King Vidor

Director

February 8, 1894 (88 years)

† November 1, 1982

Galveston, Texas, USA

Biography

King Wallis Vidor (February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades. In 1979, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator." He was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Director, and won eight international film awards during his career. Vidor's best known films include The Big Parade (1925), The Crowd (1928), Stella Dalla…

Filmography

6.4

Duel in the Sun

Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father's first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.

6.7

War and Peace

The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

6.4

Solomon and Sheba

Near death, King David has a vision that his poet son, Solomon, should succeed him, rather than hot-headed Adonijah. Furious, Adonijah departs the court, swearing he will become king. Other rulers are concerned that Solomon's benevolent rule and interest in monotheism will threaten their tyrannical, polytheistic kingdoms. The Queen of Sheba makes an agreement with the Egyptian pharaoh to corrupt Solomon for their mutual benefit.

6.8

The Fountainhead

An uncompromising, visionary architect struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards.

6.5

Man Without a Star

A wandering cowboy gets caught up in a range war.

6.3

Ruby Gentry

A sexy but poor young girl marries a rich man she doesn't love, but carries a torch for another man.

6.2

Comrade X

An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.

6.5

The Citadel

Young, idealistic, newly qualified Scottish doctor Andrew Manson arrives in Wales and takes his first job in a mining town, and begins to wonder at the persistent cough many of the miners have. When his attempts to prove its cause are thwarted, he moves to London. His new practice does poorly, but when a friend shows him how to make a lucrative practice from rich hypochondriacs, it will take a great shock to show him what the truth of being a doctor really is.

7.2

The Champ

A broken-down alcoholic prizefighter struggles to keep custody of his adoring son.

7.2

Show People

Hollywood hopeful Peggy Pepper arrives at a major studio, from Georgia, to become a great dramatic star. Things don't go entirely according to plan.

6.6

Northwest Passage

Based on the Kenneth Roberts novel of the same name, this film tells the story of two friends who join Rogers' Rangers, as the legendary elite force engages the enemy during the French and Indian War. The film focuses on their famous raid at Fort St. Francis and their marches before and after the battle.

6.8

Street Scene

The setting is a city block during a sweltering summer, where the residents serve as representatives of the not-very-idealized American melting pot. There is idle chitchat, gossip, jealousy, racism, adultery, and suddenly but not unexpectedly, a murder.

6.9

Stella Dallas

A working-class woman is willing to do whatever it takes to give her daughter a socially promising future.

5.7

On Our Merry Way

Oliver Pease gets a dose of courage from his wife Martha and tricks the editor of the paper (where he writes lost pet notices) into assigning him the day's roving question. Martha suggests, "Has a little child ever changed your life?" Oliver gets answers from two slow-talking musicians, an actress whose roles usually feature a sarong, and an itinerant cardsharp. In each case the "little child" is hardly innocent: in the first, a local auto mechanic's "baby" turns out to be fully developed as a woman and a musician; in the second, a spoiled child star learns kindness; in the third, the family of a lost brat doesn't want him returned. And Oliver, what becomes of him?

5.7

Lightning Strikes Twice

Sent to a dude ranch in the west to recover her health, a New York actress falls in love with a ranch owner recently acquitted of the murder of his wife.

7.6

The Crowd

John, an ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker, meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.

6.7

Beyond the Forest

Rosa, the self-serving wife of a small-town doctor, gets a better offer when a wealthy big-city man insists she get a divorce and marry him instead. Soon she demonstrates she is capable of rather deplorable acts -- including murder.

7.6

The Big Parade

The story of an idle rich boy who joins the US Army's Rainbow Division and is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes friends with two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl.

6.4

La Bohème

A group of starving artists try to survive in 1830s Paris, including a seamstress and the would-be playwright she loves.

7.7

So Red the Rose

During the American Civil War, Valette Bedford waits patiently for her husband Duncan Bedford, to return home, praying that she will not become a widow.