By RAY KELLY
If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, Josh Grossberg would be in Rio de Janeiro right now — hunting for Orson Welles’ fabled cut of The Magnificent Ambersons.
A journalist and filmmaker, Grossberg has been tracking down leads since first traveling to Brazil in December 1994 in search of the 131-minute version that existed before RKO Radio Pictures removed nearly 50 minutes of Welles footage, tacked on a happy ending and ordered the destruction of the original cut.
Grossberg had lined up financial backing in Los Angeles for a four-week expedition this summer. He planned to tell how the print was left at a Rio studio and track down the families of four private collectors, who might unknowingly have the footage in their possession.
“I was out in L.A. in January, I met with Peter Bogdanovich, which was great… I have a nice little team together and everything was going great — and then the pandemic hit,” Grossberg told Wellesnet. “We were hoping to get down to Brazil this summer and shoot the bulk of the documentary — but how do I get to Brazil when it is a major hotspot.”
Brazil is second only to the U.S. with confirmed cases of coronavirus.
If health conditions there improve, Grossberg is hoping to make the trek to Brazil later this year to hunt for the footage and film the story of the undoing of The Magnificent Ambersons. (See his four-minute “sizzle reel” below).
Welles lost control of the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons in spring 1942 while filming a wartime project in Brazil. After two less-than-satisfactory previews, editor Robert Wise drastically recut the movie at RKO’s direction
According to RKO memos and cables, two groupings of Ambersons reels (14 and 10), as well as 10 reels of Journey Into Fear, were shipped to Welles in Brazil so he could edit the film with Wise.
“What those reels actually contained is not noted in the (RKO) memo. We have the Wise letter saying he had shipped the 131-minute cut to Welles in Brazil,” Magnificent Ambersons authority Roger Ryan told Wellesnet. “Since an individual reel of 35mm film cannot contain more than 10 minutes of film, 14 reels would run a maximum of 140 minutes.”
Ryan added, “Wise definitely refers to sending alternate excerpts showing how the surrounding scenes would play with the factory scene and the two porch scenes removed. Given how much material Welles was requesting, it’s not unreasonable there could be 10 reels of alternates or test edits — but this is not a given. It’s possible that those 10 reels represent the final 88-minute released version, but I’m not sure why that would be shipped to Brazil other than as a courtesy to Welles. ”
The studio-edited version of the film was released in July 1942, less than two weeks after newly installed RKO head Charles Koerner ordered Welles’ Mercury Productions off the lot. At the direction of her bosses, Hazel Marshall, head of RKO’s stock-film library, had the negative of the deleted scenes incinerated in December 1942. (She confirmed the cremation took place in a conversation with Paramount executive Fred Chandler four decades later.)
More than two years after Welles left Brazil, RKO instructed the Rio film studio Cinedia, which Welles had used as a base in 1942, to junk the reels of The Magnificent Ambersons and Jouney Into Fear. Cinedia owner Adhemar Gonzaga, a cineaste and film collector, notified RKO he had complied with their wishes.
“I find the conclusion that the film was junked next to impossible. At minimum, it was kept in storage and some collector got his hands on it. I firmly, firmly believe that,” Grossberg said. “Brazilians are passionate film lovers, especially in the ’30s and ’40s. They loved Welles. He was a god. They were well aware of Citizen Kane.”
He dismissed the notion that the footage was sent back to the U.S. “There’s no way they are going to send a print back just to be junked by RKO because they already knew a cut version of Ambersons had come out in the United States.”
During a trip to Brazil a quarter of a century ago, Grossberg met Michel do Esprito Santo, an archivist. He claimed he saw a Welles print in a film can at Cinedia, though he could not confirm it was The Magnificent Ambersons. De Esprito searched for it later, but it was gone — possibly trashed or taken by a private collector.
Grossberg has identified four private collectors, who bought films from the Cinedia warehouses.
The footage — if it still exists — may be in the hands of relatives of a now deceased collector, who are unaware of the significance of what is on those reels, he said
“Hopefully, it is in the hands of a collector who has the means to preserve celluloid in the warm, humid temperatures of Brazil,” he said.
He is well aware the odds that the 131-minute cut has survived the past 78 years are slim, but Grossberg believes that even if he comes back from Brazil empty handed, he will still have a fascinating documentary on the behind-the-scenes drama.
“Whether or not we find the print — and it would be great if we did — I think there is a great story there.”
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