Wise's & Moss' Role In "Ambersons" Re-Editing

[Roger Ryan]

In his book "What Ever Happened To Orson Welles?", Joseph McBride describes that in writing his first essay on "Ambersons" he had assigned editor Robert Wise the majority of the blame for the film's mutilation. When McBride later asked Welles if the director thought McBride had "hit Wise a little too hard", Welles replied, "You can't hit him too hard. You can never be too hard on Robert Wise. Wise was the real villain." I had that quote in mind late last week when I was going through the "Ambersons" material at the University of Michigan's Special Collections Department.

Among the documents I found there was a letter Wise wrote to Welles on March 14th, 1942. In it Wise notes that a print of the 131 min. cut has been shipped to Brazil along with several reels of "alternates" that either Welles requested or Wise was proposing. Wise states that he hopes to join Welles in Rio in six to ten days depending on when his visa is cleared (this never happened) and then goes on to detail the improvements he hopes to make to the 131 min. edit. Most of these concern the sound mixing and dubbing, which Wise admits were done in a rush, as well as certain optical effects (the length of fades, matte shots, etc.). Trying to anticipate what Welles will think of the edit, Wise addresses specific moments in each reel. For example, Welles had apparently requested a new close-up of Richard Bennett as Major Amberson be shot and inserted into the scene by the punchbowl (I have to assume this would accompany Bennett's line "I remember the last drink Eugene ever had"). Wise comments that the insert shot didn't look good and disrupted the flow of the scene so he decided against using it. Interestingly, what Welles was proposing was cutting into one of his celebrated long takes with an insert (probably to give Bennett a little more "face time" - at this point in the film, Major Amberson would have received only one close-up and that was before his character was even introduced). However, Wise didn't think the insert matched and preferred to keep the scene as one long take.

After detailing a few other concerns ("music cue doesn't work in factory scene", "George walks too fast to the mansion's front door in 'last walk' scene"), Wise's most startling assessment occurs: the 131 min. edit is probably too long and could lose some footage. He recommends losing the two porch scenes and the factory scene and tightening up other sequences to bring the film in under two hours. The porch and factory scenes are wonderful unto themselves, Wise states, but their inclusion tend to make later, more important scenes seem to play too long. At the same time, Wise implores Welles not to make his "big cut" which would remove all the scenes between George leaving Isabel's bedroom after discussing Eugene's letter and the family gathering outside the bedroom after Isabel and George return from Europe (approx. 14 minutes worth of footage). Welles intended to bridge the lost footage with a new scene showing George returning to Isabel's bedroom and finding her unconscious and near death (this scene had indeed been shot by Wise on March 10th). Wise states in his letter that he hopes once Welles sees how well the film plays "as is" he will change his mind about the "big cut". He goes on to ask Welles if he has a specific reason for wanting to edit out that much material apart from trying to cut down the film's length, because Wise doesn't feel there's a need for such drastic measures. Wise is convinced that after losing two or three scenes and tightening others up, the film will play beautifully.

In later years, Welles claimed that Wise was trying to promote his own directorial ambitions by reworking "Ambersons", but on March 14th, 1942, Wise is actually arguing against including a scene he directed (the bridging scene of George finding Isabel unconscious) in the final cut. Of course, this letter was written three days prior to that first disastrous preview of the film in Pomona which would change everything, but I think it's important to note that Wise (at least in his communication with Welles) appears to be fully behind the original conception of the film with a few minor alterations.

What surprised me the most in Wise's letter was the role that Jack Moss, Welles' business manager, was playing in the production just days after the initial 131 min. edit had been completed. Wise specifically notes that Moss has requested numerous changes be made to the film including cutting the "bathroom" scene between George and Uncle Jack, the "accident" scene as well as the scene where George asks Fanny to prevent Eugene from seeing Isabel. In addition, Moss is unhappy with the first half of Eugene's "letter" scene calling the blocking of Dolores Costello reading the letter "stagey and awkward" (Wise agrees) and recommending simply showing a shot of the mansion interior under Joseph Cotten's voice-over. Moss also wants the bedroom confrontation scene between George and Isabel reshot; Wise concurs that this would be a good idea noting that no one (Welles persumably included) was happy with this scene as it stands (I found photographic evidence that suggests the bedroom confrontation had already been shot twice during principal photography, or as one of the early retakes, prior to this letter being written). Finally, Wise relates how Moss would like to change the continuity in the film's final third by moving the "comeuppance" scene to after George's meeting with Bronson, but before Eugene and Lucy's "garden" scene. Moss apparently feels strongly about showing "the girl" immediately after George asks for forgiveness.

What's noteworthy here is that Moss is not following Welles' instructions, but coming up with his own ideas about how "Ambersons" should be edited before anyone knew how the general public would react to the picture. Once the initial two previews were held and proved to be disappointments, Moss was able to push through virtually all of his desired changes commented on in Wise's March 14th letter. I suspect that many of the subsequent, more drastic alterations that followed were proposed by Moss as well.

In his fine piece on Jack Moss that Jeff Wilson contributed to this site, it was revealed that this former magician whom Welles appointed as his business manager was the one responsible for causing Welles undue tax problems and for weakening Welles' artistic control on his films. Now we're seeing that Moss also had quite a hand in mangling "Ambersons". Certainly Wise contributed to the overhaul of Welles' second feature, a film that Welles seemed uncertain about how to complete prior to leaving for Brazil, but I wonder if Welles ever fully realized, or wanted to admit, that Moss (who claimed to have thrown away many of Welles' telegrams regarding the re-editing of "Ambersons") appeared to be the man who took control of the project?

[Glenn Anders]

Excellent analysis, Roger.

Welles had a fondness for characters, theatrically and in his personal dealings. He may not have wanted to admit to biographers what a disastrous misjudgment hiring Jack Moss was.

But perhaps his great intuition, which he sometimes over-rid, prompted him to cast Moss as the shadowy hitman/villain in JOURNEY INTO FEAR. It was a playful Mercury Players joke, but Moss, as your valuable research shows, certainly took the role to heart.

Glenn

[ToddBaesen]

Roger:

Thanks for reporting on that letter from Robert Wise. It makes for fascinating reading. I wonder if Welles made any effort to reply to Wise's question about why he wanted to make the "big cut" as it does seem to be a rather large cut to make. I think the mistake Welles made with Wise was trusting him to be strong enough to stand up to studio pressure without Welles around to back him up.

Welles obviously felt Wise was a good editor and they worked well together on CITIZEN KANE, but of course there were no bad previews on KANE, and no revised contract. With the studio able to cut AMBERSONS, and with Welles not around to back up any ideas Wise might come up with, it seems that Wise artistic side would naturally defer to his commercial side. As he always said, the uncut version was probably much better as a movie, but wouldn't play for audiences.


So Welles really made a mistake by dictating the letter that gave Wise complete and total control over the editing of AMBERSONS. That of course was done so he wouldn't have to put up with red-tape from RKO. But once the bad previews happened, Wise suddenly became much more of a typical studio yes-man, and less of a Welles man.

I think Welles expected all his close collaborators to do as Herrmann did, and stand by him until the bitter end. Obviously it takes a rare person who would be willing to risk their career over the fate of a movie. Welles and Herrmann clearly would do it. But since Wise wanted to go on and direct, it would be a very bad move to resign under protest, as Herrmann did. As Wise says when he got his chance to direct THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE, he justified it by noting the studio was going to fire the director of the movie whether he took over or not. Likewise, even if he resigned from AMBERSONS, RKO would still have cut the film down, but just used another editor, just as they used another composer after Herrmann refused to go along with the re-scoring of the picture.

And replacing John Houseman with Jack Moss was undoubtedly another big mistake. Even after their big fight, Houseman worked with Welles on writing KANE and directing NATIVE SON. If only Houseman had agreed to stay on and produce AMBERSONS, he might have been able to help carry out some of Welles wishes coming in from Rio.

[Roger Ryan]

I wonder if Welles made any effort to reply to Wise's question about why he wanted to make the "big cut" as it does seem to be a rather large cut to make.

I haven't seen any response from Welles on this issue, but in a cable dated April 18th, 1942 he again asks for the "big cut" to be made among other alterations. Of course at this point Welles was very aware that the studio was requesting a major overhaul so he was more desperate to cut the film down while saving his favorite moments.

I can't fault Wise for deferring to the studio's wishes after the disappointing previews, but I'm starting to think he got his marching orders direct from Moss who became the de facto producer on both "Ambersons" and "Journey Into Fear" in Welles' absence.

[Tony]

Thank you Roger!

I remember a thread a while ago and we discussed this issue; for sure Moss was a legal disaster for Welles, and Welles's former lawyer (Weissberger), was temporarily out of the Welles orbit. But he kept Welles apprised, and informed him (c. 42) that it was because the RKO people didn't like Moss that they changed the original contract (on all three pictures Welles was to have made for the company): that original contract gave him final cut on ALL THREE PICTURES. So Moss lost him that, then played a major (the major?) role in mangling Ambersons, and who knows what else to screw up things with RKO, then screwed Welles for years on taxes and other business things. A total incompetent.

Roger is bang on: Welles was often a VERY poor judge of character, and often had very bad people around him, his whole life, who he thought were great. Wise has been grossly misjudged, but was always a gentle man about it, and Moss has got off scot free- until recently. Luckily, Welles rehired Weissberger after the Moss debacle and kept him as his lawyer til he died.

[Michael O'Hara]

Does Welles’ apparently reckless “big cut” give us the impression that he was more concerned with finishing the film rather than making a masterpiece? It’s such a large cut, and it was made in a rather hasty decision. Would the film play better that way? It seems the audience didn’t think so. It would be interesting to see. Imagine if he decided to hack a large chunk of Kane out in the middle. I think the early cuts in Ambersons (extra dialogue during opening montage, Ace meeting) do help move the picture along and were the correct choices. Obviously, cutting up the ballroom sequence is brutal, and removing all reference to the change in the town due to the automobiles only help to make the film into a somewhat simplistic love story, but they all agreed it was too long and needed to be tightened up. I think I’d rather have the porch scene than the factory scene. I agree that Mr. Wise gets wrongly painted as a wrong-doer in the matter, and I’m glad this new information helps clear his name. He was a professional and did the best he could under a ridiculous set of circumstances.

[Roger Ryan]

In many ways this humanizes Welles to a degree. As brilliant as he was, I still think he was finding his way as a filmmaker. At some point he probably realized that Major Amberson wasn't properly introduced and sought to have a close-up inserted during a crucial bit of dialogue from this character (Wise realizes the edit looks bad and the matter is dropped). As to the "big cut", who knows what Welles was thinking. If he was still in Hollywood editing the film with Wise, he could have explained himself better. Or maybe Wise would have talked him out of it. The "big cut" sure seems misguided to me, but by April '42 Welles is suggesting some equally radical re-editing and reordering of scenes that sound very well thought out and intriguing as alternatives. The 131 min. edit is how Welles thought he wanted the film to play prior to leaving for Brazil; there never was a definitive Welles final cut to speculate on.

[mteal]

Great work, Roger. That sounds like a fascinating memo. Somewhere I have Welles's instructions for the new scene where George finds Isabel unconscious, which I found in the Peter Bogdanovich archive at Lilly. I'll have to go through my notes to see if I can find it. One of these days someone should put all the memos from the whole Ambersons/It's All True debacle together into a single book. That would tell the story better then any biographer could.

That's very interesting to hear how Wise thought both porch scenes were splendid in and of themselves. Also, the continuity of the last part of the picture that Moss apparently was requesting seems to correspond to what was eventually shown at the second preview in Pasadena-

Major's death
Jack's farewell at the station
Fanny collapsing at the boiler
George's visit to Bronson
George's walk home and repentance
Lucy and Eugene in the garden
George's accident

At the risk of sounding like an apologist for Moss, who clearly bungled things for Welles, I've always felt that this order would have been the most effective, and indeed, the Pasadena preview was said to have been much more successful then the disastrous first preview at Pomona, where Welles's requests were carried out pretty much to the letter, including both the 'big cut' and his completely eliminating the Lucy/Eugene garden scene later on.

Not to make any wild speculations, but Welles's Pomona cut almost completely eliminated Anne Baxter from the second half of the picture, which I've always felt was interesting in light of the passage from Frank Brady's CITIZEN WELLES book, where Baxter recalls how Welles made a crude pass at her one night after drinking nine demolitionary martinis. Is it possible he was getting artistic revenge against Baxter for spurning his sexual advances?

Todd,
As far as Welles's explanation for wanting the 'big cut', I've never seen a clear-cut answer to that, but I do know from the research I did at Lilly last year that Welles said he was unhappy with some of Delores Costello's line readings during those scenes, particularly her letter-to-George scene, where Welles thought she sounded too 'sibilant'. But I think a more likely explanation is that Welles simply got cold feet about the oedipal nature of those scenes. Whatever the reason, Welles's "Pomona" cut seems to have seriously diminished the importance to the picture of both Delores Costello and Anne Baxter. It was also obviously a much darker and more despairing conception of the story then the script he had originally submitted to RKO for approval. That may be partly why they felt they had the right to massacre it the way they did.

One last note:
Let me apologize for this in advance, but here's an excerpt from THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ORSON WELLES:

According to David Thomson, Welles had every reason for returning to reedit "The Magnificent Ambersons" but was reluctant to leave Rio. When Jack Moss, Welles's new manager, was asked by RKO's Cy Endfield why Welles did not return, Moss showed Endfield footage featuring Brazilian chorus girls and said that Welles, who had shot the footage, told him "I fucked that one...and that one...and that one." Moss added, "There's no place in the world where he can do what he's doing there."

[Roger Ryan]

Good to have you back on the board mteal! Thanks for apologizing ahead of time for that dubious David Thomson quote; apart from the Moss-reported chorus dalliances, Welles had one very big reason for staying in Brazil: he was shooting a million dollar movie there!

Of course, I agree with you that both the "big cut" and the elimination of Eugene and Lucy's "Garden Scene" seem to reflect poor judgement and I'm glad the majority of that material was retained for the released version. George's "Last Walk Home" seems to have jumped around quite a bit during production. In Welles' original script he had the scene coming later in the film's final third, but during the initial editing phase it had been moved up to follow Jack's "Train Station Farewell" (this corresponds to Tarkington's plotting in his novel). I don't have a problem with the "Pasadena" sequencing, but really dislike how the released version moves the "Garden" scene up to follow the "Train Station" scene; for me, Eugene and Lucy's dialogue only works after you've seen the entire downfall of the Ambersons as its tone suggests that some time has passed since these events took place.

[mteal]

Thanks Roger, and you're exactly right: The Garden scene should have been a time transition between the Fall of the House of Amberson and George's auto accident. But since Welles himself had requested it's complete elimination for the Pomona preview, the studio probably felt it was justified in putting it in wherever it pleased.

I quoted Thomson to show the kind of pervasive attitude that Welles scholars are up against. And to show how complex not only is the story of TMA/IT'S ALL TRUE, but the perception of it as well. But I suppose that's how it always will be since it's one of the central fronts in the War of the Welles.

Here are a few loose notes I took from the PB archive, unused bits of conversation for the THIS IS ORSON WELLES book-

OW: The Boardinghouse scene was the best scene in the film. It was marvelously played.

PB: It reads like it would have been great. Because the thing about the continuity script that I have, is that it has every cut as it appeared on the screen in your version.

OW: That's interesting.

PB: That's why you can tell that Fanny is rocking.

OW: Yes, that's right.

MEMO EXCERPTS FROM WELLES:
Isabel's letter to George,'Delores's voice track is horrible, too sibilant. I hope this is temporary.'

Here is a new scene for Ambersons:Have Norman shoot tonight, rush to Benny for music. Delores reading letter from Joe. Tim as before, he starts to burn letter, leaves his room, walks down the hall, knocks on Isabel's door. Pause. Knocks again. Pause. Then dub in Tim saying 'Mother?'Now, here is new scene:Interior Delores bedroom. Make over again from JOURNEY Hotel Room, but show only the door, part of bed, camera left part of dresser, camera right at post, stop. Tim opens door and heads into a camera close up, stop. Then Tim looks down and falls to his knees, camera staying with him on crane, Delores lying unconscious. Tim grabs her in his arms, a tight two-shot. 'Mother!'. Fade out.

[RayKelly]

MSN.COM today posted the 10 worst movie endings of all time. I disagree with some but not their lead item:

"The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942)
The second film Orson Welles directed -- the first was a little number called "Citizen Kane" -- is nine-tenths perfect. An adaptation of Booth Tarkington's melodramatic novel, "Ambersons" is a sweeping epic about America's journey into modernity as viewed through the lens of class, manners and two families whose intersections and divergences are heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal measure. In short, the film was ready to be an improvement on its predecessor. Then, while Welles was in South America scouting locations for his next project, the studio decided the ending of "Ambersons" was a bummer and therefore hired editor Robert Wise to shoot a happier one -- a clumsily acted, turgidly written one that looked nothing like the gorgeous film Welles made. The result is not so much a compromise as a mutilation that cast a shadow over the rest of Welles' career and life. It's still a great movie, but it could've been the greatest.

[Roger Ryan]

"Nine-tenths perfect" is too high a percentage for me. While most critics and fans will focus on that miserable studio-imposed ending, I think the cutting and reordering of scenes throughout damages the film in equal measures.

All in all, it's still nice to see this film discussed in mainstream media.

[ToddBaesen]

I find it interesting that when both the scripts for KANE and AMBERSON'S were published, they somehow got paired with essays with truly idiotic suppositions. As we now know, Pauline Kael did no research, except for talking to John Houseman, and simply made up whatever she wanted to fit into her own misplaced theories about KANE.

Unlike Ms. Kael, Robert Carringer did lots of research, but still somehow came up with the theory that Welles couldn't write a decent script by himself (he needed the help of a professional), and then spends a lot of time annotating this substandard script and having it published! Of course, apparently the whole AMBERSONS fiasco was due to the fact that Welles never played HAMLET, and Carringer also believes it was largely Welles own fault that RKO cut AMBERSONS!

[RayKelly]

Todd,
I have so many problems with Carringer's essay, I don't know where to begin.
(I'll skip the dollar book Freud of Oedipus and Indianapolis.)
One of the many things that bugs me is Carringer blaming Welles for "entrusting the film's fate entirely to lower-level subordinates who would be powerless to defend his interests if the need arose."
The implication is that Welles was a dope for seeing it coming.
Of course, he should have known the studio would demand massive reshoots while he was out of the country .
He should have known that his business manager Jack Moss would cave in.
He should have known the actors he trusted and brought to Hollywood would agree to take part in the reshoots.
Who should Welles have put in charge to guard his interests?
Carringer plays Monday morning quarterback but tell us who he thinks Welles should have thrown the ball to.
?

[brenbar]

Hear hear both Todd and Ray. Carringers essay to me is simply ridiculous. A close examination of the actual chronology of the events from October 1941 to when Welles boarded the plane on 29th Jan. 1942 will dispel the notion that he was in any way responsible for the debacle that ensued. The finest and clearest telling of the whole story is (in my view) contained in Clinton Heylin's book "Despite the system". Heylin provides the finest summing up of the whole situation - and I will quote directly from the book here: "The suggestion made by a number of film critics with no more experience of filmmaking than the RKO janitor whom Welles once whimsically suggested edited the released version of the Magnificent Ambersons is that he was a fool for leaving the Magnificent Ambersons unfinished and at the mercy of the studio. He did not act like a fool. He simply failed to concieve of a situation akin to the one that transpired."

Amen !!