King Vidor
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King Wallis Vidor (February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director.
He was born in Galveston, Texas, and survived the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.
A freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist, he made his debut as a director in 1913 with Hurricane in Galveston. In Hollywood from 1915, he worked on a variety of film-related jobs before directing a feature film, The Turn of the Road in 1919. A successful mounting of Peg o' My Heart in 1922 got him a long term contract with MGM.Three years later he made The Big Parade , among the most acclaimed war-films of the silent era, and a major commercial success. In 1928 Vidor received his first Oscar nomination for The Crowd. In all he was nominated five times for an Oscar but he never won in direct competition; he received an honorary award in 1979. Vidor's career extended well in to the sound era and he continued making feature films till the late 50's.. Some of his better known sound films include Stella Dallas, The Citadel, Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead and War and Peace. He also directed the black and white sequences in the Wizard of Oz including the song "Somewhere over the Rainbow".
Vidor entered in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest career as a film director: beginning with Hurricane in Galveston in 1913 and ending in 1980 with a documentary called The Metaphor.
Selected Filmography
- The Jack Knife Man 1920
- The Sky Pilot 1921
- Peg 'o My Heart 1922
- The Big Parade 1925
- The Crowd 1928
- The Champ 1931
- Our Daily Bread 1934
- The Citadel 1938
- Comrade X 1940
- Northwest Passage 1940
- Duel in the Sun 1946
- The Fountainhead, 1949
- Ruby Gentry 1952
- War and Peace 1956
- Solomon and Sheba 1959
External links
- Template:Imdb name
- Vidor, King Wallis (http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/VV/fvi15.html) in the Handbook of Texas Onlinede:King Vidor