Trivia

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 makeup, which was highly caustic.

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 recutting of this film caused a deep rift in Orson Welles' friendships with Robert Wise and Joseph Cotten. Cotten later wrote several letters of apology to Welles, and the two later reconciled. Welles and Wise, however, remained on acrimonious terms for some 42 years until Wise was invited to come to the stage by Gilbert Cates when the Directors Guild of America honored Welles with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984. The former rivals ended up shaking hands as the crowd rewarded them with a standing ovation.

The lost footage of Orson Welles's original cut of the film has earned a sort of "Holy Grail" status among film fans. A number of high-profile Hollywood figures have embarked on searches for the footage in the vaults at Paramount Studios (which absorbed the RKO lot and archives) and around Los Angeles, including Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, Henry Jaglom, and William Friedkin. Friedkin, in particular, spent years scouring Paramount, as he was married to longtime studio boss Sherry Lansing. As of 2018, none of their searches has turned up the missing footage.

Composer Bernard Herrmann had his name removed from the credits to protest the way RKO tampered with his work.