The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
Overview
 
The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942
1942 in film
The year 1942 in film involved some significant events, in particular the release of a film consistently rated as one of the greatest of all time, Casablanca.-Events:...

 American drama film written and directed by Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

. His second feature film, it is based on the 1918 novel of the same name
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize for novel. It was the second novel in his Growth trilogy, which included The Turmoil and The Midlander . In 1925 the novel was first adapted for film under the title Pampered Youth...

 by Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams...

 and stars Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cheshire Cotten was an American actor of stage and film. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original productions of The Philadelphia Story and Sabrina Fair...

, Dolores Costello
Dolores Costello
Dolores Costello was an American film actress who achieved her greatest success during the era of silent movies. She was nicknamed "The Goddess of the Silent Screen"...

, Anne Baxter
Anne Baxter
Anne Baxter was an American actress known for her performances in films such as The Magnificent Ambersons , The Razor's Edge , All About Eve and The Ten Commandments .-Early life:...

, Tim Holt
Tim Holt
Tim Holt was an American film actor perhaps best known for co-starring in the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.-Early life:...

, Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Robertson Moorehead was an American actress. Although she began with the Mercury Theatre, appeared in more than seventy films beginning with Citizen Kane and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than thirty years, Moorehead is most widely known to modern audiences...

 and Ray Collins
Ray Collins (actor)
Ray Bidwell Collins was an American actor in film, stage, radio, and television. One of Collins' best remembered roles was that of Lt. Arthur Tragg in the long-running series Perry Mason.- Biography :...

. Welles provides the voiceover narration.

Tarkington's novel had originally been filmed in 1925 by Vitagraph Pictures
Vitagraph Studios
American Vitagraph was a United States movie studio, founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1907 it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros...

, starring Cullen Landis
Cullen Landis
Cullen Landis was an American motion picture actor and director whose career began in the early years of the silent film era.-Biography:...

, Alice Calhoun
Alice Calhoun
Alice Calhoun was an American silent film actress.-Film star:Born Alice Beatrice Calhoun in Cleveland, Ohio, she made her film debut in a role not credited in 1918 and went on to appear in another forty-seven films between then and 1929. As a star with Vitagraph in New York City, she moved with...

 and Allan Forrest
Allan Forrest
Allan Forrest was an American silent film actor.-Life and career:He starred in 119 films mostly silent between 1913 and 1932 in films such as The Torch Bearer, with actresses such as Charlotte Burton....

, and directed by David Smith
David Smith (director)
David Smith , was an English film director of the silent era. He directed 79 films between 1915 and 1927.He was born in Faversham, Kent, and died in Santa Barbara, California.-External links:...

. Welles adapted it for radio in 1939 for the Mercury Theatre of the Air
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was a theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and John Houseman. After a string of live theatrical productions, in 1938 the Mercury Theatre progressed into their best-known period as The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio series that included one of the...

. The only actor from that production who also appeared in the film was Ray Collins.

Welles lost control of the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons to RKO, and the final version released to audiences differed significantly from his vision for the film.
Quotations

And now Major Amberson was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his life. And he realized that everything which had worried him or delighted him during this lifetime, all his buying and building and trading and banking, that it was all trifling and waste beside what concerned him now. For the Major knew now that he had to plan how to enter an unknown country where he was not even sure of being recognized as an Amberson.

Something had happened, a thing which years ago had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town. And now it came at last: George Amberson Minafer had got his comeuppance. He'd got it three times filled and running over. But those who had longed for it were not there to see it. And they never knew it, those who were still living had forgotten all about it, and all about him.

[in a letter to Isabel] And so we come to this, dear. Will you live your life your way, or George's way? Dear, it breaks my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is your own selfless and perfect motherhood. Are you strong enough, Isabel? Can you make a fight?

Real life screened more daringly than it's ever been before!

From the Man who Made "The Best Picture of 1941"

Orson Welles' Mercury Production of Booth Tarkington's Great Novel

 
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