We met again at the time of the LACMA retrospective and the publication of his amusing and self-chiding autobiography, “Joseph Cotten: Vanity Will Get You Somewhere” (Mercury House, 1987). It didn’t, but he and his wife, Patricia Medina, were packed for a quick getaway, Cotten with a tuxedo for a television shoot the next day. I first met Cotten standing in the smoky darkness of our neighborhood in Pacific Palisades in 1961, as we waited to see if the Bel-Air fire would sweep over the last remaining crest between it and us.
When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art honored Cotten with a retrospective in 1987, the 16 films shown vividly confirmed that range, from the charming and lethal visiting uncle in “Shadow of a Doubt” to the steadying father seeing his family through World War II in “Since You Went Away” to the Westerner contesting with Gregory Peck for the favors of Jennifer Jones in “Duel in the Sun,” not to mention his memorable and varied visitations for and with Orson Welles in “Citizen Kane,” “The Magnificent Ambersons” and “The Third Man.”
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