The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruction

Orson Welles considered The Magnificent Ambersons the crucial turning point in his career. He said, "They destroyed Ambersons and it destroyed me."
In 1942, while Welles was away, RKO Studios drastically recut the completed film. None of that deleted footage is known to survive.
Now film scholar Robert Carringer has reconstructed Welles's own version of Ambersons, using all available surviving evidence including rare studio documents and the recollections of Welles himself and other original participants in the film.
Carringer reaches startling conclusions about where the responsibility for the film's undoing ultimately lies. His spellbinding—and no doubt controversial—book will be eagerly welcomed by film historians and enthusiasts.

"An indispensable reference work. . . . Anyone with a serious interest in movies will want to have it."—James Naremore, author of Acting in the Cinema

Library Journal

The Magnificent Ambersons was Orson Welles's 1942 follow-up to Citizen Kane (1941). Before the film's completion, Welles traveled to South America on assignment for the State Department, leaving post-production work on the film to RKO. After a test audience panned the film, studio heads scrambled madly to salvage their $1 million investment by cutting 50 minutes of Welles's footage and reshooting several scenes. The deleted film stock was burned, opening a permanent rift between Welles and Hollywood. Using shooting schedules, storyboards, and other studio documents, Carringer, author of The Making of Citizen Kane ( LJ 7/85), has reconstructed the original script, allowing readers to experience Ambersons as Welles envisioned it. Although not all will agree with Carringer's theory that Welles was as responsible for the film's failure as RKO or with his Freudian analysis of Welles's psyche, the film world nevertheless owes Carringer a true debt of gratitude for this volume. Essential for large film collections.-- Michael Rogers, ``Library Journal''

Robert L. Carringer is Professor of English and Film at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of The Making of Citizen Kane (California, 1985).