www.ambersons.com

[majoramberson]

I got a message back for the Lilly Library and it's about the same as what you said. $12.50 for an 8x10 print and $8.50 for a 5x7, and if they don't have a negative there is an additional $23.00 charge. Also, if fewer than 10 photographs have to be shot, there is another charge of $27.00. No information given of how many negatives they have, however.

[Le Chiffre]

I went to Lilly recently and they told me anything less then 4 photos and you'd have to pay a $20 surcharge. Maybe I misheard them. If it is 10, as the major says, then here are 10 Ambersons photos at Lilly for which I think negatives should eventually be made, if some person (or persons) can scrape together enough cash. I'd love to myself, but finances are a little tight right now.

1. BOX 33, Folder 1, picture 31
From a missing section of the ballroom scene, Closeup of Jack and Eugene discussing George with a mirror reflecting dancers between them ("Just wait until you know young George a little bit better"). Needs a negative.

2. BOX 33, Folder 5, picture 182
Also a missing section of the ballroom scene, a low-angle shot of Fanny, Isabel, Eugene, and Jack as they discuss the wrinkles that age puts on faces. Needs a negative.

3. BOX 33, Folder 5, picture 196
Jack and George at the railroad station, an angle I've never seen in any Welles book. Don't know whether it has a negative or not.

4. BOX 34, Folder 1, picture 211
Missing scene: Eugene walking to Amberson mansion with flowers for Isabel, to apologize about the bass fiddle. Don't know whether it has a negative or not.

5. BOX 34, Folder 1, picture 236
Missing FOTA clubhouse scene: Boys raising hands to say "Aye!" ("All those in favor of holding a new election say "Aye!"). Needs a negative.

6. BOX 34, Folder 2, picture 251
Ballroom scene, Fanny, Isabel, Eugene, and Jack. Same as #2, but from a straight-on angle. Needs a negative.

7. BOX 34, Folder 2, picture 256
Missing scene: Isabel (partially in shadow) writing a letter to George renouncing Eugene. Has a negative.

8. BOX 34, Folder 2, picture 263
Missing bit of ballroom scene: Jack and Eugene discussing George, but from a low-angle. Needs a negative.

9. BOX 34, Folder 7, picture 445
Priceless behind-the-scenes shot of Welles sitting on Santa's lap (with a pipe in his mouth if I remember correctly). Don't know whether it has a negative or not.

10. Great behind-the-scenes publicity stills of Ambersons cast strolling arm-in-arm across the RKO lot. Can't remember the Box and Folder number though. Don't know about negative.

These to me were some of the most striking of the Ambersons pics at Lilly, and were ones which I've never seen anywhere else. But there are many others too: Boxes 33 and 34 contain nearly 500 Ambersons photographs!

[majoramberson]

I want to see all of those too, especially the prints from the ballroom. Of the 38 prints from Box 33 that I asked about, they have negatives for 16. I'm not sure how many there are, though the website says 501. They sent me two lists, for Box 33 and 34. Even though every print has a number, many of them are duplicates. Also, there's a gap where there are no prints with numbers from 65 to 203. Either I'm missing a list, or there are some that aren't available for circulation. I have to write back to them to find out.

[jaime marzol]

Going over the ambersons, welles’ version, not the release version. What a tragic ending. George destroyed everyone who remained in his orbit.

The major dies broke.

Georgie denied his mother another man, she becomes sickly, and finally dies a lonely woman.

Aunt Fanny first loses her fortune, then loses her nut by the furnace, then ends up in a third rate rooming house, staring off into space with a blank look on her face. On the radio we hear the two black crows comedy record making jokes, and the audience laughing at everything that Fanny has gone through.

Eugene was left a widower because the only woman who’s house he knew how to get to was isabel’s. like a stuck broken machine he just kept ruturning to the amberson
mansion over and over.

lucy resigned herself to a life time of celibacy, washing her father’s feet, and strolling the enchanted garden quoting stories about the Indian mini-ha-ha.

Uncle Jack was the only smart amberson who didn’t wait around for certain destruction to strike. Once he was raped of his fortune, he hightailed it out of town on a train and found work in Washington as a used congressman.

And georgie’s end? When he could not make ends meet on a lawyer’s salary, he needed to take a job in a dynamite factory, for every one knows that employment in a place that might blow up at any moment pays more than lawyering wages.

In typical welles fashion, the first time georgie ventures from the mansion to stand on his own 2 feet, it’s befitting that the very invention that robbed the rotten little bastard of his legacy, and a life of yaughting and contributing his fare share to charities, the automobile, break both his legs.

Watching the events of welles’ ambersons unfold is a dark, heavy experience today. I can only imagine the effect on an already frightened WWII American ‘preview’ audience.

This is heavy shit

[majoramberson]

I agree - Welles didn't give you much to smile about at the end of Ambersons. You're just hit with one downer after another. I'm not sure which part is the saddest. The major's death is sad, but it doesn't seem to have as much of an impact as Isabel's death. It's probably because there's so much leading up to the Isabel's death, it seems to eclipse the major's demise. With Fanny, Welles was just as punishing, and she didn't even have to die to suffer. One of the (many) reasons that the remake was so bad was that Fanny seems almost happy to be in the boardinghouse, serving up supper for George. So much for following Welles' original version.

[jaime marzol]

major:
absolutely a downer, and that is the beauty of this picture. masterpiece from begining to end and i love every minute of it. it really takes you through a journey.

i've been watching a copy mteal and i have been working on, mailing back and forth, adding bits and chunks here and there. the scenes are rearranged to follow the order of the continuity, and the missing scenes are represented on the screen with the continuity. it works very well and delivers the knock out punch that the release version is void of.

i'm working my way through the film with adobe premiere, recreating the missing scenes using stills, storyboard art, parts of other films, anything i can use to recreate the missing chunks interesting enough to keep the viewer seated.

we were using scrolling text but the reading got overwhelming, so we upgraded to Mteal's talents as a reader. that is what he's working on now, he's probably reading as i type!

when he finishes what he is reading now, and i have it in my possesion for a week, we'll have everything recreated till the first missing scene at the ball. the rest of the film is assembled, as i said, footage, and continuity reading.

in it's most cudest form that we have it in now, it delivers the one two punch. draws you into it's deep, frightening world.

cool stuff.

major
mteal and me spoke about contacting you to see if you had anything visual that we could use to augment a missing scene.

so i'm glad we had this exchange.

[jaime marzol]

fanny really gets knocked around.

that pig-out scene, georgie's comment giving here one metaphoric elbo in the face after the other.

the bananas scene by the furnace. welles' version does not exist, it was probably too much.

the black crows delivering one sock in the jaw after the other, as poor aunt fanny sits there with a blank look on her face, gazing off into oblivion.

i love every minute of it. after all, what are movies for if they don't pick you up and take you on a journey?

[majoramberson]

Definitely a journey. Welles certainly had a way with keeping your attention. The recreation that you're doing sounds exciting. You're welcome to anything from my website. I don't have much more, but next month I'm placing an order with the lilly to get a bunch of stills. I made a short list, some of which are from the list that mteal made a while back as well as those stills from the deserted mansion, which I've never seen.

Also, I wanted to mention that I added a link to ambersons.com with a few more images - you can get to it from about halfway down the FAQs page. Another Ambersons fan sent me a compilation of memos between Welles and RKO during the editing, and asked if I'd like to post it on the site. I added a few images and posted it the other week.

[jaime marzol]

major:
would love to make you a copy of tape we are working from.

what we could use are scans of any specialty item you have that i can use to recreate a missing scene. on floppy, or disc would be great.

e-mail me your address, will send you tape.

cinema_vortex@yahoo.com

when you get your items, we would be most appreciative for anything you want to share. we have all the regularly available stuff, TIOW, carringer book, etc.

[jaime marzol]

.
>>>>>>>>>

if any one has any specialty item we don't have , would be most happy to trade copy of tape restoration in trade for good scan of said item.

[Le Chiffre]

Hold on a second with that Lilly order, Major. I'm thinking of ordering some too. Maybe we can coordinate. I emailed you, let me know if you didn't get it.

[jaime marzol]

...........

"he can't help but be a total snot, he's isabel amberson's brat. plenty of that amberson high stuff in-m. but don't worry, we'll slap that smirk off his face before the movie's over."

notice the way they refer to isabel, like a trophi, who got her, who wanted her, i never thought he would get her, etc.

fanny extolling mousey wilbur's conquests, "what's important is not only that wilbur GOT HER, BUT KEPT HER."

the pride of the town might be the mansion but the trophy is the rather large, isabel amberson.

even wilbur wasn't saved from suffering by an early death. first he was wiped out financially, then died broke!

georgie, "we gave her the isurance money, with no strings attached what so ever." this dialogue means to me that georgie tried to attach strings to the insurance money, but was convinced otherwise by the family.

and where is that pesky deed when you need it? the deed. the holy grail that could save georgie, and fanny from the beating, but it's never found.

no wonder fanny, along with georgie are set up for a such a merciless beating. both have objectionable dialogue throughout the film. by the time fanny realizes she's been a spiteful old bittie, it's too late for isabel, she's on the way to the amberson cemetery, to be buried beside mousey wilbur.

by the time isabel kicks the bucket, only thing left to do is administer the merciless beating to georgie, and fanny, which the film does quite well.

............................

[R Kadin]

When you're done your reconstruction, you'd better include a dose of Prozac with every copy you issue unless you want the FDA coming after you for distributing a harmful substance.

It's becoming more and more apparent that Welles was going for tragedy of Shakespearean proportions in his Ambersons vision - "Titus Andronicus Americus", or maybe "Hamlet Does Indianapolis". Which thought finally helps me understand what it was that drew him, after Kane, to an otherwise moderately engaging novel (with all due respect to its Pulitzer Prize pedigree, of course).

That Booth Tarkington inhabited the larger Welles family social circle is acknowledged and the fact that the setting and the people hark directly back to Welles' own family and youth cannot be discounted as influences, either. But only now do I begin to see that it might well have been the prospect of transporting the weightiest of Shakespearean experiences across the world and across the ages to reconstruct it, frame by frame, iambic image by image, in the very heart of America that became Welles' true objective. Not only could doing it the once prove a wonder in itself but so, too, might it have played herald to an entirely new order of New World drama - easily the equal of anything the revered U.K. had ever seen.

And why not? Why should Haiti (Voodoo Macbeth) be the only Western venue to play host to The Bard? And why should not those very American devices, the silver screen and a Pulitzer-ed author, be enlisted to suborn their special properties to the cause of laying claim to classical drama's new epoch?

Looks like you guys are really onto something and have been for awhile...

[Le Chiffre]

R. Kadin,
You make some good points. Welles' Ambersons is like HAMLET of course, but it's also like Chekov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD, and certain scenes towards the end, like the death scenes of Isabel and the Major, and George's walk home (in it's original form) are dark and macabre, like something out of Poe. One must also consider how closely tied to CITIZEN KANE the film is as well.

One thing I keep finding from the work Jaime and I have done so far is how enormously and complexly integrated this film was in it's original vision. The tragedy of the studio version is that it barely scratches the surface of what Welles was trying to express with this film. And not just Welles, either. The full-length Ambersons was not just one of Orson Welles' masterpieces, it was also one of Bernard Hermann's as well. His score for Ambersons was one of the finest ever written, and it should be noted that it was Hermann, not Welles who demanded that his name be taken off the credits of the studio version. Where did such a profound depth of feeling come from on HIS part?

The more I study the relationship between Hermann's score and Welles' direction, the more I am reminded of the Eisenstein/Prokofiev collaboration for ALEXANDER NEVSKY, though I think the original Ambersons went way beyond that in psychological and historical complexity.

As far as Welles creating a new epoch for classical drama in America, he could have done it if the Mercury had stayed together. The breakup of the Mercury Theatre may be the biggest tragedy to come out of the whole AMBERSONS/IT'S ALL TRUE fiasco. Welles spent many years trying to resurrect the Mercury in some form or another, but was never really able to.

[majoramberson]

mteal,

I didn't receive your email. You can try either of these addresses:

jlight@sickkids.ca
jlightfoot@sympatico.ca

Yes, it would be great if we could coordinate on this, especially on the stills that need negatives. I don't have my list with me right now, but I'll compare it to yours so that we're not ordering the same ones. I imagine there are some in particular that you're interested in for the tape.
Thanks.
major