By LAWRENCE FRENCH ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ opens in Los Angeles – July 7, 1942 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 […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH As George Schaefer’s position as head of RKO (as well as the Mercury’s chief supporter) became extremely precarious, Herbert Drake, the press representative for Mercury productions, sent Welles this plan to help with his public relations efforts regarding IT’S ALL TRUE and the increasingly hostile RKO regime, which would soon be headed […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH Details on the previews of the re-edited version of  THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS that were held in May are incomplete, but it appears Welles was no longer being advised on all the changes that the studio was making, even by his own manager, Jack Moss, who was working with Robert Wise in making […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH This revealing telephone conversation between Reginald Armour, RKO President George Schaefer’s executive assistant in Hollywood and Phil Reisman in New York, clearly shows the animosity towards Welles and his current project IT’S ALL TRUE, that was now shared by most of the top RKO executives.  Phil Reisman, however, was the exception, as […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH Nearly a month after the single bad preview of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS in Pomona, George Schaefer decided to take the drastic step of shooting a new ending scene for the film.  Schaefer was also worried about the cost for the Urca club scene Welles wanted to use as the grand finale for […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH Robert Wise sent this detailed report to Welles about the audience reaction at the first two previews of the film. In retrospect, it seems rather incredible that RKO executives would take only two previews as the final word on how AMBERSONS would be received by audiences nationwide. While the majority of the […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH Although Welles still wanted to finish the editing on AMBERSONS by having Robert Wise come to Rio, he also began sending a detailed list of changes he wanted made to the film, only two days after receiving this cable from Jack Moss assuring him that “every effort” was being made for Robert […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH On March 19, only two day after the Pomona fiasco, RKO held another preview at the United Artists Theatre in Pasadena. This time the film was shown after the Warner Bros. James Cagney film (in Technicolor), CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS. For this showing the film was re-edited to a running time of […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH On March 15 — the ides of March — Welles received the 132 minute rough cut print of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS in Rio. The next day, Welles had the first inkling that something might be terribly amiss with the film when he received a telegram from Robert Wise. As Wise had noted […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH In early March, Joseph Breen, RKO’s head of production under George Schaefer left for Mexico on a vacation, leaving one of Welles key supporters absent during the panic that gripped the studio after RKO held the first previews for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. RKO executive Charles Koerner assumed Breen’s duties, supposedly on a […]

By LAWRENCE FRENCH I was trapped down there (in Brazil), I couldn’t leave, and all I kept getting were those terrible signals about this awful movie I made. My own chums were running frightened — not just RKO…  Even those people who truly had my interests at heart felt that I’d gone too far. I […]