A long-lost film by Orson Welles has been uncovered and restored.

Welles made the slapstick short, Too Much Johnston, in 1939. It was meant to be part of a stage presentation by his Mercury Theatre Company, but was never completed. That was the same year Welles and Mercury made headlines and caused panic with their radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.

The film was discovered in a film warehouse in Italy.

Actor and Welles biographer Simon Callow says it was the making of Too Much Johnston that first made Welles fall in love with the art of filmmaking. Two years later he went to Hollywood to begin work on his classic, Citizen Kane.