The Magnificent Ambersons - Friends of the Ace

[MartynH]

This is regarding a deleted scene where George Amberson meets his 'gang' called Friends of the Ace. In the still I have seen the group initials is accompanied with a skull and crossbones motif on the door window. This could well be based on the real Skull and Bones Society which has existed in Yale University since the 1830's!

Many political leaders have been members including both of the Bush's. In fact, according to the website below G W Bush has refused to go into any details about the Society other than admitting he was a 'Bonesman'.

Has anybody else heard of this society?



http://skullandcrossbones.org/articles/ ... dbones.htm

[Roger Ryan]

It seems like every American politician/government employee who attended Yale was a member of the Skull & Bones or an alleged member. The CIA film "The Good Sheperd" has a couple of prominent scenes involving the secret society.

The "Friends of the Ace" in AMBERSONS might have been inspired by the Skull & Bones, but the "F.O.T.A." is really just a youthful smalltown club. I don't think it's implied in Tarkington's novel that George belongs to any club/society in college which would have been a much more direct correlation. The point of having a scene involving the club, in both the novel and the film, is to establish that George has no loyalty to his fellow members. When he grows tired of playing the "president", he dismisses his clubmates.

[Glenn Anders]

I think Roger is correct. Only John Dos Passos was digging into that kind of thing when Tarkington wrote The Magnificent Ambersons.

Back in 1980 or so, Donald Freed [Executive Action, Secret Honor] wrote a big prophetic novel, entitled The Spymaster. Some have suggested that it was based loosely on the life of someone remarkably like George Herbert Walker Bush. Of course, that saga was only beginning back then, really

Lot's of stuff about "Skull and Bones" in there.

Glenn

[MartynH]

Don't forget in the film this was big as George tells Lucy 'The family likes to have somebody in Congress'. So it was not just small time friends getting together. Also, in the script we don't know the background of the other people in the FOTA.

[ToddBaesen]

I think Marty made be on to something here.

George Prescott Bush - the great grandfather of the current President, when he was at Yale in the 20's had the task of going to New Mexico and digging up the Skull of the great Apache Indian leader, Geronimo. It was a task which he apparently accomplished and supposedly the Skull of Geronimo now resides behind the closed doors of the Skull and Bones clubhouse in New Haven, Conn. For many years, the Apache's have been trying to get Geronimo's remains back from the Yale clubhouse, but with little success. That's hardly very surprising, since many of it's members have not only been Presidents, but members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices!

I also have three uncles who attended Yale, and two of them were in Skull and Bones, so I can certainly affirm that whenever I asked them about who was a member of that mysterious club, I simply got a dirty look and a silent reply. They would always refuse to say a word about it!

So it seems quite possible, since Charles Foster Kane was kicked out of so many colleges, and George Amberson Minafer, presumably was, as well, he might well have been a Skull and Bones man - if he ever got into Yale!

[MartynH]

In the script of that scene George says to the group 'I had a pretty good time at the old school, back east' Could that be a ref to Yale?

[Roger Ryan]

Don't forget in the film this was big as George tells Lucy 'The family likes to have somebody in Congress'. So it was not just small time friends getting together. Also, in the script we don't know the background of the other people in the FOTA.

I'm not sure how Uncle Jack being a congressman makes George's hometown club any more sinister (or deepens its connection to Yale's "Skull & Bones"). George definitely attends college in the East, in the novel and in the film (the famed kitchen scene takes place after George has graduated), but I think the other members of the F.O.T.A. are simply local boys who did not attend college. In the novel, it's made clear that one of the club members, Fred Kinney, has been romancing Lucy while George is away at college during his senior year. Another F.O.T.A. member is the son of Mrs. Johnson, Fanny's friend and town gossip. In the cut scene itself, George makes a number a references to being away at school and what "his crowd" is like implying that the others have not shared the same collegiate experience.

[MartynH]

I think the problem here is thinking everything in a story has got to be relevant to it. In that period of time there was great rivalry between Yale, Harvard and Princeton - Booth-Tarkington went to the latter. It could well be that Tarkington was showing his contempt for Yale and their 'secret' society and their silly conventions.

This is what authors do. I have written several books and mentioned Welles in two of them and I have also mentioned things I don't like as well.

[Roger Ryan]

MartynH - I see your point now. I did think we were talking about whether George's club had a direct correlation to the "Skull & Bones" in the literal sense. The idea that Tarkington might have been inspired to include the silly smalltown club as a "jape" aimed at Yale's secret society is an interesting one. I want to go back now and re-read that portion of the novel to see if the author left further "clues".

[Glenn Anders]

I think Baesen's old Nazi connections [the reference is to his uncles and Prescott Bush] have us off dancing on a sugar-spun cloud here.

What is part of a narrative may not fit into a drama.

If you can show, MartynH, how the Friends of the Ace are relevant to the central theme that Welles apparently adopted for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, then you have my support in your case. But as it stands, seems to me that the reference is rather peripheral, suggesting that this sequence deserved to be eliminated or at least cut down.

Still, when one observes Baesen, as I have, trying to strangle an Asian waiter over the price of a Gimlet, one realizes suddenly how that early streak of 20th Century Yankee pre-fascism could easily have infected George Minafer, when he went East to school.

Perhaps, if Welles had returned from South America, been able to sit down with all the footage of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, he might have connected the saga of George Minafer and the others to the growth of American fascism, as he did so brilliantly in the biographical narrative of Charles Foster Kane; might have shown us the mechanism by which Baesen's uncles and Prescott Bush would lead us to George Herbert Walker Bush's New World Order, and to the New American Century promised by the minions of George Walker Bush.

Glenn

[Terry]

My cousin was in Skull and Bones with George Bush and John Kerry. They recently had a reunion at Camp David. So far as I know, my cousin is not a member of the Illuminati.

[MartynH]

This is how it works as I see it. George obviously had the same sort of education as the author. So Tarkington was able to draw on this in his story. So as a lot of universties had clubs of some sort, when he created FOTA it is was probably an afterthought to attach the Skull and Crossbones as their motif. My point was that this could have been a cheeky aside to Yale. When you think about it the name of the group is not very menacing, whereas the motif is. The name doesn't fit with the motif.

What I do know is to analyse every line a writer has written is folly. For example, the reason why John Lennon's lyrics to I am the Walrus are incomprehensible is because he found out his old school were analysing the lyrics to Beatles songs and he disapproved.

I feel I don't have to prove anything to anybody. I have raised a point and shown that it's possible it could have been inserted for the reasons I have stated. If people want to believe the skull and crossbones was inserted for no reason then ok.

[Glenn Anders]

Lest our discussion degenerate into an unruly meeting of F.O.T.A., I will agree that anything is possible, and that the parallel between George Walker Bush's character formation and undergraduate career with that of George Amberson Minafer's fictional progress emerges as a highly intriguing interpretation. I bow to Todd Baesen and MartynH for bringing together those disparate elements.

Still, in terms of Booth Tarkington's novel and Orson Welles' movie, Roger Ryan's analysis seems the most convincing.

George Minafer considered himself at least a prince in a small midwestern kingdom. His family and fellow townspeople hoped that going East to school would knock the small town snobbery out of him and achieve for him a certain "come-uppance,", but George did not take readily to assumptions of Eastern superiority. As a result, between the lines of Chapter Four of the novel, one can sense his almost desperate need to regain the throne of his former kingdom.

The Friends of the Ace, so far as I can determine, was primarily a boy's club George was able to found because the Amberson family provided it a room where the organization might meet. Instead of any sinister Yale reference to "The Skull and Bones Society," the F.O.T.A. was just a place where the teenage male upper strata of George's town could gather for a semi-illicit card game, and latterly, perhaps, sneak a bottle of port wine.

For some reason, one of the perennial ambitions of American boys -- perhaps, it's true of boys everywhere over the last two centuries -- is to be a pirate. That profession represents a rebellion against the coming responsibilities of adulthood. And that's what "the skull and crossbones" scrawled in purple ink and soft lead pencil on the frosted glass window of the shabby clubroom signifies.

Yet, I agree, anything is possible.

And so, applying that standard, either to a projected prophetic insight by Welles, or to a post-9/11 interpretation of George Walker Bush's psycho-biography, your interpretation, MartynH and Baesen, makes a lot of sense.

It certainly would help me understand what has been going on!

Glenn

[Roger Ryan]

...it is was probably an afterthought to attach the Skull and Crossbones as their motif. My point was that this could have been a cheeky aside to Yale. When you think about it the name of the group is not very menacing, whereas the motif is. The name doesn't fit with the motif.

In the novel, Tarkington refers to the motif as one "dear to adolescence" which could be a cheeky aside to the secret society or simply a statement concerning the universality of the motif in regards to the young (continuing in the tradition of pirates, "Huckleberry Finn", etc.). You're correct that the motif doesn't appear to fit with the group's name, but it is a fairly common one. Had the "Skull & Bones" society been called...say... the Death Eaters and had a serpent as their motif, and Tarkington described the serpent image as being painted below the F.O.T.A. name on the door to the club, then it might have been more obvious that the author was thumbing his nose to Yale.

It still could be the case that Tarkington chose the image as an obscure allusion to the "Skull & Bones", but I don't think we'll ever know. I would say with more certainty that Welles was probably not thinking about a secret society, only staying true to imagery provided by the author.

[tonyw]

In a brief shot prior to Isabel's death, I believe a University pennant is hanging above George's bed where Major Amberson rests. If somebody could look up this scene, it would identify George's alma mater. I'm also inclined to agree with other posters who see the club as a small town boys club society having little to do with Yale's Skull and Bones. More proof is needed here.