LYCOS RETRIEVER 
King Vidor: Movies
built 612 days ago
From All Movie Guide: For the first 20 years of her life, Houston-born Florence Vidor was Florence Cobb. In 1915 she married freelance photographer King Vidor, a fellow Texan with aspirations for a movie career. The Vidors traveled to Hollywood in their second-hand Model T (which ... served as their "home"), financing their trip by filming travelogue footage on behalf of the Ford Motor company. Both secured jobs at the Vitagraph studio, Florence as a bit player and King as a scriptwriter and extra. The first of Florence's film roles to attract attention was the tragic seamstress in Fox's 1917 production of A Tale of Two Cities. She was next cast as leading lady opposite Sessue Hayakawa in Hashimura Togo (1917).
Source:
Almost an instant classic, Booth Tarkington's 1921 small-town morality tale reached the screen two years later courtesy of King Vidor and Encore Pictures. Vidor's wife, the beautiful Florence Vidor, played the title-role, a girl of modest means who pretends to be wealthy to her friends in general and socialite Arthur Russell (Vernon Steele) in particular. The highlight of the film -- and the book -- is the disastrous dinner party given in Arthur's honor. RKO remade the story in 1935 as a vehicle for Katharine Hepburn, with Fred MacMurray as Arthur and Evelyn Venable as the debutante Mildred Palmer, a role played in the 1924 original by Gertrude Astor. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
Source:
King Vidor only directed few but very successful movies in the following two decades like "Northwest Passage" (40), "H.M. Pulham, Esq." (41) and "An American Romance" (44). Because M-G-M cut out long passages out of the last mentioned movie, Vidor turned his back on the studio and directed for David O. Selznick the western "Duel in the Sun" (46).
Source:
Vidor published his autobiography, A Tree is A Tree, in 1976. 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 film exterior shots).
Source:
Vidor is neglected today. Yet it is not for this reason that his influence on Wyeth was virtually unknown among Wyeth scholars in 2006, as was their film together, Metaphor (1980). (8) Although “film” is getting increased attention in art history, it is as media within the broad gamut of popular culture. Old auteur movies are discounted. Yet there is an interesting relationship between Vidor and 20th century American painters, a bit like that between Jean Renoir and French impressionists – and not a relationship that is just a one-way.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Movies