title: Discworld (world)

text: Djelibeybi is based on the cultures of Ancient Egypt. Also called the Kingdom of the Sun and the Old Kingdom. Principal crops: melons, garlic and, since they are increasingly encroaching on the fertile agricultural land, pyramids. The name "Djelibeybi" is a pun lost on most people outside the UK, South Africa and Australia, playing on "Jelly baby", a popular gummi sweet in those countries. The joke is compounded when Pratchett says that "Djelibeybi" means "Child of the Djel" (its main river; the line is a parody of Herodotus's famous claim that Egypt was the "gift of the Nile"). Djelibeybi is wide and long and is on the Circle Sea coast of Klatch. The ancient country of Ur lies Rimward of it. The kingdom is almost entirely underwater during the flood season, and both threatened and protected on either side by stronger neighbours (Tsort and Ephebe). It was once great, but all that now remains is an expensive palace, a few ruins and pyramids. The entire economic life of the country is, until after the events of "Pyramids", devoted to building them. As a result, Djelibeybi is permanently bankrupt. The country has an enormous number of local gods, unknown to the world outside. Its ruler, the Pharaoh, is also a god, although in human form. He wears a gold mask (the Face of the Sun) and during his official functions carries the Flail of Mercy, the obsidian Reaping Hook of Justice, the Honeycomb of Increase, the Asp of Wisdom, the Sheaf of Plenty, the Gourd of the Water of the Heavens, the Three-Pronged Spear of the Waters of the Earth, the Cabbage of the Vegetative Increase and the Scapula of Hygiene. However, the then Pharaoh Pteppicymon XXVIII, also known as Pteppic, discovered that the mask was in fact gilded lead, the original gold one having likely been sold to pay for the pyramids.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Tsort: A mythical place (no books have yet been set there, with the possible exception of the events portrayed in "Faust Eric" where Rincewind and Eric Thursley appear briefly), the Disc's analogue to ancient Troy. Its enmity with Ephebe began with the famous Tsortean War, when King Mausoleum of Tsort kidnapped Queen Eleneor of Ephebe, leading to a siege that lasted for decades. To this day Tsort and Ephebe believe there is a place for giant wooden horses in combat. Tsort possesses a Great Pyramid, although pyramid-building has long been out of fashion and – no doubt because of the example of nearby Djelibeybi – modern Tsorteans scorn the things. Tradition claims Tsort was razed by the armies of Ephebe under Lavaeolus, and that it was home to the famed Tsortean Knot until the Knot was undone – sliced in half – by Carelinus. The people of Tsort worship all manner of gods, some of which seem to comprise all the bits the other gods had left over. The river Tsort bisects the desert rimwards of Al Khali.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Omnia is a desert theocracy ruled by the Cenobiarch, the head of the Omnian Church, from the Citadel in the capital city of Kom (a sort of cross between Qum, Jerusalem and the Vatican). There is also a connection to the Latin word 'Omnis', meaning all or everything, ironic due to the nation's unipolar outlook. When Omnianism was an intolerant religion it was known for its imperialism, having conquered the neighbouring countries of Betrek, Istanzia and Ushistan in the name of the Great God Om. After Brutha became the Cenobiarch, the country reversed directions and became the home of a renowned theological college and library. These days it is known for the constant arguing amongst the clergy, as new interpretations of Brutha's teachings spring up every day. The currency of Omnia is the obol. In "The Truth", it was mentioned that Omnia (or possibly the Agatean Empire) developed movable type printing in the production of religious texts.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Howondaland is the Discworld's principal "jungle" region. It lies on the Klatchian continent, and is the Disc's rough analogue to Sub-Saharan Africa, although the Tezumen Empire gives it Mesoamerican overtones as well. Howondaland is not so much a country as a blank patch on the map. Just as "darkest Africa" remained largely unexplored by Europeans until the 19th century, "darkest Klatch" is largely unknown to most Discworlders. Exploration of the land has been hampered by the habit of explorers ending up nailed to trees. Its name is probably a play on Gondwanaland or perhaps a play on the expression "How on earth ...?" transformed into "How on the land... ?" There is also an echo of Lewis Carroll's "Wonderland" in the name. In some of the early Discworld novels (American publications) it is spelled "Howonderland." In "Snuff", it was discovered that inexpensive tobacco for consumption in Ankh-Morpork was produced on Howondaland plantations, using slave labour by goblins transported from the Shires.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The Great Nef is a vast desert on the Klatchian continent, noted mainly for containing the Dehydrated Ocean, an ocean consisting of dehydrated water. Dehydrated water is a peculiar substance found only in areas of high magical concentration. It resembles fine sand, but can be reconstituted into normal water by adding water. The Dehydrated Ocean is home to its own, unique, kinds of fish. The name "Nef" is a reversal of fen, a type of wetland; "Great Nef" in particular may be a reference to the Great Fen, an historical wetland area in England in the area now known as The Fens and the subject of a restoration effort known as the Great Fen Project.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Only briefly mentioned in the books, Hersheba is a small desert kingdom rimwards of Klatchian empire, practically on the more-or-less vague boundary of Howondaland. The country is said to be ruled by a queen who lives forever (probably a reference to H. Rider Haggard's "She"). The nomadic tribes known as the D'regs occupy areas of Hersheba as well as Klatch. Depredations against Klatch by Hersheban D'regs, against Hersheba by Klatchian D'regs, and against both sides by their own D'regs has led to the border being in a permanent state of war. The name is a play on Hershey bar and also resembles Israeli Beersheba; Pratchett initially suggested it as an alternative name for Djelibeybi, to aid American readers mystified by the pun.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Very little is known about the Theocracy of Muntab. Its ruler is known as a Pash (Lu-Tze, the History Monk, once had to make sure one of them choked on a fishbone). It is often used as a generic third-world country, as in "Eat your dinner, there are starving children in Muntab who'd be glad to have that!" It is more or less on the border between the continent of Klatch and the Unnamed Continent, and is located more or less rimwards of Borogravia. Muntab is known to be eager to emerge as a dominant nation in the modern world, and is suspected to have ambitions to conquer the hubward nations, most notably Borogravia. As a result, it figures into the famous political problem, the Muntab Question – most often quoted as "Where's Muntab?", but in serious political discussion is more likely to concern the sides on which the more developed nations would fall in a war between Muntab and Borogravia. Muntab is very likely one of the nations in the Alliance that Borogravia is fighting in the novel "Monstrous Regiment". Muntab's calendar "counts down"; no-one really knows why, but it's probably NOT a good idea to stay there to see for oneself what happens when the count reaches zero.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Nothing is known of Istanzia, although it is a state big enough to send an Ambassador to Ankh-Morpork for Commander Vimes to frighten: when in "The Fifth Elephant" the Istanzian forces were reported to be making repeated armed incursions across the Slipnir River, Vimes's offer to arrange for the Istanzian Ambassador to "...go home in an ambulance" resulted in the Istanzian forces pulling back so far that they were "...nearly in the next country." At some point, Istanzia was controlled by Omnia ("Small Gods"), but it can be assumed they have gained personal jurisdiction.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The Tezumen Empire is a jungle civilisation in the darkest depths of Howondaland that resembles the Aztecs. They are renowned as the most pessimistic and angst-ridden culture on the Disc; their writing is engraved on giant slabs of stone rather than more conveniently written on paper. Large discs of precisely-carved stone with holes in the middle are used for almost every imaginable purpose except making wheels, a technology which they have not yet discovered. Before the events in "Eric", they worshiped the "feathered boa" Quezovercoatl, a parody of the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl, who was a junior demon who supplanted the previous Tezumen god, a stick; after manifesting himself to his worshippers, he was revealed to be only six inches high. The Tezumens have since tired of gods and killed all their priests.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The Counterweight Continent is situated on the opposite edge of the Discworld from the Unnamed Continent and Klatch. It is smaller than these other two landmasses but acts as a counterweight because its crust is made up largely of gold and octiron, both dense, heavy metals. It is (roughly) comma-esque in shape, and the tip of the comma extends all the way up to the ice cap at the Hub. Its closest point to the Unnamed Continent is about away but, as the channel is under an ice cap, it is often referred to as an isthmus. The cultures of the Counterweight Continent are a play upon those of Earth's Far East, or at least Western perceptions of it. In a pun on the Orient, it is also known as the Aurient, from the Latatian (Latin) word 'aurum' (gold), meaning 'the place where gold comes from'.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The Agatean Empire is the home of Twoflower and the Luggage. The country was first mentioned in the very first Discworld novel "The Colour of Magic", but was not explored: its main role was as the place from which Twoflower had come. It appeared in a brief segment of "Mort", and was the setting for most of "Interesting Times".


title: Discworld (world)

text: The Agatean Empire is similar to feudal Japan or Imperial China, most obviously in the vast wall that surrounds it, and the belief that anyone from outside the Empire must be an invisible vampire ghost (probably a play on "gwailo", lit. ghost man). The name is a pun on the term "Jade Empire," referring to ancient China. The capital of the Empire is Hunghung and the biggest port (and only one mentioned) is Bes Pelargic. However, in "Mort", Bes Pelargic was depicted as the Agatean capital, as Mort travelled there for the death of the Grand Vizier Nine Turning Mirrors.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The crust of the Agatean Empire is composed largely of gold, octiron and other heavy metals. Exchange rates between the Ankh-Morpork dollar and the Empire's currency, the rhinu, has never been established because the solid gold coins are worth significantly less on the Counterweight Continent than on the Sto Plains. Because of the readily-availability of gold, the Counterweight Continent is comparable to the Roundworld's African Mali Empire. Gold is such a ubiquitous metal in the Agatean Empire that it has taken on the role of lead as a material for roofing and plumbing; gold is only used for small denominations of the rhinu, whilst larger denominations such as ten rhinu are issued in the form of paper notes.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Large amounts of octiron make Agatean Empire home of the rare sapient pear trees. The wood of this tree is used to build luggages.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The Empire was founded thousands of years ago by the Emperor One Sun Mirror. Until fairly recently it was ruled by a number of constantly fighting and somewhat psychotic noble families (the Hongs, the Sungs, the Fangs, the Tangs and the McSweeneys), all jockeying to be emperor. They viewed politics as similar to chess; the goal was to put one's opponent in an untenable position, and the best way to do that was to take as many opposing pieces as possible through the sacrifice of pawns.


title: Discworld (world)

text: As in feudal Japan (and later imperial Japan), the Emperor was seen as a god, and could do anything he liked. Given how nastily inventive a noble had to be to get to this point, this was not a good thing. In "The Colour of Magic" and "Mort" the Emperor was an idealistic young boy; however, by "Interesting Times" he had been supplanted by an elderly man who was quite insane (and who is said to have killed his nephew for the throne). During "Interesting Times", Cohen the Barbarian was declared Emperor, and started changing the system into one a no-nonsense barbarian could feel comfortable with. It was felt by many of the peasantry that he was the "preincarnation" of One Sun Mirror, because Agateans believe in a form of backward reincarnation in which the soul's next life takes place chronologically earlier than its previous life. Since the events of "The Last Hero", it can be presumed Cohen is no longer Emperor. Details of his replacement are unknown, although it is implied that most of the duties of governance had already been assumed by his Grand Vizier Twoflower by the time of his intended-to-be death. In the companion book "The Compleat Discworld Atlas", the Empire has been supplanted by the People's Beneficient Republic of Agatea, led by the Chairman of the Central Committee of the People's Revolution Madame Butterfly (possibly Twoflower's daughter and the former leader of the revolutionary Red Army).


title: Discworld (world)

text: The island fulfills the role of Borneo, in that it is large, covered in jungle, and home to the orangutan. It is also the site of the death of explorer Sir Roderick Purdeigh, after he yelled at a "native" and jabbed him with his walking stick in an attempt to make him stand up straight and say something other than "ook". Bhangbhangduc's unusual flora includes the sledgehammer plant, one of the Disc's carnivorous plants.


title: Discworld (world)

text: It appears unusual in the economics of the disc in that Bhangbhangduc uses the Silver Standard to base its money. This is unpopular in other areas who use gold (which does not tarnish).


title: Discworld (world)

text: Bhangbhangduc has its own distinct ethnic cuisine, encountered via Feeney Upshot's grandparents in "Snuff". Examples include:


title: Discworld (world)

text: EcksEcksEcksEcks or Fourecks (previously known as XXXX or Terror Incognita) is clearly influenced by Australian culture, as seen in "The Last Continent". Like Australia, Fourecks is both a country and a continent. It consists largely of desert land, which for some time remained unfinished. It was created some time after the rest of the Discworld by the old man who carries the universe in a sack. Lu-Tze and other sources state that on Fourecks time and space are very twisted up, and there is a big time source right in the middle (probably the Red Rock, the Ecksian version of Uluru). The continent's name is a play on Castlemaine XXXX, a Queensland lager, and advertised there with adverts playing on Australian stereotypes. According to the books, maps used the label "XXXX" because no-one knew what the place was called.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Both the flora and fauna of the continent are extremely dangerous, as Death's Library attests. A book series known as "Dangerous Mammals, Reptiles, Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Jellyfish, Insects, Spiders, Crustaceans, Grasses, Trees, Mosses and Lichens of Terror Incognita" extends at least into "Volume 29c Part Three", while a list of the harmless ones contains only "Some of the sheep." There are few poisonous snakes in XXXX, the explanation being that "most of them have been eaten by the spiders".


title: Discworld (world)

text: For much of its history, the entire continent was surrounded with a huge anticyclone which effectively prevented rainclouds from arriving or ships from leaving. This was due to interference by the wizards of Unseen University while fleeing the bug-obsessed god of evolution during the creation of Fourecks. Shortly before the permanent drought reached catastrophic proportions the anticyclone was dissipated by Rincewind, although, as usual, he received no credit. Many Ecksians have since taken the opportunity to explore the Disc. According to Lu Tze, the relief barman everywhere now comes from Fourecks.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The indigenous population are very similar to Indigenous Australians, with a strong mythology. Until recently, their main peculiarity was a tendency to attack anyone who talked about the weather. There is also a population of Ankh-Morporkian settlers, from various shipwrecks.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The capital of Fourecks is evidently Bugarup. Other known settlements are Dijabringabeeralong, Cangoolie (a parody of Kalgoorlie) and Worralorrasurfa. Time and space appear more consistent in these areas. An odd quirk of the Fourecksian government is that they immediately put their politicians in jail as soon as they are elected. According to the locals, "It saves time." Another important feature of the city is the Old Brewery, where Roo Beer lager is made. It has a huge billboard featuring a grinning kangaroo. The New Brewery is abandoned, because it was built on an "unsacred site" which made the beer flat- a reference to the Old Swan Brewery of Perth, Western Australia. There is also a local magic college for wizards. The university's motto is "Nullus Anxietas (no worries)." The university is similar in some ways to Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, although rather than an Tower of Art they have one that is tall at the bottom, but a tall at the top. The Archchancellor is named Bill Rincewind, possibly a relation of Rincewind, Unseen University's Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography and trained coward.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Bugarup has a regular festival in which female impersonators play a notable part, very similar to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. It is called the Galah, possibly after a local bird and also a play on "gala"; galah is also Australian slang for someone who is a bit of a fool.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Just off the coast of Fourecks are several islands: the Land of Fog or the Foggy Islands, home of the morporks (a reference to the English translation of New Zealand's Māori name "Aotearoa", the Land of the Long White Cloud); and Purdeigh's Island (or Purdeighsland), discovered by the explorer Sir Roderick Purdeigh, who somehow missed the continent itself (in much the same way the Dutch sailor Abel Tasman managed to do with Australia, but did get to have an island named after him).


title: Discworld (world)

text: The most notable nation to lie on the Rim (it actually juts slightly over it) is the island kingdom of Krull. The nation's capital is also called Krull (featured in "The Colour of Magic"), and a local river is known as the Hakrull River (mentioned in "Mort").


title: Discworld (world)

text: Its economy is largely based on the capture and salvage of nautical wreckage as it heads towards the Rimfall. To aid in this, the Krullians constructed the Disc's largest manmade object: the Circumfence, a great net that extends across a third of the Disc's perimeter. Now in disrepair, it is still maintained by the occasional guardian, such as Tethis the sea troll.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Due to its unique position, Krull is one of the Disc's main centres of astronomical and astrological learning; indeed until recently, its high priest was also its chief astronomer. Krull possesses a magical University and, unlike the Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, the Krullians have no problem educating female wizards.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Krullians are noted for their habitual nervousness and fatalism, the product of spending their lives overlooking a bottomless black abyss of infinity. On the Disc, the phrase "being on edge" is a reference to the Krullians.


title: Discworld (world)

text: In "The Colour of Magic" and "The Last Hero", it has been shown that life does exist over the Rim of the Discworld, whether that be specially evolved rimfishers or entire islands populated by the survivors of shipwrecks and their possible descendants.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Pratchett created or adapted a variety of fictional lifeforms for the Discworld setting, both sentient and non-sentient.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Pratchett populated the Discworld with his own interpretations of numerous classic fantasy and mythological races as well as humans. While humans are portrayed as the main inhabitants of the major Discworld cities, many other races have left their traditional domain and integrated with other, sometimes hostile, species in Discworld's cities. Though Discworld races are often inspired by other authors' versions or by real-world mythologies, they may have different characteristics than their prototypes. For example, Discworld trolls are made of stone rather than being turned to stone by sunlight like Tolkien's trolls; Discworld Furies have physical similarities to the Furies of Greco-Roman myth, but have different roles. In the list below, Discworld races are followed by the real-world inspiration for them.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Pratchett also created a variety of other fictional life forms on the Discworld. Like the sentient species, these also have real-world connections, although most of these connections take the form of slight changes to existing real-world animals, as shown in the .303 bookworm, which is a worm that evolved differently due to the danger of consuming magic books, or the hermit elephant, which is an elephant who has evolved hermit crab-like living conditions.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The Discworld's Unnamed Continent's fictional calendar was first defined in a footnote in "The Colour of Magic", and has been expanded upon in later novels and "The Discworld Almanak" (2004). It has numerous oddities, the chief of which is its length.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The calendar is based on a Great Year, or Astronomical Year, defined as the time it takes for the Disc to revolve once on the backs of the elephants. This lasts 800 days and contains two of each season (Midsummer occurs at a given point when the sun passes directly overhead, midwinter when it passes perpendicularly. However most people, especially farmers, consider four seasons to be a year, so an Agricultural Year of 400 days is used for most purposes.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Each week has eight days: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Octeday.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The first of Ick is Hogswatchday, the Disc's New Year, and the winter solstice from the perspective of Ankh-Morpork. In the Astronomical Year the second midwinter (the year's midway point) is called Crueltide, but due to people using the Agricultural Year this is the same festival.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The 32nd of December, or the day before the New Year, is known as "Hogswatchnight". Traditionally associated with pig-killing, to ensure there is enough food for the rest of the winter. Many Hogswatch traditions are parodies of those associated with Christmas, including a decorated oak tree in a pot, strings of paper sausages, and, of course, a visit by the Hogfather. Witches do not leave the house on Hogswatchnight more because of tradition than any practical reasons. The witch Nanny Ogg gets around this by simply inviting everyone to "her" house for the holiday instead.


title: Discworld (world)

text: In the Omnian religion, Hogswatchnight is called the Fast of St Ossory. Omnians celebrate with fasting, prayer meetings, and the exchange of religious pamphlets.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Hogswatch was also a holiday celebrated in "The Dark Side of the Sun", a non-Discworld book by Pratchett.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The 25th of May is quietly celebrated by the survivors of the People's Revolution, which ended the reign of Lord Winder. They wear a sprig of lilac and gather at the Small Gods Cemetery to honour the Watchmen who fell: Cecil Clapman, Ned Coates, Dai Dickins, John Keel, Horace Nancyball, Billy Wiglet, and (albeit temporarily) Reg Shoe.


title: Discworld (world)

text: In the Roundworld (following Terry Pratchett's diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease), Match It For Pratchett called on fans to wear lilacs on 25 May in support of Terry.


title: Discworld (world)

text: The slogan of the People's Revolution is "Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg!"


title: Discworld (world)

text: The calendar in general use in the Sto Plains and Ramtops ("Ankh-Morpork years") uses the agricultural year, and counts from the founding of Unseen University. Years and centuries are also given names by the UU's astrologers. 2005 AM, for instance, is the Year of the Prawn, the fifth year of the Century of the Anchovy. The majority of the "Discworld" novels are set in the 20th century AM, the Century of the Fruitbat, with the later ones entering the 21st, the Century of the Anchovy.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Other calendars count from various other events, and different schools of astronomy give the years different names. The Theocracy of Muntab has a calendar that counts "down", rather than up. The reason for this is unknown, though it is agreed that waiting around for it to reach zero is unwise.


title: Discworld (world)

text: Pratchett gave Discworld a variety of fictional languages, though most, if not all, of these are versions of real-world languages renamed to match country names created for the novels. Alongside those of the non-human species such as Dwarfs, Trolls and orangutans, the Disc's fictional human languages include:


title: Discworld (world)

text: "The Folklore of Discworld" is a book written by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson as an ancillary to the "Discworld" series of novels. It details the folklore aspects of the "Discworld" novels and draws parallels with Earth's folklore. It is divided into sections, each with an accompanying sketch by Paul Kidby.


title: Discworld (world)

text: As it was the only "Discworld" book published in 2008, 25 years after the appearance of the first Discworld book, "The Colour of Magic", some of the hardback editions displayed a sticker stating "25 Years of Discworld".


title: King Vidor

text: King Wallis Vidor (; 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. His works are distinguished by a vivid, humane, and sympathetic depiction of contemporary social issues. Considered an auteur director, Vidor approached multiple genres and allowed the subject matter to determine the style, often pressing the limits of film-making conventions.


title: King Vidor

text: His most acclaimed and successful film in the silent era is "The Big Parade" (1925). Vidor's 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.


title: King Vidor

text: 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.


title: King Vidor

text: He 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.


title: King Vidor

text: 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.


title: King Vidor

text: 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.


title: King Vidor

text: 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.


title: King Vidor

text: 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 an interview with the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1980 Vidor recalled the horrors of the hurricane's effects:


title: King Vidor

text: 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."


title: King Vidor

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


title: King Vidor

text: 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).


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor, in a partnership with vaudevillian and movie entrepreneur Edward Sedgwick formed the Hotex Motion Picture Company in 1914 ("HO" for Houston, "TEX" for Texas) to produce low-budget one- or two-reelers. The enterprise garnered a national press release in Moving Picture World announcing its formation. Only still photos survive from these comedy-adventures, for which Hotex failed to collect any royalties.


title: King Vidor

text: In 1915, newlyweds Vidor and actress Florence Arto Vidor along with business partner Sedgwick, moved to California in search of employment in the emerging Hollywood movie industry, arriving on the West Coast virtually penniless.


title: King Vidor

text: Based on a screen test arranged by Texas actress Corinne Griffith and shot by Charles Rosher in Hollywood, Florence Vidor procured a contract with Vitagraph Studios, marking the start of her successful movie career. Vidor obtained minor roles acting at Vitagraph and Inceville studios (the spy drama "The Intrigue" (1916) survives, in which he plays a chauffeur). As a low-level office clerk at Universal, he was fired for trying to present his own scripts under the pseudonym "Charles K. Wallis", but soon was rehired by the studio as a writer of shorts.


title: King Vidor

text: Beginning in 1915, Vidor served as screenwriter and director on a series of shorts about the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents by social reformer Judge Willis Brown. Written and produced by Brown, Vidor filmed ten of the 20-film series, a project in which Vidor declared he had "deeply believed". A single reel from "Bud's Recruit" is known to survive, the earliest extant footage from Vidor's film directing career.


title: King Vidor

text: In 1918, at the age of 24, Vidor directed his first Hollywood feature, "The Turn in the Road" (1919), a film presentation of a Christian Science evangelical tract sponsored by a group of doctors and dentists affiliated as the independent Brentwood Film Corporation. Vidor recalls of his first foray into Hollywood film-making:


title: King Vidor

text: 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.


title: King Vidor

text: King Vidor next embarked on a major project in collaboration with a New York-based film exhibitor First National. In a bid to compete with the increasingly dominant Hollywood studios, First National advanced Vidor funding to build a small film production facility in Santa Monica, California, dubbed "Vidor Village". King Vidor issued a founding statement entitled "Creed and Pledge" that set forth moral anodynes for film-making, inspired by his Christian Science sympathies.


title: King Vidor

text: The first production from Vidor Village was his "The Jack Knife Man" (1920), a bleak and bitter story of an orphaned boy raised by an impoverished yet kindly hermit, performed by former stage actor Fred Turner. The recluse achieves financial success and is ultimately rewarded with the affection of a gentlewoman, played by Florence Vidor. Redolent with the precepts of the "Creed and Pledge", the film's "relentless realism" did not please the executives at First National. They demanded entertainment that would garner a mass share of box-office receipts so as to fill their theaters.


title: King Vidor

text: As film critic and biographer John Baxter observed: "[t]his experience had a fundamental effect on Vidor's attitude toward film-making." Under pressure "as the studio system began to harden into place", the 26-year-old Vidor began to craft his films to conform to prevailing standards of the period. His 1920 film "The Family Honor" exemplifies this shift towards romantic comedies and away from the ideals that had informed "The Jack Knife Man".


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's "The Sky Pilot" (1921) was a big-budget western-comedy shot on location in the high Sierra Nevada of California. John Bowers stars as the intrepid preacher and Colleen Moore (soon to be famous as the quintessential Hollywood "flapper") as the girl he loves and rescues from a deadly cattle stampede. The natural landscapes serve as an essential dramatic component in the film, as they would in subsequent Vidor movies. The cost overruns cut into First National profits, and they declined to fund any further Vidor projects.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor and Moore would begin a three-year romance on the set of "The Sky Pilot" that became "a Hollywood legend". The couple would resume their relationship after 40 years (in 1963), remaining close until Vidor's death in 1982.


title: King Vidor

text: "Love Never Dies" (1921) is a "rural love story" with a spectacular disaster scene depicting a locomotive and box cars derailing and plunging into a river below. The dramatic presentation of rivers served as a standard motif in Vidor films. Impressed with this Vidor sequence, producer Thomas H. Ince helped to finance the picture.


title: King Vidor

text: In 1922, Vidor produced and directed films that served as vehicles for his spouse, Florence Vidor, notable only for their "artificiality". These works conformed to the comedies of manners and romantic melodramas that were typical of his contemporary, Cecil B. DeMille at Famous Players-Lasky studios. Later, Vidor admitted to being overawed by DeMille's talents. Florence Vidor, in her later career, frequently starred in DeMille productions.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's next picture, "Conquering the Woman", was an unabashed imitation of DeMille's outstanding drama "Male and Female" (1919), starring Gloria Swanson. Vidor followed up with "Woman, Wake Up" and "The Real Adventure" (both 1922) and each depicting a female struggling successfully to assert herself in a male dominated world. As such, these may be considered as early examples of feminist-oriented cinema, but with entirely conventional endings.


title: King Vidor

text: By the early 1920s, Florence Vidor had emerged as a major film star in her own right and wished to pursue her career independent of her spouse. The couple divorced in 1926, and shortly thereafter Florence married violinist Jascha Heifetz. Vidor would soon marry model and future film actress Eleanor Boardman.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor Village went bankrupt in 1922 and Vidor, now without a studio, offered his services to the top executives in the film industry.


title: King Vidor

text: Film producer Louis B. Mayer engaged Vidor to direct Broadway actress Laurette Taylor in a film version of her famous juvenile role as Peg O'Connell in "Peg o' My Heart", written by her husband J. Hartley Manners. Despite viewing screen tests supplied by director D.W. Griffth, Vidor was anxious that the aging Taylor (born 1884) would not be convincing as her 18-year-old stage character on screen. Biographer Marguerite Courtney describes their first encounter:


title: King Vidor

text: The process of adapting the stage version to film was nevertheless fraught with difficulties, complicated by a romantic attachment between director and star. The final product proved cinematically "lifeless".


title: King Vidor

text: Pleased with "Peg o' My Heart" box-office receipts, Mayer matched Vidor and Taylor again, resulting in a second feature film success, "Happiness" (1923) also written by Manners, with Taylor playing a charming Pollyanna-like character. The film would mark Vidor's final collaboration with the couple.


title: King Vidor

text: Next, Vidor was entrusted to direct Mayer's top female star Clara Kimball Young in "The Woman of Bronze", a 1923 melodrama that resembled the formulaic films he had created with Florence Vidor at Vidor Village.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's yeoman service to Louis B. Mayer secured him entrée into Goldwyn Pictures in 1923, a holding soon to be amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Samuel Goldwyn and other film producers of the early 1920s favored "literary" texts as the basis for movie screenplays. Parvenu-rich movie executives wished to provide a patina of class or "tone" to an industry often regarded as vulgar and cash-driven.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor was content to adapt these "prestigious properties" so securing his reputation as a reliable studio asset. His work during this period did not rise to the level of his later work, but a few films stand out. "Wild Oranges" (1924), from a story by Joseph Hergesheimer, is notable as a harbinger of his best work in the sound era. The natural features of the coastal regions of Georgia are endowed with sinister and homicidal potential, where a fugitive arrives to terrorize rural residents. As such, the film exhibits Vidor's trademark use of nature to symbolize aspects of the human conflict.


title: King Vidor

text: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's cast of rising movie stars included soon-to-be matinee idol John Gilbert. Vidor directed him in "His Hour" (1924), based on an Elinor Glyn "febrile romance", and is one of the few films from Vidor's output of that period to survive. Gilbert, as the Russian nobleman Prince Gritzko, was so ardently performed as co-star Aileen Pringle's seducer that one scene was deleted.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's typically "routine" movies of this period include "Wine of Youth" (1924) and "Proud Flesh" (1925) emphasize the "time-honored virtues" of familial and matrimonial loyalty, even among the liberated Jazz Age flappers.


title: King Vidor

text: King Vidor's tenure as a studio stringer was at an end. His next feature would transform his career and have a resounding impact on the late silent film era: "The Big Parade".


title: King Vidor

text: In 1925 Vidor directed "The Big Parade", among the most acclaimed films of the silent era, and a tremendous commercial success. "The Big Parade", a war romance starring John Gilbert, established Vidor as one of MGM's top studio directors for the next decade. The film would influence contemporary directors G.W. Pabst in "Westfront 1918" and Lewis Milestone in "All Quiet on the Western Front", both 1930. Producer Irving Thalberg arranged for Vidor to film two more Gilbert vehicles: "La Bohème" and "Bardelys the Magnificent", both released in 1926. In "La Bohème", a film of "great and enduring merit", leading lady Lillian Gish exerted considerable control over the film's production. "Bardelys the Magnificent," a picaresque swashbuckler mimicked the films of Douglas Fairbanks. Vidor would spoof the movie on his own "Show People" (1928) with comedienne Marion Davies.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's next film would be a startling departure from romantic entertainment to an exposure of the "cruel deception of the American dream".


title: King Vidor

text: In the late 1920s European films, especially from German directors, exerted a strong influence on filmmakers internationally. Vidor's "The Crowd" resonates with these populist films, a "pitiless study" of a young working man's descent into isolation and loss of morale who is ultimately crushed by the urban "assembly line", while his wife struggles to maintain some order in their relationship. Though the most uncharacteristic of Vidor's pictures, it was his personal favorite: the picture, he said "came out of my guts."


title: King Vidor

text: Employing relatively unknown actors, the film had modest box office success, but was widely praised by critics. In 1928, Vidor received an Oscar nomination, and his first for Best Director. M-G-M executives, who had been content to allow Vidor an "experimental" film found that bleak social outlook of "The Crowd" troubling – reflected in their one-year delay in releasing the film. "The Crowd" has since been recognized as one of the "masterpieces" of the late silent era.


title: King Vidor

text: Cosmopolitan Pictures, a subsidiary of M-G-M studios and controlled by influential newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, insisted that Vidor direct Marion Davis – Hearst's longtime mistress – in these Cosmopolitan-supervised films, to which Vidor acquiesced. Though not identified as a director of comedies, Vidor filmed three ""screwball"-like comedies that revealed Davies talents with her "drive-you-to-distraction persona".


title: King Vidor

text: "The Patsy", a comedy of manners, brought Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson, veterans of Mack Sennett "slapstick" era out of retirement to play Davies' farcical upper-class parents. Davies performs a number of amusing celebrity imitations she was known for at social gatherings at Hearst's San Simeon estate, including Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Pola Negri and Mae Murray.


title: King Vidor

text: The scenario for "Show People" (1928) was inspired by the glamorous Gloria Swanson, who began her film career in slapstick. Davis' character Peggy Pepper, a mere comic, is elevated to the high-style star Patricia Pepoire. Vidor spoofs his own recently completed "Bardelys the Magnificent" (1926), an over-the-top swashbuckling costume drama featuring romantic icon John Gilbert. Some of the best-known film stars of the silent era appeared in cameos, as well as Vidor himself. "Show People" remains the enduring picture of the Vidor–Davies collaborations.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's third and final film with Davies was his second sound film (after "Hallelujah" (1929)): "Not So Dumb" (1930), adapted from the 1921 Broadway comedy "Dulcy" by George S. Kaufman. The limitations of early sound, despite recent innovations, interfered with the continuity of Davies' performance that had enlivened her earlier silent comedies with Vidor.


title: King Vidor

text: In early 1928, Vidor and his spouse Eleanor Boardman were visiting France in the company of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. There Vidor mixed with literary expatriates, among them James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Vidor was shaken by news that US film studios and theaters were converting to sound technology and he returned quickly to Hollywood, concerned about the impact on silent cinema. Adjusting to the advent of sound, Vidor enthusiastically embarked upon his long-desired project of making picture about rural black American life incorporating a musical soundtrack. He quickly completed writing the scenario for "Hallelujah" and began recruiting an all African-American cast.


title: King Vidor

text: M-G-M studios had not yet decided which emerging sound technology they would invest in, Vitaphone or Movietone, a decision that would determine what camera system Vidor would use. Vidor circumvented the dilemma by appealing directly to President of Lowe's Inc. Nicholas Schenck, who authorized Vidor to begin shooting outdoor location sequences without sound and with the caveat that Vidor waive his $100,000 salary.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's first sound film "Hallelujah" (1929) combines a dramatic rural tragedy with a documentary-like depiction of black agrarian community of sharecroppers in the South. Daniel L. Haynes as Zeke, Nina Mae McKinney as Chick and William Fontaine as Hot Shot developed a love-triangle that leads to a revenge murder. A quasi-musical, Vidor's innovative integration of sound into the scenes, including jazz and gospel adds immensely to the cinematic effect.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor, a third-generation Texan, encountered black workers employed at his father's sawmills when he was a child, and there he became familiar with their spirituals. As an adult, he was not immune to the racial prejudices common among whites in the South of the 1920s. His paternalistic claim to know the character of the "real negro" is reflected in his portrayal of some rural black characters as "childishly simple, lecherously promiscuous, fanatically superstitious, and shiftless". Vidor, nonetheless, avoids reducing his characters to Uncle Tom stereotypes and his treatment bears no resemblance to the overt racism in D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" (1915).


title: King Vidor

text: The black sharecroppers resemble more the poor white agrarian entrepreneurs Vidor praised in his 1934 "Our Daily Bread", emphasizing the class, rather than race, of his subjects. The film emerges as a human tragedy in which elemental forces of sexual desire and revenge contrast with family affection and community solidarity and redemption.


title: King Vidor

text: "Hallelujah" enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response in the United States and internationally, praising Vidor's stature as a film artist and as a humane social commentator. Vidor was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards of 1929.


title: King Vidor

text: Filmed just before passage of the Production Code of 1933, Vidor's "Billy the Kid" is free of the fixed moral dualities that came to typify subsequent Good Guy vs. Bad Guy Westerns in Hollywood. Starring former football champion Johnny Mack Brown as Billy and Wallace Beery as his nemesis Sheriff Pat Garrett, the protagonists display a gratuitous violence that anticipates Vidor's 1946 masterpiece "Duel in the Sun" (1946). Homicidal behavior resonates with the brutal and deadly desert landscape, Hemingwayesque in its brevity and realism. Studio executives were concerned that the excessive violence would alienate audiences, though the Prohibition era in the United States was saturated with news of the gangster-related killings.


title: King Vidor

text: Shot partially in the new 70 mm Grandeur system, the film was conceived by producers to be an epic, but few cinemas were equipped to handle the new wide-screen technology. The film did poorly at the box-office.


title: King Vidor

text: Upon his return to M-G-M after his sojourn to complete "Street Scene" for Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor embarked on his second picture starring actor Wallace Beery, this time with child actor Jackie Cooper in "The Champ". Based on a story by Francis Marion, Vidor adapts a standard plot about a socially and economically impaired parent who relinquishes a child to insure his/her escape from squalid conditions to achieve an upwardly mobile future. The film is a descendant of director Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid" (1921), as well as Vidor's own early silent shorts for Judge Willis Brown. Vidor owed M-G-M a more conventional and "fool-proof" production after executives allowed him to make the more experimental "Street Scene" in 1931. The Champ would prove to be a successful vehicle for Berry and propel him to top-rank among M-G-M movie stars.


title: King Vidor

text: After finishing the sentimental vehicle starring Wallace Beery, in "The Champ", Vidor was loaned to Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) to make a "South Seas" romance for producer David Selznick filmed in the US territory of Hawaii. Starring Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea, the tropical location and mixed-race love theme in "Bird of Paradise" included nudity and sexual eroticism.


title: King Vidor

text: During production Vidor began an affair with script assistant Elizabeth Hill that led to a series of highly productive screenplay collaborations and their marriage in 1937. Vidor divorced his wife, actress Eleanor Boardman shortly after "Bird of Paradise" was completed.


title: King Vidor

text: "The Stranger's Return" (1933) and "Our Daily Bread" (1934) are Depression era films that present protagonists who flee the social and economic perils of urban America, plagued by high unemployment and labor unrest to seek a lost rural identity or make a new start in the agrarian countryside. Vidor's expressed enthusiasm for the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's exhortation in his first inaugural in 1933 for a shift of labor from industry to agriculture.


title: King Vidor

text: In "The Stranger's Return", a city girl (Miriam Hopkins) abandons her life in a great metropolis to visit her grandfather (Lionel Barrymore) in Iowa, the aging patriarch of a working farm. Her arrival upsets the schemes of parasitic relatives to seize the property in anticipation of Grandpa Storr's passing. The scenario presents the farm as "bountiful", even in the midst of the Dust Bowl where banks seized tens-of-thousands of independent family farms in the Midwest and drove millions into low wage seasonal agricultural labor. The picture is a paean to family "blood" ties and rural generational continuity, manifested in the granddaughter's commitment (though raised in New York City) to inherit the family farm and honor its agrarian heritage.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor continued his "back to the land" theme in his 1934 "Our Daily Bread". The picture is the second film of a trilogy he referred to as "War, Wheat and Steel". His 1925 film "The Big Parade" was "war" and his 1944 "An American Romance" was "steel". "Our Daily Bread" – "wheat" – is a sequel to his silent masterpiece "The Crowd" (1928).


title: King Vidor

text: "Our Daily Bread" is a deeply personal and politically controversial work that Vidor financed himself when M-G-M executives declined to back the production. M-G-M was uncomfortable with its characterization of big business, and particularity banking institutions, as corrupt.


title: King Vidor

text: A struggling Depression-era couple from the city inherit a derelict farm, and in an effort to make it a productive enterprise, they establish a cooperative in alliance with unemployed locals who possess various talents and commitments. The film raises questions as to the legitimacy of the American system of democracy and to government imposed social programs.


title: King Vidor

text: The picture garnered a mixed response among social and film critics, some regarding it as a socialistic condemnation of capitalism and others as tending towards fascism – a measure of Vidor's own ambivalence in organizing his social outlook artistically.


title: King Vidor

text: During the 1930s Vidor, though under contract to M-G-M studios, made four films under loan-out to independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, formerly with the Goldwyn studios that had amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924. Goldwyn's insistence on fidelity to the prestigious literary material he had purchased for screen adaptations imposed cinematic restraints on his film directors, including Vidor. The first of their collaborations since the silent era was "Street Scene" (1931)


title: King Vidor

text: The adoption of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Elmer Rice depicts a microcosm in a major American metropolis and its social and economic inequalities. The cinematic limitations imposed by a single set restricted to a New York City block of tenements building and its ethnically diverse inhabitants presented Vidor with unique technical challenges. He and cinematographer George Barnes countered and complemented these structural restrictions by using a roving camera mounted on cranes, an innovation made possible by recent developments in early sound technology.


title: King Vidor

text: The excellent cast, drawn largely from the Broadway production, contributed to the critical success of the film, as did the huge publicity campaign engineered by Goldwyn. Street Scene's immense box-office profits belied the financial and economic crisis of the early Depression years, when movie studios feared bankruptcy.


title: King Vidor

text: "Cynara" (1932), a romantic melodrama of a brief, yet tragic affair between a British barrister and a shopgirl, was Vidor's second sound collaboration with Goldwyn. Starring two of Hollywood's biggest stars of the period, Ronald Colman and Kay Francis, the story by Francis Marion is a cautionary tale concerning upper- and lower-class sexual infidelities set in England. Framed, as in the play and novel, in a series of flashbacks told by the married barrister Warlock (Colman), the story ends in honorable redemption for the barrister and death for his mistress. Vidor was able to inject some "pure cinema" into a picture that was otherwise a "dialogue-heavy" talkie: "Colman [in London] tears up a piece of paper and throws the pieces out a window, where they fly into the air. Vidor cuts to St. Mark's Square in Venice (where Francis, his spouse is vacationing), with pigeons flying into the air".


title: King Vidor

text: In his third collaboration with Goldwyn, Vidor was tasked with salvaging the producer's huge investment in Soviet-trained Russian actress Anna Sten. Goldwyn's effort to elevate Sten to the stature of Dietrich or Garbo had thus far failed despite his relentless promotion when Vidor began directing her in "The Wedding Night" (1935).


title: King Vidor

text: A tale of a doomed affair between a married New Yorker (Gary Cooper) (whose character Vidor based on novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald) and a farm girl (Sten) from an Old World Polish family, Vidor provided thoughtful direction to Cooper and Sten while cinematographer Gregg Toland's devised effective lighting and photography. Despite good reviews the picture did not establish Sten as a star among movie-goers and she remained "Goldwyn's Folly".


title: King Vidor

text: In 1937 Vidor made his final and most profitable picture with Samuel Goldwyn: "Stella Dallas". A remake of Goldwyn's most successful silent movie, the 1925 "Stella Dallas", also an adaption of Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel. Barbara Stanwyck stars as the eponymous "martyr of motherhood" in the sound re-make. Vidor analyzed director Henry King's handling of his silent production and incorporated or modified some of its filmic structure and staging. Stanwyck's performance, reportedly without undue oversight by Vidor, is outstanding, benefited by her selective vetting of Belle Bennett's famous portrayal. Vidor contributed to defining Stanwyck's role substantially in the final cut, providing a sharper focus on her character and delivering one of the great tear-jerkers in film history.


title: King Vidor

text: Despite the success of the film it would be his last with Goldwyn, as Vidor had tired of the producer's outbursts on the set. Vidor emphatically declined to work with the "mercurial" producer again.


title: King Vidor

text: Paramount production manager at Paramount Pictures, Ernst Lubitsch, persuaded Vidor to undertake the direction of a film based on a story that afforded a ""Southern" perspective, "So Red the Rose", an American Civil War epic.


title: King Vidor

text: The topic appealed to the Texas-bred Vidor and he offered a dual vision of the antebellum South's response to the war among the white planter class, sentimentalizing their struggle and defeat. Here, the western "pioneer" plantation owners possess less of the anti-Northern fury that led to secession by their "Old South" counterparts. The scion of the estate, Duncan Bedford (Randolph Scott) initially refuses to join the Confederate army ("I don't believe Americans should fight Americans") but his sister Vallette Duncan (Margaret Sullavan) scorns his pacifism and singlehandedly diverts her slaves from rebellion. The white masters of the "Portobello" plantation in Mississippi emerge from the conflict content that North and South made equal sacrifices, and that a "New South" has emerged that is better off without its white aristocracy and slavery. With Portobello in ruins, Valette and Duncan submit to the virtues of hard work in a pastoral existence.


title: King Vidor

text: The novel "So Red the Rose" (1934) by Stark Young in its narrative and theme anticipates author Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" (1936). Vidor, initially tapped to direct Mitchell's epic, was ultimately assigned to director George Cukor.


title: King Vidor

text: The box-office failure of "So Red the Rose" led the film industry to anticipate the same for Cukor's adaption of Mitchell's Civil War epic. To the contrary, "Gone with the Wind" (1939) enjoyed immense commercial and critical success.


title: King Vidor

text: At a period in the 1930s when Western theme films were relegated to low-budget B movies, Paramount studios financed an A Western for Vidor at $625,000 (lowered to $450,000 when star Gary Cooper was replaced with Fred MacMurray in the lead role.) "The Texas Rangers", Vidor's second and final film for Paramount reduced, but did not abandon, the level of sadistic and lawless violence evidenced in his "Billy the Kid". Vidor presents a morality play where the low-cunning of the outlaws "cum" vigilantes heroes is turned to the service of law-and-order when they kill their erstwhile accomplice in crime – the "Polka Dot Bandit.".


title: King Vidor

text: The film's scenario and script was penned by Vidor and wife Elizabeth Hill, based loosely on "The Texas Rangers: A History of Frontier Defense of the Texas Rangers" by Walter Prescott Webb. Made on the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Texas Ranger Division the picture includes standard B western tropes, including Indian massacres of white settlers and a corrupt city official who receives small town justice at the hands of a jury composed of saloon denizens. The film presages, as does Vidor's "Billy the Kid" (1931), his portrayal of the savagery of civilization and nature in producer David O. Selznick's "Duel in the Sun" (1946).


title: King Vidor

text: In an effort to retain Vidor at Paramount, the production head William LeBaron offered him a biopic of Texas icon, Sam Houston. Vidor emphatically declined: "... "I've [had] such a belly-full of Texas after the Rangers that I find myself not caring whether Sam Houston takes Texas from the Mexicans or lets them keep it."


title: King Vidor

text: In the 1930s Vidor became a leading advocate for the formation of the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) and since 1960 called the Directors Guild of America (DGA), when television directors joined its ranks.


title: King Vidor

text: In an effort to enlarge movie director's meager influence in studio production decisions, Vidor personally exhorted a dozen or more leading directors, among them Howard Hawks, William Wellman, Ernst Lubitsch and Lewis Milestone to form a union, leading to the incorporation of the SDG in January 1936. By 1938, the collective bargaining unit had grown from a founding membership of 29 to an inclusive union of 600, representing Hollywood directors and assistant directors. The demands under Vidor's tenure at SDG were mild, seeking increased opportunities to examine scripts before filming and to make the initial cut on a movie.


title: King Vidor

text: As the SDG's first president, and a founding member of the anti-Communist group the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals Vidor failed to bring the SDG into affiliation with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that had already organized actors and screenwriters (deemed a "Bolshevik" political front by anti-communist critics). Not until 1939 would the directors sign an accord with these sister guilds, under then SDG president Frank Capra.


title: King Vidor

text: Upon completion of "Stella Dallas" and his disaffection from Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor returned to M-G-M under a five-film contract that would produce "The Citadel" (1938), "Northwest Passage" (1940), "Comrade X" (1940), "H. M. Pulham, Esq." (1941) and "An American Romance" (1944). In 1939, Vidor would also direct the final three weeks of primary filming for "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).


title: King Vidor

text: Film historian John Baxter describes the demands that the studio system at M-G-M had on an auteur director such as Vidor in this period:


title: King Vidor

text: These unconsummated projects at M-G-M include "National Velvet" (1944) and "The Yearling" (1946), the later in which Vidor presided over a failed attempt to produce a population of juvenile deer who would be age-appropriate throughout the production (female deer refused to reproduce out of season). Both films would be completed by the director Clarence Brown. Vidor further invested six months shooting an Amazon River survival-adventure, "The Witch in the Wilderness" from which he was diverted to perform pre-production for "Northwest Passage" (1940). This period would be one of transition for Vidor but would lead to an artistic phase where he created some of his richest and most characteristic works.


title: King Vidor

text: The Citadel: The first picture under the contract and the first under the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) was "The Citadel" in 1938. Filmed in England at a time the British government and trade unions had placed restrictions designed to extract a portion of the highly lucrative American movie exports to the British Isles. M-G-M, as a tactical olive branch, agreed to hire British actors as cast members for "The Citadel" and provided them generous compensation. (American actress Rosalind Russel and Vidor were the only two non-Britons who served on the film's production).


title: King Vidor

text: The movie is a close adaptation of A. J. Cronin's "novel of the same name", an exposé of the mercenary aspects of the medical profession that entices doctors to serve the upper-classes at the expense of the poor. Vidor's Christian Science-inspired detachment from the medical profession influence his handling of the story, in which an independent doctor's cooperative is favored over both socialized medicine and a profit-driven medical establishment.


title: King Vidor

text: The protagonist, Dr. Andrew Manson (Robert Donat) ultimately resorts to an act of anarchism by using explosives to destroy a disease-producing sewer, but emerges personally vindicated.


title: King Vidor

text: A success at the Academy Awards, the film garnered nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Donat), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.


title: King Vidor

text: During the late 1930s M-G-M enlisted Vidor to assume artistic and technical responsibilities, some of which went uncredited. The most outstanding of these was his shooting of the black-and-white "Kansas" sequences in "The Wizard of Oz", including the notable musical production in which Dorothy Judy Garland sings "Over the Rainbow". Portions of the Technicolor sequences that depict Dorothy and her companions lulled into sleep on a field of poppies were also handled by Vidor.


title: King Vidor

text: The sound era saw the eclipse of the Western movie that had its heyday in the silent era and by the 1930s the genre was relegated to the producers of B movies. By the end of the decade high-budget films depicting the Indian Wars in the America of the 18th and 19th century reappeared, notably Ford's "Drums Along the Mohawk" (1939) and DeMille's "North West Mounted Police" (1940)


title: King Vidor

text: In the summer of 1939, Vidor began filming in Idaho a Western-themed picture using the new Technicolor system. The picture that emerged is one of his "master works": "Northwest Passage" (1940).


title: King Vidor

text: Northwest Passage: Based on an American colonial-era epic novel, the film describes a punitive expedition against an Abenaki (Iroquois) village by a unit of British Army irregulars during the French and Indian Wars. Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) leads his green-clad "Roberts Rangers" on a grueling trek through 200 miles of wilderness. The Rangers fall upon the village and brutally exterminate the inhabitants who are suspected of assaulting white settlements. A demoralized retreat ensues led by Rogers. Under retaliatory attack by Indians and a savage landscape the Rangers are pushed to the limits of their endurance, some reduced to cannibalism and madness.


title: King Vidor

text: The script by Laurence Stallings and Talbot Jennings (and several uncredited writers) conveys the unabashed anti-Indian hatred that motivates Roger's men to their task. The level of violence anticipates film noir of the post-World War II period and the McCarthy era.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor began filming in July 1939, just weeks before war was declared in Europe and the isolationist or interventionist policies were widely debated. The film influenced tropes that appeared in subsequent war films, depicting small military units operating behind enemy lines and relying on harsh tactics to destroy enemy combatants. The relevance of "Northwest Passage"s sanguinary adventurer to contemporary Americans confronted with a looming world war is never made explicit but raises moral questions on "military virtue" and how a modern war might be conducted. Though Vidor was "anti-fascist" his political predilections are left unstated in "Northwest Passage".


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor established an unusually close professional relationship with the film's star, Spencer Tracy and the actor delivered what Vidor considered a performance of "tremendous conviction".


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor used the new three-strip Technicolor camera system (the two huge 800-pound [365 kg] cameras had to be transported by train). The color photography conveys more than the scenic beauty of Payette Lake, injecting documentary realism into key sequences. Notable are those of the Rangers portaging boats through a rugged mountain pass, and the famous river "human chain" crossing. Despite its enormous box office earnings, Northwest Passage failed to recoup its $2 million production costs. Northwest Passage's cinematography earned an Oscer nomination in that category.


title: King Vidor

text: Comrade X: A political comedy set in the Soviet Union, "Comrade X" (1940) was conceived as a vehicle for M-G-M's glamorous acquisition Hedy Lamarr, in the hopes they might duplicate the profits they reaped from M-G-M star Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). "Comrade" X is played by Clark Gable, a cynical American journalist who exposes Stalin-era cultural falsifications in his dispatches to his newspaper in the United States. Lamarr plays a Moscow tram conductor. Her coldly logical persona ultimately proves susceptible to Gable's America-inspired enthusiasms. Released in December 1940, the scurrilous tone of the dialogue toward the USSR officials was consistent with US government posture in the aftermath of the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 (after America's entry into WWII in December 1941), Russians became US allies in the war effort against the Axis powers. Reflecting these developments, M-G-M executives, just six months after the film's release, inserted a disclaimer assuring audiences that the movie was only a farce, not a hostile critique of the USSR. Writer Walter Reisch, who also scripted Ninotchka, earned an Oscar nomination for best original story.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor disparaged the picture as "an insignificant light comedy" that afforded him "a change of pace." Vidor's next picture would be a cold-eyed examination of the institution of marriage and a much more personal work: "H.M. Pulham, Esq." (1941).


title: King Vidor

text: H. M. Pulham, Esq.: With wife and screenwriting partner Elizabeth Hill, Vidor adapted John P. Marquand's highly popular novel of the same name. A story of a married man tempted to revive an affair with an old flame, Vidor draws upon memories of a failed romance from his own youth.


title: King Vidor

text: Harry Pulham (Robert Young), a member of the New England's conservative upper-middle class, is stultified by the respectable routines of life and a proper marriage to his wife Kay (Ruth Hussey). Vidor examines Pulham's past in a series of flashbacks that reveal a youthful affair Harry had with an ambitious German immigrant, Marvin Myles (Hedy Lamaar) at a New York advertising agency. They prove incompatible, largely due to different class orientation and expectations: Marvin pursues her dynamic career in New York and Harry returns to the security of his Bostonian social establishment. In an act of desperate nostalgia, Pulham attempts to rekindle the relationship 20 years later, to no avail. His attempt at rebellion failed, Harry Pulham consciously submits to a life of conformity that falls short of freedom but offers self-respect and a modest contentment.


title: King Vidor

text: "H. M. Pulham, Esq" was completed by Vidor after years of manufacturing "conventional successes" for M-G-M. The calm certitude of Harry Pulham in the face of enforced conformity may reflect Vidor's determination to artistically address larger issues in contemporary American society. His next, and final movie for M-G-M, would be the "Steel" component of his "War, Wheat and Steel" film trilogy: "An American Romance" (1944).


title: King Vidor

text: An American Romance: Rather than demonstrate his patriotism by joining a military film unit Vidor attempted to create a paean to American democracy. His 1944 An American Romance represents the "steel" installment of Vidor's "War, Wheat and Steel" trilogy and serves as his "industrial epic".and emerged from an extremely convoluted screenwriting evolution. Vidor personifies the relationship between man and the natural resources on which struggles to impose his purpose on nature.


title: King Vidor

text: The lead role of immigrant Stefan Dubechek was offered to Spencer Tracy but the actor declined, an acute disappointment for the director who had greatly admired Tracy's performance in his "Northwest Passage" (1940). Vidor's dissatisfaction with the studio's casting, including lead Brian Donlevy, led Vidor to concentrate on the industrial landscape to reveal the motivations of his characters.


title: King Vidor

text: Despite producer Louis B. Mayer's personal enthusiasm for the picture, his studio deleted 30 minutes from the movie, mostly essential human interest sequences and only preserving the abundant documentary scenes. Disgusted by M-G-M's mutilations, Vidor terminated his 20-year association with the studio. The film received negative reviews and was a financial failure. Some critics noted a shift in Vidor's focus from working class struggles to celebrating the ascent of a "Ford-like" industrial magnate. Film historian Raymond Durgnat considers the picture "his least personal, artistically weakest and most spiritually confused."


title: King Vidor

text: The failure of "An American Romance", after an artistic investment of three years, staggered Vidor and left him deeply demoralized. The break with M-G-M presented an opportunity to establish a more satisfying relationship with other studio producers. Emerging from this "spiritual" nadir he would create a Western of great intensity: "Duel in the Sun" (1946).


title: King Vidor

text: At the end of 1944 Vidor considered a number of projects, including a remake of his silent era Wild Oranges (1924), this time with producer David O. Selznick.


title: King Vidor

text: When Selznick purchased the rights to Niven Busch's novel "Duel in the Sun" in 1944, Vidor agreed to rewrite Oliver H. P. Garrett's screenplay and direct a miniature Western, "small" but "intense". Selznick's increasingly grandiose plans for the production involved his wish to promote the career of actress-mistress Jennifer Jones and to create a movie rivaling his successful 1939 "Gone with the Wind". Selzick's personal and artistic ambitions for "Duel in the Sun" led to conflicts with Vidor over development of the themes which emphasized "sex, violence and spectacle". Vidor walked off the set just before primary filming was completed, unhappy with Selznick's intrusive management. The producer would enlist eight additional directors to complete the picture. Though the final cut was made without Vidor's participation, the production reflects the participation of these talented filmmakers, among them William Dieterle and Josef von Sternberg. Vidor was awarded sole screen credit after Directors Guild arbitration.


title: King Vidor

text: "Duel in the Sun" is a melodramatic treatment of a Western theme concerning a conflict between two generations of the McCanles family. The elderly and crippled McCanles Lionel Barrymore presides with an iron fist over his a vast cattle estate with his invalid wife Laura Belle Candles Lillian Gish. Their two sons, Lewt and Jess, are polar opposites: the educated Jess "the good son" Joseph Cotten takes after his refined mother, while Lewt "the bad son" Gregory Peck emulates his domineering cattle baron father. The adoption of the young orphan girl Pearl Chavez, the "half-breed" offspring of a European gentleman and a native-American mother, whom Pearl's father has murdered and been executed for his crime, introduces a fatal element into the McCanles family. The "film noir" ending includes an attempted fratricide and a suicide-like love pact, destroying the McCanles family.


title: King Vidor

text: The "unbridled sexuality" portrayed by Vidor between Pearl and Lewt created a furor that drew criticism from the US Congressmen and film censors, which led to the studio cutting several minutes before its final release.


title: King Vidor

text: Selznick launched "Duel in the Sun" in hundreds of theaters, backed by a multiple-million dollar promotional campaign. Despite the film's poor critical reception (termed "Lust in the Dust" by its detractors) the picture's box office returns rivaled the highest-grossing film of the year, "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946).


title: King Vidor

text: In the aftermath of his critical failures in "An American Romance" (1944) and "Duel in the Sun" (1946), Vidor disengaged from Hollywood film production to purchase his Willow Creek Ranch in Paso Robles, California.


title: King Vidor

text: "A Miracle Can Happen" (1948) is a film sketch that Vidor participated in with co-director Leslie Fenton during this period of relative inactivity. A "low-budget" Universal Studios release of the early baby boom era, this "omnibus" presents vignettes filmed or performed by an array of actors and directors (some of them returning from service in the armed forces) among them Burgess Meredith, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, James Stewart, John Huston and George Stevens. (An episode with British actor Charles Laughton was cut from the final release, a disappointment to Vidor.) The picture's title was changed shortly after opening to "On Our Merry Way" to promote its comedic virtues. Vidor dismissed the film from his oeuvre in later years.


title: King Vidor

text: In 1948 Vidor was diverted from making a series of 16mm Westerns for television and produced on his ranch when Warner Brothers studios approached him to direct an adaption of author Ayn Rand's controversial novel "The Fountainhead". Vidor immediately accepted the offer.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's three films for Warner Brothers studios—"The Fountainhead" (1949), "Beyond the Forest" (1949) and "Lightning Strikes Twice" (1951)—were crafted to reconcile the excessive and amoral violence displayed in his Duel in the Sun (1946) with a constructive presentation of American individualism that comported with his Christian Science precepts of morality.


title: King Vidor

text: The Fountainhead (1949): Unhappy with the screen adaption offered by Warner Brothers for Ayn Rand's 1938 novel, "The Fountainhead" Vidor asked the author to write the script. Rand accepted but inserted a caveat into her contract that required that she authorize any deviation from the book's story or dialogue, which Vidor abided by.


title: King Vidor

text: Rand's political philosophy of Objectivism is distilled through the character of architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper), who adopts an uncompromising stand on the physical integrity of his proposed designs. When one of his architectural projects is compromised, he destroys the building with dynamite. At his trial, Roark offers a principled and forthright defense for his act of sabotage and is exonerated by the jury. Though Vidor was committed to developing his own populist notion of American individualism, Rand's didactic right-wing scenario and script informs much of the film. The Roark character is loosely based on the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, both in the novel and Vidor's film version.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's most outstanding cinematic innovation in "The Fountainhead" is his highly stylized images of the Manhattan high-rise interiors and skylines. The urban landscapes, created by Art Director Edward Carrere were strongly influenced by German Expressionism and contribute to the film's compelling "film noir" character. The eroticism inherent in the sets resonate with the on-screen sexual tension, augmented by the off-screen affair between Cooper and Patricia Neal, who plays the architect's ally-adversary Dominique Francon.


title: King Vidor

text: "The Fountainhead" enjoyed profitable box-office returns but a poor critical reception. Satisfied with his experience at Warner's, Vidor signed a two-film contract with the studio. In his second picture he would direct Warner's most prestigious star Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest (1949).


title: King Vidor

text: Beyond the Forest (1949): A lurid "noir" melodrama that tracks the descent of a petty-bourgeois Madame Bovary-like character, Rosa Moline (Bette Davis) into marital infidelity, murder and a sordid death, the picture has earned a reputation as a "Camp" classic. The film is often cited for providing the phrase "What a dump!", appropriated by playwright Edward Albee in his 1962 "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and its 1966 "screen" adaption.


title: King Vidor

text: Despising the role assigned her by producer Jack Warner and feuding with director Vidor over her character's portrayal, Davis delivers a startling performance and one of the best of her mid-career. The role of Rosa Molina would be her last film with Warner Brothers after seventeen years with the studio.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's characterization of Davis as the unsophisticated Gorgon-like Rosa (the film was titled "La Garce", "[The Bitch]", in French releases) were widely rejected by her fans and contemporary film critics and reviews "were the worst of Vidor's career."


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor and Max Steiner inserted a leitmotif into those sequences where Rosa obsessively longs for escape from the dull, rural Loyalton to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Chicago. The "Chicago" theme surfaces (a tune made famous by Judy Garland) in an ironic style reminiscent of film composer Bernard Herrmann. Steiner earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Score.


title: King Vidor

text: Lightning Strikes Twice (1951): His final picture for Warner Brothers, Vidor attempted to create a "film noir" tale of a deadly love triangle starring Richard Todd, Ruth Roman and Mercedes McCambridge, a cast that did not suit Vidor. A standard Warner's melodrama, Vidor declared that the picture "turned out terribly" and is largely unrepresentative of his work except in its western setting and its examination of sexual strife, the theme of the film. Vidor's next project was proposed by producer Joseph Bernhard after pre-production and casting were nearly complete: "Japanese War Bride" (1952).


title: King Vidor

text: The topic of the film, white racial prejudice in post-WWII America, had been addressed in a number of Hollywood films of the period, including directors Joseph Losey's "The Lawless" (1950) and Mark Robson's "Home of the Brave" (1949).


title: King Vidor

text: The story by co-producer Anson Bond concerns a wounded Korean War veteran Jim Sterling (Don Taylor) who returns with his bride, a Japanese nurse Tae (Shirley Yamaguchi), to his parents farm in California's Central Valley. Conflicts arise when Jim's sister-in-law falsely accuses Tae of infidelity sparking conflicts with the neighboring Nisei-owned farm. The picture locates acts of racism towards non-whites as personal neurosis rather than socially constructed prejudice. Vidor's artistic commitments to the film were minimal in a production that was funded as a B Movie, though he meticulously documents the experience of workers in field and factory.


title: King Vidor

text: Before beginning direction of "Japanese War Bride", Vidor had already arranged with Bernhard to finance his next project and perhaps "the last great film" of his career: "Ruby Gentry" (1952).


title: King Vidor

text: With "Ruby Gentry", Vidor revisits the themes and scenario of "Duel in the Sun" (1946), in which an impoverished young woman, Jennifer Jones (Ruby née Corey, later Gentry), is taken in by a well-to-do couple. When the foster mother dies (Josephine Hutchinson) Ruby marries the widower (Karl Malden) for security, but he too dies under circumstances that cast suspicions on Ruby. She is harried by her evangelical preacher-sibling (James Anderson) and her love affair with the son of a local land-owing scion (Charlton Heston) leads to a deadly shootout, a climax that recalls Vidor's violent 1946 Western.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor deferred his own salary to make the low-budget work, filming the "North Carolina" landscapes on his California ranch. American critics generally disparaged the movie.


title: King Vidor

text: Film historian Raymond Durgnat champions "Ruby Gentry" "as a truly great American film..."film noir" imbued with new fervor" that combines a radical social understanding with a Hollywood veneer and an intensely personal artistic statement. Vidor ranks "Ruby Gentry" among his most artistically gratifying works: "I had complete freedom in shooting it, and Selznick, who could have had an influence on Jennifer Jones, didn't intervene. I think I succeeded in getting something out of Jennifer, something quite profound and subtle." The swamp sequence where Ruby and her lover Boake hunt one another is "perhaps the best sequence [Vidor] ever filmed." "Ruby Gentry" showcases the essential elements of Vidor's oeuvre depicting the extremes of passion inherent in humanity and nature. Vidor commented on these elements as follows:


title: King Vidor

text: In 1953, Vidor's autobiography entitled "A Tree is a Tree" was published and widely praised. Film critic Dan Callahan provides this excerpt the book:


title: King Vidor

text: As part of the 75th Anniversary of Thomas Edison's invention of electric light, Vidor adapted two short stories for television produced by David O. Selznick. The production aired on all the major American TV networks on October 24, 1954.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's contributions included "A Kiss for the Lieutenant" by author Arthur Gordon starring Kim Novak, an amusing romantic vignette, as well as an adaption of novelist John Steinbeck's short story "Leader of the People" (1937) (from his novella "The Red Pony") in which a retired wagon-master, Walter Brennan, rebuffed by his son Harry Morgan, finds a sympathetic audience for his War Horse reminiscences about the Old West in his grandson Brandon deWilde. Screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote the scripts for both segments.


title: King Vidor

text: In 1954 Vidor, in collaboration with longtime associate and screenwriter Laurence Stallings pursued a remake of the director's silent era "The Turn in the Road" (1919). Vidor's persistent efforts to revive this Christian Science themed work spanning 15 years in the post-war period was never consummated, though a cast was proposed for a Allied Artists production in 1960. Setting aside this endeavor, Vidor opted to film a Western with Universal-International, "Man Without a Star" (1955).


title: King Vidor

text: Based on a story by Dee Linford of the same name and scripted by Borden Chase, "Man Without a Star" is an iconographic Western tale of remorseless struggle between a wealthy rancher Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain) and small homesteaders. Saddle-tramp and gunman Dempsey Rae (Kirk Douglas) is drawn into the vortex of violence, that Vidor symbolizes with ubiquitous barbed-wire. The cowboy ultimately prevails against the hired gunslinger Steve Miles (Richard Boone) who had years ago murdered Rae's younger brother.


title: King Vidor

text: Kirk Douglas acted as both the star and uncredited producer in a collaborative effort with director Vidor. Neither was entirely satisfied with the result. Vidor failed to fully develop his thematic conception, the ideal of balancing personal freedoms with conservation of the land as a heritage.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor and Douglas succeeded in creating Douglas's splendid character, Dempsey Rae, who emerges as a vital force, especially in the saloon-banjo sequence that screenwriter Borden Chase termed "pure King Vidor".


title: King Vidor

text: "Man Without a Star", rated as "a minor work" by biographer John Baxter, marks a philosophical transition in Vidor's outlook towards Hollywood: the Dempsey Rae figure, though retaining his personal integrity, "is a man without a star to follow; no ideal, no goal" reflecting a declining enthusiasm by the director for American topics. Vidor's final two movies, the epics "War and Peace" (an adaption of the novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy), and "Solomon and Sheba", a story from the Old Testament, followed the director's realization that his self-conceived film proposals would not be welcomed by commercial movie enterprises. This pair of historical costume dramas were created outside Hollywood, both filmed and financed in Europe.


title: King Vidor

text: Contrary to his aesthetic aversion to adapting historical spectaculars, in 1955 Vidor accepted independent Italian producer Dino De Laurentis's offer to create a screen adaption of Leo Tolstoy's vast historical romance of the late-Napoleonic era, "War and Peace" (1869). In the public domain, "War and Peace" was under consideration for adaption by several studios. Paramount Pictures and De Laurenti rushed the film into production before a proper script could be formulated from Tolstoy's complex and massive tale, requiring rewrites throughout the shooting. The final cut, at three hours, was necessarily a highly compressed version of the literary work.


title: King Vidor

text: Tolstoy's themes of individualism, the centrality of family and national allegiance and the virtues of agrarian egalitarianism were immensely appealing to Vidor. He commented on the pivotal character in the novel, Pierre Bezukhov (played by Henry Fonda): "The strange thing about it is the character of Pierre is the same character I had been trying to put on the screen in many of my own films."


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor was delighted with the vitality of Audrey Hepburn's performance as Natasha Rostova, in contrast to the miscasting of the male leads. His assessment of the centrality of Natasha is based in the process of her maturation:


title: King Vidor

text: Cinematographer Jack Cardiff devised one of the film's most visually striking sequences, the sunrise duel between Pierre (Henry Fonda) and Kuragin (Tullio Carminati), shot entirely on a sound-stage. Vidor performed second-production duties to oversee the spectacular battle reenactments and director Mario Soldati (uncredited) shot a number of scenes with the principal cast.


title: King Vidor

text: American audiences showed modest enthusiasm at the box-office, but "War and Peace" was well-received by film critics. The movie was met with huge popular approval in the USSR, a fact alarming to Soviet officials, coming as it did near the height of Cold War hostilities between America and Russia. The Soviet government responded in 1967 with its own heavily financed adaption of the novel, War and Peace (film series) (1967).


title: King Vidor

text: "War and Peace" garnered Vidor further offers to film historical epics, among these "King of Kings" (1961), (directed by Nicholas Ray) as well as a project to develop a script about the life 16th Century Spanish author Miguel Cervantes. Vidor finally settled on the Old Testament story of Solomon and Sheba, with Tyrone Power and Gina Lollobrigida tapped as the star-crossed monarchs. This would be Vidor's final Hollywood film of his career.


title: King Vidor

text: "Solomon and Sheba" is one of a cycle of bible-based epics popular favored by Hollywood during the 1950s. The film is best remembered as the Vidor's last commercial production of his long career in Hollywood.


title: King Vidor

text: A tragic footnote is attached to this picture. Six weeks into production the leading man, 45-year-old star Tyrone Power, suffered a heart attack during a climatic sword fight scene. He died within the hour. Considered the "ultimate nightmare" for any major movie production, the entire film had to be re-shot, with the lead role of Solomon now recast with Yul Brynner.


title: King Vidor

text: The death of Tyrone Powers was less a financial disaster and more a creative loss. Vidor was bereft of an actor who had grasped the complex nature of the Solomon figure, adding depth to Powers' performance. Brynner and Vidor were instantly at loggerheads when the leading man substituted a portrayal of an "anguished monarch" for an Israelite king who would "dominate each situation without conflict." Vidor reported, "it was an attitude that affected the depth of his performance and probably the integrity of the film."


title: King Vidor

text: Leading lady Gina Lollobrigida adopted Brynner's approach to her character development of her Queen of Sheba, adding another facet of discord with the director.


title: King Vidor

text: "Solomon and Sheba" includes some impressive action sequences, including a widely cited battle finale in which Solomon's tiny army faces an approaching onslaught of mounted warriors. His troops turn their burnished shields to the sun, the reflected light blinding the enemy hordes and sending them careening into an abyss. Astonishing sequences such as these abound in Vidor's work, prompting film historian Andrew Sarris to observe "Vidor was a director for anthologies [who] created more great moments and fewer great films than any director of his rank."


title: King Vidor

text: Despite the setbacks that plagued the production and the ballooning costs associated with the reshoot, Solomon and Sheba "more than earned back its costs."


title: King Vidor

text: Contrary to claims that "Solomon and Sheba" ended Vidor's career, he continued to receive offers to film major productions after its completion. The reasons for the director's disengagement from commercial film-making are related to his age (65-years-old) and to his desire to pursue smaller and more personal movie projects. Reflecting on independent productions, Vidor remarked, "I'm glad I got out of it"


title: King Vidor

text: In the mid-1960s Vidor crafted a 26-minute 16mm movie that sets forth his philosophy on the nature of individual perception. Narrated by the director, and quoting from theologian-philosophers Jonathan Edwards and Bishop Berkeley, the images serve to complement the abstract ideas he sets forth. The film is a discourse on subjective idealism, which maintains that the material world is an illusion, existing only in the human mind: humanity creates the world they experience.


title: King Vidor

text: "Truth and Illusion" provides an insight into the significance of Vidor's themes in his work, and is consistent with his Christian Science precepts.


title: King Vidor

text: Micheal Neary served as assistant director on the film, and Fred Y. Smith completed the editing. The movie was never released commercially.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor's documentary "The Metaphor" consists of a number of interviews between the director and painter Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth had contacted Vidor in the late 1970s expressing admiration for his work. The artist emphasized that much of his material had been inspired by the director's 1925 war-romance "The Big Parade".


title: King Vidor

text: The documentary records the discussions between Vidor and both Wyeth and his spouse Betsy. A montage is formed by inter-cutting images of Wyeth's paintings with short clips from Vidor's "The Big Parade". Vidor attempts to reveal an "inner metaphor" demonstrating the sources of artistic inspiration.


title: King Vidor

text: Considering the film only a work in progress at the time of his death, the documentary had its premiere at the American Film Institute in 1980.


title: King Vidor

text: "Conquest" (formerly The Milly Story): In 1960, Vidor resumed efforts to make sound version of his 1919 "The Turn in the Road". His reconceived screenplay concerns a Hollywood director disillusioned with the film industry who inherits a gas station from his father in the fictional Colorado town of "Arcadia". The script's dialogue contains oblique references to a number of Vidor's silent films including ("The Big Parade" (1925), "The Crowd" (1928)). "Conquest" introduces a mysterious young woman, "a feminine archetype" (a figure in Jungian philosophy) who serves as "the answer to everyone's problems" while pumping gas at the station. She disappears suddenly, leaving the director inspired and he returns to Hollywood. Impressed by Italian director Federico Fellini's "8 ½" (1963), he briefly corresponded with him while writing "Conquest". Vidor soon abandoned his 15-year effort to make the "unfashionable" movie, despite Sid Grauman – like Vidor an adherent to Christian Science- having purchased the rights. Even the modest budgetary requests were rejected by the tiny Allied Artists and they dropped the project.


title: King Vidor

text: "The Crowd": Vidor developed revisions of his 1928 silent masterpiece, including a 1960s sequel of Ann Head's 1967 novel "Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jones" (made as a TV feature without his input), and in the early 1970s another effort, "Brother Jon".


title: King Vidor

text: "The Actor": In 1979, Vidor sought financing for a biography of the "ill-fated" James Murray, star of Vidor's "The Crowd" (1928).


title: King Vidor

text: "A Man Called Cervantes": Vidor was involved in script writing for an adaption of Bruno Frank's novel, but withdrew from the project, unhappy with script changes. The movie was shot and released in 1967 as "Cervantes", but Vidor withdrew his name from the production.


title: King Vidor

text: "William Desmond Taylor": Vidor researched the murder of silent era actor-director William Desmond Taylor, killed under mysterious circumstances in 1922. Though no screenplay was forthcoming, author Sidney D. Kirkpatrick alleges that Vidor solved the murder, as described in his novel, "A Cast of Killers" (1986).


title: King Vidor

text: 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.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor served as an 'extra" or made cameo appearances during his film career. An early film still exists from an unidentified Hotex Motion Picture Company silent short made in 1914, when he was 19-years-old (He wears a "Key Stone Cop" costume and false beard). While attempting to break into Hollywood as a director and screenwriter, Vidor took "bits parts" for Vitagraph Studios and Inceville in 1915–1916. During the height of his fame he made a number of cameo appearances in his own films, including "The Patsy" in 1926 and "Our Daily Bread" in 1934.


title: King Vidor

text: Vidor did not appear as a featured actor until 1981, at the age of 85. Vidor provided a "charming" tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Walter Klein, a senile grandfather in director James Toback's "Love and Money". Vidor's motivation in accepting the role was a desire to observe contemporary movie-making technology. "Love and Money" was released 1982, shortly before Vidor died of heart failure.


title: King Vidor

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


title: King Vidor

text: 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).


title: King Vidor

text: 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.


title: King Vidor

text: 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.