High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942 U.S. period drama, the second feature film produced and directed by Orson Welles. Welles adapted Booth Tarkington`s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1918 novel, about the declining fortunes of a proud Midwestern family and the social changes brought by the automobile age. The film stars Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins, with Welles providing the narration.