The Furniture: The Magnificent Amberson Mansion
Monday, July 10, 2017 at 10:30AM "The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.
Much has been written about the making of The Magnificent Ambersons, the conflict between Orson Welles and RKO, Robert Wise’s studio-mandated shorter version, Bernard Herrmann’s refusal of credit, and the loss of much of the original footage. It’s a fascinating story.
However, this column isn’t about that. There remains plenty to celebrate in the version that was released to theaters, 75 years ago today. At the top of that list is the Amberson mansion, a triumph of design that should stand next to Citizen Kane’s Xanadu. It’s like a Victorian ancestor to the great palace of Charles Foster Kane, a previous iteration of wealth’s excesses. But the story of The Magnificent Ambersons is not about a meteoric rise in fortune, but what comes after.