In 1949 there was excitement in the air in war torn Vienna as two super star Hollywood producers were teaming up for the first time to make a movie called The Third Man in a first in what many had hoped was a long line of spectacular films. With a script written by noted writer Graham Greene and a cast that included super star Orson Welles there were high expectations for The Third Man. The movie delivered on screen and in the box office but it would be the only collaboration for producers David O. Selznick and Alexander Korda as the two could not stand each other by the end of the shoot and the grueling schedule took its toll on everyone involved. It did not help that the movie’s star Orson Welles arrived on set two weeks late and then insisted that he would not run around in the sewers of Vienna to shoot the scenes he had to be in down in those sewers. To help solve this dilemma the producers of The Third Man build replica sets of the Vienna sewers on a soundstage in London, England where Welles would shoot his sewer scenes. Welles was in the middle of a lot of controversy about The Third Man as he had insisted that he had a large part in writing the lines for his character which wound up not being true.

The Third Man is a movie set in post-World War II Vienna and stars Joseph Cotten as American author Holly Martins who specializes in writing cheap western novels that have a decent audience in the United States but his books are very popular in Europe. Martins is offered a job in Vienna by his friend Harry Lime so Martins decides to go to the war torn city and seek out his friend and his new job. Vienna was controlled by the Allies in post-war Europe and Martins soon found himself involved in a murder mystery in the British sector. In a complicated tale of lies and murder Martins arrives in Vienna to find out that his friend Lime, played by Orson Welles, is supposed to be dead after being hit by a truck in front of his apartment building in front of a lot of witnesses. As the movie moves along we meet many shady characters and find out that Martins’ friend Lime was involved in a lot of illegal and dangerous activities and he was being pursued by the British police in the British sector of Vienna. Martins attempts to become involved with Lime’s girlfriend but she is not interested and later we find out that things may not be as they appear to be and that Lime may not be as dead as the reports said he was.

The Third Man is an Oscar winning movie that was a huge box office success. It was voted the best British movie ever made and also made the list of the top 100 American movies ever made. Director Carol Reed became obsessed with The Third Man and found himself working 20 hour days directing all aspects of the movie and refusing to delegate any part of the movie to any other director. The production team of Selznick and Korda never worked together again and Orson Welles was left wishing he had taken the percentage of the movie that he was offered because it turned out to be an incredible box office success even in its re-release in 1999. Such was the chaos of The Third Man.