LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Rex Ingram: Hollywood Walk
built 614 days ago
That night in 1951 in the Las Palmas Theater in Los Angeles, Ingram began acting once again. Before his swift fall, he had established himself as a favorite among both black and white audiences of his time. Throughout his career, he struggled to eradicate the stereotypical roles usually given to African American actors both in the theater and particularly in Hollywood. His resources in the struggle to broaden the range of parts for blacks were his forceful acting style and his increasingly selective standards for his own roles as he gained fame and notoriety. "For black audiences of that time [the 1930s and 1940s], he was clearly an emblem of pride and assertion," wrote Donald Bogle in his 1988 book Blacks in American Film and Television.
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Ingram's performance as De Lawd in The Green Pastures film was the defining moment of his movie career and turned him into the most prominent black leading man in Hollywood -- not that there was much competition. Paul Robeson, who had emerged to stardom in the 1920s in Showboat and had done The Emperor Jones on film, was living in England at the time, making films there because there were simply no vehicles or roles available in Hollywood for strong, powerful, black leading men. Alas, Ingram encountered the same problem after playing De Lawd; there were few movie roles from the major studios suitable to an actor of such stature. He would not and could not go back to playing porters or African tribesmen, but he found himself unable to go forward either. The best offer he got was to do a theatrical revival of The Green Pastures, in which he refused to take part. So he left acting, returned to medicine, and planned to go into research.
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Reknowned director Michael Powell began his career as an apprentice for Rex Ingram in Nice. Powell recalls in his autobiography "A Life in the Movies" that "[John George] had been a permanent member of Rex's troupe for some years. He was a well known Hollywood character and a good actor...he had a beautiful face and fine eyes".
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Rex was born in Dublin but lived and worked in Hollywood from about 1914. He left there in 1926 & went to Nice after an argument with Louis B. Mayer. After that he just put "Metro-Goldwyn presents ..." on his pictures with no mention of Mayer.
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Ingram sold his studios in Nice, where he had reigned as an uncrowned king; as the Victorine Studios they were to become an important element in French film production. Ingram retired to North Africa and later rejoined his wife Alice Terry in Hollywood. He indulged his hobbies of sculpture, writing, and travel.
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Louis B. Mayer, who after Loew's death, had taken control of the studio, wanted Ingram to come to Hollywood, and when the director refused, his contract was not renewed. After making his first and only talkie, "Baroud," in 1931, he retired from motion pictures.
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