The Magnificent Ambersons

The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington, the second in his Growth trilogy after The Turmoil (1915) and before The Midlander (1923, retitled National Avenue in 1927). It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1925, it was adapted into the silent film Pampered Youth directed by David Smith. In 1942, it was made into The Magnificent Ambersons film written and directed by Orson Welles (though the released version was edited against Welles' wishes). Much later in 2002, came a same-titled TV adaptation based on Welles' screenplay. Plot summary The story is set in a largely-fictionalized version of Indianapolis, and much of it was inspired by the neighborhood of Woodruff Place. The novel and trilogy trace the growth of the United States through the declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socioeconomic change in America. The decline of the Ambersons is contrasted with the rising fortunes of industrial tycoons and other new money families, which derive power not from family names but by "doing things." As George Amberson's unspecified friend says, "Don't you think being things is 'rahthuh bettuh' than doing things?"