The Third Man - Screenplay by Graham Greene
first edition
1949 · Los Angeles
by WELLES, ORSON & GRAHAM GREENE
Los Angeles: David O. Selznick Releasing, 1949. Original mimeographed 117 page pre-release script for the great world classic film, "The Third Man" and this script contains the first printing of Orson Welles’s great Swiss Cuckoo Clock Speech which was not in the shooting script and which Welles wrote and contributed anonymously during filming. One of the most famous speeches in all of cinema, Welles speaks it to Joseph Cotton at the end of their ride on the Vienna Ferris wheel. “You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” The film was an international co-production between David O. Selznick Studios in Hollywood and London Film Productions in England. This script was made at Selznick Studios and records the British version which is 11 minutes longer. Starring Orson Welles as Harry Lime, with Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli and was produced and directed by Carol Reed. The Third Man has achieved the status as one of the greatest movies of all time and is among the tiny group of pictures that can be classified as a near perfect film. Bradbound in wrappers. 8 1/2 by 14 inches. Bradbound. Some marginal chipping, creasing, and general wear, else very good. Scarce. (Inventory #: 16336J)