During his later years, wryly quipped that, "I started at the top and have been working my way down ever since." Though still in his early twenties, Welles was already a star when he arrived in Hollywood during the late 1930s. He had established a reputation as an actor-director of note on both the stage and radio, to such a degree that he was able to wrangle a contract that gave the first-time director total control over whatever he came up with. The result was 1941 's , a masterpiece of intelligent, stylised filmmaking - one that also fatefully satirised powerful newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. As Hearst blustered and controversy raged, Welles started work on an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's acclaimed novel The Magnificent Ambersons, which Welles had previously adapted for radio. Tracing the decline of a once-great Midwestern family, it echoed Welles' own privileged upbringing. Indeed, Tarkington had known Welles' parents, and Welles liked to claim that one of the novel's main characters had been based on his own inventor father. By the time Ambersons was complete, though, the Kane controversy had dealt its damage, and after completing an almost two-and-a-half-hour cut of the film, Welles saw it wrestled away from him and hacked down to 88 minutes. Then, with the film-stock's nitrate needed for the World War II effort, the movie's studio, RKO, ordered the negative to be melted down. Today, The Magnificent Ambersons is widely regarded as one of cinema's great lost films. And it was a blow from which the man himself never recovered. "[The studio] destroyed Ambersons, and the He was tasked with clearing out a room at picture itself destroyed me," Welles would the studio, which had been found sealed up tell the BBC years later. like a vault. It turned out to be the very room FROM TH E MAN WHO MADE 'THt; Bt:ST PICTURE OF 191/"' But is that original version truly lost? in which Welles had edited both Citizen Around the world are dotted a number of Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. enthusiastic Ambersons hunters: people "I was told that everything needed to who have spent decades trying to track be cleaned up and tossed," Chandler says. down that fabled director's cut, committed "Only I found something immensely themselves to reassembling it, or otherwise valuable in there. And that's how I came simply piecing together exactly what it is to be introduced to Orson." that happened to this missing masterpiece. What he discovered wasn't The Magnificent Ambersons, rather the fine­ grain negative for a later Orson Welles film, The Trial. Chandler contacted cameraman ORSON Gary Graver, who'd worked with Welles at the time, and told him that he wouldn't WELLES' give the negative to anyone except Orson l/f.Rct·Rr l'/tO/Jl'CTllJX fJf himself. A meeting was arranged. I l e Roor11 r.1~1.-1xcro. \ ··s 'fl, f;1u;. 1T . \on~L "It was very mysterious," Chandler remembers. "I was given a place to go to, and when I got there Gary was waiting, THE ARCHIVE RAIDER and he took me in a separate car to meet Magnificent Orson, who was in his editing room." One of the earliest Ambersons hunters is Welles was impressed, and asked {\.mbersons ~"' OOt.oacs Fred Chandler, today the Executive Vice­ Chandler if he might be able to find corri:!:~ COSTELLO · BAXTER . Hoh President of Post Production at 20th Ambersons. Chandler returned to the MOOREHEAD · c?JL1Ns. SANFORD Century Fox. During the 1980s, Chandler Paramount lot and continued his search. BEmiErr was working at Paramount, which had It was painstaking work, since many &rn. Pfa!f, Prwiwtia ••i /)irtt/io,.., On• H'HkJ v bought out Welles' former studio, RKO. films were mislabelled or stored in the

110 - EMPIRE JUN E20 15 empireonline.c wrong canisters, but six months later Above left: Tim of cinema," says Grossberg, today he unearthed another Welles creation: Holt, Anne Baxter, a writer and filmmaker himself. "How Joseph Cotten and 309 cans filled with lost footage from an Dolores Costello in could we not go and look for it?" unreleased Welles documentary called the studio cut of the For five days, the friends lodged with It's All True. Then Chandler hit upon a sweeping family epic. Brazilian and Ambersons fan promising lead, finding the contact details Rogerio Sganzerla, who introduced them Above: Costello for a former RKO employee named Hazel and Holt as mother to an archivist who worked for 30 years in Mar hall. Only for her to tell him that it Isabel Amberson and the Rio Cinemateca archives. He recalled was she who'd incinerated the Ambersons THE BRAZIL BOYS meddling son George. seeing original film canisters during the negati\'e and that she knew of no other. For Left: The poster for 1960s, belonging to Orson Welles. The Chandler. this signalled the end of the hunt. There is another intriguing strand to the the RKO release, label on them had read "RKO Films". '·we re itting in the editing room and Magnificent Ambersons mystery. After which was in fact far "Although it's been reported that the from "Orson Welles' I said. ·Orson. I've got something to tell Welles wrapped the film on January 22, The Magnificent film canisters were shipped back to RKO, you .... Chandler speaks lowly as he relives 1942, he and editor Robert Wise headed Ambersons". one of the things we were told was that in a painful emory. "Orson immediately to Miami. Over an exhausting three days Brazil, private collectors would often make kne\\ \\ · 1 \\as about. but he said, 'Tell and nights, they edited together a rough copies of the different prints that came . ·orson. it doesn't exist. The cut which ran to three hours. Welles then into the country," Grossberg remembers. headed to Rio for his next job, directing It's He and Ow were given the names of three All True for the US State Department. prominent film collectors in the area who The plan was for a copy of the might fit the description. Two of them Ambersons negative to be sent there for him are now dead, while the other appears to to work on. It arrived on March 15, 1942. have never existed in the first place. The More than half a century later, a pair students returned to the United States that WO of preppy American students named Josh empty-handed, but they still don't feel ~ got so gn Grossberg and Dominic Ow flew to Brazil their search is over. "It's possible that ~ their one per on their own dime, determined to track The Magnificent Ambersons was spirited c: "The Mag:i_ lifi:::ent .:'\nl:Je:rso1115 down this still AWOL negative. "The lost away to some collector's vault," says - Orson· I print of The Magnificent Ambersons is Grossberg, "and that even today they ~ < been hi one of the greatest mysteries in the history don't realise what they have." >

subscribe a JUNE 2015 EMPIRE - Ill THE GREATEST FILMS NEVER MADE THE OTHER WELLES MOVIES THAT REMAIN (MOSTLY) MIA

HEART OF DARKNESS Before Citizen Kane, Welles planned a movie adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness novella, which later formed the basis for Fra ncis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The 24 year-old Welles planned to shoot the whole fi lm in a single, continuing shot, from a first-person perspective, but the project fell apart - partially over budgeting issues. THE LIFE OF CHRIST Not one of Welles· major unfinished wo rks but among his most intriguing, The Life Of Ch rist was one possible project to follow Citizen Kane. It would have drawn all its dialogue fro m the New Testament, but the setting moved to the Old West. Welles wrote a script and scouted locations for his Jesus Western - although it never materialised. IT'S ALL TRUE Welles left Ambersons during post­ production to work on th is South American documentary, which was itself never completed. Years later, some of the surviving footage was made available in the 1993 documentary It's All True: Based On An Unfinished Film But Ryan didn't realise how much by Orson Welles. Ambersons itself had been changed until one Christmas he was given a book DONOUIXOTE about Welles featuring the film 's original Rather like Terry Gilliam more recently, editing instructions. "What shocked me Welles spent years trying to bring the was that, contrary to my belief at the story of chiva lrous dreamer Don Quixote time, it wasn't just the ending of the film to the screen. The film was initially that got changed," Ryan says. "If you conceived in 1955, and Welles worked look at the cutting instructions for the on it intermittently for the re maining THE RECREATIONIST complete version, and you compare it 30 years of his life. At one point he got to what we have on screen in the publicly so fed up of being asked about it, he Not every Ambersons hunter has taken released version, only nine out of a total considered renaming the film When the same approach. "I became a fan of of 48 scenes in the released edit are Are You Going To Fi nish Don Quixote? Welles in my early teens because of the exactly as Welles intended them. The showmanship displayed in his films," film just got mutilated." THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND says filmmaker and Welles aficionado Ryan had editing equipment, but A mockumentary about the death Roger Ryan. "The tracking camera, the obviously no access to the original of Old Hollywood and the arrival of the expressionistic lighting, the dynamic edits workprint of Ambersons. So he figured ava nt-garde directors of the 1970s, The and the overlapping dialogue felt akin to he could do the next best thing: reconstruct Other Si de Of The Wind was meant to a magic act." Growing up outside Detroit, it to Welles' specifications. He called in a ma rk Welles· comeback as a filmmaker, Michigan, Ryan could easily relate to group of friends who helped him perform but legal problems stopped its release ... Ambersons' story of a Midwestern US the dialogue from the shooting script. Until soon as, excitingly, it is finally set city changed forever by the arrival of Then he obtained a copy of composer to come out this year. the automobile and industrialisation. Bernard Hermann's original score,

112 - EMPIRE JUN E2015 emp ireonline.com an official release impossible, although cars driving down a road, banked on both the film has been shown at festivals. The sides by enormous factories, belching result is, by definition, amateur - but the acrid black smoke into the sky. It is a fact that it plays so well regardless is a sombre and hellish ending, showing how testament to the power of Welles' vision. the Ambersons' idyllic slice of America "Roger did an amazing job of succumbed to industrialisation. At this integrating stills, dialogue and music point, Welles' voice would appear on from the missing scenes to give us a fuller the soundtrack, saying, "Ladies and sense of how dark and disturbing and rich gentlemen, that's the end of the story." this film was before RKO went at this If the director's cut couldn't be found, masterpiece with a lawnmower," says film McBride resolved to find these, at least, historian Joseph McBride, author of What for posterity's sake, and he tracked them Ever Happened To Orson Welles. "As to a storage locker in Los Angeles, where a result, Roger is a hero of mine and he found them amid a pile of junk. But should be to all lovers of film history." it turned out that the locker had recently been broken into. The missing items: a few surfboards, and the last shot of one of the greatest films never released. "It's just another tragedy in the history of Ambersons," McBride sighs.

Today, The Magnificent Ambersons isn't Welles' only lost - or, indeed, 'complicated' - movie (see sidebar, facing page). Throughout the rest of his THE EXPERT career, he found himself at loggerheads with Hollywood and distributors, with "We joke that we're still working for films unceremoniously sliced and diced as Orson Welles, because he left so much a result. But there is hope. Occasionally unfinished business for us to take care Welles enthusiasts will be rewarded by of," says Joseph McBride. "Right now I'm some fresh discovery. A few years ago, the working on several Orson Welles projects. unfinished nitrate workprint of one of And perhaps the biggest of those is trying Welles' earliest lost films - shot several to find The Magnificent Ambersons." years before Citizen Kane - was found in Most Ambersons hunters are motivated an Italian warehouse by the staff at a local by the sheer mystery of the original cut's cinema. Titled Too Much Johnson, the disappearance, or by their appreciation of short film starred a 23 year-old Welles, and Welles himself, whose legend looms large was intended to be part of a stage play even today. But McBride's passion is that flopped. Then, this year, audiences located in something quite different. His will finally get their chance to see The great uncle was producer Bryan Foy ­ Other Side Of The Wind: a mammoth known at Warner Bros. as "the keeper of unseen project which consumed Welles the B's" - who played a significant part from 197 l until his death in 1985. in Ambersons' destruction. Although not This is the dream for The Magnificent an employee of RKO, Foy had been called Ambersons: the possibility that, one day, in to advise on how Ambersons could be a complete copy may turn up in some salvaged. His answer? Chop it in half. "He sealed vault in the Hollywood hills, said it was 'too fuckin' long'," McBride or in afave/a in Brazil. Strangely, Welles' recalls, sadly. "You could say I feel a family reputation has only grown through his obligation to make amends for that event." status as an artist wronged by the Today, McBride refers to Ambersons Hollywood machine. The digital age has as not only his favourite Welles film, but made us expect 'findability'. In an age his favourite film, period. He has spent of Amazon, iTunes, eBay and YouTube, which had been pulled from the film Left: Orson Welles decades not only trying to get to the nothing feels rare anymore. And with so after a disagreement with the studio. In on the Ambersons set. bottom of the missing print mystery, but many DVD extras, deleted scenes and lieu of footage, he gathered a number of also educating people about Welles and directors' commentaries on offer, that an Top: Welles with unseen publicity stills which had been cinematographer his lost masterpiece. He has not only hour of a movie by such a lauded director produced for the picture and which Gary Graver in 1972. guided other Ambersons hunters, but has should disappear seems almost impossible. revealed almost every scene that had been traced most of the weird tangents that "Orson Welles continues to enthrall Above: Historian cut. He then pieced it all together to create Joseph McBride plagued the picture's rediscovery. For anyone who loves movies," says Fred an impressionistic approximation of sketches out his instance, during the 1970s, McBride was Chandler, who today keeps a framed Ambersons as its creator bad imagined it. memory - from one of the first people to see the publicity photo of the man, circa The Magnificent ·'It was just a homemade project," he says, '7Ds publicity stills - of the original stills that would later prove so useful to Ambersons, above his desk at 20th Century modestly. "My idea was only ever to make version's last shot. Roger Ryan. At the time there were more Fox. "He was an absolute master of the omething that I could watch myself." than 50 of them. Today, there are far fewer. medium. A genius. Is it any wonder that However, word got out about Ryan's Many have disappeared - including the people wouldn't want to give up on finding project and he was soon inundated with original final scene of the film: an overhead what could have been his greatest movie?" requests to screen it. Copyright laws make shot of one of the principal characters' [email protected] subscribe at www. empi reonline.com/sub JUNE 2015 EMPIRE - 113