Like Charles Foster Kane and the youngest Amberson, Orson Welles was often his own worst enemy. Because Citizen Kane had caused terrific controversy and failed to recoup its blown budget quickly enough, Welles found himself working without a sympathetic ear inside his own studio. He had enjoyed absolute control over the making of Kane, an arrangement that had shocked Hollywood. Further, the ravenous Welles ego routinely earned him the wrath of moguls, allies, starlets, cast, and crew alike. Alarmed by advance reports that Ambersons was too bleak for an audience that would be seeking escape from wartime stress, RKO test-screened the full version. Predictably, the film tested too "down beat," allowing the studio to order self-justified cuts and re-shoots. Welles, making a documentary in Latin America at the time, was aware of the mess. Despite having ample opportunity to defend an ending he had added to the novel (which had Joseph Cotten visiting the superb Agnes Moorehead in a nursing home), Welles entrusted the editing and re-shoots to his editor Robert "Sound of Music" Wise. RKO had Wise shoot an entirely different ending.