(Editor’s note: Equally as lost as Orson Welles’ cut of The Magnificent Ambersons is the full version of a 1925 silent film based on the Booth Tarkington Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Fragments were included in the now out-of-print Criterion Collection laserdisc. Wellesnet reader Tadao had the opportunity view what remains of the silent film last fall in London and posted his impressions on the Message Board. It is presented here with minor editing.)
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I had the opportunity last week to see projected, for a second time, what remains of the 1925 silent film based on The Magnificent Ambersons. I had previously seen it some 18 months earlier on my first visit to the London meetings of Group 9.5, a club dedicated to the Pathescope format.
Some may be aware that excerpts were included on on the Criterion CAV laserdisc of The Magnificent Ambersons, which was issued in 1986. I was impressed by how much more satisfying the film presentation was than the excerpts on the laserdisc, which look and feel far more primitive than their 1925 vintage would justify. Encountering the surviving material as preserved on 9.5mm was a small revelation in terms of quality and coherence of narrative.
The showing was part of an event put on by the marvelous Kennington Bioscope organization at London’s Cinema Museum, in a program presented by the renowned silent film historian Kevin Brownlow. The sequence consisted of Pathescope 9.5mm home digest versions of Vitagraph feature films believed not to survive in their original length and format. The home versions are reduced to one or two reels of 9.5mm film, with runtimes of 10 to 20 minutes; the selections included in this program and another earlier in the summer is that the full length Vitagraph originals are thought ‘lost’, and that the digests are the only remaining versions.
Mr. Brownlow was wittily withering towards the 1925 film and several of the others shown in his spoken prefaces, but both times I’ve seen it projected I’ve been impressed by the photography and with some pleasing similarities to the 1942 RKO version.
These Pathescope cutdowns are typically issued under a different title than their feature-length progenitors, and have their intertitles rewritten and reset, with character names replaced. The 1931 British issued digest of Pampered Youth is entitled Two To One. The reworked intertitles somewhat confusingly rename Eugene Morgan as George Morgan (and Georgie Minafer as Jack Forest; unproblematic for those who don’t know the original character names, but leading to the unintended plot complication of my thinking for a moment that the mother would name her son after her former beau!). The Major and Isabel both remain Ambersons and Wilbur Minafer is Wilbur Forest. (Below, to minimize confusion between Georges and Jacks I’m using the names as they’re given in the Pampered Youth cast list which match the source novella and the Welles film, and calling the Pampered Youth himself Georgie.) I had thought the practice of changing character names was for copyright reasons, although the mix of retained and changed names in Two To One may indicate it was done to localize to names more familiar in a different national market.
This truncated version is the basis for the excerpts included on the Ambersons CAV laserdisc, whose jacket credits “Pampered Youth fragment restored and preserved by David Bradley and Kevin Brownlow”, but it shows much more of interest than the laserdisc, which segments contain little that chimes with the RKO production. If (as I was) you’re aware of Pampered Youth only through these excerpts on the laserdisc, you’ve not seen the surviving material that has the most resonance with the later film.
The excerpts included there consist of ‘The Opening’, a horse and dogcart race between the Eugene and Wilbur characters; ‘The Ambersons Ball’, two momentary shots extended by a static hold on a wide shot of the ballroom; ‘George and Lucy’s Ride’ which corresponds quite closely to the snow ride in the Welles film; and ‘The Ending’, Isabel’s rescue by Eugene from a burning boarding house and subsequent reconciliation of Georgie and Lucy. Needless to say neither the horse race and the boarding house fire have no equivalents in the Welles picture, although they make up the majority of the laserdisc excerpts running time. I’m puzzled why these excerpts were selected for the laserdisc, emphazing the difference in content over the parallels. Eugene’s serenade and subsequent disgrace are mentioned on a slate on the laserdisc but are not included there.
Significant segments seen in the two reel Pathescope Two To One that aren’t on the laserdisc are Eugene’s disgrace, exterior shots of the Amberson mansion before the ball, an explanation of the passage of time and both Eugene and Isabel’s widowhood, midshots of dancing and the Eugene/Isabel reunion and Georgie/Lucy meeting; then Georgie’s turning Eugene away at the door, Major Amberson’s money troubles and death, George’s unsuccessful search for work and employment as ditch digger, his automobile accident, and a sequence leading up to the fire where Isabel’s boarding house landlady admits Eugene and leaves her frying pan to burn while distracted by gossiping and eavesdropping.
A slate on the laserdisc states of the two very brief shots they include of the Ambersons’ Ball, “The footage in this excerpt is all that survives from this key scene”; thankfully it seems that more complete copies of the Pathescope cutdown have come to light in the interim as the print(s?) that I’ve seen in London have a nice (matte?) shot of the exterior of the mansion, mid-shots of dancing at the ball, and Georgie and Lucy’s introduction.
As an appendix in his book on Welles, Charles Higham included quite a good synopsis of the surviving footage from the 1925 film, using its Pathescope character names, crediting David Bradley for help with preparing it (unsure whether this means he drafted it or provided a viewing opportunity of the material); however Higham doesn’t point out that this description refers to the two-reel Two to One version severely truncated from the theatrically released Pampered Youth, leading readers to the incorrect idea that the changed character names and plot foreshortening occurred in the publicly exhibited version and not only the home digest format.
The Pathescope cutdown in its 1931 issue displays qualities and internal narrative cohesion not in evidence in the laserdisc excerpts, and shows more parallels with the 1942 feature too. The projection at the Cinema Museum ran 20 minutes with Mr. Brownlow reading a transcription of the intertitles, many of which flashed for only a frame as the notching on this particular print wasn’t reliably triggering the projector to hold the still frame as the format was intended to do. Pausing on the notched titles as the original projection equipment was designed to do would have added a few minutes to the running time.
The program notes supplied at the Brownlow event included a cast list sourced from the AFI (sourced, I assume, from contemporary materials), with the actors and their character names from the theatrical release version of Pampered Youth. The character rundown includes George Minafer as a boy, who isn’t depicted in this cutdown version, along with Wilbur Minafer (appearing in the short version only in the prologue). ‘George Amberson’, Uncle Jack of the Welles film retaining his original name from Tarkington, and Fanny Minafer are listed although they barely register, appearing wordlessly as spectators to the dogcart race, among those at the ball and in the joyride.
As stated in the Higham book, Isabel doesn’t die and she is the one reduced to genteel poverty in the boarding house, and thus able to be rescued by and reunited with Eugene Morgan (‘George’ Morgan in this two reeler).
The Eugene – Isabel reunion is a departure from Tarkington, but it’s a comprehensible commercial choice of the day to give a happy ending to both couples and seems no more bizarre than the ending of the 1942 release. The fire sequence which precedes it (occupying most of the second reel of the cutdown, and presumably left disproportionately and fundamentally complete from the full feature version) is naturally a purely cinematic invention; Mr. Brownlow quoted a review from the trade press at the time of the theatrical release which stated with enthusiasm that this had improved Tarkington! That concept notwithstanding, it’s an exciting sequence that played well to the audience at our screening.
With my less-than-photographic memory I felt a strong sense of resonance with the Welles film in the sequences of Eugene’s disgrace (as does Higham’s appendix, adding that a visual of the sewing circle is a less elaborate but similar motif to Welles’s depiction of town gossipmongers); in the shots of the Amberson mansion exterior and wide interior; the joyride (in the silent version without the snowy setting but otherwise quite similar to the RKO feature), subsequent interruption of the young couple’s clinch and motor ride homeward; Georgie’s doorstep dismissal of Eugene’s call (Higham’s appendix remarks on this too); Major Amberson’s last appearance in medium close portrait; Georgie’s job hunt, automobile accident and hospitalization. A quick visual reference to the 1942 film on the laserdisc shows that the coverage of the job hunt and hospitalization, but the unfamiliar city and the ‘comeuppance’ are described in terms similar to the visuals of the silent film.
Mr. Brownlow pointed out in his introduction that special care was taken in the 1925 production in sourcing period appropriate vehicles. The Higham appendix also comments on this common attention to detail as a reason for similarity). Higham further states: “Of course it would be grossly unfair to charge Welles with plagiarism, although it is possible he saw Pampered Youth – he was 10 or 11 when it was released. Although it is possible Welles screened it when he was preparing the new adaptation, the most likely explanation for the similar handling of such scenes as George’s (or Jack’s) rejection of Eugene or George at the door lies in the two films’ common source material and in well-established conventions handling in such scenes.”
A slate on the CAV laserdisc questions “Had Welles seen Pampered Youth? Most of the similarities between the two films are material that appears in Tarkington’s novel. However, Welles’ use of the iris effect in the same way it is used in this scene (“George and Lucy’s Ride”) in Pampered Youth is hard to explain in any other way.” I don’t recall if there was an iris out during the projection; the excerpt of this scene on the laserdisc ends with a vignette shot which I wouldn’t say is a smoking gun in terms of determining whether Welles or his team had made particular reference to Pampered Youth.
Simon Callow calls a chapter in Hello Americans ‘Pampered Youth‘, although I don’t have that volume to hand to see whether he makes any comment on the Vitagraph film. At a brief web search I haven’t come across information on when master material on Pampered Youth was destroyed, but certainly some now-lost silents were available for studio viewing by connected individuals into the 1960s.
With a crossed wire somewhere, Mr. Brownlow indicated that Welles was only born around the time of Pampered Youth‘s release, doubting the Welles would have had an opportunity to see it, and mentioned The Magnificent Ambersons as dating to 27 years later, not 17. Welles, as those of us here know, turned 10 years old in 1925. Mr. Brownlow quoted Variety that the production was “heralded by Vitagraph with much trumpet and fanfare.” Unfounded speculation on my part but my instinct says that the precocious and vociferous Young Orson might well have happened upon it or sought it out, particularly if the Tarkington source story was of interest to his father due to the automatative founding of Welles Sr.’s fortune (and misfortune) as Simon Callow’s Edinburgh talk reminded me. He might even have been pointed towards it as a story of a headstrong youth who gets his comeuppance! Presumably prints remained in circulation on the second-run and fleapit circuits for some time after the opening. There are also Welles’ collaborators on the RKO project to take into account – cinematographers, art directors, storyboard artists – older than Welles and also potential moviegoers in 1925 (maybe already in the industry), and established professions 16 years later. While the generational loss of the now surviving materials makes it look almost prehistoric in movie history, the features were released only 17 years apart, and there is enough in the surviving two-reel Pathescope version to indicate the professional production values that would have been on show in the original release.
As part of one of the other Ambersons threads on the Wellesnet Message Board, someone mentioned that RKO acquired title to the property through Warners, the successors to the Vitagraph library, and that the acquisition included script material (from unproduced 1930s developments) as well as rights. Would it be right to assume at least some rights to the original picture were included? Other remade pictures had their originals kept out of circulation following a remake by another studio. Would print and/or pre-print materials have made the transfer of studio at the same time?
The Welles’ Ambersons certainly employs compositions, rhythms and techniques making direct quotation of silent-era conventions, whether or not that reference material included Pampered Youth itself, synthesizing and shaping those elements as he did with disparate sources throughout his creative career. The narrated introduction to Welles’ Ambersons with Joseph Cotten’s changing outfits bears clear affectionate nostalgia for silent comedy films of the 20s, which we’ve so joyously seen reflected at greater length with the rediscovery of the Too Much Johnson interstitials, and bears similarities to sound era reworkings of vintage material with voice-over.
I see no plagiarism evident in any of the similarities whether or not Welles (or indeed his collaborators) saw the earlier film at a young age or later while preparing his own version. If he reworked, from memory or direct reference, any part of existing treatments other than the novella itself, it’s part of a normal collaborative and developmental filmmaking process.
It would be great to see the two-reel Two To One included on a future Ambersons Blu-ray. The 1930s print shown in London also shows a lot of black scratches (which seem to be printed in to the Pathescope prints from a scuffed master?), but unsurprisingly looked substantially better than the footage as it appeared on the laserdisc, probably due both to the limitations of that format and its analogue master tapes at that time, and due to the telecine methods available not accommodating 9.5mm film with ease. The surviving Pathescope cutdown in its entirety provokes a new angle of interest on Welles’ inspirations and references for Ambersons!
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