By RAY KELLY
For two and a half years, cinematic treasure hunters have made repeated trips to Brazil in search of the fabled lost, longer cut of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons.
The team headed by Joshua Grossberg has been keeping a relatively low profile since an April 2023 visit to South America. However, the silence does not necessarily mean the hunt is over or that they have no new leads.
Grossberg, who has chronicled the search for an upcoming documentary, The Lost Print: The Making of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, provided a carefully worded update to Wellesnet in response to our request for a status update.
“We know folks are eager to learn of the outcome of our investigation into the legendary lost print of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons,” Grossberg said. “Here’s the good news: The Lost Print team is still tracking down more leads while we conduct additional interviews and continue editing our long-awaited documentary. The bad news is we aren’t ready to disclose anything… yet.”
Grossberg revealed the researchers have received “some tantalizing inquiries from Welles fans, who believe they have information on the fate of the print – and in one particularly wild case – even claimed to have seen it when they were a child!”
“Of course, to paraphrase Orson, not everyone’s history can possibly be true,” Grossberg said. “But if it involves the lost original version of Ambersons, it’s worth looking into.”
Welles lost control over the final shaping his sophomore film in 1942.
With editing underway on The Magnificent Ambersons, RKO Pictures ordered Welles to Brazil in February 1942 to direct the ill-fated It’s All True. According to RKO memos and cables, two groupings of Ambersons footage (14 reels and another 10), as well as 10 reels of Journey Into Fear, were shipped to Brazil so Welles could finish editing the film. However, after a test audience reacted badly at a preview, RKO ordered a happier ending to be shot in Welles’ absence and drastically cut the movie down to 88 minutes.
The excised footage and outtakes stored in RKO’s vault in Southern California were subsequently destroyed.
“They destroyed Ambersons,” Welles would say in a BBC interview four decades later, “and the picture itself destroyed me; I didn’t get a job as a director for years afterwards.”
More than two years after Welles left Brazil, RKO instructed Cinedia Studios in Rio de Janiero, which Welles used as a base in 1942, to junk the reels of The Magnificent Ambersons and Journey Into Fear left behind. Cinedia owner Adhemar Gonzaga, a cineaste and film collector, notified RKO he had followed their orders.
However, Grossberg has theorized Gonzaga did not destroy the footage. It may be in the hands of a private collector’s descendants or simply mislaid.
Grossberg began his hunt for the lost Ambersons footage when he was a 21-year-old film student at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1995.
A documentarian, he secured backing for a full-fledged search timed to the film’s 80th anniversary in 2022. However, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the first expedition until October 2021. There have been followup trips to Brazil since then. The Lost Print team includes producer Gary Greenblatt and cameraman Matthew Reber, as well as Brazilian cinematographer Janice D’Avila.
Those with a “personal story to tell about the print” are encouraged to email Grossberg at press@thelostprint.com
__________
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.