Trivia for
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) More at IMDbPro »

• In the newspaper reporting the auto accident that injured George Amberson Minafer, the left hand column is "Stage Views" featuring the picture and byline of "Jed Leland", the theater critic in Citizen Kane (1941), also directed by Orson Welles. Leland was played by Joseph Cotten, who plays Eugene Morgan in this movie.
  
  
• RKO chopped 50 minutes of the film and added a happy ending while Orson Welles was out of the country. The footage was subsequently destroyed; the only record of the removed scenes is the cutting continuity transcript.
  
  
• The scenes with the automobile ride with the snow were filmed in an abandoned icehouse instead of the RKO stage reserved for such shots. However, it took much longer than anticipated because the equipment kept having problems that were brought on by the cold (film jamming because of frozen condensation, lenses fogging up, etc.). Because of this everyone involved, except for Orson Welles, contracted a terrible head cold.
  
  
• On its original release, the film was shown as a second feature on a double bill with Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost (1942).
  
  
• Tim Holt and Anne Baxter walk past a movie theater advertising a film starring Jack Holt, Tim's father.
  
  
• The preview of the movie occurred a short time after Pearl Harbor. Because of this, most of the audience review cards stated that they didn't want to see a depressing movie, and that it should have more laughs and a happy ending. With Orson Welles out of the country, the production team had to make the cuts and changes without his input.
  
  
• Orson Welles suspected that author Booth Tarkington based the lead character George on Welles himself for a variety of reasons: Tarkington was a friend of the Welles family, Welles had a reputation for being a spoiled, difficult child and Welles's full name was George Orson Welles, so he was called George or Georgie while growing up.
  
  
• The earliest Morgan Automobile shown in the film is actually an 1892 Philion Road Carriage, one of the oldest existing American built cars and the only one produced. It can still be seen at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada.
  
  
• After a disastrous preview, it was clear to the suits at RKO that the film was too long, too dense and too sombre. Welles, however, had decamped to Brazil where he was in the midst of working on a film called "It's All True" (which was never completed). Welles had been shipped out there under the auspices of Nelson Rockefeller, one of the chief shareholders in RKO, to make a film boosting US-South American wartime relations. With him out of the way, however, the onus of re-cutting and trimming the film fell on editor Robert Wise.
  
  
• The 50 minutes that Robert Wise cut out of the original film were destroyed, ostensibly to free up vault space at RKO. There was conjecture though that this was to prevent Welles attempting to make any changes to what was left of his film.
  
  
• Ironically, RKO's reshot ending for the film - a much more uplifting affair than the one that Welles had intended - is much closer to the ending in the novel.
  
  
• A print of Welles' rough cut was allegedly sent to the director on location in Brazil. It has yet to be found.
  
  
• The first major film to have nearly all its credits narrated rather than appear on screen.
  
  
• Producer Bryan Foy was one of many who felt that the film was too long. Upon hearing that 40 minutes had to be excised, Foy is alleged to have said: "Just throw all the footage up in the air and grab everything but 40 minutes."
  
  
• From a budget of $1 million, the film lost over $600,000 - a huge amount of money for a small studio like RKO.
  
  
• To persuade RKO head George Schaefer to approve this film as a follow-up to Citizen Kane (1941), Welles played him the Mercury Theater of the Air radio version. It is claimed that Schaefer fell asleep during this. Nevertheless, he greenlighted the film for $1 million, an unheard-of move for a studio whose policy was not to make films that cost more than $750,000.
  
  
• The set for the Ambersons mansion was one of the most elaborate and expensive sets ever built at the time.
  
  
• While Welles would direct "Ambersons" during the day, at the same time each night he would act his part of a Turkish policeman in Norman Foster's film Journey Into Fear (1943).
  
  
• In the absence of Welles, the re-editing of the film was left in the hands of two men: Robert Wise, the physical editor, and Jack Moss, the RKO studio representative. A phone was put into Moss's office that fed directly to Welles's hotel room in Rio. According to future director Cy Endfield, who was working with Moss at the time, often when the phone rang, suspecting it was Welles with his latest batch of comments and suggestions for the re-edit, Moss would simply not answer the call. Similarly, when Moss received lengthy telegrams from Welles with more suggestions and thoughts, he would throw them away.
  
  
• Welles demanded that the inside of the Ambersons mansion be built as if it was a real house, with continuous rooms of four walls and ceilings. This enabled his camera to roam around the house freely and shoot from any angle.
  
  
• The consensus of opinion according to nearly everyone who saw the original conclusion - which included a tour of the decaying Amberson mansion - was that it was much more powerful than the tacked-on "happy" ending.
  
  
• Welles later described the 88 minute version as if "it had been edited by a lawnmower".
  
  
• Composer Bernard Herrmann had his name removed from the credits in protest at the way RKO messed about with his work.
  
  
• Aunt Fanny did not feature in Welles' radio adaptation.
  
  
• Twenty years later, Welles was still planning an epilogue starring the older Joseph Cotten, Anne Baxter, Agnes Moorehead and Tim Holt.
  
  
• After attending the first preview, RKO president George Schaefer wrote to Welles: "Never in all my experience in the industry have I taken so much punishment or suffered as I did at the Promona preview".
  
  
• Robert Wise's first directing experience, although uncredited.
  
  
• Attempts to send Robert Wise to Brazil so that he could work alongside Welles were prevented due to wartime travel restrictions.
  
  
• Robert Wise was one of the many vocal detractors of the critically derided 2002 Alfonso Arau mini-series remake.
  
  
• One of former silent star Dolores Costello's last roles. She was forced to retire from the film business as her face had become badly scarred by early film make-up which was highly caustic.
  
  
• Agnes Moorehead's signature scene - which secured her an Academy Award nomination - in which she bemoaned the turn of the Ambersons fortunes and her inability to provide for George, was actually cobbled together from original footage and hastily reshot scenes. The latter had no input from Welles.
  
  
• Ray Collins was the only member of the cast to have featured in Welles' radio version in 1939.
  
  
• The main poster for the Ambersons was designed by Norman Rockwell.
  
  
• Sets were re-used by Val Lewton in Cat People (1942) and The Curse of the Cat People (1944) to help save production costs resulting from a ridiculously small budget.
  
  
• The re-cutting of this film caused a deep rift in Orson Welles' friendships with Robert Wise and Joseph Cotten. Cotton later wrote several letters of apology to Welles, and the two later reconciled. Welles and Wise, however, remained on acrimonious terms for the rest of their lives.
  
  
• According to Peter Bogdanovich, Orson Welles said many times that this film could've been "much better than Citizen Kane (1941)." Also, while Welles always refused to watch any of his films, he was in a hotel room in the 70s with many friends and ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ was on TV, and he was talked into watching the rest of it. It is said that he was teary throughout, and confessed that although the ending didn't work, he still liked the film.
  
  
• Although Orson Welles had hoped to work again with the great cinematographer 'Greg Toland', with whom he so generously shared a credit card on Citizen Kane (1941), Toland under contract to Sam Goldwyn was not available. Welles, however, insisted that Toland's camera crew work on this film: Burt Shipman operated the camera; the assistant cameraman was Eddie Garvin, the gaffer Bill J. McClellan and the key grip Ralph Hoge.
  
  
• Several cast members in studio records/casting call lists apparently were eliminated during the final editing process. These were (with their character names): Jesse Graves (Servant), Lillian Nicholson (Landlady), Robert Pittard (Charles Johnson) and Sam Rice (Attendee at Funeral). Don Dillaway (Wilbur Minafer) is not mentioned in Welles' oral credits, but he appears in three scenes in the opening minutes of the film: As Isabel and Wilbur emerge from a store, Isabel spurns suitor Eugene's attentions; Wilbur reads aloud a letter complaining about son George's misbehavior as George, Major Amberson, and Isabel listen; and Wilbur has lines in several shots of the ball scene.
  
  

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