, in a less than flattering light. Fearful of retribution by the powerful man, MGM offered $800,000 to buy the negatives of the film (to the destroy the film and prevent any problems created by it.) Fortunately, RKO continued with the release of the film, despite the objections of Hearst, his newspapers, and other studios.
Joseph Cotten as Jed Leland in Citizen Kane.
When released on May 1, 1941, Citizen Kane found little attention at theaters, due to the fact that the majority of the country's press outlets, Hearst-owned, would not run advertisements for the film. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1942, but was largely ignored by the Academy, only winning for Best Screenplay, for Welles and Mankiewicz. In addition to Cotten, Citizen Kane featured the talents of many other Mercury players, many of them newcomers to the screen. The film helped launch the careers of Agnes Moorehead (who played Kane's mother), Ruth Warrick (Kane's first wife), and Ray Collins (Kane's chief employee). However, Cotten was the only of the four to find major Hollywood success outside of Citizen Kane.
Collaborations with Welles
Joseph Cotten in The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed.
Despite Welles' reputation of being difficult to get along with, he and Cotten remained good friends. Cotten starred a year later in Welles' adaptation and production of The Magnificent Ambersons, supported by Moorehead. After the commercial disappointment of Citizen Kane, RKO was apprehensive about the new film, and cut nearly an hour off the running time before releasing it. Though at points the film came off as disjointed, the film was well received by critics. Despite another point-on performance by Cotten, he was again snubbed by the Academy in favor of Moorehead (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress).
In 1943, Cotten took control of the Nazi-related thriller Journey Into Fear. He wrote the screenplay with the help of Welles (who produced the film), and starred in the film. By the time production wrapped on the film, Welles had been dropped from RKO, and, as part of the settlement, was required to edit the film to suitable length. Once again, the studio had intervened in a Cotten picture. The film was a minor hit, but separated the friends from professional collaboration for six years.
The last collaboration between Welles and Cotten is widely considered as Cotten's best performance. In The Third Man, Cotten portrays a pulp fiction writer who travels to post-war Vienna to meet his friend Harry Lime (Welles). When he arrives he discovers Lime has died, and is determined to prove to the police that it was murder, but uncovers an even darker secret. The film proved to be another technical achievement, but Cotten was passed over come Academy night.
The Forties and Fifties
Cotten in 1947's The Farmer's Daughter.
Cotten proved himself a versatile actor in Hollywood following the success of Citizen Kane. The characters he played onscreen during this period ranged from a serial killer in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt to an eager police detective in 1944's Gaslight. Cotten starred with Jennifer Jones in three films, first in the western Duel in the Sun and later in the critically acclaimed Portrait of Jennie, in which he played a melancholy artist who becomes obsessed with a girl who may have died long ago, and Love Letters.
Cotten's career cooled in the 1950s with a string of less high-profile roles in films such as the dark Civil War epic Two Flags West, the Joan Fontaine romance September Affair, and the Marilyn Monroe vehicle, Niagara. His last theatrical releases in the '50s were mostly film-noir outings and unsuccessful character studies. In 1956, Cotten left film for several years in exchange for a string of successful television ventures, such as the series On Trial, which was later called The Joseph Cotten Show. He was also featured in the successful series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and the "General Electric Theater." He finished the decade with a cameo appearance in the Welles production Touch of Evil and the 1958 adaptation of From the Earth to the Moon.
The Sixties and Seventies
In 1960 he married British actress, the Anglo-Spanish Patricia Medina, after his first wife, Lenore Kipp, died of leukemia earlier that year. After some time away from film, Cotten returned in 1964's in the horror classic Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, opposite fellow screen veterans Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, and Mercury player Agnes Moorehead. The rest of the decade found Cotten in a number of forgettable B-movies, foreign productions, and tv-movies.
In the early 1970s, Cotten followed a supporting role in Tora! Tora! Tora!, with several horror features such as The Abominable Dr. Phibes, opposite Vincent Price, and as William R. Simonson, the executive whose murder investigation opens the classic Soylent Green (1973).
Later in the decade, Cotten was featured in several all-star disaster outings, including Airport '77 opposite James Stewart and again with Olivia de Havilland and the nuclear thriller Twilight's Last Gleaming.
Heaven's Gate
One of Cotten's last films was 1980's infamous Heaven's Gate. In late 1979, Cotten found himself on a set reminiscent of Citizen Kane, nearly forty years earlier. The cast and crew of Heaven's Gate found themselves working under director Michael Cimino, who demanded perfection, though he himself was unclear of the direction his film would take. As production costs soared to $40 million and the studio, United Artists, became increasingly skeptical, the cast questioned whether the film would be completed, let alone released.
Cotten, circa 1976.
Finally, filming did end, but much of the damage had already been done. Cimino was forced to edit nearly five hours of film into a three hour movie. Upon release, the film was met with scathing reviews and lackluster sales at the box office. At the time, it was a monumental flop, and sent United Artists into bankruptcy. Shortly after, the 75-year-old actor retired with his wife to their home in Westwood, California. Cotten published a popular autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere, in 1987. He died on February 6, 1994, of pneumonia, a complication of terminal (or metastasized) throat cancer at the age of 88, leaving behind his wife and step-daughter. He was buried at the Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia.
Legacy
Today, Cotten is known as one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. He was never nominated for an Academy Award, despite his immense body of work, including many films that are considered classics today. The only notable acting award Cotten received throughout his career was a Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actor for his work in Portrait of Jennie.
Filmography
Too Much Johnson (1938) (short subject)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Lydia (1941)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Journey Into Fear (1943)
Hers to Hold (1943)
Gaslight (1944)
Since You Went Away (1944)
I'll Be Seeing You (1945)
Love Letters (1945)
Duel in the Sun (1946)
The Farmer's Daughter (1947)
Portrait of Jennie (1948)
The Third Man (1949)
Under Capricorn (1949)
Beyond the Forest (1949)
Two Flags West (1950)
Walk Softly, Stranger (1950)
September Affair (1950)
Half Angel (1951)
Peking Express (1951)
The Man with a Cloak (1951)
The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1952)
The Wild Heart (1952) (narrator)
Untamed Frontier (1952)
The Steel Trap (1952)
Egypt by Three (1953) (narrator)
Niagara (1953)
A Blueprint for Murder (1953)
Vom Himmel gefallen or Special Delivery (1955)
The Bottom of the Bottle (1956)
The Killer Is Loose (1956)
The Halliday Brand (1957)
Touch of Evil (1958)
From the Earth to the Moon (1958)
The Angel Wore Red (1960)
The Last Sunset (1961)
Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)
The Great Sioux Massacre (1965)
The Money Trap (1965)
The Oscar (1966)
The Tramplers (1966)
The Cruel Ones (1967)
Brighty of the Grand Canyon (1967)
Jack of Diamonds (1967)
Days of Fire (1968)
Gangster '70 (1968)
Petulia (1968)
White Comanche (1968)
Keene (1969)
Latitude Zero (1969)
The Grasshopper (1970)
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
Lady Frankenstein (1971)
Baron Blood (1972)
Doomsday Voyage (1972)
The Scientific Cardplayer (1972)
A Delicate Balance (1973)
Soylent Green (1973)
Syndicate Sadists (1975)
Timber Tramps (1975)
A Whisper in the Dark (1976)
F for Fake (1976) (documentary)
Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)
Airport '77 (1977)
Last In, First Out (1978)
Caravans (1978)
Concorde Affair (1978)
Something Waits in the Dark (1979)
Concorde Affair '79 (1979)
Guyana: Crime of the Century (1979)
The Hearse (1980)
Delusion (1980)
Heaven's Gate (1980)
The Survivor (1981)
References
Cotten, Joseph (1987). Vanity Will Get You Somewhere, Mercury House. ISBN 0-86-287334-7.
Barr, Tom. Citizen Cotten. MovieMaker Magazine. New York: MovieMaker Magazine. URL accessed on July 13, 2005.
