July 10, 1942 –
RKO Pictures released Orson Welles‘ butchered masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, on this date. (Like El Dorado or Shangri-La, a work print of Welles’ version supposedly exists in a vault somewhere in Brazil, tantalizingly, just out of reach. I have just read the TCM is currently sponsoring an exhaustive search through a major Brazilian film vault, this summer.)
RKO chopped 50 minutes of the film and added a happy ending while Orson Welles was out of the country. The consensus of opinion according to nearly everyone who saw the original conclusion – which included a tour of the decaying Amberson mansion – was that it was much more powerful than the tacked-on “happy” ending. The footage was thought to have been subsequently destroyed; the only record of the removed scenes is the cutting continuity transcript.
The Haus of Dcaligari 