The Ending Of Orson Welles’s Second Film

In 1942, filmmaker Orson Welles was fresh off the success of his film Citizen Kane. In search of a fresh project, he turned to The Magnificent Ambersons, a prize-winning but practically forgotten novel. He quickly created a masterwork that modern reviewers have compared to Kane's. And they say this without even having seen the entire film—the studio deleted roughly a third of it.

Because Kane was a box office flop, RKO executives felt Welles didn't know how to direct a film. So when he showed them his heartfelt, 132-minute elegy to his childhood America, they pulled out the knives and chopped them to bits. Over 40 minutes of material were taken from Ambersons and secretly thrown at sea while Welles was filming another film in South America.

The damaged material comprised the majority of the second half as well as the original finale. Although the complete first half and a new finale remain, the film that may have been the finest ever created is no longer available. And the ending of Orson Welles’s second film is one of the cultural artifacts lost to humanity forever.