Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair. He gained worldwide fame for his collaborations with Orson Welles on films Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Journey into Fear. Cotten starred in the latter and was also credited with the screenplay.
Cotten became one of the leading Hollywood actors of the 1940s, appearing in films such as Shadow of a Doubt ; Gaslight ; Love Letters ; Duel in the Sun ; The Farmer's Daughter ; Portrait of Jennie, for which he won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor; The Third Man, alongside Welles; and Niagara. One of his final films was Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate.
Film critics and media outlets have cited him as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.
Early life
Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. was born on May 15, 1905, in Petersburg, Virginia, United States, the first of three sons born to Joseph Cheshire Cotten Sr., an assistant postmaster, and Sally Willson Cotten. He had two brothers, Whitworth W. "Whit" and Samuel W. Cotten. Both were engineers. Cotten grew up in the Tidewater region and showed an aptitude for drama and a gift for storytelling.In 1923, when Cotten was 18, his family arranged for him to receive private lessons at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington, D.C., and underwrote his expenses.
Cotten earned spending money playing professional football on Sundays, for $25 a quarter. After graduation, he earned enough money as a lifeguard at Wilcox Lake to pay back his family's loan, with interest. He moved to Miami in 1925 and worked as an advertising salesman for The Miami Herald at $35 a week. He started performing at the Miami Civic Theatre, and worked there for five years, also reviewing the shows for the Herald.
Cotten served in the First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.
Career
1932–1939: Broadway and film debuts
Cotten moved to New York and worked for David Belasco as an assistant stage manager. He was an understudy to Melvyn Douglas in Tonight or Never, then succeeded Douglas in the lead role for the Copley Theatre in Boston, where he worked on and performed in over 30 plays. Cotten struggled to find work during the Depression, so he turned to modeling through the Walter Thornton Model Agency and acted in industrial films. He also performed on radio. Cotten made his Broadway debut in 1932 in Absent Friends which ran for 88 performances. He followed it with Jezebel, staged by Katherine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic, which only had a short run. He was in Loose Moments which ran for 8 performances.In 1934, Cotten met and became friends with Orson Welles, a fellow cast member on CBS Radio's The American School of the Air. Welles regarded Cotten as a brilliant comic actor, and gave him the starring role in his Federal Theatre Project farce, Horse Eats Hat. Cotten was sure that Horse Eats Hat won him the notice of his future Broadway co-star, Katharine Hepburn. Cotten said Welles later told him "You're very lucky to be tall and thin and have curly hair. You can also move about the stage without running into the furniture. But these are fringe assets, and I'm afraid you'll never make it as an actor. But as a star, I think you well might hit the jackpot."
In 1937, Cotten became an inaugural member of Welles's Mercury Theatre company, starring in its Broadway productions Caesar as Publius; it ran for 157 performances. He followed it with The Shoemaker's Holiday and Danton's Death for Welles. Cotten also performed in radio dramas presented on The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The Campbell Playhouse. That same year Cotten made his film debut in the Welles-directed short, Too Much Johnson, a comedy that was intended to complement the aborted 1938 Mercury stage production of William Gillette's 1894 play. The film was never screened in public and was lost until 2008.
Cotten returned to Broadway in 1939, creating the role of C. K. Dexter Haven opposite Katharine Hepburn's Tracy Lord in the original production of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story. The play ran for 417 performances at the Shubert Theatre, and in the months before its extensive national tour a film version was to be made by MGM. Cotten went to Hollywood, but discovered there that his stage success in The Philadelphia Story translated to, in the words of his agent Leland Hayward, "spending a solid year creating the Cary Grant role." Hayward suggested that they call Cotten's good pal, Orson Welles. "He's been making big waves out here", Hayward said. "Maybe nobody in Hollywood ever heard of the Shubert Theatre in New York, but everybody certainly knows about the Mercury Theatre in New York."
1940–1949: Leading film roles
''Citizen Kane'' (1941)
After the success of Welles's War of the Worlds 1938 Halloween radio broadcast, Welles gained a unique contract with RKO Pictures. The two-picture deal promised full creative control for the young director below an agreed budget limit, and Welles's intention was to feature the Mercury Players in his productions. Shooting had still not begun on a Welles film after a year, but after a meeting with writer Herman J. Mankiewicz Welles had a suitable project.In mid-1940, filming began on Citizen Kane, portraying the life of a press magnate 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 best friend Jedediah Leland, eventually a drama critic for one of Kane's papers.
When released on May 1, 1941, Citizen Kane – based in part on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst– did not do much business at theaters; Hearst owned numerous major newspapers, and forbade them to carry advertisements for the film. Nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1942, the film won only for Best Screenplay, for Mankiewicz and Welles. Citizen Kane launched the film careers of the Mercury Players, including Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick, and Ray Collins. However, Cotten was the only one of the four to find major success as a lead in Hollywood outside of Citizen Kane; Moorehead and Collins became successful character film actors. Moorehead starred in Bewitched and Warrick spent decades in a career in daytime television, specifically All My Children.
The Los Angeles Times, in an otherwise mixed review of the film, said that "Cotten's work is vital and distinctive... He is an important 'find.'" Alexander Korda hired him to play Merle Oberon's leading man in Lydia. "I didn't care about the movies, really", Cotten said later. "I was tall. I had curly hair. I could talk. It was easy to do."
''The Magnificent Ambersons'' (1942)
Cotten starred in Welles's adaptation and production of The Magnificent Ambersons. After the commercial disappointment of Citizen Kane, RKO was apprehensive about the new film, and after poor preview responses, cut it by nearly an hour before its release. Though at points the film appeared disjointed, it was well received by critics. Despite the critical accolades Cotten received for his performance, he was again snubbed by the academy.''Journey into Fear'' (1943)
Cotten was cast in the World War II spy thriller Journey into Fear based on the novel by Eric Ambler. It was originally scripted by Ben Hecht but Welles, who was supervising, disliked it, and rewrote it with Cotten. Released by RKO, the Mercury production was directed by Norman Foster. It was a collaborative effort due to the difficulties shooting the film and the pressures related to Welles' imminent departure to South America to begin work on It's All True.Alfred Hitchcock cast Cotten as a charming serial killer in Shadow of a Doubt. It was made for Universal Pictures, for whom Cotten then appeared in Hers to Hold, as Deanna Durbin's leading man.
After Welles's return, he and Cotten co-produced The Mercury Wonder Show for members of the U.S. armed services. Opening August 3, 1943, the all-star magic and variety show was presented in a tent at 9000 Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. Featured were Welles, Cotten, Rita Hayworth, Agnes Moorehead and others. Tickets were free to servicemen, and more than 48,000 of them had seen show by September 1943.
In late 1943, Cotten visited Welles's office and said that producer David O. Selznick wanted to make two or three films with him, but that he wanted him under his own contract. Welles then tore up Cotten's contract with Mercury Productions, saying, "He can do more for you than I can. Good luck!" Cotten signed a long-term deal with Selznick. Selznick loaned out Cotten and Ingrid Bergman to MGM for the thriller Gaslight, which was a major hit. Selznick then put Cotten in the wartime drama Since You Went Away alongside Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple, which was another major success.
Selznick followed this up by teaming Cotten with Ginger Rogers and Temple in I'll Be Seeing You, another melodrama. Hal Wallis borrowed Cotten and Jones to make Love Letters. Exhibitors voted him the 17th most popular star in the United States in 1945. Selznick used Cotten, Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck in Duel in the Sun, an epic Western that was hugely popular at the box office.
Dore Schary, who had worked for Selznick, went to run RKO and hired Cotten for The Farmer's Daughter, where he was Loretta Young's leading man. Cotten then made Portrait of Jennie for Selznick, co starring with Jones; Cotten played a melancholy artist who becomes obsessed with a girl who might have died many years before. His performance won Cotten the International Prize for Best Actor at the 1949 Venice International Film Festival.