30 Years of Brilliance: 1930-1959
King Vidor had a long and successful career as a Hollywood director lasting over 60 years and passing from the silent movie age well into the era of Talkies. He was brilliant and innovative and it is a mystery why his name and reputation have become less well known than some of his contemporaries. He certainly does not deserve such a fate. He directed some brilliant and pioneering works such as 'Hallelujah! in 1929, 'Stella Dallas' in 1937 with Barbara Stanwyck, 'Duel in the Sun' in 1946, and 'Solomon and Sheba' in 1959. Most of his best sound films are still shown regularly on television decades after his death, and even 'The Big Parade', the best of his silents, saw release on laserdisc during the 1980s. He did not win an Oscar for Best Picture or Director but he was nominated 5 times.
He began by working as a ticket collector at a local Galveston theater and quickly progressed to projectionist. He was astute and enthusiastic enough to learn how to make movies from the repeated viewings of the movies he projected and he began shooting news events in the area and selling it to newsreel production companies.
In 1915 he married actress Florence Arto and the young couple moved to the new movie colony which was springing up in Hollywood. Vidor initially worked as a clerk and a movie extra whilst his wife slowly developed a career for herself as an actress. By 1918, he had become a director at Universal, making two-reel shorts, and the following year he moved up to directing main features with 'The Turn in the Road', based on a script which he had written himself.
In 1920, backed by his father, the ambitious Vidor built and ran "Vidor Village," a small studio where he directed eight movies over the next 3 years most of them starring his wife. The marriage hit problems and the couple separated in 1923, divorcing a year later. At the same time Vidor reinforced his rapidly growing reputation by joining the resourceful and ambitious Sam Goldwyn. When Goldwyn merged with the newly formed MGM Vidor stayed on and continued with the new company for twenty years, during which time he established his reputation as one of Hollywood's foremost and innovative directors.
His best work shows his preoccupation with the experiences of ordinary people in situations which are clearly quite out of the ordinary. His biggest movie of the Silent era, and the one which mde him famous, was 'The Big Parade', made in 1925, which became the biggest box-office success of the time. The movie imaginatively depicts World War 1 through the eyes of a single soldier. Vidor used the same device in 1928 in 'The Crowd' which examines and dramatizes the humdrum life of a city clerk.
Vidor accepted the era of Talkies wth equilibrium and even panche. He was not intimidated by the new medium and, unlike many of his contemporaries, was prepared to experiment and improvise. He made the all black musical, 'Halleluja', in 1929 and then 'The Champ', starring Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper, made in 1931 was one of the most popular melodramas of its era.
Vidor's next memorable film, 'Our Daily Bread' in 1934 was financed by himself, ironically mirroring the fate of its characters: victims of the Depression who pull together to manage an abandoned farm. It ends with an amazing sequence of choreographed toil: the workers divert a stream through a hastily constructed ditch to irrigate the crops. Through superb editing and composition, Vidor turns the stuff of documentary realism into a compelling, magnificent, poetic cinema.
Vidor was extremely successful at the box-office during the 1930's with such his as 'Stella Dallas' in 1937 and 'The Citadel' the following year. He also worked uncredited on 'The Wizard of Oz' in 1939. In 1940 Vidor directed the satirical comedy 'Comrade X', and the thriller Northwest Passage starring Spencer Tracy, but he had to wait until 1947 for his next unforgettable hit with Duel in the Sun, starring Jennifer Jones. The movie re-established his pre-eminence in the ranks of Hollywood directors and 'The Fountainhead' in 1949 reinforced his position.
In the 1950's, only the epic genre seemed big enough for his reputation and he ended his career with two famous examples.. So unfashionable are such films today, it is almost heretical to concede that 'War and Peace' in 1955 is majestic filmmaking, and as dramatically engaging in its quiet verses as it is vivid in its action choruses. But it is.
Solomon and Sheba, made in 1959, and which left Vidor dissatisfied, is an interesting Biblical epic, containing an amazing sequence of a group of soldiers blinding the advancing enemy army by reflecting sunlight off their shields. Great sceneslike this, amidst otherwise ordinary fare, have caused Vidor to be branded a director of 'great moments' but not 'great films'.
Vidor received an honorary Oscar in 1979 for his services to the movie industry. He died in November, 1982.
