Post-production and Exhibition Problems
Welles spent ten days shooting Too Much Johnson, which resulted in approximately 25,000 feet of film. He edited the footage on a Moviola in his suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City, and John Houseman later recalled visitors had to "wade knee-deep through a crackling sea of flammable film."
During post-production, Welles ran into financial problems relating to his cast (who were not originally paid for the film shoot) and the film laboratory (which refused to deliver the processed film until it received payment). Welles also received an attorney's letter from Paramount Pictures informing him that the studio owned the film rights to Too Much Johnson, and that public presentation of his film would require payment to the studio.
Welles initially planned to present the stage-and-film mix of Too Much Johnson at the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut as a pre-Broadway trial run, but discovered that the theater's ceiling was too low to allow for film projection. The show opened on August 16, 1938, without the filmed sequences. Audience and critical reaction to the show was poor and Welles opted not to attempt a Broadway version of the show.
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