Trivia and Other Fun Stuff on THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

Booth Tarkington was a friend of Orson Welles's family. Some biographers have suggested that he based the character of Eugene Morgan on Welles's father, who had made a fortune as an automobile manufacturer. Welles also told people he suspected that the spoiled George Minafer had been based on himself.

The Magnificent Ambersons is the only film directed by Welles in which he does not appear. He would later say that this made it a particularly joyous experience for him.

Welles used an iris effect to begin and end some scenes in tribute to the earliest silent films, particularly those directed by D.W. Griffith, who was credited with creating that cinematic trick.

On one of their walks through town, Tim Holt and Anne Baxter pass a movie marquee advertising a film starring Holt's father, Jack Holt.

The newspaper reporting George's injury in the automobile accident also has a story bylined by "Jed Leland," the theatre critic played by Joseph Cotten in Citizen Kane (1941). The paper itself is part of the Kane publishing empire.

Welles worked on the film's editing in the same Miami facility where animator Max Fleischer made his "Betty Boop" and "Popeye the Sailor" cartoons. That's also where he recorded the narration.

Many historians consider Agnes Moorehead's performance as Fanny Minafer the first to show the modern concept of a neurotic on-screen. In Focus on Orson Welles, Stephen Farber calls it "an archetype for all those hysterically repressed, neurasthenic spinster heroines of the next decades."

By Frank Miller

Famous Quotes from THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

"The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873. Their splendor lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and darken into a city." -- Orson Welles's opening narration.

"Anybody that really is anybody ought to be able to go about as they like in their own town, I should think." -- Tim Holt, as George Amberson Minafer, describing his view of polite behavior to Anne Baxter, as Lucy Morgan.

"Eighteen years have passed, but have they?...By gosh, old times certainly are starting all over again."
"Old times. Not a bit. There aren't any old times. When times are gone, they're not old, they're dead. There aren't any times but new times." -- Ray Collins, as Jack Amberson, reminiscing with Joseph Cotten, as Eugene Morgan.

"Well, just look at them. That's a fine career for a man, isn't it? Lawyers, bankers, politicians. What do they ever get out of life, I'd like to know. What do they know about real things? What do they ever get?"
"What do you want to be?"
"A yachtsman!" -- Holt, as George Amberson Minafer, sharing his plans with Baxter, as Lucy Morgan.

"I think we've been teasing her about the wrong things. Fanny hasn't got much in her life. You know George, just being an Aunt isn't really the great career it sometimes seemed to be. Really don't know of anything much Fanny has got, except her feeling about Eugene." -- Collins, as Jack Amberson, warning Holt, as George Amberson Minafer, to take it easy on Agnes Moorehead, as Fanny Minafer.

"This town seems to be rolling right over that old heart you mentioned just now, Jack. Rolling over us and burying us under." -- Richard Bennett, as Major Amberson, bemoaning changing times.

"Automobiles are a useless nuisance." -- Holt as George Amberson Minafer, deliberately insulting Cotten, as Eugene Morgan.

"I'm not sure George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward, they may be a step backward in civilization. It may be that they won't add to the beauty of the world or the life of men's souls. I'm not sure. But automobiles have come. And almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They're going to alter war and they're going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. It may be that in 10 or 20 years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine but would have to agree with George: that automobiles had no business to be invented." -- Cotten, responding to Holt's insult.

"Well, it's a new style of courting a pretty girl, I must say, for a young fellow to go deliberately out of his way to try to make an enemy of her father by attacking his business. By Jove, that's a new way of winning a woman." -- Collins, as Jack, chiding Holt for insulting Cotten.

"You wouldn't treat anybody in the world like this, except old Fanny! 'Old Fanny,' you say, 'It's nobody but old Fanny, so I'll kick her. Nobody'll resent it. I'll kick her all I want to!' And you're right. I haven't got anything in the world since my brother died. Nobody. Nothing!" --Moorehead, as Fanny Minafer, protesting Holt's mistreatment of her.

"Oh, I was a fool. Eugene never would have looked at me, even if he'd never seen Isabel. And they haven't done any harm! She made Wilbur happy. She was a true wife to him as long as he lived. Here I go, not doing myself a bit of good by him, I'm just ruining them." -- Moorehead, as Fanny, regretting her role in ruining Dolores Costello `s, as Isabel Minafer, happiness.

"Dearest One Yesterday, I thought the time had come when I could ask you to marry me and you were dear enough to tell me, 'Sometime it might come to that.' Now, we are faced, not with slander, not with our own fear of it, because we haven't any, but someone else's fear of it, your son's. Oh dearest woman in the world, I know what your son is to you and it frightens me. Let me explain a little. I don't think he'll change. At 21 or 22, so many things appear solid, permanent, and terrible, which 40 sees as nothing but disappearing miasma. Forty can't tell 20 about this. Twenty can find out only by getting to be 40. And so we come to this, dear. Will you live your life your way or George's way? Dear, it breaks my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is your own selfless and perfect motherhood. Are you strong enough, Isabel? Can you make a fight? I promise you that if you will take heart for it, you will find so quickly that it's all amounted to nothing. You shall have happiness and only happiness. I'm saying too much for wisdom, I fear. And oh my dear, won't you be strong? Such a little short strength it would need. Don't strike my life down twice, dear. This time I've not deserved it." -- Cotten's letter to Costello, as Isabel Amberson Minafer.

"And now Major Amberson was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his life. And he realized that everything which had worried him or delighted him during this lifetime was all trifling and waste beside what concerned him now - how to enter an unknown country where he was not even sure of being recognized as an Amberson." -- Welles as the narrator, describing Major Amberson's (Richard Bennett) death.

"It must be in the sun. There wasn't anything here but the sun in the first place...The Earth came out o' the sun, and we came out of the Earth. So whatever we are..." -- Bennett's final words as Major Amberson.

"Once I stood where we're standing now to say goodbye to a pretty girl. Only it was in the old station before this was built. We called it the depot. We knew we wouldn't see each other again for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it. She stood there crying - don't even know where she lives now. Or if she is living. If she ever thinks of me she probably imagines I'm still dancing in the ballroom of the Amberson mansion. She probably thinks of the mansion as still beautiful. Still the finest house in town. Ah, life and money both behave like loose quicksilver in a nest of cracks. When they're gone, you can't tell where, or what the devil you did with them." -- Collins taking his leave of Holt.

"I had too much unpleasant excitement. I don't want any more. In fact, I don't want anything but you." -- Anne Baxter, as Lucy Morgan, explaining to Cotten why she has never married.

"I knew your mother wanted me to watch over you, and try and make something like a home for you, and I tried. I tried to make things as nice for you as I could...I walked my heels down looking for a place for us to live. I-I walked and walked over this town. I didn't ride one block on a streetcar." -- Moorehead's breakdown in front of Holt.

"Something had happened, a thing which years ago had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town. And now it came at last: George Amberson Minafer had got his comeuppance. He'd got it three times filled and running over. But those who had longed for it were not there to see it. And they never knew it, those who were still living had forgotten all about it and all about him." -- Welles after Holt has lost everything.

Compiled by Frank Miller