King Vidor
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| Known for: |
War and Peace, The Crowd, Duel in the Sun |
| Birth name: |
King Wallis Vidor |
| Birthday: |
8 February 1894,
Galveston, Texas, USA |
| Height: |
5' 11½" (1.82 m) |
Trivia

Father of
Suzanne Vidor Parry by his first marriage to
Florence Vidor and Antonia Vidor and
Belinda Vidor Holiday by his second marriage to
Eleanor Boardman..

President of the Screen Directors Guild. [1936-1938]

Survived the most horrific hurricane to ever hit the United States, the 1900 storm that devastated Galveston, Texas on September 8th, 1900. This tropical cyclone killed an estimated 6,000 people, fully one third of the population. Vidor wrote a fictional account of the storm entitled "Southern Storm" for the May 1935 issue of Esquire magazine.

Entered into Guinness World Records as having "The Longest Career As A Film Director", spanning 67 years beginning with
Hurricane in Galveston in 1913 and ending with the documentary
The Metaphor in 1980.

Directed the black and white sequences, including "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", in
The Wizard of Oz when director
Victor Fleming was forced to leave the production to move to
Gone with the Wind.

Was obsessed by the unsolved murder of 1920s director
William Desmond Taylor. He spent all of 1967 attempting to learn the identity of Taylor's killer and planned to turn the story into a movie.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1130-1136. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
The Big Parade was a huge hit. When MGM discovered that a clause in Vidor's contract entitled him to 20% of the net profits, studio lawyers called a meeting with him. At the meeting, MGM accountants played up the costs of the picture while downgrading the studio forecast of its potential success. Vidor was persuaded to sell his stake in the film for a small sum. The film ran for 96 weeks at the Astor Theater alone and grossed $5 million (approximately $50 million in 2003 dollars) domestically by 1930, making it the most profitable release in MGM history at that point.

He had three daughters. His oldest, Suzanne, was born to his first wife Florence in 1919. With
Eleanor Boardman he had daughters Antonia, born in 1927, and Belinda, born in June, 1930.

Directed four different actors in Oscar-nominated performances:
Wallace Beery,
Robert Donat,
Barbara Stanwyck and
Anne Shirley. Beery won an Oscar for
The Champ.

In 1978, he (co-presenter) accepted the Oscar for "Best Director" on behalf of
Woody Allen, who wasn't present at the awards ceremony

Head of jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1962
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