In the summer of 1946, Welles was directing
Around the World, a musical stage adaptation of the
Jules Verne novel
Around the World in Eighty Days, with a comedic and ironic book by Welles, incidental music and songs by
Cole Porter, and production by
Mike Todd, who would later produce the successful
film version with
David Niven. When Todd pulled out from the lavish and expensive production, Welles financed it. When he ran out of money and urgently needed $55,000 to release costumes that were being held, he convinced
Columbia Pictures president
Harry Cohn to send him the money to continue the show and in exchange Welles promised to write, produce, and direct a film for Cohn for no further fee. As Welles told it, on the spur of the moment, he suggested the film be based on a book that he happened to see in front of him during his call with Cohn, one a girl in the theatre box office was reading at the time. Welles had never read it. However, according to the daughter of
William Castle, it was her father who had purchased the film adaptation rights for the novel and who then asked Welles to pitch it to Cohn, with Castle hoping to receive the directoral assignment himself. She described her father as greatly respecting Welles's talents, but feeling nonetheless disappointed at being relegated to serve merely as Welles's assistant director on the film.
The Lady from Shanghai began filming on 2 October 1946, and originally finished filming on 27 February 1947, with studio-ordered retakes continuing through March 1947—but it was not released in the U.S. until 9 June 1948. Cohn strongly disliked Welles's rough cut, particularly what he considered to be a confusing plot and lack of close-ups (Welles had deliberately avoided these, as a stylistic device), and was not in sympathy with Welles's
Brechtian use of irony and black comedy, especially in a farcical courtroom scene. He also objected to the appearance of the film. Welles had aimed for documentary-style authenticity by shooting the film almost entirely on location (making it one of the first major
Hollywood pictures to be shot in this way) in
Acapulco,
Pie de la Cuesta,
Sausalito, and
San Francisco), and by using primarily long takes, while Cohn preferred the more tightly controlled look of footage lit and shot in a studio. The release of the film was delayed due to Cohn's order for extensive editing and reshoots. Whereas Welles had delivered his cut of the film on time and under budget, the reshoots Welles was ordered to do meant that the film ended up over budget by a third, contributing to the director's reputation for going over budget. Once the reshoots were over, the heavy editing ordered by Cohn took over a year to complete; editor
Viola Lawrence cut about an hour from Welles's rough cut. Welles was appalled at the musical score, and he was particularly aggrieved by the cuts in the climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse at the end of the film. Intended as a climactic tour-de-force of editing and production design, the scene was cut to less than three minutes out of an intended running time of twenty minutes. As with many of the films over which Welles did not have control over the final cut, the missing footage has not been found and is presumed to have been destroyed. Surviving production stills show elaborate and expensive sets that were built for the sequence and which were entirely cut from the film. Welles cast his wife
Rita Hayworth as Elsa and caused a good deal of controversy when he instructed her to cut her long red hair and bleach it blonde for the role. "Orson was trying something new with me, but Harry Cohn wanted The Image—The Image he was gonna make me 'til I was 90," Rita Hayworth recalled. "
The Lady from Shanghai was a very good picture. So what does Harry Cohn say when he sees it? 'He's
ruined you—he cut your hair off!'"
Filming locations In addition to the
Columbia Pictures studios, the film was partly shot on location in San Francisco. It features the
Sausalito waterfront and Lee Kahn's Valhalla waterfront bar and cafe, the front, interior, and a courtroom scene of the old Kearny Street
Hall of Justice, and shots of Welles running across
Portsmouth Square, escaping to a long scene in a theater in
Chinatown, then the
Steinhart Aquarium in
Golden Gate Park, and Whitney's
Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park at
Ocean Beach for the hall of mirrors scene, for which interiors were shot on a soundstage. Other scenes were filmed in
Acapulco. The yacht , on which many scenes take place, was owned by actor
Errol Flynn, who skippered the yacht in between takes and can also be seen in the background in one scene at a cantina in Acapulco. ==Reception==