King Vidor facts for kids

Quick facts for kids King Vidor
Vidor in 1925
Born	(1894-02-08)February 8, 1894 Galveston, Texas, U.S.
Died	November 1, 1982(1982-11-01) (aged 88) Paso Robles, California, U.S.
Other names	King W. Vidor
Occupation	Film director producer screenwriter
Years active	1913–1980
Spouse(s)	Florence Arto ​ ​ (m. 1915; div. 1924)​ Eleanor Boardman ​ ​ (m. 1926; div. 1931)​ Elizabeth Hill ​ ​ (m. 1932⁠–⁠1978)​ her death

King Wallis Vidor (/ˈviːdɔːr/; February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose 67-year film-making career successfully spanned the silent and sound eras.

Early life and career

Vidor was born into a well-to-do family in Galveston, Texas, the son of Kate (née Wallis) and Charles Shelton Vidor, a lumber importer and mill owner. His grandfather, Károly Charles Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s. Vidor's mother, Kate Wallis, of Scotch-English descent, was a relative of the second wife of iconic frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett. The "King" in King Vidor is no sobriquet, but his given name in honor of his mother's favorite brother, King Wallis.

At the age of six, Vidor witnessed the devastation of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Based on that formative experience, he published a historical memoir of the disaster, titled "Southern Storm", for the May 1935 issue of Esquire magazine.

In 1939, he would direct the cyclone scene for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz.

Vidor was introduced to Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science by his mother at a very early age. Vidor would endow his films with the moral precepts of the faith, a "blend of pragmatic self-help and religious mysticism."

Vidor attended grade school at the Peacock Military Academy.

Vidor featured in the February 21, 1920, issue of Exhibitors Herald

Career

King Vidor and Colleen Moore on the set of The Sky Pilot (1921)

As a boy, Vidor engaged in photographing and developing portraits of his relatives with a Box Brownie camera.

At the age of sixteen Vidor dropped out of a private high school in Maryland and returned to Galveston to work as a Nickelodeon ticket taker and projectionist. As an 18-year-old amateur newsreel cameraman Vidor began to acquire skills as a film documentarian. His first movie was based on footage taken of a local hurricane (not to be confused with the 1900 Galveston hurricane). He sold footage from a Houston army parade to a newsreel outfit (titled The Grand Military Parade) and made his first fictional movie, a semi-docucomedy concerning a local automobile race, In Tow (1913).

In 1918, at the age of 24, Vidor directed his first Hollywood feature, The Turn in the Road (1919). Vidor would make three more films for the Brentwood Corporation, all of which featured as yet unknown comedienne Zasu Pitts, who the director had discovered on a Hollywood streetcar. The films Better Times, The Other Half, and Poor Relations, all completed in 1919, also featured future film director David Butler and starred Vidor's then wife Florence Arto Vidor (married in 1915), a rising actor in Hollywood pictures. Vidor ended his association with the Brentwood group in 1920.

Vidor's earlier films tend to identify with the common people in a collective struggle, whereas his later works place individualists at the center of his narratives.

Holiday greetings from the Vidors, December 25, 1920

Vidor's most acclaimed and successful film in the silent era is The Big Parade (1925). His sound films of the 1940s and early 1950s arguably represent his richest output. Among his finest works are Northwest Passage (1940), Comrade X (1940), An American Romance (1944), and Duel in the Sun (1946). His dramatic depictions of the American western landscape endow nature with a sinister force where his characters struggle for survival and redemption.

Vidor was considered an "actors' director": many of his players received Academy Award nominations or awards, among them Wallace Beery, Robert Donat, Barbara Stanwyck, Jennifer Jones, Anne Shirley, and Lillian Gish.

Vidor was nominated five times by the Academy Awards for Best Director. In 1979, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator." Additionally, he won eight national and international film awards during his career, including the Screen Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1957.

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 lectured occasionally on film production and directing in the late 1950s and the 1960s at two state universities in Southern California, (USC and CSU, Los Angeles.) He published a non-technical handbook that provides anecdotes from his film career, On Film Making in 1972.

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.

Filmography

Academy Awards and nominations

Directed Academy Award performances

Academy Awards in King Vidor films

Other awards

In 1964, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. 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.

Images for kids

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  King Vidor and Colleen Moore on location for The Sky Pilot near Truckee, California

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  Hendrik Sartov (cinematographer), King Vidor (director), Irving Thalberg (producer) & Lillian Gish (co-star) on the set of La Bohème

• 

  King Vidor (center) with Renée Adorée and John Gilbert. On the set of The Big Parade

• 

  Nina Mae McKinney as Chick in Hallelujah

• 

  Vidor directed the black & white sequences for The Wizard of Oz (1939), including Judy Garland singing Over the Rainbow

See also

In Spanish: King Vidor para niños