Opening credits are prefaced by the following written prologue: “This film contains footage directed by Orson Welles for a project he was never allowed to finish. It is dedicated to the memory of his friend and collaborator Richard Wilson.”
       The following statement appears in end credits: “In 1985, the surviving nitrate negatives for ‘It’s All True’ were donated by Paramount to the American Film Institute and placed on deposit with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. UCLA and The National Center for Film and Video Preservation at AFI are actively working to preserve these historic materials.”
       Brazilian actor Grande Otelo is credited as “Grande Othelo” (Sebastião Bernardes de Souza Prata).
       In 1981, 140,000 feet of black and white nitrate negative was discovered in a vault at Paramount Pictures. As noted in the 27 Aug 1986 Var and 2 Sep 1986 HR, the footage was identified as part of the unfinished 1942 Orson Welles film, It’s All True, a semi-documentary about Latin American culture that was thought to be lost or destroyed.
       The project began forty years earlier, in 1941. Welles had recently signed his first motion picture contract with RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., in 1939, and the studio became the parent company to Welles’s Mercury Productions. The Mercury enterprise, an offshoot of Welles’s New York City theatrical and radio companies Mercury Theatre and Mercury Theatre on the Air, allowed him to bring many of his former associates to Hollywood. Tapping into the resources of his troupe, Welles became a near-overnight success with his opus debut, Citizen Kane (see entry), which opened on 5 Sep 1941 to critical acclaim. The same year, he was finishing The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, see entry) while preparing Journey into Fear (1943, see entry). Parts of the two films were shot back to back in adjacent soundstages.
       At that time, World War II was underway in Europe, and American involvement was looming. Although the U.S. did not officially join the war until after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 Dec 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about Germany’s influence over Latin America, and moved to secure solidarity in the Southern Hemisphere by establishing the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) in 1941. Efforts to gain leverage in the continent involved cultural diplomacy, in which entertainers and artists were appointed as “Goodwill Ambassadors” to infuse Latin society with American values and political agendas. Welles was delegated for this role in 1941, and the head of the OCIAA, politician-tycoon Nelson Rockefeller, convinced him to make an “entertainment film” to infiltrate U.S. interests in the hearts and minds of Latin Americans. Rockefeller was also a leading stockholder at RKO.
       In response to the request, Welles planned to direct a lighthearted picture that combined documentary and dramatic filmmaking. According to Barbara Leaming’s Orson Welles: A Biography (New York, 1985), Welles saw the opportunity a bit differently than the OCIAA platform. Instead of imbuing the Southern Hemisphere with North American ways of life, he aimed to introduce Latin culture to the U.S. In late 1941, the OCIAA ordered Welles to shoot the annual carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which took place on 13 Feb 1942. However, the event conflicted with his work on The Magnificent Ambersons, Journey into Fear, and a property he was developing about jazz music, based on the life of Louis Armstrong. The latter project had the working title The Story of Jazz, but Welles intended it to be called It’s All True.
       Despite Welles’s resistance toward abandoning these three undertakings, he realized he could segue the Brazilian carnival footage into a film related to jazz. The festivities in Rio featured samba music and dance, and Welles was intrigued by samba’s similarity to jazz, as they both evolved from pre-slavery African culture. In addition, Mercury Productions had previously acquired screen rights to documentarian Robert J. Flaherty’s story, “Bonito, the Bull,” which took place in Mexico. John Fante and Norman Foster had since written a film adaptation, titled My Friend Bonito. Welles acknowledged his call to duty as a Goodwill Ambassador and resolved to make It’s All True a compilation of three short films: My Friend Bonito, The Story of Samba (Carnaval), and Jangadeiros, a reenactment of the journey of four Brazilian fisherman, or jangadeiros, who sailed a primitive six-log raft sixty days to protest their exploitation. The story of the jangadeiros appeared in the Dec 1941 issue of Time, and the men were considered heroes in Brazil. The jangadeiros’ efforts resulted in a law that ensured union rights to fishermen, and Welles was interested in portraying the upside of labor equality. According to the documentary, the budget for the It’s All True trilogy was $1 million.
       While Norman Foster began directing My Friend Bonito in Mexico under Welles’s instruction, production continued on The Magnificent Ambersons back in Hollywood. However, RKO pressed Welles to leave for Brazil so the Carnaval shoot could start by 13 Feb 1942, and The Magnificent Ambersons was left under supervision of its editor, Robert Wise. Welles followed orders and had footage of The Magnificent Ambersons sent to Rio, where he endeavored to deliver changes through telephone calls and cable messages. As Welles continued production on Carnaval in Rio, RKO dispatched Norman Foster back to Hollywood from the My Friend Bonito shoot in Mexico to work on Welles’s Journey into Fear. Despite Welles’s mounting responsibilities in the U.S., RKO compelled him to stay in Brazil, finish Carnaval, and relocate to Mexico for the completion of My Friend Bonito. The Mexican project was never finished.
       By May 1942, Welles was filming Jangadeiros in Rio de Janeiro with the actual fishermen who made the journey. The documentary states that the jangadeiros’ leader, Manuel Jacaré, had been defamed by the Brazilian government as an alleged “communist” since his original odyssey, and Welles’s close relationship with Jacaré put the filmmaker’s political alliance into question. Although the Carnaval shoot had ended, plans were underway to add footage of a voodoo ceremony in a Brazilian shantytown, or favela. According to archival footage of a monologue delivered by Welles at the beginning of the documentary, he believed the sequence would help illustrate the origins of the carnival, and a local “witch doctor” agreed to let Welles’s crew film his sacred ritual at a future date.
       In response to rumors of Welles’s supposed communist sympathies and his shifting film narrative, Brazilian officials became suspicious of the production. According to the Brazilian government, the picture was proposed as light tourist propaganda, but it was evolving into an exposition of socioeconomic disparity. Back in Hollywood, RKO was distressed with the film’s rushes, and believed the ethnically diverse and politically challenging movie would be unmarketable in the U.S.
       Despite controversy and discouragement, Welles continued production on Jangadeiros. In order to give the picture Hollywood appeal, he added a love story to the beginning of the movie, making the fishermen’s journey a labor of love and justice. As the filmmakers prepared the reenactment of the fishermen’s arrival into Rio’s Guanabara Bay, the raft capsized and Manuel Jacaré drowned in the accident. Welles was left anguished, maligned, and without a key player.
       According to the documentary, the incident prompted Welles to become unwavering in his conviction to complete It’s All True. Although an RKO executive was sent to Rio to shut down production, Welles convinced him that Brazilians saw Jacaré as a martyr who sacrificed his life for the picture, and it would not be in the best interest of the studio or the OCIAA to incense the very people they were trying to impress. Since It’s All True also represented new hope for impoverished Brazilians, it fulfilled the OCIAA’s political agenda in a way that was not expected. In documentary footage, a jangadeiro’s descendant reveals that Brazilians rallied behind It’s All True in faith that Welles would bring their cause to U.S. audiences. They presumed Americans would respond with overwhelming support, and the resulting infusion of U.S.-style democracy in Brazil would end the country’s oppressive caste system.
       RKO permitted It’s All True to continue. However, the studio was soon taken over by business mogul Floyd Odlum, and the transition edged out Nelson Rockefeller, the OCIAA government sponsor of the picture. Odlum believed Welles’s expensive, controversial projects had depleted RKO’s coffers, and he was eager to change the direction of the company. Refocusing the studio’s priority from art films to entertainment pictures, he terminated RKO’s contract with Orson Welles and Mercury Productions, leaving It’s All True abandoned by both RKO and the OCIAA. According to the 27 Aug 1986 Var, Welles used the remaining 45,000 feet of film and $10,000 to shoot additional black and white, silent footage over the next two months. The production’s frugality inspired him to innovate a new style of filmmaking, in which his actors performed on makeshift platforms while cameraman captured the action from below, steadied by trenches of sand. Jangadeiros was finished, but the voodoo Carnaval sequence never came to fruition.
       When Welles could go no further with It’s All True, the picture idled in limbo and the screen rights remained with RKO. At one point, Welles was reportedly able to buy back parts of the film and edited a seven-reel, color version of Carnaval, which he hoped would raise funds to acquire the entire picture from RKO. Welles’s efforts were unsuccessful, and It’s All True was eventually considered missing from RKO archives. In the late 1950s, however, the former RKO studio was bought by Desilu Productions and some Technicolor footage resurfaced. According to various contemporary and modern sources, including associate producer and senior research executive Catherine Benamou’s It’s All True: Orson Welles’s Pan-American Odyssey (Berkeley, 2007), 200,000 feet of It’s All True Technicolor film was thrown into the ocean in Santa Monica, CA, while the property was in the custody of Desilu. The reason remains a matter of speculation.
       Over twenty years later, approximately 300 cans of black-and-white nitrate negative was found at Paramount Pictures by the studio’s director of technical services, Fred Chandler. The film cans had become the property of Paramount in 1967, when Paramount’s parent company, Gulf+Western, bought out Desilu Productions and its archives. Chandler told the 27 Aug 1986 Var that the remaining It’s All True footage had been saved “because it was black-and-white” and “had become separated from the color carnival stuff.” Although Chandler informed Welles about the discovery, the filmmaker refused to view the picture or participate in its reconstruction. In a 28 Aug 1986 NYT article, Chandler stated that Welles thought the film was “cursed” and believed it “marked the downfall of his career in Hollywood.” Welles’s monologue at the beginning of the documentary explains his belief that the film was officially doomed when the voodoo ceremony sequence was called off due to lack of funds from RKO. The “witch doctor,” who went to great lengths to orchestrate the shoot, was so enraged by the change in plans that he stabbed a steel needle through a copy of the script. The needle was threaded with red wool. Welles contends: “This was the mark of the voodoo,” and, “the end of the film.”
       As noted in various sources, Welles’s success as a mainstream Hollywood filmmaker became tarnished around the time of his termination from RKO and the It’s All True debacle. Welles believed his trip to South America effectively denied him creative control over The Magnificent Ambersons, and the film’s final cut reflected the studio’s vision, not his own. Film editor Robert Wise shortened the film and directed new material to bridge the cuts with Mercury Theatre business manager Jack Moss. As noted in various sources, including Robert L. Carringer’s The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruction (Berkeley, 1993) and Clinton Heylin’s Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios (Chicago, 2005), Welles saw both men as traitors. In Welles’s mind, RKO intentionally forced him to surrender authority over The Magnificent Ambersons and used It’s All True as an excuse to oust him from the project. This maneuver caused The Magnificent Ambersons to spiral out of control, and the released version of the picture failed to recoup its costs. Welles was subsequently pegged as a decadent filmmaker, who could not work on budget or finish a film on time. According to Fred Chandler, the recovered It’s All True footage offset such claims and documented Welles as a generally purposed and measured artist.
       Since Welles wanted nothing more to do with It’s All True, Paramount donated the footage to AFI’s National Center for Film and Video Preservation. In 1985, AFI entrusted the film to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Film & Television Archive, which had the vault space necessary for its storage. AFI was not able to finance a complete inventory and preservation plan, so the film remained in cans while supporters looked for ways to finance its reconstruction. According to Fred Chandler in the 27 Aug 1986 Var, AFI’s involvement was essential to the process of securing donors because the institute provided “tax-breaks to those giving cash and services.” AFI raised $100,000 to restore enough footage for a short film that would serve as a “teaser” to raise more capital, as stated in the 28 Aug 1986 NYT.
       Orson Welles died on 10 Oct 1985 without changing his mind about participating in the identification and reconstruction of his work. In Welles’s absence, Richard Wilson, his executive assistant and associate producer on The Story of Samba (Carnaval), spent six days going through the negative by hand, and approximately 40,000 feet of raw footage from Jangadeiros was printed as dailies. The remaining 100,000 feet was intended to be used at a later date for a feature-length documentary.
       While Fred Chandler, Richard Wilson, and a host of various participants, labs, and vendors labored voluntarily on the project, Bill Krohn, the Los Angeles, CA, correspondent for Cahiers du Cinéma, brought the lost picture to the attention of French filmmakers. As a result, the restoration received a deluge of support from European film festivals, and the Cinémathèque Française offered to sponsor a screening of clips at the May 1986 Cannes Film Festival. Preparing for the premiere, Chandler oversaw the handling of the original film while Wilson shot interviews with individuals who worked on It’s All True, including his wife, Elizabeth Wilson, cinematographer George Fanto, and assistant Shifra Faran. In addition, Wilson solicited funding from the Brazilian government, and its motion picture division, Embrafilme, granted a co-production deal for a feature film release. However, Embrafilme is not credited onscreen in the final cut of It’s All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles.
       The AFI-sponsored restoration of the Jangadeiros clips resulted in a twenty-two-minute short titled It’s All True: Four Men on a Raft. Richard Wilson and Bill Krohn were credited in reviews as its primary filmmakers. The picture was not ready in time for Cannes, but made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in Italy on 30 Aug 1986. According to the 27 Aug 1986 Var, the short was financed with $20,000 from Eastman Kodak, $500,000 in services from RGB Optical/Video, and additional support from Consolidated Film Industries. Other contributors included Magnatronics Sound Services, AME, Inc., Samuel Goldwyn Studio Sound Facility, United Color Lab, Title House, and Synch Film Lab. It’s All True: Four Men on a Raft was presented as a trailer for a feature film which was to be overseen by AFI and budgeted at $250,000. Plans were in place to include footage from The Story of Samba (Carnaval) and My Friend Bonito, but $60,000 was needed to transfer the nitrate negative to safety stock.
       It’s All True: Four Men on a Raft is the centerpiece of the It’s All True documentary. It concludes with the following title card: “’Jacaré and the others made their voyage by jangada exactly as it is here filmed. They were sixty-one days in the open sea, without compass, and guided only by the stars… a record unique in the history of navigation.’ Orson Welles.” A second card states: “For the jangadeiros of Fortaleza, it was the first step in their long journey to become part of the Brazilian nation.” The documentary also contains limited footage from The Story of Samba (Carnaval) and My Friend Bonito.
       Seven years after It’s All True: Four Men on a Raft was released, a 20 Aug 1993 DV article announced that Paramount Pictures was set to premiere the feature-length documentary, It’s All True, at the New York Film Festival on 15 Oct 1993. In the time that elapsed, director-producers Richard Wilson and Bill Krohn persevered without a consistent backer, and film critic Myron Meisel joined the reconstruction team. In 1991, Wilson died of cancer while the future of the documentary remained uncertain. Not long after, Les Films Balenciaga guaranteed completion and acquired distribution rights for most international markets. It’s All True: Four Men on a Raft, excerpts from The Story of Samba (Carnaval), and My Friend Bonito were included among interviews and other archival footage.
       Paramount released It’s All True on 17 Oct 1993 in major U.S. cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, CA, Boston, MA, and Denver, CO. The studio planned a wider opening in early 1994.
       End credits give “Special Thanks” to: “Stephen Flick; Lina de Souza; Jonathan Rosenbaum; Peter Bogdanovich; Edward Richmond; Iris Chester; Robert Rosen; Jodie Foster; John Tirpak; Carol Bahoric; Chris Wood; Michael Schlesinger; Gregory Lukow; Oja Kodar; Michael Friend; Olivier Assayas; Joseph Grillo; Raymond Depardon; Beatrice Welles; Gunther Schiff; Howard Smith; Todd McCarthy; Walter Murch; Martin Scorsese; Tom Cromwell; Steve Cohen; Agustin Laó; Rosa & Bira Castro; Fabiano Canosa; Oscar Castro-Neves; Carl Fontina; Stephan Goldman; Leonard Maltin; Dean Barnes; Arnaldo Carrilho; Ana Pessoa; Francisco; Francisco Marques de Holanda, Jr.; Zuleide Medeiros; Ana Maria Viegas; Carlos Augusto Calil; Vera Zaverucha; Eunice Gutman; Fabio Magalhaes; Dulcinea Gil; AMAR, Rio de Janeiro; Banco do Nordeste do Brazil, S.A.; Brazilian Ministry of Culture; Caesar Palace Hotel, Fortaleza; Café e Bar General Gaveia, Rio de Janeiro; Coditur, Fortaleza; Coelce, Fortaleza; Compania Docas do Estando do Ceará; Cordão do Bola Preta, Rio de Janeiro; Farol do Mucuripe; Fundação Cultural de Fortaleza; Grupo de Côco Praiano da Colonia Z-8 Mucuripe; Hotel Cocacabana Palace, Rio de Janeiro; Hotel Excelsior, Fortaleza; Ideal Clube, Fortaleza; Museu do Ceará; New York University Department of Cinema Studies; Pelé e Carlos Box B-21 Mercado de Peixe, Fortaleza; Phoenix Viagens, Fortaleza; Prefeitura Municipal de Fortaleza; Secretaria da Culture e Desporto do Estado do Ceará; Sindicato de Pescadores do Estado do Ceará; S.O.S. Sobrevivencia, Prainha do Canto Verde, Ceará; Teatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro; T.V. Viva, Recife; União Espírita de mbanda do Estado do Ceará; Wagram Voyages.”
       The following “sources” are acknowledged: “UCLA Film and Television Archive; The National Center for Film Preservation at the American Film Institute; BBC-Lionheart Television; Cinemateca Brasileira (São Paulo); National Archives (Washington, D.C.); Turner Broadcasting; Sherman Grinberg Llibrary; Edmar Morel interview courtesy of Catherine Benamou & Marcos Bonisson; Lilly Library (Indiana University); Estate of Richard Wilson; Arquivo Nirez (Fortaleza); Rogério Sganzeria; Estate of Edmar Morel; Yaçanã Martins; Fundação Getúlio Vargas/CPDOC (Rio).” Also credited are: “Rockefeller photo by Myron Davis/Life Magazine”; “Time cover and story ‘Four Men on a Raft’ All © 1942 Time Inc. Reprinted by permission”; and, “Excerpts of audiotaped interviews between Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, from the book and audio album ‘This is Orson Welles’ published by Harper Collins, courtesy of the Orson Welles Estate and Peter Bogdanovich.”