Robert Wise was one of the many vocal detractors of the critically derided 2002 Alfonso Arau mini-series remake.
Robert Wise's first directing experience, although uncredited.
Orson Welles suspected that author Booth Tarkington based the lead character George on Welles himself for a variety of reasons: Tarkington was a friend of the Welles family, Welles had a reputation for being a spoiled, difficult child and Welles's full name was George Orson Welles, so he was called George or Georgie while growing up.
Tim Holt and Anne Baxter walk past a movie theater advertising a film starring Jack Holt, Tim's father.
Ray Collins was the only member of the cast to have featured in Welles' radio version in 1939.
Agnes Moorehead's signature scene - which secured her an Academy Award nomination - in which she bemoaned the turn of the Ambersons fortunes and her inability to provide for George, was actually cobbled together from original footage and hastily reshot scenes. The latter had no input from Welles.
A print of Welles' rough cut was allegedly sent to the director on location in Brazil. It has yet to be found.
According to Peter Bogdanovich, Orson Welles said many times that this film could've been "much better than Citizen Kane." Also, while Welles always refused to watch any of his films, he was in a hotel room in the 70s with many friends and 'The Magnificent Ambersons' was on TV, and he was talked into watching the rest of it. It is said that he was teary throughout, and confessed that although the ending didn't work, he still liked the film.
After a disastrous preview, it was clear to the suits at RKO that the film was too long, too dense and too sombre. Welles, however, had decamped to Brazil where he was in the midst of working on a film called "It's All True" (which was never completed). Welles had been shipped out there under the auspices of Nelson Rockefeller, one of the chief shareholders in RKO, to make a film boosting US-South American wartime relations. With him out of the way, however, the onus of re-cutting and trimming the film fell on editor Robert Wise.
After attending the first preview, RKO president George Schaefer wrote to Welles: "Never in all my experience in the industry have I taken so much punishment or suffered as I did at the Pomona preview".
Although Orson Welles had hoped to work again with the great cinematographer Gregg Toland, with whom he so generously shared a credit card on Citizen Kane, Toland under contract to Sam Goldwyn was not available. Welles, however, insisted that Toland's camera crew work on this film: Burt Shipman operated the camera; the assistant cameraman was Eddie Garvin, the gaffer Bill J. McClellan and the key grip Ralph Hoge.
Attempts to send Robert Wise to Brazil so that he could work alongside Welles were prevented due to wartime travel restrictions.
Aunt Fanny did not feature in Welles' radio adaptation.
Composer Bernard Herrmann had his name removed from the credits in protest at the way RKO messed about with his work.
From a budget of $1 million, the film lost over $600,000 - a huge amount of money for a small studio like RKO.
In the absence of Welles, RKO cut 50 minutes from the original film, which was destroyed, ostensibly to free up vault space at the studio. However, there was also conjecture that this was done to prevent Welles from attempting to make any changes to what was left of his film. The RKO-mandated re-editing had been left in the hands of two men: Robert Wise, and studio rep Jack Moss. A phone was put into Moss's office that fed directly to Welles's hotel room in Rio. According to future director Cy Endfield, who was working with Moss at the time, often when the phone rang, suspecting it was Welles with his latest batch of comments and suggestions for the re-edit, Moss would simply not answer the call. Similarly, when Moss received lengthy telegrams from Welles with more suggestions and thoughts, he would throw them away.
In the newspaper reporting the auto accident that injured George Amberson Minafer, the left hand column is "Stage Views" featuring the picture and byline of "Jed Leland", the theater critic in Citizen Kane, also directed by Orson Welles. Leland was played by Joseph Cotten, who plays Eugene Morgan in this movie.
Ironically, RKO's reshot ending for the film - a much more uplifting affair than the one that Welles had intended - is much closer to the ending in the novel.
On its original release, the film was shown as a second feature on a double bill with Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost.
One of former silent star Dolores Costello's last roles. She was forced to retire from the film business as her face had become badly scarred by early film make-up which was highly caustic.