King Vidor Biography

Fast Facts

• Was the president of the Screen Directors Guild from 1936 to 1938
• Started his career as a cinema projectionist, which gave him an opportunity to watch the same films repeatedly and learn from them
• Quote: "The director is the channel through which a motion picture reaches the screen․"
• Made films with prominent moral standpoints that were inserted gracefully into the story
• Started out making visually dazzling silent films, but was always ready to embrace new technology, refusing to be intimidated by sound or to let the new equipment get in the way of his filming techniques
• Spent 1967 researching the unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor with the intention of turning the story into a screenplay, but never publicized his findings
• Survived the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and wrote a fictionalized account of the experience for "Esquire" magazine in 1935