The second book of his Growth trilogy, The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington, was published in 1918. It was made into the 1925 silent picture Pampered Youth after winning the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Orson Welles wrote and directed the movie that was released in 1942. A television adaptation based on Welles' screenplay debuted much later, in 2002. The rise of industrial tycoons and other new money families, who gain influence not through family names but by "doing things," contrasts with the demise of the Ambersons. At the turn of the century, the titular family is the wealthiest and most influential in the community. The patriarch's grandson, George Amberson Minafer, is pampered by his mother, Isabel. George falls in love with Lucy Morgan, a young but astute debutante, despite his conceit, self-assurance, and complete ignorance of the lives of others. George is not aware of the long relationship that exists between Lucy's father and his mother. Industry prospers as the village develops into a city, the Ambersons' fame and fortune decline, and the Morgans, due to Lucy's foresightful father, prosper. Life as George knows it ends when he thwarts his widowed mother's developing feelings for Lucy's father.
The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams are among the works of American author Newton Booth Tarkington, who was born on July 29, 1869, and died on May 19, 1946. (1921). He is one of just four authors who have twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He was regarded as the best-living novelist in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s. The son of John S. Tarkington and Elizabeth Booth Booth, Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was given the name Newton Booth in honor of his maternal uncle. The Triangle Club, subsequently known as Triangle, was created with his help, and he began the custom of staging student plays there. A blatant Midwestern regionalist, Tarkington based a large portion of his novels in his home state of Indiana. He twice received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his books The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams, in 1919 and 1922. Given his family's long history of public service, Tarkington believed that gentlemen in his socioeconomic position had a duty to serve their communities. One of the more well-known American authors of his period was Tarkington. Satirical and meticulously documented analyses of the American class structure make up a large portion of Tarkington's writing.
