 Cotten made his film debut in the Welles-directed short, "Too Much Johnson", a comedy that was intended to complement the aborted 1938 Mercury stage production of William Gillette's 1890 play.The film was never screened in public and was lost until 2013.Cotten returned to Broadway in 1939, creating the role of C. K. Dexter Haven opposite Katharine Hepburn's Tracy Lord in the original production of Philip Barry's "The Philadelphia Story".