TMA memos - 70th anniversary Wellesnet blog series

[Glenn Anders]

Mike: Thank you or the Ghost of Orson Welles for coming up with those crucial memos. You do us a great service.

My reaction is that, after asking for a draconian slash of the central body of his movie, Orson Welles is proposing a "love conquers all" ending for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. For all of us who have scenes from the picture in our minds, who have re-edited the footage in umpteen ways, can we imagine a shot of Lucy joyously, innocently, smiling at her possibly psychopathic groom as he drives her off into the sunset? Can we figure out how grating Welles' "And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the end of our story" would have been either over a black screen or from the Mercury microphone? Much as I've always dreamed of seeing that final shot, this ending would have had me muttering, "What the . . ." -- too!

No doubt the tragic accident in the harbor of Rio was a factor, but Welles had no real obligation to stay for six months overseeing a Latin American cultural propaganda documentary, when his second, potentially great film was in danger from the Hollywood philistines. He must bear considerable responsibility for the beautiful but disappointing hodgepodge THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS turned out to be.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

I was just reading part 6 of Jim Lane's Blog posts on THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and he comes up with yet another new "interpretation" I've yet to see:

It was Robert Wise who "saved" the film, and it was mostly Welles's own fault for Flying Down to Rio!! I don't think even Robert Wise would believe that, as when asked, he always said the longer version was better, but to make the film play for an audience, it had to be cut down. When I met Wise he also seemed to be almost ashamed when he talked about cutting AMBERSONS. Of course, he was rather modest compared to Welles, as when I asked him to sign posters for THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and STAR TREK. He was happy to sign the first, but looking at the STAR TREK poster he hesitated and said, "I don't know if I should." In the end, he caved in though, and signed it as well.

Anyway, what's really wrong with all these interpretations is most of them try to place the blame for what happened on Welles, Wise, Schaefer, Koerner, Jack Moss, Rockefeller, or pick your choice. If you side with Welles, it's easy to blame everyone at the studio, especially Robert Wise as he did the actual editing, and of course Jack Moss, who I must admit, is one of my own favorite choices to pin the blame on. The reality is there is enough blame for everyone to share in, and there really is no chief villain.

That's why I think seeing all the memos will be the closest we can come to the actual truth. Welles certainly is not blameless, but when you think that if Welles had only held on to his right of final cut, none of this would have happened, it is rather hard for me to blame Welles for not "foreseeing" what did happen. Due to the blunders of Jack Moss, Welles revised contract did not give him final cut, but Welles still expected it. After making CITIZEN KANE, why should he think otherwise, and especially after the top studio executives in December saw the rushes and expressed how pleased they were.

So just that one detail would have made all the difference... if Welles had kept final cut, no matter who took over at RKO, the film couldn't have been released without Welles having the final say.

Another mistake that Welles made, that I hadn't even thought about before, until Mike pointed it out, was why Welles didn't think of keeping the long print of AMBERSONS he had with him in Rio? If he had it shipped back to his house in Los Angeles, he could have restored the film himself, as he was talking about doing in the sixties. We know from the "smoking gun" memo Catherine Benamou found, that the order to destroy the long 14-reel print wasn't even given until December 21, 1944, which was well after Koerner had already ordered all the AMBERSONS material on hand in Hollywood to be junked.

[Roger Ryan]

Another mistake that Welles made, that I hadn't even thought about before, until Mike pointed it out, was why Welles didn't think of keeping the long print of AMBERSONS he had with him in Rio? If he had it shipped back to his house in Los Angeles, he could have restored the film himself, as he was talking about doing in the sixties. We know from the "smoking gun" memo Catherine Benamou found, that the order to destroy the long 14-reel print wasn't even given until December 21, 1944, which was well after Koerner had already ordered all the AMBERSONS material on hand in Hollywood to be junked.

Part of the answer to this is in your question. Wise reportedly sent Welles 24 reels of film related to AMBERSONS: 14 reels of which represent the 131 min. edit completed in March, 1942; 10 reels of alternate editing, takes etc. that either Welles requested or Wise was recommending. What's confusing about this is the format. Some have reported that a 16mm copy was sent to Welles, but I don't think that would equal 14 reels (more like five or six); however, 14 reels of 35mm would equal a feature that ran between 130 minutes and 140 minutes. So, if we accept that the 24 reels sent to Welles in Brazil were 35mm film, that's a huge shipment both in weight and size. This was not something easily carried around nor was it something that Welles would have wanted to pay out of his pocket to ship. Also, these reels were dupes and would have been of poorer quality than the elements RKO held back in Culver City. Welles would have known this. Finally, there was the issue of legal ownership. RKO "owned" the prints sent to Welles; legally, Welles could not confiscate the prints for his own use. At the time, Welles was not aware that RKO intended to destroy the original negative and extant footage not used in the final cut, so the value of the reels he had would have seemed quite low. Probably at the request of RKO, Welles had the reels sent to the studio's Brazil office where they supposedly sat until 1944 when they were reportedly destroyed. I think the idea of trying to retrieve those reels seemed pointless to Welles since AMBERSONS had already been released and he was preoccupied trying to finish IT'S ALL TRUE, an unreleased film he could potentially save.

[Glenn Anders]

Roger: I'm with Todd Baesen and this guy, Jim Lane, on this one. [Is he running around here under a bizarre avatar like mine?] All of what you say is probably true, but in the end, no matter how much blame there was to share, the final responsibility had to be Welles's. He lost his temper with Houseman, he hired Jack Moss, he took on three films at once, he didn't heed his attorney's timely warning about the contract, he didn't fly back to the U.S. for six long months, and he "ordered" disastrous cuts to THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS in the interim. If what you say is true (and from my experience here, I consider you our expert), he had the entire film in dupe, in his possession. No matter what quality problem, weight, storage space, that represented, the factor you point up, Roger, must have been the greatest regret for him of all. If he knew what he did with all that footage, why did he never reveal where it was, and what he did with it? If he didn't know what he did with those precious cans of 35mm film, that's most damning of all. [And he had that problem of "detail" through much of his later career.] But if, as you speculate, he simply simply left the cans of 35mm film at RKO's Brazil office because he couldn't be bothered with the expense of taking them on himself, what does that say about most of his later laments; about all Larry French's photos of Welles living it up, immersing himself in Brazillian culture? Todd and Mike are right.

The loss of the long version of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS was a great one, but, for all the blame we can spread around, Orson Welles' professional style, which created CITIZEN KANE and many other of his works we admire, must also in the end be responsible for the debacle of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. And when he spoke to Peter Bogdanovich, years later, about its "being all gone," he must have known the bottom line fact of the matter.

Truly tragic, in a classical sense!

Glenn

[Le Chiffre]

 
Orson Welles's April 2nd memo to Jack Moss requesting the change in the end credits is usually cited by Welles scholars as an indication that he didn't fully grasp, or was simply out of touch with the gravity of the situation. To my mind however, it seems to indicate that he was getting worried about his boardinghouse ending. Maybe in some memo that we don't have, someone began suggesting it should be eliminated. It was right around April 2nd too, that George Schaefer issued a temporary halt to all changes to the film. With the Easter opening obviously cancelled, he apparently wanted everyone to take a deep breath and some time to think about what the film's fate should be.

Glenn wrote:
No doubt the tragic accident in the harbor of Rio was a factor, but Welles had no real obligation to stay for six months overseeing a Latin American cultural propaganda documentary, when his second, potentially great film was in danger from the Hollywood philistines. He must bear considerable responsibility for the beautiful but disappointing hodgepodge THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS turned out to be.

 
Good point, Glenn, but I think it’s possible that, at a certain point, perhaps at the same point in the year that we are now, early April, Welles began to accept the idea that the Ambersons that he had made was no longer relevant in a world at war. IT’S ALL TRUE, on the other hand, still had serious political ramifications. Which of course, would have been all the more reason for him to want to see his original Ambersons preserved for later times, when his version might have been relevant again. Too bad he didn’t think of it that way. Some of his statements later in life make it sound as if he was somewhat indifferent to posterity.



Todd wrote
...what's really wrong with all these interpretations is most of them try to place the blame for what happened on Welles, Wise, Schaefer, Koerner, Jack Moss, Rockefeller, or pick your choice...The reality is there is enough blame for everyone to share in, and there really is no chief villain.

 
I agree with that, although none of that would have even mattered if only someone, ANYONE, had had the foresight to have the original version preserved in some way. When you think about it, it’s kind of a minor miracle that we’re able to enjoy Welles’ original cut of MACBETH today, and it’s only because, for some reason, Republic Studios kept that extra footage around. Larger studios, like Columbia and RKO didn’t bother, so we don’t have either Ambersons or the original LADY FROM SHANGHAI. What a tragic waste.



Due to the blunders of Jack Moss, Welles revised contract did not give him final cut, but Welles still expected it. After making CITIZEN KANE, why should he think otherwise, and especially after the top studio executives in December saw the rushes and expressed how pleased they were. 

So just that one detail would have made all the difference... if Welles had kept final cut, no matter who took over at RKO, the film couldn't have been released without Welles having the final say.

But then, after seeing the audience reaction to Welles’ Pomona version, RKO was probably thanking God that they didn’t have to give Welles final cut.



Roger wrote:
Some have reported that a 16mm copy was sent to Welles, but I don't think that would equal 14 reels (more like five or six)...Finally, there was the issue of legal ownership. RKO "owned" the prints sent to Welles; legally, Welles could not confiscate the prints for his own use. At the time, Welles was not aware that RKO intended to destroy the original negative...the idea of trying to retrieve those reels seemed pointless to Welles since AMBERSONS had already been released

It's maddening and heartbreaking to think of those reels sitting on a Brazilian shelf for two years before the order finally came to destroy them. Why, oh why couldn't RKO have just forgotten about them instead?

The accounts I’ve read of Selznick wanting to donate Welles’ original version to MOMA all say that it wasn’t done because RKO thought it was too expensive, which seems absurd to me. I wonder how much a 16mm copy would have cost. One would think Rockefeller could have sprung for that. It would have been the least he (or Schaefer for that matter) could have done after Welles agreed to do the South American project in the first place. But, as you say, Welles may have thought preserving his original was pointless once the film had been released, although he did preserve those frame enlargements that were seen in THIS IS ORSON WELLES. That book also indicates another possible factor in Welles not fighting harder to protect the film, which is that he really may have genuinely lost confidence in his version, especially after Cotten’s letter:
 
PB: Why did you yourself suggest so many cuts from Rio?

OW: I was trying to protect something. I was trapped down there, I couldn't leave, and all I kept getting were these terrible signals about this awful movie I'd made. My own chums were running frightened, not just RKO.

PB: And you are affected by what your friends think and feel. Were you shaken in your confidence?
 
OW: Shaken? You bet...even those people who had my interests at heart felt that I'd gone too far. I don't believe that I had. And I still don't.


 

[Roger Ryan]

 ...although he did preserve those frame enlargements that were seen in THIS IS ORSON WELLES...
 

...and those frame enlargements probably wouldn't have even been made had Welles stayed in Hollywood working on the editing of AMBERSONS. The frame enlargements were all printed in early February, 1942 and sent to Welles in Brazil where he used them like flashcards to help him communicate with Wise how to put together the initial 131 min. fine edit. A few frame enlargements exist for JOURNEY INTO FEAR as well, but nothing for Welles' subsequent films as a director (presumably because he was present for the initial editing of these films).

[Le Chiffre]

Interesting, I didn't know that. I'd like to see the ones for JOURNEY too sometime, if they're from missing scenes.

[Roger Ryan]

Interesting, I didn't know that. I'd like to see the ones for JOURNEY too sometime, if they're from missing scenes.

There are far fewer JOURNEY frame enlargements than for AMBERSONS. Notable ones show Cotten's and Del Rio's characters kissing on the boat and Welles' Colonel Haki dressed in a bowler hat and suit leaving a gangplank with Ruth Warrick's character. Both of these images refer to a key aspect of the film as it was originally conceived: the largely comedic adulterous affairs that both Cotten's and Warrick's characters are having simultaneously. Virtually all of this material was cut from the film, probably due to censorship concerns. One can see from the original screenplay that Welles was trying hard to make JOURNEY the kind of light, popular entertainment that Schaefer was asking for, but the lightness was all eliminated for the final cut.

[Le Chiffre]

Ah yes, I've got most of those. I didn't know they were frame enlargements, I thought they might be publicity stills. I think I may have even scanned and posted a couple of them some years ago. What gets me is, if Charles Koerner had a policy that most movies should be just on either side of 90 minutes, then why did he massacre JIF down to 67 minutes? It already was right around 90 minutes in the Mercury's cut of the film. Makes no sense.

ORSON WELLES ON JOURNEY INTO FEAR (From the 1982 Leslie Megahey interview):
"The books that give me credit for that picture are wrong, because it really is Norman Foster's picture...and if you'd seen the picture before they cut out what didn't advance the action, you would have realized what a good movie he made."

I find myself wondering, when could Welles have seen Journey before they cut it up? I know he filmed a new ending in September 1942, but if the Mercury's 90-minute cut still existed at that point, someone should have tried to have that preserved as well. Even if only on 16mm. But of course, he was probably lucky Koerner even let him back on the lot to redo the ending.

Another observation: isn't it amazing how much of the IT"S ALL TRUE footage survived down through the years, even though most of it remains undeveloped? Contrast that with how little of Ambersons (and Journey) survived.

[ToddBaesen]

Mike:

Many thanks for posting the complete reports on both AMBERSONS previews.

I think there has always been a pro or con bias in Welles biographies, as well as many mistakes, and this to me is possibly the biggest one I've ever come across. After looking at the first 40 cards from Ponoma, and they all are basically calling the film a great work of cinema, I'm wondering, what the fuck was George Schaefer worried about. Of course, they get worse from there, but from comment 114 to 130 they go back to saying this is a great film!

Now, before the internet age, we had to rely on idiots like Charles Higham to report their biased research on Welles, and like Welles, if something was in print you tended to believe it, like Higham's idotic report on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND that appeared in The New York Times, that was so full of errors the Estate of Orson Welles should sue both Higham and the NY TIMES. Yet, unlike Pauline Kael, I don't think anyone has yet appeared to defend Mr. Higham for what a great writer or journalist he is. Well, now we can add another shocky journalist to the list of discredited Welles writers: Robert Carringer! I thought Carringer's reporting was suspect from the start, but based on the facts presented in the preview cards, it is now proven beyond a doubt.

As Jonathan Rosenbaum said: "Carringer accepts without qualm the conclusion of studio executive George Schaefer that the first preview of AMBERSONS, when a version approximating Welles's own version was shown, was a "disaster"...I've seen most of the 125 "comment cards" myself - fifty-three of which were positive, some of them outright raves ("a masterpiece with perfect photography, settings and acting"; "the best picture I have ever seen") - and would conclude that declaring the preview a "disaster" on the basis of those cards is a highly subjective matter, very much dependent on what one is predisposed to look for."

I'll go far beyond what Jonathan Rosenbaum says, and wonder how anyone in their right mind could even consider that the Ponoma was a total disaster! The most it could be called was a split decision. A disaster would be when everyone in the theater thought the film was bad. I've always thought the Ponoma preview was a disaster, based on all the reporting in the books written since 1970 say, but it's obvious, those reports were based on the initial studio reports, and never checked by the actual preview cards, which tell quite another story. When so many people actually thought the film was a brilliant masterpiece, one has to wonder how these comments all got ignored by most Welles biographers, until Mr. Simon Callow.

So I have to wonder, is Jonathan Rosenbaum really the first person to have seen all the positive comments written about AMBERSONS in Ponoma, or did the other Welles' biographers simply ignore these "positive" comments. Whatever the reason was, all previous accounts are suspect since they were all very negligent in terms of reporting the actual facts, especially Mr. Carringer, who devoted a whole book to the subject. Let's put him in the trash basket like all the AMBERSON'S memos and forget about him.

Of course, I realize that the majority of the preview cards where bad, but that's like saying Bush won over Gore in 2000, so Gore was a bad man that had to changed before he could be President. Of course that is not true, nor was AMBERSONS a bad film because the majority of teenagers in Ponoma didn't like it. In other words, there is a great deal of room for doubt, which I've never really had, until I actually read the reports from the Ponoma preview. What it actually boils down to this: The "truth" has been filtered down to us, by whichever way writers wanted to slant their stories. When "we the people" can actually see the evidence, we can make up our own minds. It's very similar to today's politics. So I say to you "consider the source," especially whenever you read anything concerning Orson Welles.

So, look at the preview reports Mike has provided, and then make up your own mind.

If you were in Ponoma, in 1942, with a largely teenage audience, after a screening of THE FLEET'S IN, what do you think might happen? Would you like the film, or call it "Putrid." Today, that would be like showing a preview of Terence Malick's THE TREE OF LIFE after a screening of the latest TWILIGHT movie and expect to get a good response. And if you did get a response from 35% or more of the audience in Ponoma, who said you had a brilliant movie, I'd would have to say you had a real "cinema classic" on you hands.

Obviously, George Schaefer, Charles Higham and Robert Carringer, would not agree with me.

[Roger Ryan]

...Another observation: isn't it amazing how much of the IT"S ALL TRUE footage survived down through the years, even though most of it remains undeveloped? Contrast that with how little of Ambersons (and Journey) survived.

Precisely because IT'S ALL TRUE was not finished or released. As far as RKO was concerned, both AMBERSONS and JOURNEY were completed, so there was no need to retain the material was wasn't used. The final state of IT'S ALL TRUE was unknown so the footage was kept around (although apparently not all of it). I believe RKO thought they could use some of it as b-roll for other films and Welles himself hoped to raise enough money to buy the film and fashion his own completed work.

[Roger Ryan]

Todd - I believe you hit upon the core issue in regards to the acceptance of AMBERSONS.

The studio/producers of THE TREE OF LIFE knew they had an esoteric "arthouse" movie on their hands and marketed the film in that fashion. It was aimed at the audience that would be excited about something experimental and ambiguous. Had the film been previewed after a TWILIGHT film, it would have been laughed at and walked out on in the same way AMBERSONS was. When Schaefer hired Orson Welles, he wanted the notoriety of the "boy genius" who had become a popular personality after "shocking the nation" with the WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast. But the "boy genius" had no ability (or interest) in making popular entertainments, the kind that make studios a lot of money. Today, a healthy studio like 20th Century Fox maintains a specialty film division like Fox Searchlight to promote/support smaller quirkier films and larger more experimental work like THE TREE OF LIFE. In 1940, RKO was not a healthy studio nor did it have a specialty division. Orson Welles was hired to make popular entertainments, but that's not what he did best. By spring of 1942, Schaefer was in such dire straits that he needed AMBERSONS to be a bigger success than it could ever be. He even told Welles that the film would do alright with an adult audience but not with the youth crowd...and Schaefer felt RKO needed to cater to that youth crowd. AMBERSONS was re-edited not to improve it for the preview audience that thought the film was a masterpiece, but to make it play as quickly and as inoffensively to an audience that had little interest in the film's subject matter or style.

In terms of box office receipts and studio well-being, RKO made a mistake in hiring Welles. But had the studio not made that mistake, we wouldn't have CITIZEN KANE now nor what's left of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS.

[Glenn Anders]

The comparison of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS to THE TREE OF LIFE is a brilliant one. As one who took my extended family to the latter film, on the advice of someone here, I will attest to how easily that stultifying "masterpiece" can lead to near fist fights among patrons. As you say, Roger, Fox Searchlight Pictures recognized THE TREE OF LIFE's Art Film potential, and promoted it accordingly, with amazing results! Your discussion leads me to two final points, inadequately examined, so far:

General David Sarnoff, a figure not much discussed here, a ruler of the dominant communications medium that was Radio from the late 1920's to the flowering of television, in RCA had early formed a connection to the emerging medium of Film through RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum). It is seldom pointed out that one of the natural reasons Radio Personality Orson Welles would have had his film contract negotiated through RKO relates to his connections with friend, Nelson Rockefeller, and General Sarnoff, both RKO stockholders, both on the RKO Board of Directors. We now know that a main goal for General Sarnoff in the late 1930's and early 1940's was to establish a vast South American subsidiary radio network, using RCA equipment, starting with Brazil, where potential markets were numerous and very fresh. Might this not have been an additional reason why RKO was amenable to Under Secretary of State Rockefeller's "drafting" of a famous American Radio figure, Welles, for a mission to Brazil?

Secondly, thinking of your comparison of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and THE TREE OF LIFE, Todd and Roger, I'm always puzzled by the fact that so many Welles' experts neglect an obvious possibility about the infamous Pomona sneak preview of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS -- that a number of cards turned in after the performance may have come from shills on both sides of the question pertaining to AMBERSON's excellence . . . or lack thereof. It is a practice still encouraged today, as Todd Baesen and Larry French would know. Many were the slices of bread to be buttered, and butter would be increasingly scarce in the the Wartime Year of 1942.

Glenn

[Le Chiffre]

Interesting question about shills, Glenn. I've sometimes wondered whether there were some people planted at the Pomona preview as well, by anyone who had an interest in seeing Welles' power and career destroyed.

"By the way, we saw nothing in so serious a presentation to provoke the merriment so many of the audience saw fit to inflict on us."
- preview card from Pomona (excerpt)

The Sarnoff question is interesting too, and Rockefeller even said later that Welles's radio broadcasts from South America were excellent, even though the IAT film had becoame a disaster. As for Rockefeller and Brazil, here's an article I found interesting that you might also enjoy, if you haven't seen it. It's from the Feb 4th, 1941 issue of New Masses, an American Marxist magazine. It's called OIL AND CULTURE DON'T MIX:

http://www.unz.org/Pub/NewMasses-1941feb04-00003

The issue also features an article on the soon-to-be released CITIZEN KANE, describing and mocking Hearst's attempts to destroy the film. Interesting description for the Rockefeller article: "The Salesmen for imperial Culture Go South"

[ToddBaesen]

The memos Welles wrote on April 15 mirror the problems he was having with both AMBERSONS and IT'S ALL TRUE:

He tells George Schaefer "I MUST HOWEVER BE ALLOWED TO FINISH (IT'S ALL TRUE:) AS I WISH TO" while at that very time Schaefer had ordered the retakes on AMBERSONS to begin shooting on April 17th!

Welles also tells Jack Moss: "MY POSITION IS I CANNOT ALLOW RETAKES. WHAT CAN SCHAEFER DO ABOUT IT?" Welles is clearly expecting that Schaefer won't dare change AMBERSONS from what he wanted, but Schaefer needed to do something to save his job.

In the end, the changes didn't help the film, and didn't save anybodies job.

No wonder Welles was "REALLY DESPERATE…"