This is the eighth example I’ve posted of John Walsh’s copyright infringement of my work.
Page 104 of his book The Third Man: The Official Story of the Film plagiarizes pp.61–3 of my book In Search of The Third Man.
First his plagiarizing text:
And here is the passage from my book that he plagiarizes:
Following the same approach that I’ve analysed already in so many previous examples, Walsh uses mostly his own words, but paraphrases my content: his choice of what details to address is determined by my choice, so that he describes what I describe in exactly the same order.
The summary below breaks his account down into seven stages, which mirror the order of my account (with the exception of three paragraphs that he skips past):
Joseph Cotten and his wife are stopped and searched on their way from Vienna to Italy;
(Walsh skips first my second paragraph, in which I explain that Cotten and his wife were attempting to patch up their marriage; and then my third paragraph, in which I describe Cotten complaining to Jenia Reissar, and Selznick suggesting that Cotten should be made to watch The Fallen Idol.);
Cotten, who knows that he wasn’t the first choice for his part, complains to Selznick about the slow pace of filming;
David Selznick calls Louis Lewis in the London office to communicate Cotten’s dissatisfaction;
quotation from Selznick (which Walsh uses without citing the source);
an explanation of how Cotten’s stay in Vienna is longer than expected because of his late arrival in the city and the delays caused by Orson Welles;
(Walsh skips my sixth paragraph, in which I quote a telephone chat Cotten had with Jenia Reissar’s assistant Rosemary Clifford.)
Selznick is told to stay for three weeks in Paris to avoid having to pay British Tax;
the several months he has already spent in England filming Under Capricorn mean that he has little remaining tax exemption.
Walsh’s carelessness in copying causes him to introduce some inaccuracies. For example, he states in his last paragraph that “Cotten was advised to spend three months in Paris to avoid a high British tax bill”, when actually Cotten was asked to spend time in Paris to be exempt from paying any British tax at all. But the fact that Walsh gives an occasionally inaccurate version of what I wrote doesn’t stop his copying – so heavily dependent on an account that he has used without permission – from being copyright infringment.
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