King Vidor

King Wallis Vidor (/ˈviːdɔːr/; February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades. In 1979, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator." He was nominated five times for a Best Director Oscar, and won eight international film awards during his career. Vidor's best known films include The Big Parade (1925), The Crowd (1928), Stella Dallas (1937), and Duel in the Sun (1946). Contrary to common belief, he is not related to fellow director Charles Vidor.

Early life and career

Vidor was born in Galveston, Texas, the son of Kate (Wallis) and Charles Shelton Vidor, a lumberman. His grandfather, Károly (Charles) Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s. King Vidor attended the Peacock Military Academy. He survived the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Based on that experience, he published a fictionalized account of that hurricane, titled "Southern Storm", for the May 1935 issue of Esquire magazine:

I remember now that it seemed as if we were in a bowl looking up toward the level of the sea. As we stood there in the sandy street, my mother and I, I wanted to take my mother's hand and hurry her away. I felt as if the sea was going to break over the edge of the bowl and come pouring down upon us.

A freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist, Vidor made his debut as a director in 1913 with The Grand Military Parade. In Hollywood from 1915, he worked as a screenwriter and as director of a series of at least ten short juvenile-delinquency films for Judge Willis Brown before directing his first feature, The Turn in the Road, in 1919. A successful mounting of Peg o' My Heart in 1922 won him a long-term contract with Goldwyn Pictures (later to be absorbed into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Three years later he made The Big Parade, among the most acclaimed war films of the silent era, and a tremendous commercial success. This success established him as one of MGM's top studio directors for the next decade. In 1928, Vidor received his first Oscar nomination, for The Crowd, widely regarded as his masterpiece and one of the greatest American silent films. In the same year he made his much-loved screwball comedy The Patsy starring Marion Davies, which was the first of three films she did for Vidor over the next two years. Later that year he made the classic Show People, a comedy about the film industry which also starred Davies (in which Vidor had a cameo as himself), and was his last silent film.

Vidor's first sound film was Hallelujah, a groundbreaking film featuring an African-American cast. He had no difficulty adjusting to sound and he continued making feature films until the late 1950s. Some of his better known sound films include Stella Dallas, Our Daily Bread, The Citadel, Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead, and War and Peace. He directed the Kansas sequences in The Wizard of Oz (including "Over the Rainbow" and the twister) when director Victor Fleming had to replace George Cukor on Gone with the Wind, but did not receive screen credit.

In 1962, he was head of the jury at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1969 he was a member of the jury at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival.

Vidor was entered in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest career as a film director: beginning in 1913 with Hurricane in Galveston and ending in 1980 with The Metaphor, a 36-minute documentary featuring the painter Andrew Wyeth. He was nominated five times for an Oscar but never won in direct competition; he received an honorary award in 1979.

William Desmond Taylor

In 1967, Vidor researched the unsolved 1922 murder of fellow director William Desmond Taylor for a possible screenplay. Vidor never published or wrote of this research during his lifetime, but biographer Sidney D. Kirkpatrick posthumously examined Vidor's notes. He alleged, in his 1986 book A Cast of Killers, that Vidor had solved the sensational crime but kept his conclusions private to protect individuals still living at the time. The widely cited newsletter Taylorology later noted over 100 factual errors in A Cast of Killers and strongly disputes Kirkpatrick's conclusions, but credits the book with renewing popular interest in the crime.

Personal life

In 1944 Vidor, a Republican, joined the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

Vidor published his autobiography, A Tree is a Tree, in 1953. This book's title is inspired by an incident early in Vidor's Hollywood career. Vidor wanted to film a movie in the locations where its story was set, a decision which would have greatly added to the film's production budget. A budget-minded producer told him, "A rock is a rock. A tree is a tree. Shoot it in Griffith Park" (a nearby public space which was frequently used for filming exterior shots).

King Vidor was a Christian Scientist and wrote occasionally for church publications.

Marriages

Vidor was married three times:

1. Florence Arto (m. 1915–1924)

   • (later married Jascha Heifetz)

   • Suzanne (1918–2003)

   • (adopted by Jascha Heifetz)

2. Eleanor Boardman (m. 1926–1931)
   • Antonia (1927–2012)
   • Belinda (born 1930)
3. Elizabeth Hill (m. 1932–1978)

Death

Vidor died at age 88 of a heart ailment at his ranch in Paso Robles, California, on November 1, 1982. His remains were cremated and scattered on the ranch property.

Academy Awards and nominations

Directed Academy Award performances

Academy Awards in King Vidor films

Other awards

At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded with the Honorable Prize for the contribution to cinema. In 2020, Vidor was honored with a retrospective at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, showcasing more than 30 of his films.