Ambersons a money-maker???

[Tony]

A friend of mine has a book which lists the top 10 Hollywood money-makers of each year, and Ambersons is listed in the top 10 of 1942; can anyone confirm this? Was I hallucinating?

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

maybe whoever wrote the book that your friend has was hallucinating when he wrote it.

can't think of amberson's making money. but if what the book does say is true, people laughed at the preview of it for some reason. if it DID make money, i don't think it was because they liked it, some people go to watch a movie if it's not good, to them, too. so they can laugh their asses off at the person who made. also, maybe the movie made money, but i don't think orson did.

what's the name of that book? i'll go look it up.

bye now!

[Tony]

My apologies:my memory was somewhat off on this! What my friend has is a 1943 issue of Variety magazine, which lists the pictures for each studio which brought in a million dollars or more in 1942.

To put it in a little perspective, the 4 big studios (20th, MGM, Paramount and Warners) had between 15 and 20 "million dollar earners" each,while the 5 smaller studios had far fewer: Universal had 11, UA had 7, Columbia had 5, Republic had 1, and RKO had 9. (The top money-maker of the year was Paramount's "Reap the Wild Wind",which brought in $5.2 million in box-office receipts; the 2nd best earner was "Yankee Doodle Dandy", which took in $5.0 m.)



Here's the list of RKO's "million dollar earners" for 1942:

Once upon a Honeymoon- $2.6 million
Pride of the Yankees (Cooper)-$2.45 m.
Ball of Fire-(Stanwyck)-$2.2 m.
Suspicion-(Hitchcock)-$1.8 m.
Here We Go Again-$1.3
Bambi- (a Disney product, of course, distributed by RKO)-$1.5m.
The Navy Comes Through-$1.7m.
Seven Day Leave-$1.2m
Magnificent Ambersons-$1.0

Of course, one must remember that several RKO pictures had a better profit as percentage of cost, since many took in less than a million but cost peanuts to make.

Carrington claims that Ambersons was budgeted at $853,950, but came in at $1,013,760.46. (I wonder if the latter number includes the costs of the studio ordered editing, re-takes and re-scoring?) So, if we take this as the actual cost, then Ambersons lost $13,760.46. Taking into consideration that it was a difficult sell in war-time, and that they had missed the Easter weekend opening because of the studio changes, I think Ambersons did pretty well, but what do I know?

[ToddBaesen]

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Thanks for posting the RKO box-office report for 1942, Tony. It's very interesting to see how much money AMBERSONS actually made! Do you also have the figures for 1941, when KANE was released?

What this means is, that, despite what most of the Welles books say, AMBERSONS probably made more money than CITIZEN KANE, since presumable, it was not banned by the movie theaters, who if they ran KANE, were in fear of a Hearst newspaper boycott.

It's funny how the perception of how a film's box-office can be spinned one way or another, many years after the fact. I've always taken at face value the reports that the film did poorly. Now, it appears that this may be based on faulty Charles Higham or Pauline Kael like research, (i.e. make-up whatever fits your needs), which did not consult the actual numbers!!

One thing to also remember, is that RKO did not own it's own theaters, so if AMBERSONS made a $1 milllion gross at the box-office, what RKO actually collected in rentals, would be around $600,000. which is why, with advertsing and other costs, they could still take a loss of $600,000. on the film.

Here is more on that from the MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS memos page:


http://www.ambersons.com/Memos.htm


July, 1942: The final 88 minute version of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS opens.

Even in it's truncated version, THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS received many excellent reviews and eventually was nominated for Four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress - Agnes Moorehead; Best Cinematography - Stanley Cortez; and Best Art Decoration. Certainly not an easy task for a film that was released in July. And despite a widely perceived notion that the film was dumped without fanfare by RKO, this was not entirely the case. At least initially, RKO gave AMBERSONS an impressive campaign, with full page ads appearing in many national publications, such as LIFE and LOOK. In fact, according to Joseph McBride, AMBERSONS box-office returns for many major cities boded very well for the films prospects. "It was holding up beyond expectations in LA, doing sensationally in San Francisco, nice in New York and Baltimore, good in Denver and Omaha, and not bad in Boston and Philly." (as reported in Variety).

Eventually, however the film's high budget (around $1,000,000. - before the $100,000. in additional costs entailed by the retakes), would be it's undoing, and RKO posted a loss of over $600,000. on the film. However, if looked at from a different perspective, the film actually made over $500,000., which means it did fairly well for the time, since at any cost it was going to be a somewhat difficult sell. In fact, if the film had been made for it's original budget of $850,000. it might have been successful. It's also important to realize, that at the time, no RKO film budgeted over $1,000,000 (which was extremely steep for 1942), had ever made a profit for the studio.

[Tony]

Todd:
Again, maybe my memory is faulty, but wasn't there an RKO theatre chain? Was that earlier?

[Tony]

Todd:
Apparently, Variety didn't begin compiling this list until 1942; however, I can tell you that OW only entered the list once more as a director, and that was for The Stranger in 1946. Since The Stranger was distributed by RKO, ironically it was on the RKO list that the film appeared. Here are the RKO films that took in $1 million or more at the box office in 1946:

1. The Bells of St. Mary's (Bing Crosby)- $8.0 million (!)
2. Notorious (Hitchcock)- $4.5m
3. The Kid From Brooklyn- $4.0m
4. Tomorrow is Forever-( starring OW/distributed by RKO)-$3.25m
5. Without Reservations (a John Wayne/Claudette Colbert comedy- really!)- $3.0m
6. Spiral Staircase- (Dorothy McGuire)- $2.?m
7. The Stranger, tied with "Make Mine Music" (a Disney project); both took in $2.5 m.

Since OW only appeared twice on the Variety list as director, for Ambersons and The Stranger (we're not sure about Kane, but I believe it took in less than a million in it's initial run), it seems that when he followed The Stranger with Macbeth and Shanghai, he negated any progress that had been made in his attempt, begun with The Stranger, to establish a reputation in Hollywood as a bankable director.

[ChristopherBanks]

"Ambersons" was the bottom half of a double bill, so can we assume that the $1m it took was from people who primarily were going to see "Mexican Spitfire Sees A Ghost"?

[jaime marzol]

that's interesting about the stranger's profits. also interesting about what ambersons brought in. i think i read that mexican spitfire movie was what people showed up to see at one of the previews, i don't remember reading that it made it's run on the bottom of mexican spitfire, but who knows.

[Tony]

I believe that I read somewhere that Ambersons played top of the bill in some theatres and bottom in others; so what does the million mean is an excellent question.Carrington says that it was "test-marketed" in July, and then "effectively abandoned". I'm not sure what that means either.

[ChristopherBanks]

I think it was a Dorothy Lamour movie, "The Fleet's In" that was at the previews.

[jaime marzol]

effectively abandoned means they left it behind, and did it real well.

[ToddBaesen]

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If the Variety figures for AMBERSONS are correct, what it means is that AMBERSONS - despite what has appeared in print in most Welles biographies - is one of Orson Welles most successful films at the box-office!!

I'm now inclined to discredit the stories that the film was "abandoned by RKO", since abandoned films don't gross a million dollars - which in 1942, would be considered a big success - even though it wasn't enough to cover the film's budget. It appears that Welles was quite correct when he claimed that RKO simply put the story that the film did poorly into circulation, in order to discredit him , since they were firing Welles, but at the same time RKO managed to collect a tidy one million dollars from nationwide box-office receipts.

It seems clear to me, that if you look at the fairly substantial ad campaign RKO paid for - and many of the ads can now be viewed on the AMBERSONS webpage - the film did not open or play as a second feature to MEXICAN SPITFIRE. At the time, all top "A" pictures played on double bills, with supporting B-pictures, but AMBERSONS was always clearly the A picture. And RKO didn't pay for full page ads in newspapers and magazines advertising AMBERSONS for it's Los Angeles release at the Pantages and Hillstreet theaters for a film they planned on "abandoning." (There is also no mention of a co-feature in any of these ads). The fact is, the film was doing quite well in many cities, eventually turning in a gross of $1 million, and likely was still playing or re-issued to theaters late in 1942, when it the film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. By comparison, a literary film like NICHOLAS NICKELBY has, to date, grossed only $ 1 million (and that's in today's inflated dollars).

The problem is most writers just copy what they read in Charles Higham or David Thomson's error-filled books on Welles, and take it as fact. David Kamp's recent VANITY FAIR piece on AMBERSONS is a perfect example. Kamp says, RKO "lacking any confidence in THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS opened it without fanfare in two theaters in Los Angeles, on a double bill with the Lupe Velez comedy, MEXICAN SPITFIRE SEES A GHOST. After playing at a handful of movie houses around the country, Welles picture died a quick box-office death."

Now, I wonder where Mr. Kamp got this information from. Clearly not from any independent research, but quite obviously picked up (without any question on his part), from previous Welles biographies.

This will be completely discredited - although not neccesarily disbelieved - in Joeseph McBride's forthcoming Welles biography.

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