Magnificent Ambersons Radio Program

[Tashman]

In changing the ending...the human cores of those characters are violated, and their symbolic logic fails.

Of course, yes. Tony asked about the boarding house scene, so I took it for granted we were all talking about the un-mutilated version. I hope no one mistook that I was calling the existing AMBERSONS an exemplary tragedy.

About Ionesco, vis-a-vis Welles and fascism... It's open to question, but Welles told Bogdanovich he didn't like "Rhinoceros" or its playwright. While implying also that money was a factor, he explained: "I agreed to do it because I thought the gimmick was good enough so that you could invent an evening at the theatre about it. And it worked--it always seems to work everywhere no matter how it's done." Welles could have been affecting this attitude, of course, but it seems an obvious time to have mentioned any great affinity for the theme in a contemporary sense. If, along with being London-ized, the play was somehow made to feel up-to-the-minute as Welles was inclined to do, that seems like a simple enough theatrical decision. Is there evidence that any special fire got into Welles in putting this play on, beyond that of simply putting the play over, as they used to say? (Beyond a good night at the theatre, that is.)

I wonder about this too with the domestic plays. Glenn can't help remarking with derision (a feeling which, in the abstract, all of us have shared) about "Pomona audiences" and their "cruel, typically American" regard for Aunt Fanny. Given this--I'll be gentler than Glenn--parochialism of American audiences, what else would a skilled dramatist do but localize and make immediate a given drama? This is a man who quipped of doing the Life of Jesus with hippies as the apostles, after all, and had Don Quixote shred a movie screen.

And again I'd have to ask rhetorically, concerning politics, is this clairvoyance or moral vigilance?

[Glenn Anders]

My remark about the ending of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS may have intermingled Tony's position with your own. I understand our agreement on the point perfectly.

My apologies, nevertheless, should that be the case.

Pendleton makes your point in "Orson's Shadow" about why Welles took on "Rhinoceros" as a motivation for his character in the play. But that said, Welles could have done almost anything for money, and in his advertising gigs, did do almost anything.

But not in the Theatre.

If we examine the plays he directed or staged, the majority involved an elemental social, political, historical or philosophical theme: Macbeth, Dr. Faustus, The Cradle Will Rock, Macbeth, Heartbreak House, Julias Caesar, Danton's Death, Five Kings, Native Son, Around the World in 80 Days, Moby Dick Rehearsed, etc. He might have produced risible works for the stage for a lot more money, but he did not.

Obviously, not just the money, but the opportunity of directing Olivier, and dealing with the theme of the pervasiveness of fascism amid everyday modern life in democracies, appealed to him. As I have written: When fascism comes to [fill in the blank], the "strong man" will not be dressed in a black uniform and jack boots; he will wear a baseball cap and jeans.

The Strong Man might be leading a herd of peculiar beasts that, if we saw them in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Pol Pot's Çambodia, Idi Amin's Uganda, Miloscevitch's Serbia, Mullah Omar's Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or (whose-the-next-lucky-winner?) in Iran, would look to us like . . . "Rhinoceroses," but if dressed properly among us would appear quite ordinary.

Until they trampled the few remaining . . . what do we call ourselves?

Welles saw that in 1938's Julias Caesar; he saw it, in personal terms, in 1942's THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS; he saw it in 1946's THE STRANGER: he saw it more so in 1960's Rhinoceros. Oh, my friend, Tashman, what might he make from a similar vehicle, in the ambiguities, subterfuges and euphemisms all around us in 2006 America?

Welles was remarkably clairvoyant (a magician, after all), and always morally vigilant, Tashman, in what he considered the works of his major vocations.

We are in basic agreement, Tashman. We should runon a ticket for political office!

Regards, always.

Glenn

[Tashman]

He might have produced risible works for the stage for a lot more money, but he did not

True, true.

We should run on a ticket for political office!

The Felix and Oscar ticket!

By the way, if anyone is still confused about the differences here, this will be the last I yak about the matter. It can be shown relatively painlessly in what began this thread, and what was actually a hangover from the KANE/Sight&Sound discussion. That is, the person who says that C F Kane and Aunt Fanny are the yin and yang of America is someone very obviously evaluating life with the idea of "Who? Whom?" foremost in his thoughts. The shaft and the shafted. Zero sum. Reference to this paradigm is seen in all the history and politics mentioned since. To my eyes at least, this is reductionist thinking propelled to a degree that it becomes a kind of fanaticism of its own, an itch on the brain; and as Glenn has shown, he is otherwise opposed to fanaticisms of all kinds, to his great credit. And this is where I would suggest to Tony that aesthetics and politics meet. Because when someone is everywhere finding hegemony, when everything is above all a power situation, and male-female is a zero sum affair, then they cannot help but have a very particular view of a given artwork. Just as they would through the prism of any other political calculus. What I think Glenn would agree with is that he is mostly using the iconography of these movies as the basis for his own narrative--a springboard to muse about wider matters according to the philosophy just described. As long as one grasps this, then he can be read for pleasure and whatever enlightenment one chooses to find. People seem to have read silently over his assertions, which pack quite a lot of ideas into a short space as we've since seen laid out in detail (and thanks for doing that, Glenn).

I only say that if, as was claimed, OW actually did project Kane and Fanny in this light, with this paradigm foremost in his understanding of societal affairs (the realistic approach, according to Glenn), then all I could argue is that Welles the dramatist and artist was much broader than Welles the theorist. (Among artists in general, that ratio is a pretty good way to tell the men from the boys, as Welles would say in his patriarchal way.) And my hope is that people allow for that breadth in his work, which covers quite a bit of human terrain not covered by "Who? Whom?"--but which is nonetheless informed top to bottom with a great democratic and human skepticism of the seats of power. Thanks again for a stimulating conversation, Glenn.

the "strong man" will not be dressed in a black uniform and jack boots; he will wear a baseball cap and jeans.

I'll keep my eyes peeled.

[Glenn Anders]

Thank you, Tashman, for the stimulating discussion.

The Artist must triumph over the diadact, if a worthwhile work of art is to be produced. Form should follow function, some guy said once.

Meanwhile, do keep your eyes peeled. That fellow in the baseball cap and jeans is hiding in plain sight.

Until there is green grass in the running water, amigo!

Glenn

[mteal]

Here's a nicely delivered speech from THE CHELSEA PENSIONERS episode of AROUND THE WORLD WITH ORSON WELLES:

"You know, I used to have an extraordinary number of great aunts. Perhaps 'number' isn't the right word for it. We speak of droves and herds, and schools of fish, and a pack of wolves and a gaggle of geese. And a pride of lions - that's a wonderful expression - a pride of lions. And a rumination of cows - that's actually the expression - it's a herd of cattle and a rumination of cows. And a murmuration of swallows- or is it a surprise of swallows? I'm sure I don't know, and I'm certain I don't know how to describe a plurality of great aunts. An 'eccentricity of great aunts', maybe.

Certainly mine were numerous and a trifle on the eccentric side, and there was one - and this is why I was bringing this up - that was always described in our family as 'growing old gracefully'. Now, that isn't to say that the other great aunts were positively ungainly in the business of bearing the burden of their years, but this one, everone agreed, grew old gracefully. Well, it just happened, that she was the one with the most money. I think that's pretty obvious, I won't labor the point. Clearly it's much easier to be graceful about being aged if there's a little something put away in the sock, because of course, growing old is no joke. It's not only the loss of youth and vigor, but also the loss of friends and loved ones, and in all too many cases, the loss of ordinary human companionship. To be old and indigent is not just an economic problem, it can be a tragedy in human terms- the tragedy of loneliness. It's true that there's bound to be companionship of a kind in even the most crowded of state institutions for the aged, but all too often there's another sort of loss involved: a loss of dignity, and a loss of the sense of individuality."

Welles then goes on to say how British people should be proud of their institutions for the elderly, whose motto was, 'The evening of life, in independent retirement'.

Just re-listened to the radio Ambersons, which I hadn't heard in awhile. I think it's actually quite a good adaptation, and many snatches of dialogue from the missing scenes of the film do appear in the radio play. I don't think the Fanny character is really missed because the focus is almost entirely on George. In fact, one of the cleverest things about the radio program is the fact that it is a kind 'First Person Singular' masquerading as a conventional third-person narrative. We think Welles has been playing a dual role as both Narrator and George, then find out at the end that the two are the same.

I also think one of the main differences between the radio program and the film four years later was the power and depth of Bernard Hermann's film score, surely one of the greatest ever written. The fact that the world had become a much darker place is certainly reflected in that music.

[Glenn Anders]

Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

You are right, the Mercury Theater on the Air Production of The Magnificent Ambersons conjures a different viewpoint entirely from that of the movie. George is its main focus.

You show, mteal, a specific application of Welles' view of power and age to the elderly. In this case, applied to elderly women. My guess is that the wealthy, powerful aunt he is referring to is the one who was into Christian Science, and by extension, into magic. It is not clear how her long difficult death from cancer affected him, but he may have reflected that in the end, all earthly power will do you not much good. And prayer may not do much good either.

Thank you for remembering that episode, mteal. Welles is a real charmer among those elderly women he meets (as he is among the gruff old soldiers, the Chelsea Pensioners).

Glenn

[mteal]

You are right, the Mercury Theater on the Air Production of The Magnificent Ambersons conjures a different viewpoint entirely from that of the movie. George is its main focus.

Sort of like a Shakespeare play without the subplot. Welles was known to do that.

Welles is a real charmer among those elderly women he meets

It's a very amusing scene, and given that the speech I quoted above comes right after it, it's tempting to see the ladies as symbolic stand-ins for Welles's own great aunts.

[Gordon]

Yes, I also like the whole epsiode with the Chelsea pensioners. Toasting "My Best Respects", telling about their Scarlet Tunics.
AROUND THE WORLD WITH ORSON WELLES is a treasure. You cn rent it from Netflix. It has things like The Tynans on bullfighting and the basque jai alai players and Raymond Duncan. marvelous

[Tashman]

Thanks for posting that, mteal. I take special notice of "the tragedy of loneliness."

Incidentally, to what Gordon says: PAYS BASQUE is one of my favorite Welles films. It's funny that even in this series, the last place you might expect, we have the complications of lost films and of having to accept some things in their multiplicity. The shared elements of PAYS BASQUE won't reduce around a single version of the film--either meet it halfway or be frustrated. (This thought has nothing to do with any upcoming DVD release, of course...)

Back to AMBERSONS, now, here's a question posed to everyone. It occurred to me that one way of marking the divergence between Tarkington's ending and Welles's, is in the reading that Welles and Moorehead give to the "I wouldn't care if it burned me" line (I'm paraphrasing). I don't think it's overstating it that nearly all the dialogue in the movie comes straight from Tarkington. The scene just mentioned and Fanny's speech there is right from the book, but the tone in the book is slightly satirical at Fanny's expense. She's desperate and nervous out of an extreme sense of self-preservation, which Welles follows as far as the boiler moment. "I wouldn't care if it burned me" reads in Tarkington a bit like something a child might say through tears with their lip stuck out. In other words: "Pity me." Welles gives a new tilt to the scene--and it seems that he did so around that one line--wherein Moorehead suddenly ratchets it up into something that would fit comfortably in the worlds of Kazan or Lumet. And my question is: How much does this breakdown carry into the original ending. I'd be particularly interested to hear from Roger Ryan on this. Because I think it played irresistably to Welles, but once you commit to that you can't step back from it (although RKO thought you could), and this would seem to loom large over the boarding house. I would add that both Tarkington and Welles stand equally true in themselves, only the former is built around the idea of George rejoining the human race, while the latter was to be built around what can't ever be reclaimed.

[Gordon]

I look forward to Callow II, which has extensive treatment of Ambersons.
Welles went to great lengths to get Moorehead to the right level of histeria in the "it's not hot" scene.
Lot of the best part is lost.

[Roger Ryan]

Tashman, I think you're absolutely correct about Welles' changing the character of Fanny. He greatly admired Moorehead as an actress and, through rehearsal, I imagine the two of them hit upon a way of making her character more dynamic.

It's interesting that in the film Fanny only appears to be comfortable and fully-composed before she joins the Amberson family through her brother's marriage. Her authoritative stance during the opening montage shows her as someone who readily fits in with the townsfolk who marvel at the extravagance of the Ambersons. Once she joins the family itself, she becomes awkward and insecure. She aligns herself with the "enemy" - Mrs. Johnson - instead of her adoptive family because that is her true nature. Notice how Welles always keeps her in the background or at the edges of the frame during the last ball (or the factory tour for that matter). She desperately wants to fit in, but her banal comments are often ignored; even in her dialogue, she is unable to attain the beauty and grace of Isabel, Eugene and Jack.

This sense of Fanny being the "outsider" comes from Tarkington's book, but starting with Wilbur's funeral, Welles guides the character to a somewhat different place. This is signalled by Fanny's first close-up in the film showing her sobbing at the loss of her brother (I believe prior to this, we have only seen her as close as a two-shot with George or Lucy). From this point on, Fanny will become a more important character in the proceedings and her disposition and actions will have a dramatic effect on the family that had always behaved in a condescending way towards her.

Psychologically, Fanny begins to break down over her inability to live up to the expectations of being in the Amberson clan ("I have nothing in this world since my brother died"). In the cut veranda scenes and the existing stairway scenes we can see the recriminations fester (she actually despises Isabel for marrying her brother and taking her out of her element and then for stealing away her chance at love with Eugene). This woman is about to explode...and she does in Welles' original second kitchen scene. From all evidence, it was intended to show a complete nervous breakdown on the part of Fanny. So much so that the studio wanted it reshot. Fortunately, only the first half was redone (Welles elaborate backwards tracking shot through the empty first floor was probably deemed too complicated to reproduce, so it was left in despite Fanny's hysterics). Moorehead still gives a good performance in the reshot section, but it doesn't match the tone of the original existing second half.

Having taken Fanny beyond the breaking point, Welles and Moorehead now have the obligation to show where the character ends up. As shown in the original boarding house close, Fanny is, in a sense, hiding from her past. She maintains her sanity by returning to the common folk playing bridge (notice that George's character is redeemed by recognizing that Fanny needs the comfort of the common people that George himself continues to see as "riff raff"). Eugene's appearance, however, brings back the old ghosts that haunt her. The fact that Fanny can barely tolerate Eugene's presence while he rambles on about his love of Isabel is what I imagined made the scene dynamic...and turned off some members of the preview audiences.

In Tarkington's novel, Fanny is constantly trying to get George to join her for dinner in the boarding house dining room, but unlike her, George can't bring himself to associate with those who would live in such a place; he prefers eating his meals alone. The most telling moment in the novel is when George discovers the coffee table book in the boarding house that chronicles the 500 most important families in the town; of course, the name "Amberson" is not among them. In one of the novel's many dramatic reversals, George has been brought into the world of the common folk by the story's end in the same way that Fanny was elevated into the world of the Ambersons at the story's beginning. In effect, Welles addressed this reversal in his boarding house scene with the prosperous Eugene standing in for George. It has been thought perverse for Welles to remove George from the film's final scene, but this makes sense if we understand that the character of George is still in transition by the story's end, but the characters of Eugene and Fanny have reached a final settling point, an impasse perhaps to future growth.

[Tony]

Roger: what you have so eloquently written has just reminded me that in Welles's version George says "Riff-raff" after he is hit by the car, and the RKO/Mercury team edited those words out, as they seemingly show George had not learned his lesson comletely- or at all.

[mteal]

(she actually despises Isabel for marrying her brother and taking her out of her element and then for stealing away her chance at love with Eugene).

Perhaps even to the point of wanting Isabel dead, or at least to the point of being willing to lie in order to keep her from seeing Eugene. In the original version of the film, there was a scene showing the family gathered outside the bedroom of the dying Isabel. After Jack and the Major leave, George and Fanny are alone, and to me, this seems like a key scene in defining Fanny's character:

FANNY (whispering): George! George! Eugene is here, George!
GEORGE: Hm?
FANNY: He's downstairs.
GEORGE: What?
FANNY: Eugene is here.
George rises - goes to her as she talks cautiously-

FANNY: He's downstairs. He wants to know if he can't see her. I didn't know what to say- I said I'd see. I didn't know- the doctor said...
GEORGE (grimly): The doctor said we must keep her peaceful. Do you think that man's coming would be very soothing? Why, it would be like taking a stranger into her room. Doesn't he know how sick she is?
He goes to right behind her- Fanny staring to foreground as he talks impatiently-
GEORGE: You tell him the doctor said she had to be kept quiet and peaceful. That's what he did say, isn't it?
She turns slowly- Goes down steps to right - Exits - He looks after her-

INTEROR HALL MID-LONG SHOT
Eugene sitting at right foreground before camera - Fanny enters at left background - Crosses to right - he rises -
FANNY: The doctor said she must be kept quiet.
She comes to left foreground
EUGENE'S VOICE: If I could only look into the room and see her...
Eugene comes on at left by Fanny

EUGENE: ...just for a second.
She talks tensely.
FANNY: The doctor said she mustn't see anyone.
EUGENE: All right, Fanny.
He turns - exits left - She looks after him.

[Tashman]

Moorehead still gives a good performance in the reshot section, but it doesn't match the tone of the original existing half.

We shift into the tone of the second half in a more shocking way, right. But it's my impression that the ghost of an original shift can still be seen at this point, even with the different set-up, where her hysterics turn from despair and nervousness to a more violent mania. Is that an unfair assessment given what we know of the first half? This is not to say that the cut section isn't missed, by the way, only that it also jumped up into another gear at the "burn me" moment.

I'm glad you say that Welles and Moorehead felt "the obligation" to see this through to its end in the boarding house. It's an important way to look at it, I think.

George can't bring himself to associate with those who would live in [the boarding house]

Or with Fanny! There's that great moment in the book--it might be at the boiler--when George is disgusted at the thought that he's actually married to Fanny. This conceit reflects backwards in a somewhat uncomfortably Oedipal way, I suppose (who is she replacing, after all?), but it's also a very pointed take on his circumstances.

I appreciate the walk-through on the arc of Fanny. I don't know that I'd thought of it as such before, but having, as you say, perversely overlooked George, Welles has also chosen to close THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS on the two people who aren't Ambersons!--and proceeds even further down that funnel by having Eugene drive off alone. A final affront to George on the part of the film itself.

[Roger Ryan]

Roger: what you have so eloquently written has just reminded me that in Welles's version George says "Riff-raff" after he is hit by the car, and the RKO/Mercury team edited those words out, as they seemingly show George had not learned his lesson comletely- or at all.

Yes, in the original edit after George is being taken away from the accident scene, the Irish police officer comments incredulously on the phrase George used:

"Funny what he says to the little cuss that done the damage...and that's all he did call him...and the cuss broke both his legs for him and God knows what all..."

2nd Policeman: "I wasn't here then...what was it?"

Irish Policeman: "Riff-Raff!"


The point of the scene (and it's directly from Tarkington's novel) is to demonstrate that George still sees himself a class above the commoners. Despite the fact that he has recognized past mistakes and taken a job in a chemical plant to support his aunt (even acknowledging her wants as legitimate), he has been conditioned since childhood to view himself as better than those in the working class. George's inability to ingratiate himself with his current peers is his tragedy.