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1313
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yago
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3
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-16-mn-340-story.html
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en
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E. Boardman; Was Actress in Silent Films
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[
""
] | null |
[
"MYRNA OLIVER"
] |
1991-12-16T00:00:00
|
Eleanor Boardman, actress during the silent film era who was married to director King Vidor, has died.
|
en
|
/apple-touch-icon.png
|
Los Angeles Times
|
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-16-mn-340-story.html
|
Eleanor Boardman, actress during the silent film era who was married to director King Vidor, has died. She was 93.
Miss Boardman died Thursday in her sleep at her Santa Barbara home, her stepdaughter, Suzanne Parry, said.
A native of Philadelphia, Miss Boardman won nationwide fame as the “Kodak Girl” on posters that advertised Eastman Kodak photographic products.
Her subsequent Hollywood career, which included few talkies, peaked with her leading role in “The Crowd” in 1928. Vidor directed the silent film.
Miss Boardman also appeared in such silents as “Stranger’s Banquet,” “The Silent Accuser,” “Memory Lane” and “Tell It to the Marines.”
Her brief fling with talkies included such films as “She Goes to War,” “Mamba,” “The Flood” and a remake of “The Squaw Man.”
Miss Boardman in effect retired from the film business in 1931.
She divorced Vidor in 1933. They waged several court battles over the next decade over support and custody of their two daughters. Vidor won custody when Miss Boardman took the girls to live in pre-World War II Europe. But she returned to the United States and regained custody of the children.
Miss Boardman was also married to French director Harry D. D’Arrast.
Survivors include her two daughters, Belinda Vidor Holliday, of Middleton in Northern California, and Antonia Vidor Whitnah, of Carmel, and four grandchildren.
At Miss Boardman’s request, there will be no services.
|
||
1313
|
yago
|
0
| 25
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https://www.girl.com.au/celebrities/eleanor-boardman.htm
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en
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Eleanor Boardman
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[] |
[
"Eleanor Boardman"
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[] | null |
Eleanor Boardman
|
en
|
https://www.girl.com.au/eleanor-boardman-celebrity.htm
|
Eleanor Boardman (August 19, 1898 – December 12, 1991) was an American film actress of the silent era, married to film director King Vidor.
|
||||||
1313
|
yago
|
2
| 84
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https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-crowd/
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en
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The Crowd
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2013-08-27T00:17:56+10:00
|
en
|
https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-crowd/
|
The Crowd (1928) was both a groundbreaking and courageous film for a major director to initiate at MGM in the pre-Depression era – a big budget production without major stars, almost plotless, lacking in dramatic conflict, and about an ordinary couple struggling for a life in the big city after a brief courtship and a honeymoon at Niagara Falls. Lead character John Sims’ ambition, at once foolish but necessary, sustains him through his dreary routine as one of the mob on the office “assembly line”. The strain placed on the marriage, played out with uncommon honesty for a Hollywood production, brings out the best in his wife, Mary. But the couple’s moment of optimism is suddenly overcome by tragedy, heightened by the unfeeling crowd. The film is moving without being unequivocally happy or tragic, the theme summed up by one of the film’s intertitles: “the crowd laughs with you always… but will cry with you for only a day”.
Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simmon in their book length study of King Vidor’s career locate The Crowd in an international wave of populist films in the ’20s and ’30s including the German populism of Berlin Alexanderplatz (Phil Jutzi, 1931) and Asphalt (Joe May, 1929), Frank Borzage’s Seventh Heaven (1927), Vidor’s Street Scene (1931), Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante (1934), Jean Renoir’s Toni (1935) and Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936), and Marcel Carné’s Le Jour se lève (1939), as well as “the same cinematic current obscured by another label, ‘neorealism’, after 1945”. The theme of “the crowd” is a motif of screen populism that was pervasive in the cinema between the wars (1).
Sims arrives in New York full of the ambition instilled in him by his father who, at his birth the 4th of July 1900, predicts the arrival of “a little man the world’s going to hear from all right”, a confidence not easily deflated by a stranger’s prognosis as they contemplate the Manhattan skyline: “You’ve got to be good in that town if you want to beat the crowd”.
The core theme is the loneliness in being one of the crowd, subject to its fleetingly concerned curiosity in moments of untimely tragedy and its active indifference to the individual’s plight. It is not a positive cruelty but is played against the “excess” of John’s desperation and grief in response to which the crowd seems to close ranks. Its representatives (one of the employment queue; a policeman) take him to task, in one instance for his imploring cry for preference in a queue for work, in the other for Sims’ extended expression of anguish, his poignantly futile gestures to the passing traffic for quiet as his daughter’s life ebbs away.
In his autobiography Vidor recounted his response to MGM studio head Irving Thalberg’s prompting on how he might top the huge success of The Big Parade. The director spontaneously came up with the idea of the average fellow’s walk through life “as a battle…. One of the Mob [the suggested title]” (2). This notion of the ordinary man as hero, central to both The Big Parade and The Crowd, runs through Vidor’s films even to the casting of the naturalistic Gary Cooper as the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired figure of Howard Roark in the symbolically expressionist The Fountainhead (1949) and “prairie philosopher” Henry Fonda as Pierre in War and Peace (1956), a character Vidor claimed he had been trying to put on the screen in many of his films (3).
James Murray was a minor player discovered at a glance by Vidor after a lengthy search to find someone to play “one of the crowd”. Murray never capitalised on his success in the role of John Sims and drifted into alcoholism, unemployment and untimely death in the Hudson River in 1936, after rejecting Vidor’s offer of a comeback lead in the “sequel”, Our Daily Bread (1934) (4). To critic Raymond Durgnat “it’s as if something in his soul never recovered from the low point of John’s depressions” (5). Another relatively minor lead, Eleanor Boardman (then Vidor’s wife), gave the performance of her life as Sims’ wife, Mary.
Vidor made the most of the rare opportunity to make a film about ordinary lives with MGM’s extraordinary resources. He seamlessly combined naturalistic filming, on occasions using hidden cameras on the streets of New York, with expressionistic use of studio sets, lighting and camera placement to heighten moments of personal crisis (see, for example, the use of perspective as John climbs the stairs to learn of his father’s death) and the teeming loneliness of the city which at times threatens to envelop the characters: the open-plan office set reprised 30 years later in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960); models of skyscrapers over which suspended cameras could track; an overhead shot of the crowd clustered around the accident victim.
The Crowd sat on the shelves for a year after its completion, a reflection of the studio’s uncertainty in handling it. Seven different endings were previewed and exhibitors were finally given the option of two. To Vidor’s relief they selected his preferred “semi-cynical” ending with its ambivalent suggestion, on one hand, of lessons learned or, on the other, of fleeting respite.
Despite being slated by the Variety critic as “a drab actionless story of ungodly length”, The Crowd was generally well-received critically and its reputation has continued to grow. The oft-repeated claim that it was a failure with the public seems inaccurate. While it was not a smash hit, The Crowd grossed more than double its considerable production costs and returned a small profit to the studio (6). It now stands as one of the great silent films and, as such, has served as an inspiration, most notably to Vittorio De Sica, for another path breaking film about ordinary lives made some 20 years later, Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) (7).
The Crowd (1928 USA 98 mins)
Prod Co: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Prod, Dir: King Vidor Scr: King Vidor, John V. A. Weaver, Harry Behn, from a story by Vidor Phot: Henry Sharp Prod Des: Cedric Gibbons, Arnold Gillespie Ed: Hugh Wynn
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https://www.whosdatedwho.com/dating/eleanor-boardman-and-king-vidor
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en
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Eleanor Boardman and King Vidor
|
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20 August 2024... Eleanor Boardman and King Vidor photos, news and gossip. Find out more about...
|
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|
Who's Dated Who?
|
https://www.whosdatedwho.com/dating/eleanor-boardman-and-king-vidor
|
King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman were married for 8 years. They dated for 1 year after getting together in 1925 and married in 1926. 8 years later they divorced on 11th Apr 1933.
They had 2 children, Antonia (97) and Belinda (94).
About
American Director King Vidor was born King Wallis Vidor on 8th February, 1894 in Galveston, Texas USA and passed away on 1st Nov 1982 Paseo Robles, CA USA aged 88. He is most remembered for The Big Parade, The Crowd, Show People. His zodiac sign is Aquarius.
American Actress Eleanor Boardman was born on 19th August, 1898 in Philadephia, Pennsylvania and passed away on 12th Dec 1991 Santa Barbara, California aged 93. She is most remembered for The Crowd, WAMPAS Baby Star of 1923. Her zodiac sign is Leo.
Contribute
Eleanor Boardman and King Vidor - Dating, Gossip, News, Photos list. Help us build our profile of Eleanor Boardman and King Vidor! Login to add information, pictures and relationships, join in discussions and get credit for your contributions.
References
www.imdb.com/name/nm0896542/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
www.imdb.com/name/nm0090187/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Relationship Statistics
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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/325948091763541653/
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[] |
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[] |
2016-06-29T12:30:06+00:00
|
The wedding of Hollywood director King Vidor and silent screen star Eleanor Boardman . Far left are MGM moguls Louis B Mayer seated, Samuel Goldwyn standing behind, and Irving Thalberg , second from... Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images
|
en
|
Pinterest
|
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/the-wedding-of-hollywood-director-king-vidor-and-silent-screen-star--513973376229638608/
| |||||||
1313
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0
| 48
|
https://www.instagram.com/p/CEFiGyjjPih/
|
en
|
Instagram
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[] |
[
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| 7
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https://travsd.wordpress.com/2021/08/19/eleanor-boardman-the-face-in-the-crowd/
|
en
|
Eleanor Boardman: The Face in “The Crowd”
|
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2021-08-19T00:00:00
|
The few who remember the name Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) today know her chiefly for being King Vidor's second wife and for starring in his 1928 masterpiece The Crowd. Boardman's screen career was very brief, lasting less than a decade, fewer than three dozen films. In fact she has nearly as many interesting credits outside cinema…
|
en
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(Travalanche)
|
https://travsd.wordpress.com/2021/08/19/eleanor-boardman-the-face-in-the-crowd/
|
The few who remember the name Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) today know her chiefly for being King Vidor’s second wife and for starring in his 1928 masterpiece The Crowd.
Boardman’s screen career was very brief, lasting less than a decade, fewer than three dozen films. In fact she has nearly as many interesting credits outside cinema than in it. She started out as an artist’s model, and was apparently the one John R. Neill used for the character of Betsy Bobbin in L. Frank Baum’s book Tik-Tok of Oz (1914):
She was apparently for a time also the Eastman Kodak Girl in print adverts. She was in the chorus of a couple of Edgar Selwyn musicals, which led naturally to a contract with Goldwyn (co-founded by Selwyn). her first film was The Strangers Banquet (1922) with Hobart Bosworth, Claire Windsor, Rockliffe Fellowes, and Ford Sterling. She was also in the 1923 version of Vanity Fair, before her first starring picture Souls for Sale, working with Vidor for the first time in Three Wise Fools, and being named a WAMPAS Baby Star, all in the same year. She and Vidor were married in 1926, with Marion Davies as witness. Tell It to the Marines (1926) with Lon Chaney was another one of her silents. Her smattering of talkies included Flood (1931) with Monte Blue, and Cecil B. DeMille’s 1931 remake of The Squaw Man.
Boardman and Vidor divorced in 1933. By that time she had two daughters to raise, so she effectively dropped out of pictures, although she did return for one Spanish film, The Three Cornered Hat in 1935. In 1940 she married Argentine-French screenwriter-director Harry D’Abbadie D’Arrast, dividing time between the U.S. and Europe until his death in 1968.
|
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|
https://eatdrinkfilms.com/2022/12/02/silents-please/
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en
|
Silents, Please!
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Anticipating the SFSFF’s Day of Silents Makes My Endorphins Rise by Meredith Brody (December 1, 2022) I keep my TV tuned (do we say tuned, nowadays?) to TCM. It’s what greets me when I snap on the TV (do we say snap on, nowadays), and has resulted in me being surprised that The Apartment or…
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https://eatdrinkfilms.com/2022/12/02/silents-please/
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Anticipating the SFSFF’s Day of Silents Makes My Endorphins Rise
by Meredith Brody
(December 1, 2022)
I keep my TV tuned (do we say tuned, nowadays?) to TCM. It’s what greets me when I snap on the TV (do we say snap on, nowadays), and has resulted in me being surprised that The Apartment or The Women or Wild River or Touch of Evil is playing. I pause to watch “for JUST a few minutes,” and end up trapped, mesmerized by The Whole Thing.This morning when I turned it on, I was greeted by the dulcet tones of Kevin Brownlow saying “The silent picture people had a very hard job: emotion, without words. They came through with flying colors.” And then Bill Morrison: “For me silent film reaches a kind of dream state. It has a quality somewhere between what we know as our everyday experience as contemporary sentient beings and… these archetypes of characters and conflicts that we understand through mythology.”
Meanwhile my eyes were being treated to a fast collage of clips – I do love a clip show! – of instantly recognizable moments from movies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Louise Brooks — glimpses of The Kid, The Patsy, Modern Times, The Crowd, The Wind, Metropolis, Ben-Hur, Safety Last, The Big Parade, Sunrise.
I felt my endorphins rise. Even more so when I realized that the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s Day of Silents was coming up on Saturday, December 3 in the beautiful Castro movie palace.
I’ve already said more than once that the San Francisco Silent Film Festival is my favorite among the many local festivals. And the Day of Silents reminds me just why: it’s generous (six films in one day), inclusive (everybody can see all the movies in one location), and brilliantly programmed (with delicious and varied live music accompanying every film).
I love silent films, not just for its special wordless language, but for, among other things, its glimpses into another time. As Brownlow says: “They are…a time machine in showing you exactly what people looked like, what streets looked like, how they behaved to each other, and attitudes.” Sometimes, I have thought, all a 1920’s camera has to do is photograph a street to make my heart leap.
Another advantage of this year’s Day of Silents: its brisk pace. After a year in which so many movies topped the two-hour mark, the movies range in length from 54 minutes to 80 minutes. Pandemic-hardened binge-watchers can do the day standing on their heads. (but, we hope, wearing their masks.)
It begins at 11 a.m. with a tribute to my imaginary boyfriend, Buster Keaton, called “Buster’s Mechanized Mayhem“: three of his best shorts, The High Sign (1921), The Electric House (1922), and The Goat (1921), accompanied on the piano by award-winning composer Wayne Barker(Peter and The Starcatchers), who was discovered by SFSFF regular Donald Sosin at one of his extracurricular Master Classes.
At 1 p.m., Forbidden Paradise (1924), starring Pola Negri, directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch, an erotic comedy inspired by the ever-popular Catherine the Great of Russia (who’s been played by a murderer’s row including Dietrich, Jeanne Moreau, Helen Mirren, and currently Elle Fanning). The film co-stars Adolphe Menjou, Rod la Roque, and we might glimpse an uncredited Clark Gable as one of the Czarina’s guards. Live music will be performed by the justly-famed Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, a five-member crew traveling to SF from snowy Colorado.
We segue from European comedy to European drama, the great discovery for silent movie buffs in this lineup: Pour Don Carlos (1921), starring and directed by the great Musidora, newly restored by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival itself, in partnership with the Cinemathèque de Toulouse and the Cinemathèque Francaise. Musidora is famed for her performance as the black-cat-suited Irma Vep in Louis Feuillade’s ten-episode serial Les Vampires (1915-1916). Very few of the movies she directed have survived, hence the excitement about seeing this one, set during Spain’s 19th-century civil war and filmed in the Basque country. Musical accompaniment by the Sascha Jacobsen Ensemble, who was nominated for the Latin Grammy this year for Best Tango Album.
At 5 p.m., Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat (1915), starring the unexpected matinee idol Sessue Hayakawa as a villainous wealthy who will loan money to the desperate socialite played by Fanny Ward – for a price. The ultimate price, if you know what I mean, including an upsetting scene of s/m torture. Jack Dean, Fanny Ward’s real husband, plays her husband in the film. Wayne Barker again does the honors as accompanist.
Changing the atmosphere from intense melodrama, at 7 p.m. King Vidor’s delightful Hollywood comedy, Show People (1928), starring no-longer-underrated Marion Davies and no-longer-closeted William Haines, in a sendup of the world they all knew so well. Look for cameos from LOTS of silent stars, ranging from the most famous – Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin – to the less-well-known: Rod la Roque, who we saw earlier in Forbidden Paradise, Eleanor Boardman (then married to King Vidor, who also can be glimpsed in the film). The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra will play.
And the day ends at 9 p.m. with a burst of two-color Technicolor, employed for the beautiful Anna May Wong in two-strip’s earliest surviving movie, The Toll of the Sea (1922). The story – beautiful Asian woman, Lotus Flower, betrayed by an American man who fathers her child but does not stay with her – will be familiar. It does provide Anna May Wong with one of the roles that allowed her to shine. And its brisk 54-minute running time ought to send us into the streets hungry for more. On November 22, 2022 the U.S. Mint issued Anna May Wong quarters.
I know I will be. For, as Kevin Brownlow said in the TCM short: “The best of the silent films are great works of art.” The San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s 2022 Day of Silents will remind us all of that.
See the complete schedule and to purchase tickets.
(Editor’s Note: Will this be the last film festival at the Castro Theatre. New management wants to remove the seats on the main floor and replace them with dance floors, using folding seats for film programming. This destroys both the historic integrity of the theater and the proper moviegoing experience. Visit Save the Castro to learn how you can join over the thousands of filmgoers, filmmakers, writers and actors to preserve one of the most important movie venues in the world.)
ENJOY OUR GALLERY OF POSTERS, STILLS AND CLIPS
Meredith Brody, a graduate of both the Paris Cordon Bleu cooking school and USC film school, has been the restaurant critic for, among others, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and SF Weekly, and has written for countless film magazines and websites including Cahiers du Cinema, Film Comment, and Indiewire. Her writings on books, theater, television, and travel have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Interview. She also contributes to EatDrinkFilms including her“Meals with Meredith,” where she talks about food and film with filmmakers at restaurants in northern California, writes about vintage cocktails and where she eats during film festivals at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. A selection of her EDF pieces are found here.
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https://tv.apple.com/us/person/eleanor-boardman/umc.cpc.2ys8f4u6jobenocyutveqk5vz
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Eleanor Boardman Movies and Shows
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Learn about Eleanor Boardman on Apple TV. Browse shows and movies that feature Eleanor Boardman including Tell It to the Marines, The Crowd, and more.
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Apple TV
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A number of her films, including "Wine of Youth" (1924), the pleasing comedy "Proud Flesh" (1925) and the lavish swashbuckler "Bardelys the Magnificent" (1926), costarring John Gilbert, were directed by King Vidor, whose second wife she would become in 1926. Vidor also helmed Boardman's best-remembered film, "The Crowd" (1928), a remarkable study of an urban Everyman. While critics who generally pictured her in roles on a higher social plane thought her miscast in "The Crowd," Boardman achieved a performance of great subtlety that ranks among the finest in the history of silent screen acting. Unfortunately, her career in sound films, hurt by a series of either poor or unpopular films, quickly waned and she retired to marry director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast.
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https://fr-ca.findagrave.com/memorial/6846494/king-vidor
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1982) – Find a Grave Gedenkstätte
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Motion Picture Director. A Hollywood pioneer, he helped develop the cinema into a personal and highly expressive medium. Vidor's most striking work was done in the late silent and early talkie periods, though he continued to craft intelligent and offbeat films throughout his long career. He received five Academy Award...
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https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/vidor-king
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Encyclopedia.com
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VIDOR, King Source for information on Vidor, King: International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers dictionary.
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VIDOR, King
Nationality: American. Born: King Wallis Vidor in Galveston, Texas, 8 February 1894. Education: Attended Peacock Military Academy, San Antonio, Texas. Family: Married 1) actress Florence Arto, 1915 (divorced 1924), one daughter; 2) actress Eleanor Boardman, 1926 (divorced 1932); 3) Elizabeth Hall, 1932 (died 1973). Career: Ticket-taker and part-time projectionist in Galveston's first movie house, 1909–10; amateur newsreel photographer, 1910–15; drove to Hollywood in Model T, financed trip by shooting footage for Ford's advertising newsreel, 1915; worked at various jobs in film industry, then directed first feature, The Turn in the Road, 1919; hired by 1st National, built studio called Vidor Village, 1920 (shut down, 1922); director for Goldwyn Studios, 1923, later absorbed by MGM; taught graduate course in cinema, University of California, Los Angeles, 1960s. Awards: Best Direction, Venice Festival, for Wedding Night, 1935; Special Prize, Edinburgh Festival, 1964; Honorary Academy Award, 1978. Died: Of heart failure, in California, 1 November 1982.
Films as Director:
1919
The Turn in the Road (+ sc); Better Times (+ sc); The OtherHalf (+ sc); Poor Relations (+ sc)
1920
The Jack Knife Man (+ pr, co-sc); The Family Honor (+ co-pr);
1921
The Sky Pilot; Love Never Dies (+ co-pr)
1922
Conquering the Woman (+ pr); Woman, Wake Up (+ pr); TheReal Adventure (+ pr); Dusk to Dawn (+ pr)
1923
Peg-o-My-Heart; The Woman of Bronze; Three Wise Fools (+ co-sc)
1924
Wild Oranges (+ co-sc); Happiness; Wine of Youth; His Hour
1925
Wife of the Centaur; Proud Flesh; The Big Parade
1926
La Bohème (+ pr); Bardelys, The Magnificent (+ pr)
1928
The Crowd (+ co-sc); The Patsy; Show People
1929
Hallelujah
1930
Not So Dumb; Billy the Kid
1931
Street Scene; The Champ
1932
Bird of Paradise; Cynara
1933
Stranger's Return
1934
Our Daily Bread (+ pr, co-sc)
1935
Wedding Night; So Red the Rose
1936
The Texas Rangers (+ pr, co-sc)
1937
Stella Dallas
1938
The Citadel (+ pr)
1940
Northwest Passage (+ pr); Comrade X (+ pr)
1941
H.M. Pulham, Esq. (+ pr, co-sc)
1944
American Romance (+ pr, co-sc)
1946
Duel in the Sun
1949
The Fountainhead; Beyond the Forest
1951
Lightning Strikes Twice
1952
Ruby Gentry (+ co-pr)
1955
Man without a Star
1956
War and Peace (+ co-sc)
1959
Solomon and Sheba
Publications
By VIDOR: books—
A Tree Is a Tree, New York, 1953; reprinted 1977.
King Vidor on Filmmaking, New York, 1972.
King Vidor, an interview by Nancy Dowd and David Shepard, Metuchen, New Jersey, 1988.
By VIDOR: articles—
"Easy Steps to Success," in Motion Picture Classic (New York), August 1919.
"Credo," in Variety (New York), January 1920.
Interview with M. Cheatham, in Motion Picture Classic (New York), June 1928.
"The Story Conference," in Films in Review (New York), June/July 1952.
"Lillian Gish in Opera," in Films and Filming (London), January 1955.
"The End of an Era," in Films and Filming (London), March 1955.
"Me . . . and My Spectacle," in Films and Filming (London), October 1959.
Interview with V. F. Perkins and Mark Shivas, in Movie (London), July/August 1963.
"King Vidor at N.Y.U.," an interview in Cineaste (New York), Spring 1968.
"War, Wheat, and Steel," an interview with J. Greenburg, in Sightand Sound (London), Autumn 1968.
"King Vidor," an interview with D. Lyons and G. O'Brien, in Inter/View (New York), October 1972.
Arts in Society, vol. 10, no. 2, Summer-Autumn, 1973.
"King Vidor on D.W. Griffith's Influence," an interview with A. Nash, in Films in Review (New York), November 1975.
"Mes dix années avec Charlie," interview in Positif (Paris), no. 405, November 1994.
On VIDOR: books—
Brownlow, Kevin, The Parade's Gone By . . . , New York, 1968.
Higham, Charles, and Joel Greenberg, editors, The Celluloid Muse:Hollywood Directors Speak, London, 1969.
Baxter, John, King Vidor, New York, 1976.
Comuzio, Ermanno, King Vidor, Florence, 1986.
Durgnat, Raymond, and Scott Simmon, King Vidor—American, Berkeley, 1988.
Lang, Robert, American Film Melodrama: Griffith, Vidor, Minnelli, Princeton, New Jersey, 1989.
Mulvey, Laura, Visual and Other Pleasures, London, 1989.
On VIDOR: articles—
Harrington, C., "King Vidor's Hollywood Progress," in Sight andSound (London), April/June 1953.
Brownlow, Kevin, "King Vidor," in Film (London), Winter 1962.
Sarris, Andrew, "Second Line," in Film Culture (New York), Spring 1963.
"The Directors Choose the Best Films," in Cinema (Beverly Hills), August/September 1963.
Mitchell, G.J., "King Vidor," in Films in Review (New York), March 1964.
Higham, C., "King Vidor," in Film Heritage (Dayton, Ohio), Summer 1966.
"King Vidor at NYU: Discussion," in Cineaste (New York), Spring 1968.
Barr, C., "King Vidor," in Brighton (London), March 1970.
Luft, H.G., "A Career That Spans Half a Century," in Film Journal (New York), Summer 1971.
Higham, C., "Long Live Vidor, a Hollywood King," in The NewYork Times, 3 September 1972.
Durgnat, Raymond, "King Vidor," in two parts, in Film Comment (New York), July/August and September/October 1973.
"Vidor Issues" of Positif (Paris), September and November 1974.
"Notre pain quotidien Issue" of Avant-Scène du Cinema (Paris), 1 May 1977.
Dover, B., "Tribute to King Vidor," in Films in Review (New York), June/July 1978.
Lang, J., "Hommage à King Vidor," in Cinéma (Paris), November 1981.
Carbonner, A., "King Vidor ou l'ambivalence du désir," in Cinéma (Paris) December 1982.
Luft, H.G., "King Vidor," in Films in Review (New York), December 1982.
Allen, W., "King Vidor and The Crowd," in Stills (London), Winter 1982.
Eyman, S., "Remembering King Vidor," in Films and Filming (London), January 1983.
Kirkpatrick, S.D., "Hollywood Whodunit," in American Film (Washington D.C.), June 1986.
Special issue, in Castoro Cinema (Firenze), no.122, 1986.
Gillett, John, and Richard Combs, "King Vidor—Worth Overdoing!" in National Film Theatre Booklet (London), May 1991.
Zamour, Françoise, "L'omniprésence de l'architecture chez King Vidor," in CinémAction (Conde-sur-Noireau), no. 75, April 1995.
* * *
King Vidor began work in Hollywood as a company clerk for Universal, submitting original scripts under the pseudonym Charles K. Wallis. (Universal employees weren't allowed to submit original work to the studio.) Vidor eventually confessed his wrongdoing and was fired as a clerk, only to be rehired as a comedy writer. Within days, he lost this job as well when Universal discontinued comedy production.
Vidor next worked as the director of a series of short dramatic films detailing the reform work of Salt Lake City Judge Willis Brown, a Father Flanagan-type. Vidor tried to parlay this experience into a job as a feature director with a major studio but was unsuccessful. He did manage, however, to find financial backing from nine doctors for his first feature, a picture with a Christian Science theme titled The Turn in the Road. Vidor spent the next year working on three more features for the newly christened Brentwood Company, including the comedy Better Times, starring his own discovery, Zasu Pitts.
In 1920 Vidor accepted an offer from First National and a check for $75,000. He persuaded his father to sell his business in order that he might build and manage "Vidor Village," a small studio that mirrored similar projects by Chaplin, Sennett, Griffith, Ince, and others. Vidor directed eight pictures at Vidor Village, but was forced to close down in 1922. The following year, he was hired by Louis B. Mayer at Metro to direct aging stage star Laurette Taylor in Peg-o-My-Heart. Soon after, he went to work for Samuel Goldywn, attracted by Goldywn's artistic and literary aspirations. In 1924 Vidor returned to Metro as a result of a studio merger that resulted in MGM. He would continue to work there for the next 20 years, initially entrusted with molding the careers of rising stars John Gilbert and Eleanor Boardman, soon to be Vidor's second wife.
The Big Parade changed Vidor's status from contract director to courted screen artist. Produced by Irving Thalberg, the film grew from a minor studio production into one of MGM's two biggest hits of 1926, grossing $18 million. The Big Parade satisfied Vidor's desire to make a picture with lasting value and extended exhibition. It was the first of three films he wanted to make on the topics of "wheat, steel, and war." Vidor went on to direct Gilbert and Lillian Gish, a new studio acquisition, in La Bohème. Encouraged by the popularity of German films of the period and their concern with urban life, Vidor made The Crowd, "The Big Parade of peace." It starred unknown actor James Murray, whose life would end in an alcoholic suicide. (Murray inspired one of Vidor's later projects, an unproduced picture titled The Actor.) Like The Big Parade, The Crowd presented the reactions of an everyman, this time to the anonymity of the city and the rigors of urban survival. Vidor's silent career then continued with two of Marion Davies' comedies, The Patsy and Show People. His career extended into "talkies" with a third comedy, Not So Dumb. Though only moderately successful, Vidor became a favorite in William Randolph Hearst's entourage.
Vidor was in Europe when the industry announced its conversion to sound. He quickly returned to propose Hallelujah, with an all-black cast. Although considered a politically astute director for Hollywood, the film exposes Vidor's political shortcomings in its paternalistic attitude toward blacks. With similar political naiveté, Vidor's next great film, the pseudo-socialist agricultural drama Our Daily Bread, was derived from a Reader's Digest article.
By this point in his career, Vidor's thematics were fairly intact. Informing most of his lasting work is the struggle of Man against Destiny and Nature. In his great silent pictures, The Big Parade and The Crowd, the hero wanders through an anonymous and malevolent environment, war-torn Europe and the American city, respectively. In his later sound films, The Citadel, Northwest Passage, Duel in the Sun,, and The Fountainhead various forms of industry operate as a vehicle of Man's battle to subdue Nature. Unlike the optimism in the films of Ford and Capra, Vidor's films follow a Job-like pattern in which victory comes, if at all, with a great deal of personal sacrifice. Underlying all of Vidor's great work are the biblical resonances of a Christian Scientist, where Nature is ultimately independent from and disinterested in Man, who always remains subordinate in the struggle against its forces.
Following Our Daily Bread, Vidor continued to alternate between films that explored this personal thematic and projects seemingly less suited to his interests. In more than 50 features, Vidor worked for several producers, directing Wedding Night and Stella Dallas for Samuel Goldwyn; The Citadel, Northwest Passage, and Comrade X for MGM; Bird of Paradise, where he met his third wife Elizabeth Hill, and Duel in the Sun for David O. Selznick; The Fountainhead, Beyond the Forest, and Lightning Strikes Twice for Warner Brothers; and late in his career, War and Peace for Dino De Laurentiis. Vidor exercised more control on his films after Our Daily Bread, often serving as producer, but his projects continued to fluctuate between intense metaphysical drama and lightweight comedy and romance.
In the 1950s Vidor's only notable film was Ruby Gentry, and his filmmaking career ended on a less-than-praiseworthy note with Solomon and Sheba. In the 1960s he made two short documentaries, Truth and Illusion and Metaphor, about his friend Andrew Wyeth. Vidor wrote a highly praised autobiography in 1953, A Tree Is a Tree. In 1979 he received an honorary Oscar (he was nominated as best director five times). In the last years of his life, he was honored in his hometown of Galveston with an annual King Vidor film festival.
—Michael Selig
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Eleanor Boardman was a silent film star of the 1920's, who was married to director King Vidor - who worked on the MGM Wizard of Oz. (They di...
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http://theozenthusiast.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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http://theozenthusiast.blogspot.com/2008/04/eleanor-boardman.html
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Eleanor Boardman
Eleanor Boardman was a silent film star of the 1920's, who was married to director King Vidor - who worked on the MGM Wizard of Oz. (They divorced several years before the movie was made). However, she has a much closer Oz connection. She was born in 1898 in Philadelphia, which was also the birthplace of W. W. Denslow, and John R. Neill. She gained some recognition at the age of 15, modeling as The Kodak Girl before entering films in 1922, but for Oz collectors she is best known as the model for Betsy Bobbin on the cover of Tik-Tok of Oz. I believe Peter Hanff learned of this connection when he met her daughter in California some years ago.
Tik-Tok was pubished in 1914, which would have made Eleanor about 16 years old at the time.
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Eleanor Boardman American silent era Movie Actress
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Prints of Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) American Movie Actress of the Silent Era. Our beautiful Wall Art and Photo Gifts include Framed Prints
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en
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Media Storehouse Photo Prints
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https://www.mediastorehouse.com/mary-evans-prints-online/new-images-grenville-collins-collection/eleanor-boardman-american-silent-era-movie-18951617.html
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Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) - American Movie Actress of the Silent Era. Married American Movie Director King Wallis Vidor (1926-1931) - then Argentinian-born French screenwriter and Director Harry d Abbadie d Arrast (1940-1968, his death). Date: 1920s. Mary Evans Picture Library makes available wonderful images created for people to enjoy over the centuries. © Mary Evans Picture Library 2015
Media ID 18951617
Acting Chic Elegance Mar19 Movie Patterned Scarf Silent Stylish Boardman
Framed Prints
Bring a touch of classic Hollywood glamour to your home or office with our Media Storehouse Framed Prints featuring the elegant and captivating image of Eleanor Boardman. This exquisite portrait of the American silent film actress, taken from the Mary Evans Prints Online archives, showcases Boardman's timeless beauty and charm. As a leading lady in the silent era, Boardman starred in numerous films and was married to renowned American movie director, King Vidor. Add this stunning piece to your collection and relive the golden age of cinema.
Photo Prints
Step back in time with our exquisite Media Storehouse Photographic Print of Eleanor Boardman, the captivating American silent movie actress. This stunning black and white image, sourced from Mary Evans Prints Online, showcases Boardman's enchanting beauty and elegance during her reign in Hollywood. As a leading actress of the silent era, Boardman graced the silver screen alongside legendary directors and stars. This print is an essential addition to any vintage movie memorabilia collection or a perfect conversation starter in your home or office. Rights Managed through Media Storehouse, this print guarantees the authenticity and high-quality reproduction of this iconic photograph.
Poster Prints
Step back in time with our stunning Eleanor Boardman Poster Print from the Media Storehouse collection. This exquisite image, sourced from Mary Evans Prints Online, showcases the captivating beauty and elegance of American silent film actress, Eleanor Boardman. Known for her roles in films during the 1920s, Boardman was married to renowned American movie director, King Vidor, from 1926 to 1931. Bring a piece of classic Hollywood history into your home or office with this beautifully printed and framed poster, perfect for any film or photography enthusiast.
Jigsaw Puzzles
Step back in time with our exquisite Eleanor Boardman jigsaw puzzle from Media Storehouse. Featuring an enchanting image of the American silent film actress, this intriguing puzzle brings the golden age of Hollywood right to your home. Captured in this stunning photograph from Mary Evans Prints Online, Eleanor Boardman, born in 1898, is shown in her prime. Known for her captivating performances in films during the 1920s, she was once married to renowned American movie director, King Vidor. This 500-piece jigsaw puzzle is the perfect way to unwind and immerse yourself in the history of cinema. Experience the thrill of piecing together this beautiful puzzle and uncovering the story behind the legendary actress.
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A Message To Our Fans
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A Message To Our Fans
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Sorry, Fandango is not available outside the United States.
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New Pictures: Sep. 2, 1929
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https://time.com/favicon.ico
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https://time.com/favicon.ico
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1929-09-02T04:00:00+00:00
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The Dance of Life (Paramount). When Arthur Hopkins and George Manker Waiters wrote the play Burlesque, they somehow extracted, the maximum amount of sentimentality from a story which was even then...
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/favicon.ico
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TIME
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https://time.com/archive/6743344/new-pictures-sep-2-1929/
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The Dance of Life (Paramount). When Arthur Hopkins and George Manker Waiters wrote the play Burlesque, they somehow extracted, the maximum amount of sentimentality from a story which was even then not altogether new but which became for the first time extraordinarily successful. How a loyal dancing girl forced her alcoholic, small-time husband into a big part, how she stuck to him when good luck made him forget her, how she bucked him up in failure, was immediately used with variations as a theme for so many pictures that it was hard to believe that Paramount’s delayed production of the original, disguised under a title from Sexpert Havelock Ellis, would seem more than, a paraphrase of its own imitations. The Dance of Life is too long and overdetailed; it is handicapped with a tedious theme-song. Its virtues are faithfulness to its background, fairly legitimate sentiment, expert acting by the same people who played Burlesque on the stage except Nancy Carroll who, instead of Barbara Stanwyck, plays Bonnie.
Hallelujah (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Before the end of this picture you get the idea that King Vidor, who wrote and directed it, does not know much about Negroes but that he has guessed and reasoned out a lot. His story, simple yet sophisticated, does not goas deep into the way a black man’s mind works as, for instance, Eugene O’Neill went in Emperor Jones. It is a white man’s comment on the relationship between sex and religion, a comment in which sympathy and emotion replace the irony so easy to this kind of writing. After shooting his brother in an argument about a crap game, a Negro named Zeke turns preacher and converts the girl, Chick, who got him in the game. She beats up his rival with a poker, saying. “Ain’t no one goin’ to stand in my path to glory.” This is the best line in Hallelujah, but Zeke (Daniel L. Haynes) has other good ones in the sermon in which, dressed as a locomotive engineer, he describes the cannonball express to hell. Sometimes local color dams up the story, but mostly, in spite of the temptation of spirituals, it is under control. Vidor’s skill as a picturemaker is enough alone to make Hallelujah one of the best films of the year. Best actress : brown-yellow Nina Mae McKinney. not yet 18, who became a Manhattan chorus girl at 12, was picked by Vidor from the chorus of Blackbirds. Best tune: “The End of the Road” by Irving Berlin. Most dramatic sequence: Hot Shot (William Fountaine) running through the swamp when Preacher Zeke comes after him to avenge Chick’s death.
Called smartest U. S. director, King Vidor grew up in Galveston, Tex., went to Tome School in Maryland. When he left school he wrote short stories, published few, then wrote 51 scenarios, sold the 52nd to a small producer in Texas. He directed himself in the leading role, made little money out of it. Several years later, after marrying Florence Vidor, not then famed as a cinemactress, he got his first good job writing and directing stories for General Film Co. Recently he was divorced by Florence Vidor, married Eleanor Boardman whom he directed in The Crowd.
Wrath of the Seas (German-British). Parts of this picture, made with the co-operation of the British and German governments, are fine newsreels of the Battle of Jutland. Other parts, made with the co-operation of Nils Asther, one Agnes Esterhazt and one Bernhard Goetzke, show a German naval commander drearily betrayed by his wife. The triangle is grafted on Jutland by connecting scenes with British extras made up as sailors but looking more like members of an amateur dramatic club in a benefit performance of Pinafore. Best shot: a British warship taking the sudden, hardly perceptible list which means that she is going to sink.
Half Marriage (RKO). After several reels of almost continuous kissing, Olive Borden is faced with a moment when the bad fellow who has been trying to get her away from her husband chases her up to the roof, makes a pass at her, falls over the edge, is killed. She wants to take the blame, and her husband wants to take the blame. The worst of it is that she has to explain to her father, who is a billionaire, that she is married. She had kept this a secret all the time and lived in her own house. Only the occasional entry of Vaudevillain Ken Murray and his orchestra relieve the dreadful tedium of Half Marriage. Typical line of dialog: “When you hold me like this, I’m gaga.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/17/arts/eleanor-boardman-actress-93.html
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Eleanor Boardman, Actress, 93
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"The Associated Press"
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1991-12-17T00:00:00
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/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
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https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/17/arts/eleanor-boardman-actress-93.html
|
Eleanor Boardman, who starred in silent movies after gaining attention as a model for the Eastman Kodak Company, died at her home on Thursday. She was 93 years old.
She died in her sleep, said her stepdaughter, Suzanne Parry.
Miss Boardman, who was born in Philadelphia, gained nationwide recognition as the "Kodak Girl" on Eastman Kodak's advertising posters. From modeling, she moved into movies, starring in silent films including "Stranger's Banquet," "The Silent Accuser," "Memory Lane" and "Tell It to the Marines."
In 1928 she had a leading role in "The Crowd," directed by King Vidor, whom she married. The couple divorced in 1933. She later married the French director Harry D. D'Arrast.
Among her other credits were "She Goes to War," "Mamba," "The Flood" and a remake of "The Squaw Man."
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Eleanor Boardman (1898
|
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Eleanor Boardman, a star of silent films, is best known as the second wife of famed director King Vidor and the star of arguably his finest film, The Crowd (1928).
Born in 1898 in Philadelphia, Eleanor Boardman was modeling for a local photography company from an early age. At 16 years, she was featured as the Kodak Girl in a nationally distributed ad. Standing in a field of flowers, she casually carries a camera. Throughout her career, she projected the youthful, wholesome and appealing image seen at an early age in this photo. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and in 1922 she went to New York to work in set and costume design for the theater. Her career goals soon changed. A screen test resulted in a studio contract and a trip to Hollywood.
King Vidor
By the end of 1922, she had appeared in her first film, Stranger's Banquet, a Marshall Neilan Production starring Hobart Bosworth and Clair Windsor. As a Wampas Baby Star in 1923, her career was promoted by the US Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers as one of 13 young actresses on the threshold of stardom. She had her first starring part in her fourth film, Souls For Sale (1923), a story about the making of a movie star. Her co-star, Richard Dix, portrayed the star-making movie director. Three Wise Fools (1923), her first film directed by King Vidor, was made for Goldwyn Pictures. When Goldwyn merged into the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Goldwyn's contract personnel, including Boardman and Vidor, were included in the deal. Her first MGM film, Wine of Youth (1924), co-starred Ben Lyon and William Haines and was directed by Vidor. Of her 24 silent films, she made six with Vidor, who she married in 1926. Their finest film, The Crowd (1928), ranks among the greatest American films of all time.
Boardman's first talkie, She Goes to War (1929) was mostly silent with brief talking sequences. She appeared in seven talkies from 1930 to 1931. She played the deserted wife of John Gilbert in his disastrous second talkie, Redemption (1929). Boardman considered Redemption one of her personal favorite pictures because she wore such pretty clothes. She was loaned to Tiffany Studios to star with Jean Hersholt and Ralph Forbes in Mamba (1930), one of the earliest Technicolor films. The Great Meadow (1931) is an elaborate production about a newly wedded couple settling in the wilds of Kentucky in the 18th century. She has a relatively brief role in her final Hollywood film, The Squaw Man (1931), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Her character, the true love of the hero, appears only at the beginning and the end of the film.
According to Boardman, her film career ended in 1932 when MGM cancelled her contract. She was in Hawaii with Vidor trying to salvage their marriage. The studio cabled her to come back for a loan out to Paramount, and she refused. She was through with Hollywood. She had been working continuously for nearly ten years going from one film to the next and had apparently tired of making movies. She left California and moved to Europe in 1933. She made her last film, The Three Cornered Hat (1935) directed by Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, in Spain. The story, derived from a popular 19th century Spanish novelette, concerns a magistrate's attempts to seduce the miller's virtuous wife. Victor Varconi, a Hungarian who had migrated to Hollywood in the 1920s, played the miller.
In 1940, Boardman married d'Abbadie d'Arrast, a Frenchman who had been in Hollywood from 1927 to 1933 before returning to Europe. They lived in Spain until the outset of World War II when they returned to the US. After the war, they moved back to Europe. After the death of d'Arrast in 1968, she spent her final years in Santa Barbara, California. Eleanor Boardman died in 1991 at the age of 93.
Eleanor Boardman would have been a silent film star even without her association with King Vidor. She is a charming actress. Her acting is sincere, restrained, and intelligent and her personality warm and pleasing. She is good-looking, but not a great beauty or a glamourous type. In The Crowd, which traces the life experiences of a typical American man, Boardman, deglamorized in makeup and dress, is outstanding as a middle class wife and mother. In addition to The Crowd, she starred in several first-rate, highly entertaining silent films. The Circle (1925), directed by Frank Borzage, depicts the situation and relationships of W. Somerset Maugham's eponymous play, a comedy of manners, without his witty dialogue. Memory Lane (1926), a sentimental and humorous romantic drama, also features Conrad Nagel and William Haines. In Tell It To the Marines (1926), Boardman has a relatively small part as the nurse loved by Haines and Lon Chaney. The relationship between the two men forms the center of the humorous and dramatic story.
In sound films, her voice is fine, but her acting is somewhat stiff and unpolished. Her transition to talkies was relatively smooth, but after seven talking films, she had not developed a distinctive or effective acting style. The talking films she appears in are likewise undistinguished. The most interesting, Mamba (1930) and The Big Meadow (1931), are appealing only in a historical sense. Three years into sound films, her career faltered. Her studio, MGM, was loaning her out as much as they were using her.
By 1933, her marriage to King Vidor was ending, and she was tired of the factory-like conditions of filmmaking. Although she liked Irving Thalburg, she had bad relations with Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM. She was happy to end her career and move to Europe.
Late in life she had little respect for her films. She told William Drew that except for The Crowd she was not proud of any of them. Looking back on her career, she sometimes thought that she had not known what she was doing, and just tried to act normally, and do what she was told. She went from one picture to another, and did not remember much about any of them.
As this examination shows, Eleanor Boardman's judgment of her career was much too harsh.
Further Reading
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Portrait of the actress Eleanor Boardman by Thomas Staedeli
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The actress Eleanor Boardman had her first job at the age of 15 when she worked as a model for Eastman Kodak. She was very successful and became the "Kodak Girl".
Finally she decided to try her luck in Hollywood. She got her first contract at Goldwyn Pictures in 1922 and took part in "The Strangers' Banquet" (22), "Gimme" (23) and "Vanity Fair" (23).
Especially director King Vidor became an important support for her career in the next years. She shot with him the movies "Three Wise Fools" (23), "Wine of Youth" (24), "The Wife of the Centaur" (25), "Proud Flesh" (25), "Bardelys the Magnificent" (26) and their greatest common success "The Crowd" (28).
They got married in 1926.
When Goldwyn Pictures merged to MGM she kept at the new company and played for the company regularly in movies till 1932. To her well-known movies for MGM belong among others "The Circle" (25), "She Goes to War" (29), "The Great Meadow" (31) and "Women Love Once" (31).
She left MGM in 1932 and got a divorce from King Vidor. She went to Europe where she appeared in her last two movies "La traviesa molinera" (34) and "The Three Cornered Hat" (35) before she retired from the filmbusiness. She lived with her second husband Henri d'Abbadie d?Arrast in the Pyrenees till 1968. After the death of her husband she moved to Montecito, California where she died at the age of 93.
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Eleanor Boardman American silent era Movie Actress
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Prints of Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) American Movie Actress of the Silent Era. Our beautiful Wall Art and Photo Gifts include Framed Prints
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en
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Media Storehouse Photo Prints
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https://www.mediastorehouse.com/mary-evans-prints-online/new-images-grenville-collins-collection/eleanor-boardman-american-silent-era-movie-18951617.html
|
Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) - American Movie Actress of the Silent Era. Married American Movie Director King Wallis Vidor (1926-1931) - then Argentinian-born French screenwriter and Director Harry d Abbadie d Arrast (1940-1968, his death). Date: 1920s. Mary Evans Picture Library makes available wonderful images created for people to enjoy over the centuries. © Mary Evans Picture Library 2015
Media ID 18951617
Acting Chic Elegance Mar19 Movie Patterned Scarf Silent Stylish Boardman
Framed Prints
Bring a touch of classic Hollywood glamour to your home or office with our Media Storehouse Framed Prints featuring the elegant and captivating image of Eleanor Boardman. This exquisite portrait of the American silent film actress, taken from the Mary Evans Prints Online archives, showcases Boardman's timeless beauty and charm. As a leading lady in the silent era, Boardman starred in numerous films and was married to renowned American movie director, King Vidor. Add this stunning piece to your collection and relive the golden age of cinema.
Photo Prints
Step back in time with our exquisite Media Storehouse Photographic Print of Eleanor Boardman, the captivating American silent movie actress. This stunning black and white image, sourced from Mary Evans Prints Online, showcases Boardman's enchanting beauty and elegance during her reign in Hollywood. As a leading actress of the silent era, Boardman graced the silver screen alongside legendary directors and stars. This print is an essential addition to any vintage movie memorabilia collection or a perfect conversation starter in your home or office. Rights Managed through Media Storehouse, this print guarantees the authenticity and high-quality reproduction of this iconic photograph.
Poster Prints
Step back in time with our stunning Eleanor Boardman Poster Print from the Media Storehouse collection. This exquisite image, sourced from Mary Evans Prints Online, showcases the captivating beauty and elegance of American silent film actress, Eleanor Boardman. Known for her roles in films during the 1920s, Boardman was married to renowned American movie director, King Vidor, from 1926 to 1931. Bring a piece of classic Hollywood history into your home or office with this beautifully printed and framed poster, perfect for any film or photography enthusiast.
Jigsaw Puzzles
Step back in time with our exquisite Eleanor Boardman jigsaw puzzle from Media Storehouse. Featuring an enchanting image of the American silent film actress, this intriguing puzzle brings the golden age of Hollywood right to your home. Captured in this stunning photograph from Mary Evans Prints Online, Eleanor Boardman, born in 1898, is shown in her prime. Known for her captivating performances in films during the 1920s, she was once married to renowned American movie director, King Vidor. This 500-piece jigsaw puzzle is the perfect way to unwind and immerse yourself in the history of cinema. Experience the thrill of piecing together this beautiful puzzle and uncovering the story behind the legendary actress.
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https://www.alamy.com/1928-los-angeles-usa-the-movie-actress-eleanor-boardman-1898-1991-wife-of-celebrated-director-king-vidor-1894-1982-from-1926-to-image342596153.html
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1928 , LOS ANGELES , USA : The movie actress ELEANOR BOARDMAN ( 1898 – 1991 ) , wife of celebrated director KING VIDOR ( 1894
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Download this stock image: 1928 , LOS ANGELES , USA : The movie actress ELEANOR BOARDMAN ( 1898 – 1991 ) , wife of celebrated director KING VIDOR ( 1894 - 1982 ) from 1926 to - 2AWAGTW from Alamy's library of millions of high resolution stock photos, illustrations and vectors.
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en
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https://www.alamy.com/1928-los-angeles-usa-the-movie-actress-eleanor-boardman-1898-1991-wife-of-celebrated-director-king-vidor-1894-1982-from-1926-to-image342596153.html
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You can only use this image in editorial media and for personal use. Editorial media includes use as a visual reference to support your article, story, critique or educational text. Personal use allows you to make a single personal print, card or gift for non-commercial use. Not for resale.
It shouldn’t be used for commercial use which includes advertising, marketing, promotion, packaging, advertorials, and consumer or merchandising products.
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https://www.newspapers.com/article/pittsburgh-sun-telegraph-eleanor-boardma/45705031/
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en
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Eleanor Boardman
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1933-09-28T00:00:00
|
Clipping found in Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on 9/28/1933. Eleanor Boardman
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en
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/i/newspapers-icon.svg
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Newspapers.com
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https://www.newspapers.com/article/pittsburgh-sun-telegraph-eleanor-boardma/45705031/
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https://tv.apple.com/us/person/eleanor-boardman/umc.cpc.2ys8f4u6jobenocyutveqk5vz
|
en
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Eleanor Boardman Movies and Shows
|
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Learn about Eleanor Boardman on Apple TV. Browse shows and movies that feature Eleanor Boardman including Tell It to the Marines, The Crowd, and more.
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en
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Apple TV
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https://tv.apple.com/us/person/eleanor-boardman/umc.cpc.2ys8f4u6jobenocyutveqk5vz
|
A number of her films, including "Wine of Youth" (1924), the pleasing comedy "Proud Flesh" (1925) and the lavish swashbuckler "Bardelys the Magnificent" (1926), costarring John Gilbert, were directed by King Vidor, whose second wife she would become in 1926. Vidor also helmed Boardman's best-remembered film, "The Crowd" (1928), a remarkable study of an urban Everyman. While critics who generally pictured her in roles on a higher social plane thought her miscast in "The Crowd," Boardman achieved a performance of great subtlety that ranks among the finest in the history of silent screen acting. Unfortunately, her career in sound films, hurt by a series of either poor or unpopular films, quickly waned and she retired to marry director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast.
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https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0090187/
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Eleanor Boardman
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"Eleanor Boardman"
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Eleanor Boardman. Actress: Ein Mensch der Masse. Philadelphia-born Eleanor Boardman had always wanted to be an actress, and as soon as she graduated high school she headed for New York to conquer Broadway. When Broadway proved not quite ready to be conquered yet, she took whatever jobs she could find, including one as an artist's model. In that capacity she heard that the Selwyn Organization, a major producer of Broadway...
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en
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IMDb
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https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0090187/
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Philadelphia-born Eleanor Boardman had always wanted to be an actress, and as soon as she graduated high school she headed for New York to conquer Broadway. When Broadway proved not quite ready to be conquered yet, she took whatever jobs she could find, including one as an artist's model. In that capacity she heard that the Selwyn Organization, a major producer of Broadway plays, was looking for girls with no stage experience. Since she was more than qualified in that respect, she tried out for the job and before she knew it she was in the chorus line of "Rock-a-Bye-Baby" until the show closed three months later. She then got a job in another Selwyn production, "A Very Good Young Man", but that show closed not long after opening. It was at this time that a casting director for Goldwyn Pictures hit the Broadway scene looking for new faces. She tested for him and impressed him enough that he finally picked her out of a pool of more than 1000 young girls who tested for the opportunity to go to Hollywood. She made her first film in 1922 and stayed in the business until 1935, when she retired. She was married twice, first to director King Vidor from 1926-1931, then to director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast from 1940 to his death in 1968. She died in Santa Barbara, CA, in 1991.
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1313
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yago
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0
| 10
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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/king-vidor-with-his-wife-eleanor-boardman-art-print-by-edward-steichen-in-2022--1001558404606960268/
|
en
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2022-05-06T01:23:17+00:00
|
Purchase an art print of the photograph "King Vidor With His Wife Eleanor Boardman" by Edward Steichen. Choose from multiple sizes and hundreds of frame and mat options. All prints are professionally printed, packaged, and shipped within 3 - 4 business days.
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en
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Pinterest
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https://at.pinterest.com/pin/king-vidor-with-his-wife-eleanor-boardman-by-edward-steichen--290130401006776342/
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1313
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yago
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2
| 3
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http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/2011/10/king-vidor-queen-eleanor-wine-of-youth.html
|
en
|
ithankyou: King Vidor & Queen Eleanor… Wine of Youth (1924)
|
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It’s one of the main missions of this blog for me to discover (or rediscover) the talent and creativity of (mostly) silent film. Before I st...
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http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/2011/10/king-vidor-queen-eleanor-wine-of-youth.html
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https://obscurehollywood.net/eleanor-boardman.html
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Eleanor Boardman (1898
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Eleanor Boardman, a star of silent films, is best known as the second wife of famed director King Vidor and the star of arguably his finest film, The Crowd (1928).
Born in 1898 in Philadelphia, Eleanor Boardman was modeling for a local photography company from an early age. At 16 years, she was featured as the Kodak Girl in a nationally distributed ad. Standing in a field of flowers, she casually carries a camera. Throughout her career, she projected the youthful, wholesome and appealing image seen at an early age in this photo. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and in 1922 she went to New York to work in set and costume design for the theater. Her career goals soon changed. A screen test resulted in a studio contract and a trip to Hollywood.
King Vidor
By the end of 1922, she had appeared in her first film, Stranger's Banquet, a Marshall Neilan Production starring Hobart Bosworth and Clair Windsor. As a Wampas Baby Star in 1923, her career was promoted by the US Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers as one of 13 young actresses on the threshold of stardom. She had her first starring part in her fourth film, Souls For Sale (1923), a story about the making of a movie star. Her co-star, Richard Dix, portrayed the star-making movie director. Three Wise Fools (1923), her first film directed by King Vidor, was made for Goldwyn Pictures. When Goldwyn merged into the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Goldwyn's contract personnel, including Boardman and Vidor, were included in the deal. Her first MGM film, Wine of Youth (1924), co-starred Ben Lyon and William Haines and was directed by Vidor. Of her 24 silent films, she made six with Vidor, who she married in 1926. Their finest film, The Crowd (1928), ranks among the greatest American films of all time.
Boardman's first talkie, She Goes to War (1929) was mostly silent with brief talking sequences. She appeared in seven talkies from 1930 to 1931. She played the deserted wife of John Gilbert in his disastrous second talkie, Redemption (1929). Boardman considered Redemption one of her personal favorite pictures because she wore such pretty clothes. She was loaned to Tiffany Studios to star with Jean Hersholt and Ralph Forbes in Mamba (1930), one of the earliest Technicolor films. The Great Meadow (1931) is an elaborate production about a newly wedded couple settling in the wilds of Kentucky in the 18th century. She has a relatively brief role in her final Hollywood film, The Squaw Man (1931), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Her character, the true love of the hero, appears only at the beginning and the end of the film.
According to Boardman, her film career ended in 1932 when MGM cancelled her contract. She was in Hawaii with Vidor trying to salvage their marriage. The studio cabled her to come back for a loan out to Paramount, and she refused. She was through with Hollywood. She had been working continuously for nearly ten years going from one film to the next and had apparently tired of making movies. She left California and moved to Europe in 1933. She made her last film, The Three Cornered Hat (1935) directed by Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast, in Spain. The story, derived from a popular 19th century Spanish novelette, concerns a magistrate's attempts to seduce the miller's virtuous wife. Victor Varconi, a Hungarian who had migrated to Hollywood in the 1920s, played the miller.
In 1940, Boardman married d'Abbadie d'Arrast, a Frenchman who had been in Hollywood from 1927 to 1933 before returning to Europe. They lived in Spain until the outset of World War II when they returned to the US. After the war, they moved back to Europe. After the death of d'Arrast in 1968, she spent her final years in Santa Barbara, California. Eleanor Boardman died in 1991 at the age of 93.
Eleanor Boardman would have been a silent film star even without her association with King Vidor. She is a charming actress. Her acting is sincere, restrained, and intelligent and her personality warm and pleasing. She is good-looking, but not a great beauty or a glamourous type. In The Crowd, which traces the life experiences of a typical American man, Boardman, deglamorized in makeup and dress, is outstanding as a middle class wife and mother. In addition to The Crowd, she starred in several first-rate, highly entertaining silent films. The Circle (1925), directed by Frank Borzage, depicts the situation and relationships of W. Somerset Maugham's eponymous play, a comedy of manners, without his witty dialogue. Memory Lane (1926), a sentimental and humorous romantic drama, also features Conrad Nagel and William Haines. In Tell It To the Marines (1926), Boardman has a relatively small part as the nurse loved by Haines and Lon Chaney. The relationship between the two men forms the center of the humorous and dramatic story.
In sound films, her voice is fine, but her acting is somewhat stiff and unpolished. Her transition to talkies was relatively smooth, but after seven talking films, she had not developed a distinctive or effective acting style. The talking films she appears in are likewise undistinguished. The most interesting, Mamba (1930) and The Big Meadow (1931), are appealing only in a historical sense. Three years into sound films, her career faltered. Her studio, MGM, was loaning her out as much as they were using her.
By 1933, her marriage to King Vidor was ending, and she was tired of the factory-like conditions of filmmaking. Although she liked Irving Thalburg, she had bad relations with Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM. She was happy to end her career and move to Europe.
Late in life she had little respect for her films. She told William Drew that except for The Crowd she was not proud of any of them. Looking back on her career, she sometimes thought that she had not known what she was doing, and just tried to act normally, and do what she was told. She went from one picture to another, and did not remember much about any of them.
As this examination shows, Eleanor Boardman's judgment of her career was much too harsh.
Further Reading
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European Film Star Postcards
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A blog about cinema, film stars and vintage postcards.
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https://filmstarpostcards.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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https://filmstarpostcards.blogspot.com/2020/06/eleanor-boardman.html
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There is more than Hollywood...
European Film Star Postcards is a blog, dedicated to the stars of the European cinema. And to their photographers, the publishers of their postcards, and to the fans who collected them.
EFSP is also an elementary database. Here you can find bios, rare - and not so rare - postcards and film clips. EFSP is a non-commercial educational blog. If you own copyright protected material and do not wish it to appear on this site it will be promptly removed after contacting us.
Or do you like to share scans of your vintage postcards or maybe your choice of 10 Favourite European Film Star Postcards? Mail us, and join our exploration.
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Sieh dir auf Facebook Beiträge, Fotos und vieles mehr an.
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A blog about cinema, film stars and vintage postcards.
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en
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https://filmstarpostcards.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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https://filmstarpostcards.blogspot.com/2020/06/eleanor-boardman.html
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There is more than Hollywood...
European Film Star Postcards is a blog, dedicated to the stars of the European cinema. And to their photographers, the publishers of their postcards, and to the fans who collected them.
EFSP is also an elementary database. Here you can find bios, rare - and not so rare - postcards and film clips. EFSP is a non-commercial educational blog. If you own copyright protected material and do not wish it to appear on this site it will be promptly removed after contacting us.
Or do you like to share scans of your vintage postcards or maybe your choice of 10 Favourite European Film Star Postcards? Mail us, and join our exploration.
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https://silentfilm.org/the-crowd/
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en
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The Crowd
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https://silentfilm.org/the-crowd/
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Director King Vidor (1894–1982) had a long and distinguished career in both silent and sound films, but his masterpiece is unquestionably The Crowd. Within the simple framework of the life of an ordinary man trying to make his way in the big city, Vidor created a landmark American film.
Vidor fell in love with the movies as a child. In 1913, using a camera made from a cigar box, Vidor filmed a hurricane in his hometown of Galveston, Texas, and sold it to a newsreel company. Two years later, he and his new wife Florence struck out for Hollywood. Florence Vidor soon began making a name for herself as an actress, while her husband wrote movie scenarios and took any film work he could get. He wrote 52 scripts before he sold a single one. In 1919, he made his feature film directing debut with The Turn of the Road, which did well enough to attract offers from several major studios. He chose to open his own small studio, Vidor Village, but experienced no success. He then accepted a job at Metro Pictures, and, in 1924, when Metro merged with Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions, Vidor went along. MGM remained Vidor’s professional home for the next 20 years.
At MGM, Vidor found a kindred spirit in the youthful head of production, Irving Thalberg, who thought that the time was right for a film about the most traumatic event of the recent past: the Great War. The Big Parade (1925) was Vidor’s devastating portrait of the physical and emotional wounds inflicted by war. The film features one of John Gilbert’s greatest performances and was also a personal best for King Vidor, who proved that he had the creativity and imagination to work on a much larger canvas.
With the success of The Big Parade, Vidor immediately became one of the studio’s leading directors. Florence Vidor, meanwhile, had become a star in such sophisticated comedies as Ernst Lubitsch’s The Marriage Circle (1924). But even though the couple’s careers were flourishing, their marriage was falling apart. They divorced in 1924, and two years later Vidor married actress Eleanor Boardman, who was then costarring with John Gilbert in Vidor’s swashbuckler Bardelys the Magnificent (1926).
The Big Parade had placed an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation, but Vidor was convinced that there was also drama in ordinary life. And this time, he didn’t want a movie star, but an actual “Ordinary Man” to appear in the film that he would call The Crowd. He wasn’t having any luck finding such a person, until one day at the studio he spotted an extra named James Murray. On giving him a screen test, Vidor decided that Murray was “one of the best natural actors we had ever encountered.”
Vidor cast Eleanor Boardman in the role of the wife. Boardman’s screen image was that of a cool sophisticate, and she seemed an unlikely choice for the working-class girl. But Vidor was convinced that she was capable of delivering a good performance, and he worked hard to draw it out of her. He also used autobiographical elements based on their life together to sketch some of the little irritations in a marriage, adding naturalistic touches that give texture to the scenes. The result was a low-key, yet powerful performance that was Boardman’s best.
Vidor was impressed by the stylized films of German directors such as F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, a style which came to be known as expressionism, and he incorporated some of their techniques into The Crowd. Early in the film, John races home to be greeted by traumatic news. As he climbs up a long staircase, his apprehension is heightened by the use of forced perspective to create a dramatic, tunnel-like space, the walls and ceiling designed and specially painted to achieve the effect. Forced perspective is used to create a similar feeling in a scene set in a hospital corridor that appears to extend to infinity.
The downbeat yet hopeful ending was one of seven that Vidor shot at the studio’s request. Irving Thalberg was so concerned at the film’s prospects that he kept it on the shelf for a year before finally releasing it. And although The Crowd received excellent reviews and an Academy Award nomination, it was not a box-office success. Down through the years, its reputation among fans and filmmakers has grown. The final scene served as an inspiration for a similar sequence in Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels (1941), and the great Italian director Vittorio De Sica told Vidor that The Crowd influenced his film The Bicycle Thief (1948).
But there was no happy ending for the star of The Crowd. In spite of rave reviews, James Murray’s career faltered, and he became an alcoholic. When Vidor was looking for a leading man to star in his film Our Daily Bread (1934), he ran into a bloated, derelict Murray on the street, panhandling. Vidor told Murray that if he could pull himself together, the part was his. Murray became hostile and stalked off. Two years later, drunk and possibly suicidal, Murray fell into the Hudson River and drowned.
King Vidor made only two more silent films, The Patsy (1928) and Show People (1928), before the transition to sound. His own transition was successful, in part because he refused to let it change the way he made films. Many of the location scenes in his first talkie, Hallelujah! (1931), were actually filmed silent, so he would have the freedom of movement that the cumbersome new sound cameras did not allow. Hallelujah! was the first major studio film to portray African-American life.
Vidor continued to direct at MGM until 1944, with occasional work at other studios on films such as Stella Dallas (1937) and forays into independent production. His final feature film was Solomon and Sheba (1959), and he then taught at USC and wrote books on the art and craft of filmmaking. But until the end of his life, he continued to develop projects for new films he hoped to make. In 1979, he tried unsuccessfully to raise money for a film called Actor. It was the life story of James Murray.
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Florence-Vidor
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en
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Florence Vidor | American actress
|
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Other articles where Florence Vidor is discussed: King Vidor: Silent films: …a scriptwriter while his wife, Florence Vidor (divorced 1925), became a well-known silent-film actress. In 1918 Vidor returned to directing and made 16 short films. The following year he helmed his first feature, The Turn in the Road, a drama that he also wrote. He subsequently directed a number of…
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en
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/favicon.png
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Encyclopedia Britannica
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Florence-Vidor
|
In King Vidor: Silent films
…a scriptwriter while his wife, Florence Vidor (divorced 1925), became a well-known silent-film actress. In 1918 Vidor returned to directing and made 16 short films. The following year he helmed his first feature, The Turn in the Road, a drama that he also wrote. He subsequently directed a number of…
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https://www.cinemasight.com/oscar-profile-416-king-vidor/
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Oscar Profile #416: King Vidor
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2018-11-01T16:00:25+00:00
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Born February 8, 1894 in Galveston, Texas, King Wallis Vidor was the son of a prominent businessman and his wife. He became freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist before becoming a f…
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en
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Cinema Sight by Wesley Lovell
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https://www.cinemasight.com/oscar-profile-416-king-vidor/
|
Born February 8, 1894 in Galveston, Texas, King Wallis Vidor was the son of a prominent businessman and his wife. He became freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist before becoming a filmmaker himself. The city of Vidor, Texas, was named after his father Charles Shelton Vidor who founded the Miller-Vidor Lumber Co., which the town grew up around. His grandfather, Karoly (Charles) Vidor, was a Hungarian immigrant who served with the 1st Texas Infantry at the battle of Gettysburg.
Vidor made his first film as a director in 1913 with The Grand Military Parade at 19. He married Florence Arto, one of the great beauties of early Hollywood, known professionally as Florence Vidor in 1914. Moving to Hollywood in 1915, Vidor worked as a screenwriter and director of a numerous shorts. His first full-length film in Hollywood was 1919’s The Turn in the Road.
After the success of 1922’s Peg o’ My Heart, Vidor won a long-term contract with Goldwyn Studios (later absorbed into MGM). Divorced from Florence in 1924, he made The Big Parade, among the most acclaimed war films of the silent era and an enormous commercial success. Florence Vidor went on to marry violinist Jascha Heifetz who adopted her daughter with Vidor.
Vidor married second wife Eleanor Boardman in 1926 with whom he had two more daughters, He starred her in 1928’s The Crowd for which he received his first Oscar nomination. He received his second for the following year’s Hallelujah, his first sound film. He was divorced from Boardman in 1931, marrying Elizabeth Hill in 1932 to whom he would remain married to until her death in 1978.
Vidor’s 1930s successes included Street Scene, The Champ (his third Oscar nomination), Our Daily Bread, Stella Dallas and The Citadel (his fourth Oscar nomination). He also directed the Kansas sequences of The Wizard of Oz after Victor Fleming was reassigned to Gone with the Wind but did not receive screen credit. His 1940s hits included Northwest Passage, Duel in the Sun and The Fountainhead. The 1950s brought Ruby Gentry, Man Without a Star, War and Peace, (his fifth Oscar nomination) and Solomon and Sheba after which he retired.
Despite his retirement, Vidor made documentary shorts in 1964, 1973 and 1980 at which time he entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the director having the longest career as a film director, spanning 67 years from 1913-1980.
At the 1977 Academy Awards, co-presenter Vidor accepted the Best Director Oscar for Woody Allen for his direction of Annie Hall. The following year Vidor himself was the recipient of an Academy Award, an honorary one, for his incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator.
King Vidor died November 1, 1982 at the age of 88.
ESSENTIAL FILMS
THE BIG PARADE (1925)
Opening on a reserved seat basis in November 1925 and going into general release in September 1927, by 1930 this granddad of anti-war films was still drawing in customers when a new spate came along. John Gilbert had his greatest role as the privileged son of a Midwest banker who forgoes the officer title he father secured for him to join his buddies as an ordinary foot soldier who sees the worst of it first-hand in France. There he falls in love with a local farm girl, while on leave. Wounded in the war, he returns home to find his fiancée in love with his brother leaving him free to return to France to reunite with his true love.
THE CROWD (1928)
Vidor filmed many scenes of what is generally considered his masterpiece on New York City streets using real crowds instead of extras, real buses and trains and even real traffic cops. His film about an ordinary couple played by his then wife Eleanor Boardman and the tragic James Murray who are lost in the crowd. Billy Wilder copied the famous scene of Murray in an office surrounded by desk after desk for The Apartment. Vidor filmed nine different ending before MGM found one it approved of. Studio head Louis B. Mayer still hated the film, considering it vulgar for showing a bathroom with a toilet in it.
STELLA DALLAS (1937)
Adverse to wearing wigs, Barbara Stanwyck dyed her hair blonde for the first and only time in her career to play the tacky mother over a twenty-year span. Even though this was the remake of a famous talkie made twelve years earlier, this version was so popular that it spawned a radio soap opera that opened later that year and ran for seventeen years. Stanwyck earned her first Oscar nomination for what is still considered one of her greatest roles. Anne Shirley was also nominated for playing her sensitive daughter. A 1990 remake called Stella starring Bette Midler and Trini Alvarado was less successful.
THE CITADEL (1938)
Later twice done as TV mini-series in 1983 and 2003, Vidor’s award-winning film of A.J. Cronin’s acclaimed novel about a dedicated doctor who loses his way and falls into a world of easy money treating wealthy hypochondriacs was an eye-opener. Whereas John Ford’s film of Arrowsmith six years earlier had sugarcoated some of the abuses of the medical profession in Sinclair Lewis’ novel, Vidor’s film faces them head-on. Robert Donat, Oscar nominated as the idealistic doctor, Rosalind Russell as his supportive wife, Ralph Richardson as his best friend and Rex Harrison as a false one are all first-rate.
WAR AND PEACE (1956)
Tolstoy’s massive novel was always a difficult one to film. At the time producer Dino De Laurentis made this one, there were two other rival productions that failed in their attempts to make their own versions, one by Orson Welles, the other by Mike Todd. Although highly successful as spectacle, Audrey Hepburn is merely adequate as Natasha and Henry Fonda way too old at 50 as Pierre. The characters are supposed to be 13 and 50 respectively at the start of the film, which they clearly are not. Most of the actors, including Hepburn and Fonda, are obviously sitting on mechanical horses, not real ones in their close-ups.
KING VIDOR AND OSCAR
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Eleanor Boardman
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2024-08-20T10:04:46.111000+00:00
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Italian postcard by Cinema-Illustrazione, Milano, series 1, no. 15. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
<b>Eleanor Boardman</b> (1898-1991) was an American stage and silent screen actress, famous for King Vidor's <i>The Crowd</i> (1928), one of the best late American silent movies.
Born in Philadelphia, Eleanor Boardman originally worked on stage, but after temporarily losing her voice in 1922 she entered silent films. She was chosen by Goldwyn Pictures as their "New Face of 1922," through which she signed a contract with the company. After several successful supporting roles, she played the lead in Rupert Hughes' Souls for Sale (1923), also with Frank Mayo, Richard Dix, and Lew Cody. Boardman plays a runaway wife who ends up in Hollywood and from an extra becomes a star. Her husband (Cody), apparently a dangerous robber and killer of wives, pursues her. The film gives an insight view of Hollywood and many silent stars had cameos in the film. That same year, Boardman's growing popularity was reflected by her inclusion on the list of WAMPAS Baby Stars.
Eleanor Boardman appeared in more than 30 films during her career, achieving her greatest success in director King Vidor's The Crowd (1928). Her performance in that film is widely recognised as one of the outstanding performances in American silent films. Other memorable titles were e.g. The Circle (Frank Borzage, 1925), Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926) with John Gilbert, and Tell It to the Marines (George W. Hill, 1926) with William Haines and Lon Chaney. After some success in sound films, Boardman retired from acting in 1935 and retreated from Hollywood. Her only subsequent appearance was in an interview filmed for Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's British documentary series Hollywood (1980). From 1926 to 1931 she was married to Vidor and had two daughters with him. In 1940 she married director Harry d'Abadie d'Arrast.
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https://combo.staticflickr.com/pw/favicon.ico
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Flickr
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/truusbobjantoo/50985283708
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Italian postcard by Cinema-Illustrazione, Milano, series 1, no. 15. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) was an American stage and silent screen actress, famous for King Vidor's The Crowd (1928), one of the best late American silent movies.
Born in Philadelphia, Eleanor Boardman originally worked on stage, but after temporarily losing her voice in 1922 she entered silent films. She was chosen by Goldwyn Pictures as their "New Face of 1922," through which she signed a contract with the company. After several successful supporting roles, she played the lead in Rupert Hughes' Souls for Sale (1923), also with Frank Mayo, Richard Dix, and Lew Cody. Boardman plays a runaway wife who ends up in Hollywood and from an extra becomes a star. Her husband (Cody), apparently a dangerous robber and killer of wives, pursues her. The film gives an insight view of Hollywood and many silent stars had cameos in the film. That same year, Boardman's growing popularity was reflected by her inclusion on the list of WAMPAS Baby Stars.
Eleanor Boardman appeared in more than 30 films during her career, achieving her greatest success in director King Vidor's The Crowd (1928). Her performance in that film is widely recognised as one of the outstanding performances in American silent films. Other memorable titles were e.g. The Circle (Frank Borzage, 1925), Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926) with John Gilbert, and Tell It to the Marines (George W. Hill, 1926) with William Haines and Lon Chaney. After some success in sound films, Boardman retired from acting in 1935 and retreated from Hollywood. Her only subsequent appearance was in an interview filmed for Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's British documentary series Hollywood (1980). From 1926 to 1931 she was married to Vidor and had two daughters with him. In 1940 she married director Harry d'Abadie d'Arrast.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Vidor
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King Vidor
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Vidor
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American writer and director (1894–1982)
King Wallis Vidor ( ; February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose 67-year film-making career successfully spanned the silent and sound eras. His works are distinguished by a vivid, humane, and sympathetic depiction of contemporary social issues. Considered an auteur director, Vidor approached multiple genres and allowed the subject matter to determine the style, often pressing the limits of film-making conventions.[1]
His most acclaimed and successful film in the silent era was The Big Parade (1925).[2] Vidor's sound films of the 1940s and early 1950s arguably represent his richest output. Among his finest works are Northwest Passage (1940), Comrade X (1940), An American Romance (1944), and Duel in the Sun (1946).[3][4] His dramatic depictions of the American western landscape endow nature with a sinister force where his characters struggle for survival and redemption.[5][6][7]
Vidor's earlier films tend to identify with the common people in a collective struggle, whereas his later works place individualists at the center of his narratives.[8][9]
He was considered an "actors' director": many of his players received Academy Award nominations or awards, among them Wallace Beery, Robert Donat, Barbara Stanwyck, Jennifer Jones, Anne Shirley, and Lillian Gish.[10]
Vidor was nominated five times by the Academy Awards for Best Director. In 1979, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator."[11] Additionally, he won eight national and international film awards during his career, including the Screen Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1957.[12]
In 1962, he was head of the jury at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival.[13] In 1969, he was a member of the jury at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival.[14]
Early life and career
[edit]
Vidor was born into a well-to-do family in Galveston, Texas, the son of Kate (née Wallis) and Charles Shelton Vidor, a lumber importer and mill owner. His grandfather, Károly Charles Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s.[15] Vidor's mother, Kate Wallis, of Scotch-English descent, was a relative of the second wife of iconic frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett.[16] The "King" in King Vidor is no sobriquet, but his given name in honor of his mother's favorite brother, King Wallis.[17][18]
At the age of six, Vidor witnessed the devastation of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Based on that formative experience, he published a historical memoir of the disaster titled "Southern Storm" for the May 1935 issue of Esquire magazine.[19][20] In an interview with the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1980 Vidor recalled the horrors of the hurricane's effects:
All the wooden structures of the town were flattened ... [t]he streets were piled high with dead people, and I took the first tugboat out. On the boat I went up into the bow and saw that the bay was filled with dead bodies, horses, animals, people, everything.[21]
In 1939, he would direct the cyclone scene for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz.[21]
Vidor was introduced to Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science by his mother at a very early age. Vidor would endow his films with the moral precepts of the faith, a "blend of pragmatic self-help and religious mysticism."[22]
Vidor attended grade school at the Peacock Military Academy, located in San Antonio, Texas.[23]
Amateur apprenticeship in Galveston
[edit]
As a boy, Vidor engaged in photographing and developing portraits of his relatives with a Box Brownie camera.[24]
At the age of sixteen Vidor dropped out of a private high school in Maryland and returned to Galveston to work as a nickelodeon ticket taker and projectionist. As an 18-year-old amateur newsreel cameraman Vidor began to acquire skills as a film documentarian. His first movie was based on footage taken of a local hurricane (not to be confused with the 1900 Galveston hurricane). He sold footage from a Houston army parade to a newsreel outfit (titled The Grand Military Parade) and made his first fictional movie, a semi-docucomedy concerning a local automobile race, In Tow (1913).[25]
Hotex Motion Picture Company
[edit]
Vidor, in a partnership with vaudevillian and movie entrepreneur Edward Sedgwick formed the Hotex Motion Picture Company in 1914 ("HO" for Houston, "TEX" for Texas) to produce low-budget one- or two-reelers. The enterprise garnered a national press release in Moving Picture World announcing its formation. Only still photos survive from these comedy-adventures, for which Hotex failed to collect any royalties.[26]
In 1915, newlyweds Vidor and actress Florence Arto Vidor along with business partner Sedgwick, moved to California in search of employment in the emerging Hollywood movie industry, arriving on the West Coast virtually penniless.[27]
Hollywood apprenticeship: 1915–1918
[edit]
Based on a screen test arranged by Texas actress Corinne Griffith and shot by Charles Rosher in Hollywood, Florence Vidor procured a contract with Vitagraph Studios, marking the start of her successful movie career. Vidor obtained minor roles acting at Vitagraph and Inceville studios (the spy drama The Intrigue (1916) survives, in which he plays a chauffeur). As a low-level office clerk at Universal, he was fired for trying to present his own scripts under the pseudonym "Charles K. Wallis", but soon was rehired by the studio as a writer of shorts.[28][29]
Judge Willis Brown series
[edit]
Beginning in 1915, Vidor served as screenwriter and director on a series of shorts about the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents by social reformer Judge Willis Brown. Written and produced by Brown, Vidor filmed ten of the 20-film series, a project in which Vidor declared he had "deeply believed". A single reel from Bud's Recruit is known to survive, the earliest extant footage from Vidor's film directing career.[30][31]
Brentwood Film Corporation and the "Preachment" films, 1918–1919
[edit]
In 1918, at the age of 24, Vidor directed his first Hollywood feature, The Turn in the Road (1919), a film presentation of a Christian Science evangelical tract sponsored by a group of doctors and dentists affiliated as the independent Brentwood Film Corporation. Vidor recalls of his first foray into Hollywood film-making:
I wrote a script [The Turn in the Road] and sent it around ... and nine doctors put up $1,000 each ... and it was a success. That was the beginning. I didn't have time to go to college.[32]
Vidor would make three more films for the Brentwood Corporation, all of which featured as yet unknown comedienne Zasu Pitts, who the director had discovered on a Hollywood streetcar. The films Better Times, The Other Half, and Poor Relations, all completed in 1919, also featured future film director David Butler and starred Vidor's then wife Florence Arto Vidor (married in 1915), a rising actor in Hollywood pictures. Vidor ended his association with the Brentwood group in 1920.[33]
"Vidor Village" and First National Exhibitors, 1920–1925
[edit]
King Vidor next embarked on a major project in collaboration with a New York-based film exhibitor First National. In a bid to compete with the increasingly dominant Hollywood studios, First National advanced Vidor funding to build a small film production facility in Santa Monica, California, dubbed Vidor Village. King Vidor issued a founding statement entitled "Creed and Pledge" that set forth moral anodynes for film-making, inspired by his Christian Science sympathies.[34][35]
I believe in the motion picture that carries a message to humanity.
I believe in the picture that will help humanity to free itself from the shackles of fear and suffering that have so long bound it in chains.
I will not knowingly produce a picture that contains anything that I do not believe to be absolutely true to human nature, anything that could injure anyone or anything unclean in thought or action.
Nor will I deliberately portray anything to cause fright, suggest fear, glorify mischief, condone cruelty or extenuate malice.
I will never picture evil or wrong, except to prove the fallacy of its line.
So long as I direct pictures, I will make only those founded on the principles of right, and I will endeavor to draw upon the inexhaustible source of good for my stories, my guidance and my inspiration.[36]
His "manifesto" was carried in Variety magazine's January 1920 issue.[37]
The first production from Vidor Village was his The Jack Knife Man (1920), a bleak and bitter story of an orphaned boy raised by an impoverished yet kindly hermit, performed by former stage actor Fred Turner. The recluse achieves financial success and is ultimately rewarded with the affection of a gentlewoman, played by Florence Vidor. Redolent with the precepts of the "Creed and Pledge", the film's "relentless realism" did not please the executives at First National. They demanded entertainment that would garner a mass share of box-office receipts so as to fill their theaters.[38]
As film critic and biographer John Baxter observed: "[t]his experience had a fundamental effect on Vidor's attitude toward film-making." Under pressure "as the studio system began to harden into place", the 26-year-old Vidor began to craft his films to conform to prevailing standards of the period. His 1920 film The Family Honor exemplifies this shift towards romantic comedies and away from the ideals that had informed The Jack Knife Man.[39]
Vidor's The Sky Pilot (1921) was a big-budget western-comedy shot on location in the high Sierra Nevada of California. John Bowers stars as the intrepid preacher and Colleen Moore (soon to be famous as the quintessential Hollywood "flapper") as the girl he loved and rescued from a deadly cattle stampede. The natural landscapes serve as an essential dramatic component in the film, as they would in subsequent Vidor movies. The cost overruns cut into First National profits, and they declined to fund any further Vidor projects.[40]
Vidor and Moore would begin a three-year romance on the set of The Sky Pilot that became "a Hollywood legend". The couple would resume their relationship after 40 years (in 1963), remaining close until Vidor's death in 1982.[41][42]
Love Never Dies (1921) is a "rural love story" with a spectacular disaster scene depicting a locomotive and box cars derailing and plunging into a river below. The dramatic presentation of rivers served as a standard motif in Vidor films. Impressed with this Vidor sequence, producer Thomas H. Ince helped to finance the picture.[43]
In 1922, Vidor produced and directed films that served as vehicles for his spouse, Florence Vidor, notable only for their "artificiality". These works conformed to the comedies of manners and romantic melodramas that were typical of his contemporary, Cecil B. DeMille at Famous Players–Lasky studios. Later, Vidor admitted to being overawed by DeMille's talents. Florence Vidor, in her later career, frequently starred in DeMille productions.[44]
Vidor's next picture, Conquering the Woman, was an unabashed imitation of DeMille's outstanding drama Male and Female (1919), starring Gloria Swanson. Vidor followed up with Woman, Wake Up and The Real Adventure (both 1922) and each depicting a female struggling successfully to assert herself in a male dominated world. As such, these may be considered as early examples of feminist-oriented cinema, but with entirely conventional endings.[45][46]
By the early 1920s, Florence Vidor had emerged as a major film star in her own right and wished to pursue her career independent of her spouse. The couple divorced in 1926, and shortly thereafter Florence married violinist Jascha Heifetz. Vidor would soon marry model and future film actress Eleanor Boardman.[47]
Vidor Village went bankrupt in 1922 and Vidor, now without a studio, offered his services to the top executives in the film industry.[48]
Metro and Peg o' My Heart (1922)
[edit]
Film producer Louis B. Mayer engaged Vidor to direct Broadway actress Laurette Taylor in a film version of her famous juvenile role as Peg O'Connell in Peg o' My Heart, written by her husband J. Hartley Manners. Despite viewing screen tests supplied by director D. W. Griffth, Vidor was anxious that the aging Taylor (born 1884) would not be convincing as her 18-year-old stage character on screen. Biographer Marguerite Courtney describes their first encounter:
in [her] frowzy wig and dead white makeup, the famous star looked closer to forty than eighteen. At the first sight of Laurette [Vidor] experienced acute relief. She came toward him smiling, and his camera-minded eye saw at once a face all round and animated, essentially youthful. Pumping her hand he burst out impulsively "For Heaven's sake, let's make a test with your own lovely hair!"
The process of adapting the stage version to film was nevertheless fraught with difficulties, complicated by a romantic attachment between director and star. The final product proved cinematically "lifeless".[49]
Pleased with Peg o' My Heart box-office receipts, Mayer matched Vidor and Taylor again, resulting in a second feature film success, Happiness (1923) also written by Manners, with Taylor playing a charming Pollyanna-like character. The film would mark Vidor's final collaboration with the couple.[50]
Next, Vidor was entrusted to direct Mayer's top female star Clara Kimball Young in The Woman of Bronze, a 1923 melodrama that resembled the formulaic films he had created with Florence Vidor at Vidor Village.[51]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM): 1923–1944
[edit]
Silent era: 1923–1928
[edit]
Vidor's yeoman service to Louis B. Mayer secured him entrée into Goldwyn Pictures in 1923, a holding soon to be amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Samuel Goldwyn and other film producers of the early 1920s favored "literary" texts as the basis for movie screenplays. Parvenu-rich movie executives wished to provide a patina of class or "tone" to an industry often regarded as vulgar and cash-driven.[51]
Vidor was content to adapt these "prestigious properties" so securing his reputation as a reliable studio asset.[52] His work during this period did not rise to the level of his later work, but a few films stand out. Wild Oranges (1924), from a story by Joseph Hergesheimer, is notable as a harbinger of his best work in the sound era. The natural features of the coastal regions of Georgia are endowed with sinister and homicidal potential, where a fugitive arrives to terrorize rural residents. As such, the film exhibits Vidor's trademark use of nature to symbolize aspects of the human conflict.[53]
Vidor and the John Gilbert collaborations: 1925–1926
[edit]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's cast of rising movie stars included soon-to-be matinee idol John Gilbert. Vidor directed him in His Hour (1924), based on an Elinor Glyn "febrile romance", and is one of the few films from Vidor's output of that period to survive. Gilbert, as the Russian nobleman Prince Gritzko, was so ardently performed as co-star Aileen Pringle's seducer that one scene was deleted.[54]
Vidor's typically "routine" movies of this period include Wine of Youth (1924) and Proud Flesh (1925) emphasize the "time-honored virtues" of familial and matrimonial loyalty, even among the liberated Jazz Age flappers.[55] King Vidor's tenure as a studio stringer was at an end. His next feature would transform his career and have a resounding impact on the late silent film era: The Big Parade.[56][57]
A silent-era magnum opus: The Big Parade: 1925
[edit]
In 1925 Vidor directed The Big Parade, among the most acclaimed films of the silent era, and a tremendous commercial success.[59] The Big Parade, a war romance starring John Gilbert, established Vidor as one of MGM's top studio directors for the next decade. The film would influence contemporary directors G. W. Pabst in Westfront 1918 and Lewis Milestone in All Quiet on the Western Front, both 1930.[60] Producer Irving Thalberg arranged for Vidor to film two more Gilbert vehicles: La Bohème and Bardelys the Magnificent, both released in 1926. In La Bohème, a film of "great and enduring merit", leading lady Lillian Gish exerted considerable control over the film's production. Bardelys the Magnificent, a picaresque swashbuckler mimicked the films of Douglas Fairbanks. Vidor would spoof the movie on his own Show People (1928) with comedienne Marion Davies.[61]
Vidor's next film would be a startling departure from romantic entertainment to an exposure of the "cruel deception of the American dream".[62]
The Crowd (1928) and cinematic populism
[edit]
In the late 1920s European films, especially from German directors, exerted a strong influence on filmmakers internationally. Vidor's The Crowd resonates with these populist films, a "pitiless study" of a young working man's descent into isolation and loss of morale who is ultimately crushed by the urban "assembly line", while his wife struggles to maintain some order in their relationship. Though the most uncharacteristic of Vidor's pictures, it was his personal favorite: the picture, he said "came out of my guts."
Employing relatively unknown actors, the film had modest box office success, but was widely praised by critics. In 1928, Vidor received an Oscar nomination, and his first for Best Director. M-G-M executives, who had been content to allow Vidor an "experimental" film found that bleak social outlook of The Crowd troubling – reflected in their one-year delay in releasing the film. The Crowd has since been recognized as one of the "masterpieces" of the late silent era.[63][64]
The Marion Davies comedies, 1928–1930
[edit]
Cosmopolitan Pictures, a subsidiary of M-G-M studios and controlled by influential newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, insisted that Vidor direct Marion Davies – Hearst's longtime mistress – in these Cosmopolitan-supervised films, to which Vidor acquiesced. Though not identified as a director of comedies, Vidor filmed three ""screwball"-like comedies that revealed Davies talents with her "drive-you-to-distraction persona".
The Patsy, a comedy of manners, brought Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson, veterans of Mack Sennett "slapstick" era out of retirement to play Davies' farcical upper-class parents. Davies performs a number of amusing celebrity imitations she was known for at social gatherings at Hearst's San Simeon estate, including Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Pola Negri and Mae Murray.[66] The scenario for Show People (1928) was inspired by the glamorous Gloria Swanson, who began her film career in slapstick. Davis' character Peggy Pepper, a mere comic, is elevated to the high-style star Patricia Pepoire. Vidor spoofs his own recently completed Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), an over-the-top swashbuckling costume drama featuring romantic icon John Gilbert. Some of the best-known film stars of the silent era appeared in cameos, as well as Vidor himself. Show People remains the enduring picture of the Vidor–Davies collaborations. [67]
Vidor's third and final film with Davies was his second sound film (after Hallelujah (1929)): Not So Dumb (1930), adapted from the 1921 Broadway comedy Dulcy by George S. Kaufman. The limitations of early sound, despite recent innovations, interfered with the continuity of Davies' performance that had enlivened her earlier silent comedies with Vidor.[68]
Early sound era: 1929–1937
[edit]
In early 1928, Vidor and his spouse Eleanor Boardman were visiting France in the company of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. There Vidor mixed with literary expatriates, among them James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Vidor was shaken by news that US film studios and theaters were converting to sound technology and he returned quickly to Hollywood, concerned about the impact on silent cinema.[69] Adjusting to the advent of sound, Vidor enthusiastically embarked upon his long-desired project of making a picture about rural black American life incorporating a musical soundtrack. He quickly completed writing the scenario for Hallelujah and began recruiting an all African-American cast.[70]
M-G-M studios had not yet decided which emerging sound technology they would invest in, Vitaphone or Movietone, a decision that would determine what camera system Vidor would use. Vidor circumvented the dilemma by appealing directly to President of Lowe's Inc. Nicholas Schenck, who authorized Vidor to begin shooting outdoor location sequences without sound and with the caveat that Vidor waive his $100,000 salary.[71]
Hallelujah (1929)
[edit]
Vidor's first sound film Hallelujah (1929) combines a dramatic rural tragedy with a documentary-like depiction of black agrarian community of sharecroppers in the South. Daniel L. Haynes as Zeke, Nina Mae McKinney as Chick and William Fontaine as Hot Shot developed a love-triangle that leads to a revenge murder. A quasi-musical, Vidor's innovative integration of sound into the scenes, including jazz and gospel adds immensely to the cinematic effect.[72]
Vidor, a third-generation Texan, encountered black workers employed at his father's sawmills when he was a child, and there he became familiar with their spirituals. As an adult, he was not immune to the racial prejudices common among whites in the South of the 1920s. His paternalistic claim to know the character of the "real negro" is reflected in his portrayal of some rural black characters as "childishly simple, lecherously promiscuous, fanatically superstitious, and shiftless". Vidor, nonetheless, avoids reducing his characters to Uncle Tom stereotypes and his treatment bears no resemblance to the overt racism in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915).[73]
The black sharecroppers resemble more the poor white agrarian entrepreneurs Vidor praised in his 1934 Our Daily Bread, emphasizing the class, rather than race, of his subjects. The film emerges as a human tragedy in which elemental forces of sexual desire and revenge contrast with family affection and community solidarity and redemption.[74]
Hallelujah enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response in the United States and internationally, praising Vidor's stature as a film artist and as a humane social commentator. Vidor was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards of 1929.[75][76]
M-G-M 1930–1931: Billy the Kid and The Champ
[edit]
Filmed just before passage of the Production Code of 1933, Vidor's Billy the Kid is free of the fixed moral dualities that came to typify subsequent Good Guy vs. Bad Guy Westerns in Hollywood. Starring former football champion Johnny Mack Brown as Billy and Wallace Beery as his nemesis Sheriff Pat Garrett, the protagonists display a gratuitous violence that anticipates Vidor's 1946 masterpiece Duel in the Sun (1946). Homicidal behavior resonates with the brutal and deadly desert landscape, Hemingwayesque in its brevity and realism. Studio executives were concerned that the excessive violence would alienate audiences, though the Prohibition era in the United States was saturated with news of the gangster-related killings. [77]
Shot partially in the new 70 mm Grandeur system, the film was conceived by producers to be an epic, but few cinemas were equipped to handle the new wide-screen technology. The film did poorly at the box-office.[78][79]
Upon his return to M-G-M after his sojourn to complete Street Scene for Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor embarked on his second picture starring actor Wallace Beery, this time with child actor Jackie Cooper in The Champ. Based on a story by Francis Marion, Vidor adapts a standard plot about a socially and economically impaired parent who relinquishes a child to insure his/her escape from squalid conditions to achieve an upwardly mobile future. The film is a descendant of director Charlie Chaplin's The Kid (1921), as well as Vidor's own early silent shorts for Judge Willis Brown. Vidor owed M-G-M a more conventional and "fool-proof" production after executives allowed him to make the more experimental Street Scene in 1931. The Champ would prove to be a successful vehicle for Berry and propel him to top-rank among M-G-M movie stars.[80]
Bird of Paradise and RKO Pictures : Sojourn in Hawaii, 1932
[edit]
After finishing the sentimental vehicle starring Wallace Beery, in The Champ, Vidor was loaned to Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) to make a "South Seas" romance for producer David Selznick filmed in the US territory of Hawaii. Starring Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea, the tropical location and mixed-race love theme in Bird of Paradise included nudity and sexual eroticism.[81]
During production Vidor began an affair with script assistant Elizabeth Hill that led to a series of highly productive screenplay collaborations and their marriage in 1937. Vidor divorced his wife, actress Eleanor Boardman shortly after Bird of Paradise was completed.[82][83]
Great Depression: 1933–1934
[edit]
The Stranger's Return (1933) and Our Daily Bread (1934) are Depression era films that present protagonists who flee the social and economic perils of urban America, plagued by high unemployment and labor unrest to seek a lost rural identity or make a new start in the agrarian countryside. Vidor's expressed enthusiasm for the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's exhortation in his first inaugural in 1933 for a shift of labor from industry to agriculture.[84]
In The Stranger's Return, a city girl (Miriam Hopkins) abandons her life in a great metropolis to visit her grandfather (Lionel Barrymore) in Iowa, the aging patriarch of a working farm. Her arrival upsets the schemes of parasitic relatives to seize the property in anticipation of Grandpa Storr's passing. The scenario presents the farm as "bountiful", even in the midst of the Dust Bowl where banks seized tens-of-thousands of independent family farms in the Midwest and drove millions into low wage seasonal agricultural labor.[85] The picture is a paean to family "blood" ties and rural generational continuity, manifested in the granddaughter's commitment (though raised in New York City) to inherit the family farm and honor its agrarian heritage.[86]
Vidor continued his "back to the land" theme in his 1934 Our Daily Bread. The picture is the second film of a trilogy he referred to as "War, Wheat and Steel". His 1925 film The Big Parade was "war" and his 1944 An American Romance was "steel". Our Daily Bread – "wheat" – is a sequel to his silent masterpiece The Crowd (1928).[87][88]
Our Daily Bread is a deeply personal and politically controversial work that Vidor financed himself when M-G-M executives declined to back the production. M-G-M was uncomfortable with its characterization of big business, and particularity banking institutions, as corrupt.[89] A struggling Depression-era couple from the city inherit a derelict farm, and in an effort to make it a productive enterprise, they establish a cooperative in alliance with unemployed locals who possess various talents and commitments. The film raises questions as to the legitimacy of the American system of democracy and to government imposed social programs.[90]
The picture garnered a mixed response among social and film critics, some regarding it as a socialistic condemnation of capitalism and others as tending towards fascism – a measure of Vidor's own ambivalence in organizing his social outlook artistically.[91][92]
The Goldwyn films: 1931–1937
[edit]
Street Scene (1931), Cynara (1932), The Wedding Night (1935), Stella Dallas (1937)
During the 1930s Vidor, though under contract to M-G-M studios, made four films under loan-out to independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, formerly with the Goldwyn studios that had amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924. Goldwyn's insistence on fidelity to the prestigious literary material he had purchased for screen adaptations imposed cinematic restraints on his film directors, including Vidor. The first of their collaborations since the silent era was Street Scene (1931)[93]
The adoption of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Elmer Rice depicts a microcosm in a major American metropolis and its social and economic inequalities. The cinematic limitations imposed by a single set restricted to a New York City block of tenements building and its ethnically diverse inhabitants presented Vidor with unique technical challenges. He and cinematographer George Barnes countered and complemented these structural restrictions by using a roving camera mounted on cranes, an innovation made possible by recent developments in early sound technology.[94]
The excellent cast, drawn largely from the Broadway production, contributed to the critical success of the film, as did the huge publicity campaign engineered by Goldwyn. Street Scene's immense box-office profits belied the financial and economic crisis of the early Depression years, when movie studios feared bankruptcy.[95]
Cynara (1932), a romantic melodrama of a brief, yet tragic affair between a British barrister and a shopgirl, was Vidor's second sound collaboration with Goldwyn. Starring two of Hollywood's biggest stars of the period, Ronald Colman and Kay Francis, the story by Francis Marion is a cautionary tale concerning upper- and lower-class sexual infidelities set in England. Framed, as in the play and novel, in a series of flashbacks told by the married barrister Warlock (Colman), the story ends in honorable redemption for the barrister and death for his mistress. Vidor was able to inject some "pure cinema" into a picture that was otherwise a "dialogue-heavy" talkie: "Colman [in London] tears up a piece of paper and throws the pieces out a window, where they fly into the air. Vidor cuts to St. Mark's Square in Venice (where Francis, his spouse is vacationing), with pigeons flying into the air".[96]
In his third collaboration with Goldwyn, Vidor was tasked with salvaging the producer's huge investment in Soviet-trained Russian actress Anna Sten. Goldwyn's effort to elevate Sten to the stature of Dietrich or Garbo had thus far failed despite his relentless promotion when Vidor began directing her in The Wedding Night (1935).[97]
A tale of a doomed affair between a married New Yorker (Gary Cooper) (whose character Vidor based on novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald) and a farm girl (Sten) from an Old World Polish family, Vidor provided thoughtful direction to Cooper and Sten while cinematographer Gregg Toland's devised effective lighting and photography. Despite good reviews the picture did not establish Sten as a star among movie-goers and she remained "Goldwyn's Folly".[98]
In 1937 Vidor made his final and most profitable picture with Samuel Goldwyn: Stella Dallas. A remake of Goldwyn's most successful silent movie, the 1925 Stella Dallas, also an adaption of Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel. Barbara Stanwyck stars as the eponymous "martyr of motherhood" in the sound re-make. Vidor analyzed director Henry King's handling of his silent production and incorporated or modified some of its filmic structure and staging. Stanwyck's performance, reportedly without undue oversight by Vidor, is outstanding, benefited by her selective vetting of Belle Bennett's famous portrayal. Vidor contributed to defining Stanwyck's role substantially in the final cut, providing a sharper focus on her character and delivering one of the great tear-jerkers in film history. [99]
Despite the success of the film it would be his last with Goldwyn, as Vidor had tired of the producer's outbursts on the set. Vidor emphatically declined to work with the "mercurial" producer again.[100]
Paramount Pictures: 1935–1936
[edit]
So Red the Rose (1935) and The Texas Rangers (1936)
Paramount production manager at Paramount Pictures, Ernst Lubitsch, persuaded Vidor to undertake the direction of a film based on a story that afforded a ""Southern" perspective, So Red the Rose, an American Civil War epic.
The topic appealed to the Texas-bred Vidor and he offered a dual vision of the antebellum South's response to the war among the white planter class, sentimentalizing their struggle and defeat. Here, the western "pioneer" plantation owners possess less of the anti-Northern fury that led to secession by their "Old South" counterparts. The scion of the estate, Duncan Bedford (Randolph Scott) initially refuses to join the Confederate army ("I don't believe Americans should fight Americans") but his sister Vallette Duncan (Margaret Sullavan) scorns his pacifism and singlehandedly diverts her slaves from rebellion. The white masters of the "Portobello" plantation in Mississippi emerge from the conflict content that North and South made equal sacrifices, and that a "New South" has emerged that is better off without its white aristocracy and slavery. With Portobello in ruins, Valette and Duncan submit to the virtues of hard work in a pastoral existence.[101]
The novel So Red the Rose (1934) by Stark Young in its narrative and theme anticipates author Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936). Vidor, initially tapped to direct Mitchell's epic, was ultimately assigned to director George Cukor.[102]
The box-office failure of So Red the Rose led the film industry to anticipate the same for Cukor's adaption of Mitchell's Civil War epic. To the contrary, Gone with the Wind (1939) enjoyed immense commercial and critical success.[103]
At a period in the 1930s when Western theme films were relegated to low-budget B movies, Paramount studios financed an A Western for Vidor at $625,000 (lowered to $450,000 when star Gary Cooper was replaced with Fred MacMurray in the lead role.)[104] The Texas Rangers, Vidor's second and final film for Paramount reduced, but did not abandon, the level of sadistic and lawless violence evidenced in his Billy the Kid. Vidor presents a morality play where the low-cunning of the outlaws cum vigilantes heroes is turned to the service of law-and-order when they kill their erstwhile accomplice in crime – the "Polka Dot Bandit.".[105][106]
The film's scenario and script was penned by Vidor and wife Elizabeth Hill, based loosely on The Texas Rangers: A History of Frontier Defense of the Texas Rangers by Walter Prescott Webb. Made on the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Texas Ranger Division the picture includes standard B western tropes, including Indian massacres of white settlers and a corrupt city official who receives small town justice at the hands of a jury composed of saloon denizens. The film presages, as does Vidor's Billy the Kid (1931), his portrayal of the savagery of civilization and nature in producer David O. Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946).[107][108][109]
In an effort to retain Vidor at Paramount, the production head William LeBaron offered him a biopic of Texas icon, Sam Houston. Vidor emphatically declined: "... "I've [had] such a belly-full of Texas after the Rangers that I find myself not caring whether Sam Houston takes Texas from the Mexicans or lets them keep it."[110]
Screen Directors Guild
[edit]
In the 1930s Vidor became a leading advocate for the formation of the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) and since 1960 called the Directors Guild of America (DGA), when television directors joined its ranks.
In an effort to enlarge movie director's meager influence in studio production decisions, Vidor personally exhorted a dozen or more leading directors, among them Howard Hawks, William Wellman, Ernst Lubitsch and Lewis Milestone to form a union, leading to the incorporation of the SDG in January 1936. By 1938, the collective bargaining unit had grown from a founding membership of 29 to an inclusive union of 600, representing Hollywood directors and assistant directors. The demands under Vidor's tenure at SDG were mild, seeking increased opportunities to examine scripts before filming and to make the initial cut on a movie.[111]
As the SDG's first president, and a founding member of the anti-Communist group the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals Vidor failed to bring the SDG into affiliation with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that had already organized actors and screenwriters (deemed a "Bolshevik" political front by anti-communist critics). Not until 1939 would the directors sign an accord with these sister guilds, under then SDG president Frank Capra.[112]
M-G-M: 1938–1944
[edit]
Upon completion of Stella Dallas and his disaffection from Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor returned to M-G-M under a five-film contract that would produce The Citadel (1938), Northwest Passage (1940), Comrade X (1940), H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941) and An American Romance (1944). In 1939, Vidor would also direct the final three weeks of primary filming for The Wizard of Oz (1939).[113]
Film historian John Baxter describes the demands that the studio system at M-G-M had on an auteur director such as Vidor in this period:
M-G-M's assembly line system caught up with even top directors like Vidor, who could be called on to pass judgment on a new property or even prepare a project, only to find themselves a few days later shifted to something else.[114]
These unconsummated projects at M-G-M include National Velvet (1944) and The Yearling (1946), the later in which Vidor presided over a failed attempt to produce a population of juvenile deer who would be age-appropriate throughout the production (female deer refused to reproduce out of season). Both films would be completed by the director Clarence Brown. Vidor further invested six months shooting an Amazon River survival-adventure, The Witch in the Wilderness from which he was diverted to perform pre-production for Northwest Passage (1940). This period would be one of transition for Vidor but would lead to an artistic phase where he created some of his richest and most characteristic works.[115]
The Citadel: The first picture under the contract and the first under the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) was The Citadel in 1938. Filmed in England at a time the British government and trade unions had placed restrictions designed to extract a portion of the highly lucrative American movie exports to the British Isles. M-G-M, as a tactical olive branch, agreed to hire British actors as cast members for The Citadel and provided them generous compensation. (American actress Rosalind Russel and Vidor were the only two non-Britons who served on the film's production).[116]
The movie is a close adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel of the same name, an exposé of the mercenary aspects of the medical profession that entices doctors to serve the upper-classes at the expense of the poor. Vidor's Christian Science-inspired detachment from the medical profession influence his handling of the story, in which an independent doctor's cooperative is favored over both socialized medicine and a profit-driven medical establishment.[117]
The protagonist, Dr. Andrew Manson (Robert Donat) ultimately resorts to an act of anarchism by using explosives to destroy a disease-producing sewer, but emerges personally vindicated.[118] A success at the Academy Awards, the film garnered nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Donat), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.[119]
During the late 1930s M-G-M enlisted Vidor to assume artistic and technical responsibilities, some of which went uncredited. The most outstanding of these was his shooting of the black-and-white "Kansas" sequences in The Wizard of Oz, including the notable musical production in which Dorothy Judy Garland sings "Over the Rainbow". Portions of the Technicolor sequences that depict Dorothy and her companions lulled into sleep on a field of poppies were also handled by Vidor.[120]
The sound era saw the eclipse of the Western movie that had its heyday in the silent era and by the 1930s the genre was relegated to the producers of B movies. By the end of the decade high-budget films depicting the Indian Wars in the America of the 18th and 19th century reappeared, notably Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and DeMille's North West Mounted Police (1940)[121]
In the summer of 1939, Vidor began filming in Idaho a Western-themed picture using the new Technicolor system. The picture that emerged is one of his "master works": Northwest Passage (1940).[122]
Northwest Passage: Based on an American colonial-era epic novel, the film describes a punitive expedition against an Abenaki (Iroquois) village by a unit of British Army irregulars during the French and Indian Wars. Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) leads his green-clad "Roberts Rangers" on a grueling trek through 200 miles of wilderness. The Rangers fall upon the village and brutally exterminate the inhabitants who are suspected of assaulting white settlements. A demoralized retreat ensues led by Rogers. Under retaliatory attack by Indians and a savage landscape the Rangers are pushed to the limits of their endurance, some reduced to cannibalism and madness.[123]
The script by Laurence Stallings and Talbot Jennings (and several uncredited writers) conveys the unabashed anti-Indian hatred that motivates Roger's men to their task.[124] The level of violence anticipates film noir of the post-World War II period and the McCarthy era.[125]
Vidor began filming in July 1939, just weeks before war was declared in Europe and the isolationist or interventionist policies were widely debated. The film influenced tropes that appeared in subsequent war films, depicting small military units operating behind enemy lines and relying on harsh tactics to destroy enemy combatants. The relevance of Northwest Passage's sanguinary adventurer to contemporary Americans confronted with a looming world war is never made explicit but raises moral questions on "military virtue" and how a modern war might be conducted. Though Vidor was "anti-fascist" his political predilections are left unstated in Northwest Passage.[126] Vidor established an unusually close professional relationship with the film's star, Spencer Tracy, and the actor delivered what Vidor considered a performance of "tremendous conviction".[127]
Vidor used the new three-strip Technicolor camera system (the two huge 800-pound [365 kg] cameras had to be transported by train). The color photography conveys more than the scenic beauty of Payette Lake, injecting documentary realism into key sequences. Notable are those of the Rangers portaging boats through a rugged mountain pass, and the famous river "human chain" crossing. Despite its enormous box office earnings, Northwest Passage failed to recoup its $2 million production costs. The cinematography earned an Oscer nomination in that category.[128]
Comrade X: A political comedy set in the Soviet Union, Comrade X (1940) was conceived as a vehicle for M-G-M's glamorous acquisition Hedy Lamarr, in the hopes they might duplicate the profits they reaped from M-G-M star Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). "Comrade" X is played by Clark Gable, a cynical American journalist who exposes Stalin-era cultural falsifications in his dispatches to his newspaper in the United States. Lamarr plays a Moscow tram conductor. Her coldly logical persona ultimately proves susceptible to Gable's America-inspired enthusiasms. Released in December 1940, the scurrilous tone of the dialogue toward the USSR officials was consistent with US government posture in the aftermath of the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 (after America's entry into WWII in December 1941), Russians became US allies in the war effort against the Axis powers. Reflecting these developments, M-G-M executives, just six months after the film's release, inserted a disclaimer assuring audiences that the movie was only a farce, not a hostile critique of the USSR. Writer Walter Reisch, who also scripted Ninotchka, earned an Oscar nomination for best original story.[129][130]
Vidor disparaged the picture as "an insignificant light comedy" that afforded him "a change of pace."[131] Vidor's next picture would be a cold-eyed examination of the institution of marriage and a much more personal work: H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941).[132]
H. M. Pulham, Esq.: With wife and screenwriting partner Elizabeth Hill, Vidor adapted John P. Marquand's highly popular novel of the same name. A story of a married man tempted to revive an affair with an old flame, Vidor draws upon memories of a failed romance from his own youth.[133]
Harry Pulham (Robert Young), a member of the New England's conservative upper-middle class, is stultified by the respectable routines of life and a proper marriage to his wife Kay (Ruth Hussey). Vidor examines Pulham's past in a series of flashbacks that reveal a youthful affair Harry had with an ambitious German immigrant, Marvin Myles (Hedy Lamarr) at a New York advertising agency. They prove incompatible, largely due to different class orientation and expectations: Marvin pursues her dynamic career in New York and Harry returns to the security of his Bostonian social establishment. In an act of desperate nostalgia, Pulham attempts to rekindle the relationship 20 years later, to no avail. His attempt at rebellion failed, Harry Pulham consciously submits to a life of conformity that falls short of freedom but offers self-respect and a modest contentment.[134]
H. M. Pulham, Esq was completed by Vidor after years of manufacturing "conventional successes" for M-G-M. The calm certitude of Harry Pulham in the face of enforced conformity may reflect Vidor's determination to artistically address larger issues in contemporary American society. His next, and final movie for M-G-M, would be the "Steel" component of his "War, Wheat and Steel" film trilogy: An American Romance (1944). [135][136]
An American Romance: Rather than demonstrate his patriotism by joining a military film unit Vidor attempted to create a paean to American democracy. His 1944 An American Romance represents the "steel" installment of Vidor's "War, Wheat and Steel" trilogy and serves as his "industrial epic".and emerged from an extremely convoluted screenwriting evolution.[137] Vidor personifies the relationship between man and the natural resources on which struggles to impose his purpose on nature.[138]
The lead role of immigrant Stefan Dubechek was offered to Spencer Tracy but the actor declined, an acute disappointment for the director who had greatly admired Tracy's performance in his Northwest Passage (1940).[139] Vidor's dissatisfaction with the studio's casting, including lead Brian Donlevy, led Vidor to concentrate on the industrial landscape to reveal the motivations of his characters.[140]
Despite producer Louis B. Mayer's personal enthusiasm for the picture, his studio deleted 30 minutes from the movie, mostly essential human interest sequences and only preserving the abundant documentary scenes. Disgusted by M-G-M's mutilations, Vidor terminated his 20-year association with the studio.[141] The film received negative reviews and was a financial failure. Some critics noted a shift in Vidor's focus from working class struggles to celebrating the ascent of a "Ford-like" industrial magnate. Film historian Raymond Durgnat considers the picture "his least personal, artistically weakest and most spiritually confused."[142][143]
The failure of An American Romance, after an artistic investment of three years, staggered Vidor and left him deeply demoralized. The break with M-G-M presented an opportunity to establish a more satisfying relationship with other studio producers. Emerging from this "spiritual" nadir he would create a Western of great intensity: Duel in the Sun (1946).[144]
A sound era magnum opus: Duel in the Sun (1946)
[edit]
At the end of 1944 Vidor considered a number of projects, including a remake of his silent era Wild Oranges (1924), this time with producer David O. Selznick.[145]
When Selznick purchased the rights to Niven Busch's novel Duel in the Sun in 1944, Vidor agreed to rewrite Oliver H. P. Garrett's screenplay and direct a miniature Western, "small" but "intense". Selznick's increasingly grandiose plans for the production involved his wish to promote the career of actress-mistress Jennifer Jones and to create a movie rivaling his successful 1939 Gone with the Wind. Selzick's personal and artistic ambitions for Duel in the Sun led to conflicts with Vidor over development of the themes which emphasized "sex, violence and spectacle".[146] Vidor walked off the set just before primary filming was completed, unhappy with Selznick's intrusive management. The producer would enlist eight additional directors to complete the picture. Though the final cut was made without Vidor's participation, the production reflects the participation of these talented filmmakers, among them William Dieterle and Josef von Sternberg. Vidor was awarded sole screen credit after Directors Guild arbitration.[147] [148]
Duel in the Sun is a melodramatic treatment of a Western theme concerning a conflict between two generations of the McCanles family. The elderly and crippled McCanles Lionel Barrymore presides with an iron fist over his a vast cattle estate with his invalid wife Laura Belle Candles Lillian Gish. Their two sons, Lewt and Jess, are polar opposites: the educated Jess "the good son" Joseph Cotten takes after his refined mother, while Lewt "the bad son" Gregory Peck emulates his domineering cattle baron father. The adoption of the young orphan girl Pearl Chavez, the "half-breed" offspring of a European gentleman and a native-American mother, whom Pearl's father has murdered and been executed for his crime, introduces a fatal element into the McCanles family. The film noir ending includes an attempted fratricide and a suicide-like love pact, destroying the McCanles family.[149]
The "unbridled sexuality" portrayed by Vidor between Pearl and Lewt created a furor that drew criticism from the US Congressmen and film censors, which led to the studio cutting several minutes before its final release.[152]
Selznick launched Duel in the Sun in hundreds of theaters, backed by a multiple-million dollar promotional campaign. Despite the film's poor critical reception (termed "Lust in the Dust" by its detractors) the picture's box office returns rivaled the highest-grossing film of the year, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).[153]
Film archivist Charles Silver offered this appraisal of the Vidor-Selznick collaboration:
"[W]hen Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones) rides out to kill Lewt (Gregory Peck), she is uncannily transformed into a phantasm of a young resolute Mrs. McCanles (Lillian Gish), thus killing the son she despises via the daughter she never had. This is perhaps the most outrageous conceit of an entirely outrageous movie, and it is brilliant. As Andrew Sarris has said: 'In cinema, as in all art, only those who risk the ridiculous have a real shot at the sublime.' In Duel in the Sun, an older, less hopeful, but still enterprising King Vidor came damn close to the bullseye."[154][155]
On Our Merry Way (A Miracle Can Happen), Universal Studios 1948
[edit]
In the aftermath of his critical failures in An American Romance (1944) and Duel in the Sun (1946), Vidor disengaged from Hollywood film production to purchase his Willow Creek Ranch in Paso Robles, California.[156]
A Miracle Can Happen (1948) is a film sketch that Vidor participated in with co-director Leslie Fenton during this period of relative inactivity. A "low-budget" Universal Studios release of the early baby boom era, this "omnibus" presents vignettes filmed or performed by an array of actors and directors (some of them returning from service in the armed forces) among them Burgess Meredith, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, James Stewart, John Huston and George Stevens. (An episode with British actor Charles Laughton was cut from the final release, a disappointment to Vidor.) The picture's title was changed shortly after opening to On Our Merry Way to promote its comedic virtues. Vidor dismissed the film from his oeuvre in later years.[157]
In 1948 Vidor was diverted from making a series of 16mm Westerns for television and produced on his ranch when Warner Brothers studios approached him to direct an adaption of author Ayn Rand's controversial novel The Fountainhead. Vidor immediately accepted the offer.[158]
Warner Brothers: 1949–1951
[edit]
Vidor's three films for Warner Brothers studios—The Fountainhead (1949), Beyond the Forest (1949) and Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)—were crafted to reconcile the excessive and amoral violence displayed in his Duel in the Sun (1946) with a constructive presentation of American individualism that comported with his Christian Science precepts of morality.[159][160]
The Fountainhead (1949): Unhappy with the screen adaptation offered by Warner Brothers for Ayn Rand's 1938 novel The Fountainhead, Vidor asked the author to write the script. Rand accepted but inserted a caveat into her contract requiring that she authorize any deviation from the book's story or dialogue. Vidor accepted the provision.[161]
Rand's political philosophy of Objectivism is distilled through the character of architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper), who adopts an uncompromising stance on the physical integrity of his proposed designs. When one of his architectural projects is compromised, he destroys the building with dynamite. At his trial, Roark offers a principled and forthright defense for his act of sabotage and is exonerated by the jury. Though Vidor was committed to developing his own populist notion of American individualism, Rand's didactic Objectivist scenario and script informs much of the film. The Roark character is loosely based on the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, both in the novel and Vidor's film version.[162][163]
Vidor's most outstanding cinematic innovation in The Fountainhead is his highly stylized images of the Manhattan high-rise interiors and skylines. The urban landscapes, created by Art Director Edward Carrere were strongly influenced by German Expressionism and contribute to the film's compelling film noir character. The eroticism inherent in the sets resonate with the on-screen sexual tension, augmented by the off-screen affair between Cooper and Patricia Neal, who plays the architect's ally-adversary Dominique Francon. [164]
The Fountainhead enjoyed profitable box-office returns but a poor critical reception. Satisfied with his experience at Warner's, Vidor signed a two-film contract with the studio. In his second picture he would direct Warner's most prestigious star Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest (1949).[165][166]
Beyond the Forest (1949): A lurid noir melodrama that tracks the descent of a petty-bourgeois Madame Bovary-like character, Rosa Moline (Bette Davis) into marital infidelity, murder and a sordid death, the picture has earned a reputation as a "Camp" classic. The film is often cited for providing the phrase "What a dump!", appropriated by playwright Edward Albee in his 1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and its 1966 screen adaptation.[167]
Despising the role assigned her by producer Jack Warner and feuding with director Vidor over her character's portrayal, Davis delivers a startling performance and one of the best of her mid-career. The role of Rosa Molina would be her last film with Warner Brothers after seventeen years with the studio.[168]
Vidor's characterization of Davis as the unsophisticated Gorgon-like Rosa (the film was titled La Garce, [The Bitch], in French releases) were widely rejected by her fans and contemporary film critics and reviews "were the worst of Vidor's career." [169]
Vidor and Max Steiner inserted a leitmotif into those sequences where Rosa obsessively longs for escape from the dull, rural Loyalton to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Chicago. The "Chicago" theme surfaces (a tune made famous by Judy Garland) in an ironic style reminiscent of film composer Bernard Herrmann. Steiner earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Score.[170]
Lightning Strikes Twice (1951): His final picture for Warner Brothers, Vidor attempted to create a film noir tale of a deadly love triangle starring Richard Todd, Ruth Roman and Mercedes McCambridge, a cast that did not suit Vidor. A standard Warner's melodrama, Vidor declared that the picture "turned out terribly" and is largely unrepresentative of his work except in its western setting and its examination of sexual strife, the theme of the film.[171] Vidor's next project was proposed by producer Joseph Bernhard after pre-production and casting were nearly complete: Japanese War Bride (1952).[172]
Japanese War Bride (1952): Twentieth Century Fox
[edit]
The topic of the film, white racial prejudice in post-WWII America, had been addressed in a number of Hollywood films of the period, including directors Joseph Losey's The Lawless (1950) and Mark Robson's Home of the Brave (1949).[173]
The story by co-producer Anson Bond concerns wounded Korean War veteran Jim Sterling (Don Taylor), who returns with his bride, Japanese nurse Tae (Shirley Yamaguchi), to his parents' farm in California's Central Valley. Conflicts arise when Jim's sister-in-law falsely accuses Tae of infidelity, sparking conflicts with the neighboring Nisei-owned farm. The picture locates acts of racism towards non-whites as personal neurosis rather than socially constructed prejudice.[174] Vidor's artistic commitments to the film were minimal in a production that was funded as a B Movie, though he meticulously documents the experience of workers in field and factory.[175]
Before beginning direction of Japanese War Bride, Vidor had already arranged with Bernhard to finance his next project and perhaps "the last great film" of his career: Ruby Gentry (1952).[176]
Ruby Gentry (1952): Twentieth Century Fox
[edit]
With Ruby Gentry, Vidor revisits the themes and scenario of Duel in the Sun (1946), in which an impoverished young woman, Jennifer Jones (Ruby née Corey, later Gentry), is taken in by a well-to-do couple. When the foster mother dies (Josephine Hutchinson) Ruby marries the widower (Karl Malden) for security, but he too dies under circumstances that cast suspicions on Ruby. She is harried by her evangelical preacher-sibling (James Anderson) and her love affair with the son of a local land-owing scion (Charlton Heston) leads to a deadly shootout, a climax that recalls Vidor's violent 1946 Western.[177]
Vidor deferred his own salary to make the low-budget work, filming the "North Carolina" landscapes on his California ranch. American critics generally disparaged the movie.[178]
Film historian Raymond Durgnat champions Ruby Gentry "as a truly great American film...film noir imbued with new fervor" that combines a radical social understanding with a Hollywood veneer and an intensely personal artistic statement. Vidor ranks Ruby Gentry among his most artistically gratifying works: "I had complete freedom in shooting it, and Selznick, who could have had an influence on Jennifer Jones, didn't intervene. I think I succeeded in getting something out of Jennifer, something quite profound and subtle."[179] The swamp sequence where Ruby and her lover Boake hunt one another is "perhaps the best sequence [Vidor] ever filmed."[180] Ruby Gentry showcases the essential elements of Vidor's oeuvre depicting the extremes of passion inherent in humanity and nature. Vidor commented on these elements as follows:
"There's one scene I like a lot...because it corresponds to something vital. It's the scene where the girl [Jennifer Jones] has the barrage demolished. At the moment when the earth is flooded, the man [Charlton Heston] is destroyed. All his ambitions crumble. I think there is a fine symbol there".[181]
Autobiography: A Tree is a Tree
[edit]
In 1953, Vidor's autobiography entitled A Tree is a Tree was published and widely praised. Film critic Dan Callahan provides this excerpt the book:
"I believe that every one of us knows that his major job on earth is to make some contribution, no matter how small, to this inexorable movement of human progress. The march of man, as I see it, is not from the cradle to the grave. It is instead, from the animal or physical to the spiritual. The airplane, the atom bomb, radio, radar, television are all evidences of the urge to overcome the limitations of the physical in favor of the freedom of the spirit. Man, whether he is conscious of it or not, knows deep inside that he has a definite upward mission to perform during the time of his life span. He knows that the purpose of his life cannot be stated in terms of ultimate oblivion."[182]
Light's Diamond Jubilee, General Electric, 1954
[edit]
As part of the 75th Anniversary of Thomas Edison's invention of electric light, Vidor adapted two short stories for television produced by David O. Selznick. The production aired on all the major American TV networks on October 24, 1954.[183]
Vidor's contributions included "A Kiss for the Lieutenant" by author Arthur Gordon starring Kim Novak, an amusing romantic vignette, as well as an adaption of novelist John Steinbeck's short story "Leader of the People" (1937) (from his novella The Red Pony) in which a retired wagon-master, Walter Brennan, rebuffed by his son Harry Morgan, finds a sympathetic audience for his War Horse reminiscences about the Old West in his grandson Brandon deWilde. Screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote the scripts for both segments.[184]
In 1954 Vidor, in collaboration with longtime associate and screenwriter Laurence Stallings, pursued a remake of the director's silent era The Turn in the Road (1919). Vidor's persistent efforts to revive this Christian Science-themed work spanning 15 years in the post-war period was never consummated, though a cast was proposed for an Allied Artists production in 1960. Setting aside this endeavor, Vidor opted to film a Western with Universal-International, Man Without a Star (1955).[185]
Man Without a Star, 1955
[edit]
Based on a story by Dee Linford of the same name and scripted by Borden Chase, Man Without a Star is an iconographic Western tale of remorseless struggle between a wealthy rancher Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain) and small homesteaders. Saddle-tramp and gunman Dempsey Rae (Kirk Douglas) is drawn into the vortex of violence, that Vidor symbolizes with ubiquitous barbed-wire. The cowboy ultimately prevails against the hired gunslinger Steve Miles (Richard Boone) who had years ago murdered Rae's younger brother.[186][187]
Kirk Douglas acted as both the star and uncredited producer in a collaborative effort with director Vidor. Neither was entirely satisfied with the result. Vidor failed to fully develop his thematic conception, the ideal of balancing personal freedoms with conservation of the land as a heritage.[188] Vidor and Douglas succeeded in creating Douglas's splendid character, Dempsey Rae, who emerges as a vital force, especially in the saloon-banjo sequence that screenwriter Borden Chase termed "pure King Vidor".[189]
Man Without a Star, rated as "a minor work" by biographer John Baxter, marks a philosophical transition in Vidor's outlook towards Hollywood: the Dempsey Rae figure, though retaining his personal integrity, "is a man without a star to follow; no ideal, no goal" reflecting a declining enthusiasm by the director for American topics. Vidor's final two movies, the epics War and Peace (an adaptation of the novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy), and Solomon and Sheba, a story from the Old Testament, followed the director's realization that his self-conceived film proposals would not be welcomed by commercial movie enterprises. This pair of historical costume dramas were created outside Hollywood, both filmed and financed in Europe.[190]
War and Peace (1956)
[edit]
Contrary to his aesthetic aversion to adapting historical spectaculars, in 1955 Vidor accepted independent Italian producer Dino De Laurentis's offer to create a screen adaption of Leo Tolstoy's vast historical romance of the late-Napoleonic era, War and Peace (1869).[191][192] In the public domain, War and Peace was under consideration for adaption by several studios. Paramount Pictures and De Laurenti rushed the film into production before a proper script could be formulated from Tolstoy's complex and massive tale, requiring rewrites throughout the shooting. The final cut, at three hours, was necessarily a highly compressed version of the literary work.[193][194]
Tolstoy's themes of individualism, the centrality of family and national allegiance and the virtues of agrarian egalitarianism were immensely appealing to Vidor. He commented on the pivotal character in the novel, Pierre Bezukhov (played by Henry Fonda): "The strange thing about it is the character of Pierre is the same character I had been trying to put on the screen in many of my own films." [195] Vidor was unsatisfied with the choice of Henry Fonda for the role of Pierre, and argued in favor of British actor Peter Ustinov. He was overruled by Dino de Laurentis, who insisted that the central figure in the epic appear as a conventional romantic leading man, rather than as the novel's "overweight, bespectacled" protagonist. [196] Vidor sought to endow Pierre's character so as to reflect the central theme of Tolstoy's novel: an individual's troubled striving to rediscover essential moral truths. The superficiality of the script and Fonda's inability to convey the subtleties of Pierre's spiritual journey thwarted Vidor's efforts to actualize the film's theme. Recalling these interpretive disputes, Vidor remarked that "though a damn good actor... [Fonda] just did not understand what I was trying to say." [197]
Vidor was delighted with the vitality of Audrey Hepburn's performance as Natasha Rostova, in contrast to the miscasting of the male leads. His assessment of the centrality of Natasha is based in the process of her maturation:
"Natasha permeated [War and Peace's] entire structure as the archetype of womankind which she so thoroughly represents. If I were forced to reduce the whole story of War and Peace to some basically simple statement, I would say that it is a story of the maturing of Natasha. She represents, to me, the anima of the story and she hovers over it all like immortality itself."[198]
Cinematographer Jack Cardiff devised one of the film's most visually striking sequences, the sunrise duel between Pierre (Henry Fonda) and Kuragin (Tullio Carminati), shot entirely on a sound-stage. Vidor performed second-production duties to oversee the spectacular battle reenactments and director Mario Soldati (uncredited) shot a number of scenes with the principal cast.[199][200]
American audiences showed modest enthusiasm at the box-office, but War and Peace was well received by film critics. The movie was met with huge popular approval in the USSR, a fact alarming to Soviet officials, coming as it did near the height of Cold War hostilities between America and Russia. The Soviet government responded in 1967 with its own heavily financed adaption of the novel, War and Peace (film series) (1967).[201]
War and Peace garnered Vidor further offers to film historical epics, among these King of Kings (1961), (directed by Nicholas Ray) as well as a project to develop a script about the life of 16th Century Spanish author Miguel Cervantes. Vidor finally settled on the Old Testament story of Solomon and Sheba, with Tyrone Power and Gina Lollobrigida tapped as the star-crossed monarchs. This would be Vidor's final Hollywood film of his career.[202]
Solomon and Sheba (1959)
[edit]
Solomon and Sheba is one of a cycle of bible-based epics popular favored by Hollywood during the 1950s. The film is best remembered as the Vidor's last commercial production of his long career in Hollywood.[203]
A tragic footnote is attached to this picture. Six weeks into production the leading man, 45-year-old star Tyrone Power, suffered a heart attack during a climactic sword fight scene. He died within the hour. Considered the "ultimate nightmare" for any major movie production, the entire film had to be re-shot, with the lead role of Solomon now recast with Yul Brynner.[204] The death of Tyrone Powers was less a financial disaster and more a creative loss. Vidor was bereft of an actor who had grasped the complex nature of the Solomon figure, adding depth to Powers' performance. Brynner and Vidor were instantly at loggerheads when the leading man substituted a portrayal of an "anguished monarch" for an Israelite king who would "dominate each situation without conflict." Vidor reported, "it was an attitude that affected the depth of his performance and probably the integrity of the film."[205] Leading lady Gina Lollobrigida adopted Brynner's approach to her character development of her Queen of Sheba, adding another facet of discord with the director.[206]
Solomon and Sheba includes some impressive action sequences, including a widely cited battle finale in which Solomon's tiny army faces an approaching onslaught of mounted warriors. His troops turn their burnished shields to the sun, the reflected light blinding the enemy hordes and sending them careening into an abyss. Astonishing sequences such as these abound in Vidor's work, prompting film historian Andrew Sarris to observe "Vidor was a director for anthologies [who] created more great moments and fewer great films than any director of his rank."[207] Despite the setbacks that plagued the production and the ballooning costs associated with the reshoot, Solomon and Sheba "more than earned back its costs."[208]
Contrary to claims that Solomon and Sheba ended Vidor's career, he continued to receive offers to film major productions after its completion. The reasons for the director's disengagement from commercial film-making are related to his age (65) and to his desire to pursue smaller and more personal movie projects. Reflecting on independent productions, Vidor remarked, "I'm glad I got out of it."[209]
Post-Hollywood projects, 1959–1981
[edit]
Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1964)
[edit]
In the mid-1960s Vidor crafted a 26-minute 16mm movie that sets forth his philosophy on the nature of individual perception. Narrated by the director, and quoting from theologian-philosophers Jonathan Edwards and Bishop Berkeley, the images serve to complement the abstract ideas he sets forth. The film is a discourse on subjective idealism, which maintains that the material world is an illusion, existing only in the human mind: humanity creates the world they experience.[210]
As Vidor describes in Whitmanesque terms:
"Nature gets the credit for what in truth should be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song, the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken; they should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation."[211]
Truth and Illusion provides an insight into the significance of Vidor's themes in his work, and is consistent with his Christian Science precepts.[212]
Micheal Neary served as assistant director on the film, and Fred Y. Smith completed the editing. The movie was never released commercially.[213]
The Metaphor: King Vidor meets with Andrew Wyeth (1980)
[edit]
Vidor's documentary The Metaphor consists of a number of interviews between the director and painter Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth had contacted Vidor in the late 1970s expressing admiration for his work. The artist emphasized that much of his material had been inspired by the director's 1925 war-romance The Big Parade.[214]
The documentary records the discussions between Vidor and both Wyeth and his spouse Betsy. A montage is formed by inter-cutting images of Wyeth's paintings with short clips from Vidor's The Big Parade. Vidor attempts to reveal an "inner metaphor" demonstrating the sources of artistic inspiration.[215]
Considering the film only a work in progress at the time of his death, the documentary had its premiere at the American Film Institute in 1980.[216] It was never given a general release and is rarely screened.[217]
Unproduced film projects
[edit]
Northwest Passage (Book 2): Vidor attempted to make a sequel to his film Northwest Passage in which Rogers' Rangers find the Northwest Passage, although filming never began because author Kenneth Roberts refused to cooperate with the project, and because MGM thought the cost in making the first film in Technicolor had proven prohibitive enough.[218]
Bright Light (late 1950s): a biographical study of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy.[219]
Conquest (formerly The Milly Story): In 1960, Vidor resumed efforts to make a sound version of his 1919 The Turn in the Road. His reconceived screenplay concerns a Hollywood director disillusioned with the film industry who inherits a gas station from his father in the fictional Colorado town of "Arcadia". The script's dialogue contains oblique references to a number of Vidor's silent films including (The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928)). Conquest introduces a mysterious young woman, "a feminine archetype" (a figure in Jungian philosophy) who serves as "the answer to everyone's problems" while pumping gas at the station. She disappears suddenly, leaving the director inspired, and he returns to Hollywood. Impressed by Italian director Federico Fellini's 8 ½ (1963), Vidor briefly corresponded with Fellini while writing Conquest. Vidor soon abandoned his 15-year effort to make the "unfashionable" movie, despite Sid Grauman – like Vidor an adherent to Christian Science – having purchased the rights. Even the modest budgetary requests were rejected by the tiny Allied Artists and they dropped the project.[220]
The Marble Faun: a "quite faithful" version of the 1860 story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.[219]
The Crowd: Vidor developed revisions of his 1928 silent masterpiece, including a 1960s sequel of Ann Head's 1967 novel Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jones (made as a TV feature without his input), and in the early 1970s another effort, Brother Jon.[221]
A Man Called Cervantes: Vidor was involved in script writing for an adaption of Bruno Frank's novel, but withdrew from the project, unhappy with script changes. The movie was shot and released in 1967 as Cervantes, but Vidor withdrew his name from the production.[222]
William Desmond Taylor: Vidor researched the murder of silent era actor-director William Desmond Taylor, killed under mysterious circumstances in 1922. Though no screenplay was forthcoming, author Sidney D. Kirkpatrick alleges in his novel, A Cast of Killers (1986), that Vidor solved the murder.[223]
The Actor: In 1979, Vidor sought financing for a biography of the ill-fated James Murray, star of Vidor's The Crowd (1928).[224]
Academic Presentations
[edit]
Vidor lectured occasionally on film production and directing in the late 1950s and the 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. He published a non-technical handbook providing anecdotes from his film career, On Film Making, in 1972.
On at least one occasion, Vidor made a presentation to film historian Arthur Knight's class at USC.[217][225]
Vidor as actor: Love and Money (1982)
[edit]
Vidor served as an 'extra" or made cameo appearances during his film career. An early film still exists from an unidentified Hotex Motion Picture Company silent short made in 1914, when he was 19 years old (he wears a Keystone Cop costume and false beard). While attempting to break into Hollywood as a director and screenwriter, Vidor took "bit parts" for Vitagraph Studios and Inceville in 1915–1916. During the height of his fame he made a number of cameo appearances in his own films, including The Patsy in 1926 and Our Daily Bread in 1934.
He did not appear as a featured actor until 1981, at the age of 85. Vidor provided a "charming" tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Walter Klein, a senile grandfather, in director James Toback's Love and Money. Vidor's motivation in accepting the role was a desire to observe contemporary movie-making technology. Love and Money was released in 1982, shortly before Vidor's death.[226]
Personal life
[edit]
In 1944 Vidor, a Republican,[227] joined the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.
Vidor published his autobiography, A Tree is a Tree, in 1953. 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 filming exterior shots).
King Vidor was a Christian Scientist and wrote occasionally for church publications.[228][229][230]
Marriages
[edit]
Vidor was married three times and had three daughters:
Florence Arto (m. 1915–1924)
(later married Jascha Heifetz)
Suzanne (1918–2003)
(adopted by Jascha Heifetz)
Eleanor Boardman (m. 1926–1931)
Antonia (1927–2012)
Belinda (1930–2023)
Elizabeth Hill (m. 1932–1978)
Death
[edit]
Vidor died at age 88 of a heart attack at his ranch in Paso Robles, California, on November 1, 1982.
Filmography
[edit]
Academy Awards and nominations
[edit]
Year Award Film Result 1927–28 Best Director The Crowd Frank Borzage – 7th Heaven 1929–30 Hallelujah Lewis Milestone – All Quiet on the Western Front 1931–32 Outstanding Production The Champ Irving Thalberg – Grand Hotel Best Director Frank Borzage – Bad Girl 1938 The Citadel Frank Capra – You Can't Take It with You 1956 War and Peace George Stevens – Giant 1979 Academy Honorary Award for his incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator
Directed Academy Award performances
[edit]
Year Performer Film Result Academy Award for Best Actor 1931–32 Wallace Beery The Champ Won 1938 Robert Donat The Citadel Nominated Academy Award for Best Actress 1937 Barbara Stanwyck Stella Dallas Nominated 1946 Jennifer Jones Duel in the Sun Nominated Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress 1937 Anne Shirley Stella Dallas Nominated 1946 Lillian Gish Duel in the Sun Nominated
Academy Awards in King Vidor films
[edit]
Year Film Academy Award
Nominations Academy Award
wins 1927–28 The Crowd
2
0
1929–30 Hallelujah
1
0
1931–32 The Champ
4
2
1936 The Texas Rangers
1
0
1938 The Citadel
4
0
1940 Northwest Passage
1
0
Comrade X
1
0
1946 Duel in the Sun
2
0
1949 Beyond the Forest
1
0
1956 War and Peace
3
0
Other awards
[edit]
In 1964, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[232] At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded with the Honorable Prize for his contribution to cinema.[233] In 2020, Vidor was honored with a retrospective at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, showcasing more than 30 of his films.[234][235]
Notes
[edit]
References
[edit]
Arroyo, José. 2016. Beyond the Forest (King Vidor, USA, 1949) https://notesonfilm1.com/2016/10/21/beyond-the-forest-king-vidor-usa-1949/ Retrieved July 15, 2015.
Baxter, John. 1970. Hollywood in the Thirties. International Film Guide Series. Paperback Library, New York. LOC Card Number 68–24003.
Baxter, John. 1976. King Vidor. Simon & Schuster, Inc. Monarch Film Studies. LOC Card Number 75–23544.
Berlinale archive 2020. 2020. Cynara. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/programme/detail/202011039.html Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Berlinale 2020. 2020. King Vidor Retrospective 2020: A Very Wide-ranging Director. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/berlinale-topics/interview-retrospective-2020.html Retrieved June 20, 2020.
Berlinale, 2020. 2020. Comrade X. https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202002542 Retrieved July 2, 2020.
Berlinale 2020. 2020. The Texas Rangers. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/programme/detail/202002560.html Retrieved June 30, 2020
Callahan, Dan. 2007. Vidor, King. Senses of Cinema. February 2007, Issue 42 http://sensesofcinema.com/2007/great-directors/vidor/ Retrieved June 10, 2020.
Durgnat, Raymond and Simmon, Scott. 1988. King Vidor, American. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-05798-8
Fristoe, Roger. TMC. Comrade X. Turner Classic Movies. https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/1101 Retrieved June 29, 2020.
Gallagher, Tag. 2007. American Triptych: Vidor, Hawks and Ford. Senses of Cinema. February 2007 http://sensesofcinema.com/2007/the-moral-of-the-auteur-theory/vidor-hawks-ford/ Retrieved May 30, 2020.
Gustafsson, Fredrik. 2016. King Vidor, An American Romantic La furia umana. LFU/28 Winter 2016. http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/61-archive/lfu-28/548-fredrik-gustafsson-king-vidor-an-american-romantic Retrieved June 4, 2020.
Hampton, Howard. 2013. Into the Morass. Film Comment. July–August 2013 Issue https://www.filmcomment.com/article/beyond-the-forest-king-vidor-bette-davis/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Higham, Charles. 1972. "Long Live Vidor, A Hollywood King" https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/03/archives/long-live-vidor-a-hollywood-king-long-live-vidor-who-was-a-king-of.html Retrieved June 10, 2020
Higham, Charles. 1973. The Art of the American Film: 1900–1971. Doubleday & Company, Inc. New York. ISBN 0-385-06935-9. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 70-186026.
Hodsdon, Bruce. 2013. The Crowd. August 2013 CTEQ Annotations of Film Issue 68. http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-crowd/ Retrieved June 24, 2020.
Holliman, Rod. TMC. The Crowd. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/100/The-Crowd/ Retrieved June 20, 2020.
Koszarski, Richard. 1976. Hollywood Directors: 1914–1940. Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76–9262.
Landazuri, Margarita. TMC. The Wedding Night (1935). Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/95243/The-Wedding-Night/articles.html Retrieved June 21, 2020
Landazuri, Margarita. TMC. Cynara (1932).Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.turner.com/tcmdb/title/72067/Cynara/articles.html Retrieved June 21, 2020
Melville, David. 2013. Scary Monsters (and Super Tramps) – Beyond the Forest. Senses of Cinema. CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 68 http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/scary-monsters-and-super-tramps-beyond-the-forest/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. The Essentials: The Champ. Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/12500/Champ-The/ Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. H. M. PULHAM, ESQ. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/77194/H-M-Pulham-Esq-/ Retrieved June 30, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. Duel in the Sun. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.turner.com/tcmdb/title/73733/Duel-in-the-Sun/articles.html Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Reinhardt, Bernd. 2020. Rediscovering Hallelujah (1929), director King Vidor's sensitive film with all-black cast: 70th Berlin International Film Festival. World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved May 24, 2020. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/07/ber2-a07.html
Sarris, Andrew. 1973. Primal Screen. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780671213411
Shaw, Dan. 2013. The Fountainhead. Senses of Cinema. CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 68 August 2013. http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-fountainhead/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Silver, Charles. 2010. King Vidor's Hallelujah http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/06/15/king-vidors-hallelujah/ Retrieved June 24, 2020
Silver, Charles. 2012. King Vidor's Northwest Passage https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/10/09/king-vidors-northwest-passage/ Retrieved July 3, 2020.
Silver, Charles. 1982. Duel in the Sun. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN19827 Archived July 13, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 3, 2020.
Simmons, Scott. 2004. The Invention of the Western Film: Duel in the Sun http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN15062 Archived July 9, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Simmons, Scott. 1988. The Fountainhead (1949). Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN6980 Archived July 11, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Smith, Richard Harland. TMC. Billy the Kid (1930). Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/14902/Billy-the-Kid/articles.html Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Stafford, Jeff. TMC. The Fountainhead 1949. Turner Classi Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/596/The-Fountainhead/articles.html Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Whiteley, Chris. 2010. King Vidor (1894–1982) Hollywood Golden Age. http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/moguls/king_vidor.html Retrieved July 21, 2020.
Biography portal
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Hollywood's Golden Age
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A biography and filmography of King Vidor, director of 'Stella Dallas and 'The Crowd' and known as one of the top pioneers and innovators of Hollywood's Golden Age.
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King Vidor had a long and successful career as a Hollywood director lasting over 60 years and passing from the silent movie age well into the era of Talkies. He was brilliant and innovative and it is a mystery why his name and reputation have become less well known than some of his contemporaries. He certainly does not deserve such a fate. He directed some exceptional pioneering works such as 'The Big Parade', made in 1925, 'Hallelujah! in 1929, 'Stella Dallas' in 1937, 'Duel in the Sun' in 1946, and 'Solomon and Sheba' in 1959.
Most of his best sound films are still shown regularly on television decades after his death, and even 'The Big Parade', the best of his silents, was re-released during the 1980s. He was prepared to make movies tackling themes such as racism and the plight of the poor and although none of his five Oscar nominations between 1928 and 1955 resulted in a win, he received an honorary Oscar in 1979 for his services to the movie industry.
Biography
He was born King Wallis Vidor in 1894 in Galveston, Texas, into a well-to-do middle-class family. His father Charles, founded the Miller-Vidor Lumber Co. in Texas and the town of Vidor in Texas was named after him. King attended the Peacock Military Academy in San Antonio where he learned the value of hard work and discipline. When he left the academy at 15 it was just at the time that the new medium of films was beginning to take shape. Everything about it was new and thoroughly modern and Vidor was fascinated by every aspect of it.
He began by working as a ticket collector at a local Galveston theater and quickly progressed to projectionist. He was astute and enthusiastic enough to learn how to make movies from the repeated viewings of the movies he projected and he began his film career by shooting news events in the area and selling the clips to newsreel production companies.
Hollywood 1915
In 1915 he married actress Florence Arto and the young couple moved to the new movie colony which was springing up in Hollywood. Vidor initially worked as a clerk and a movie extra with Universal Studios, whilst his wife slowly developed a career for herself as an actress.
After gaining experience as a screenwriter at Universal, Vidor began directing for them in 1918, making short two-reelers such as 'The Chocolate of the Gang', 'Tad's Swimming Hole' and 'The Accusing Toe', and the following year he began directing feature films with 'The Turn in the Road', based on a script which he had written himself.
Vidor Village 1920
In 1920, with financial backing from his father, the ambitious Vidor built and ran "Vidor Village," a small studio where he directed eight movies over the next 3 years, many of them starring his wife, but the marriage hit problems and the couple separated in 1923, divorcing a year later.
At the same time Vidor reinforced his rapidly growing reputation by joining the resourceful and ambitious Sam Goldwyn. When Goldwyn merged with the newly formed MGM, Vidor stayed on and continued with the new company for twenty years, during which time he established his reputation as one of Hollywood's most innovative directors.
His best work shows his preoccupation with the experiences of ordinary people in situations which are clearly quite out of the ordinary. His biggest movie of the Silent era, and the one which made him famous, was 'The Big Parade', made in 1925, which became the biggest box-office success of the time. The movie imaginatively depicts the First World War through the eyes of a single soldier. Vidor used the same device in 1928 in 'The Crowd' which examines and dramatizes the humdrum life of a city clerk.
Talkies 1929
Vidor entered the era of Talkies with equilibrium and even panache. He was not intimidated by the new medium and, unlike many of his contemporaries, was prepared to experiment and improvise. He made the all black musical, 'Halleluja', in 1929 and then 'The Champ', made in 1931, starring Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper, which was one of the most popular movies of the early Talkies era.
Vidor's next memorable film, 'Our Daily Bread' in 1934 was financed by himself, ironically mirroring the fate of its characters: victims of the Depression who pull together to manage an abandoned farm. It ends with a clever and unique sequence showing the workers acting together to divert a stream through a makeshift ditch to irrigate the crops. Through superb editing and composition, Vidor turns the stuff of documentary realism into compelling and poetic cinema.
Vidor was extremely successful at the box-office during the 1930's with such hits as 'Stella Dallas' in 1937 starring Barbara Stanwyck, and 'The Citadel' the following year. He also worked uncredited on 'The Wizard of Oz' in 1939. In 1940 Vidor directed the comic satire 'Comrade X', and the thriller 'Northwest Passage' starring Spencer Tracy, but he had to wait until 1947 for his next unforgettable hit with 'Duel in the Sun', starring Jennifer Jones. The movie re-established his pre-eminence in the ranks of Hollywood directors and 'The Fountainhead' in 1949 reinforced his position.
In the 1950's, only the epic genre seemed big enough for his reputation and he ended his career with two famous examples. So unfashionable are such films today, it is almost heretical to concede that 'War and Peace' in 1955 is majestic film making, and as dramatically engaging in its quiet verses as it is vivid in its action choruses. But it is.
'Solomon and Sheba', made in 1959, and which left Vidor dissatisfied, is an interesting Biblical epic, containing an amazing sequence of a group of soldiers blinding the advancing enemy army by reflecting sunlight off their shields. Great scenes like this, amidst otherwise ordinary fare, have caused Vidor to be branded a director of 'great moments' but not 'great films', which is doing him a disservice.
After 1959 he retired from moviemaking apart from an unsuccessful attempt in 1979 to raise finance for a film about James Murray, the star of 'The Crowd' and an alcoholic who had died an early death from drowning in 1936.
Personal
Vidor wrote a well-received autobiography in 1953, entitled "A Tree is a Tee".
In retirement Vidor settled into his ranch in San Luis Obispo County in Southern California and gave occasional lectures on movie directing and film making at the University of Southern California and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Vidor was married three times, firstly in 1915 to Florence Arto, the marriage producing one daughter and ending in divorce in 1924. From 1926 until divorcing in 1933 he was married to Eleanor Boardman with whom he had two daughters, and finally he married Elizabeth Hill in 1937, the marriage ending with his death.
King Vidor died on November 1, 1982.
King Vidor Filmography
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Wallace Neff: Vidor King and Eleanor Boardman House (Beverly Hills, Calif.)
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Photo of staircase in the house of film director Vidor King and actress Eleanor Boardman in Beverly Hills, California by architect Wallace Neff.
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Eleanor Boardman
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Olive Eleanor Boardman was an American film actress of the silent era.
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Wikiwand
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https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Eleanor_Boardman
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American film actress / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
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https://vintoz.com/blogs/vintage-movie-resources/eleanor-boardman-as-she-is
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Eleanor Boardman — As She Is (1928) 🇺🇸
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"Mario Sauke"
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2023-12-24T10:17:14+00:00
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Of any one in pictures, Eleanor Boardman is at the same time the hardest to interview and the most entertaining. She is the despair of reporters who are after a story, and their delight when all hope of getting one has been abandoned. by Margaret Reid Not only her well-known frankness, but her disinterest in herself, m
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//vintoz.com/cdn/shop/files/Vintoz_Logo_2d679533-b4c2-4908-990b-0d9bf6857932.png?v=1617148467
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Vintoz
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https://vintoz.com/blogs/vintage-movie-resources/eleanor-boardman-as-she-is
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Of any one in pictures, Eleanor Boardman is at the same time the hardest to interview and the most entertaining. She is the despair of reporters who are after a story, and their delight when all hope of getting one has been abandoned.
by Margaret Reid
Not only her well-known frankness, but her disinterest in herself, make her a difficult subject. It is impossible to write about her as an actress. She is so much more a person than a personage. If, some day, there is an influx of fan-magazine reporters into the novelists’ field, it will be because that is the only medium of getting Eleanor Boardman onto paper.
She is not glamorous, she is not sensational, she is not quotable. She is wretched magazine copy.
In a few cases, reporters have dared to quote her frankness. Each time, she has been put on the official carpet and reprimanded severely. Two or three times it has precipitated her into really unpleasant jams, and still she refuses to be politic. She speaks her mind without reserve, and if any one objects — it’s too bad, of course, but not important. Compromise is impossible to her. Black and white and just that — as are right and wrong — with no midway shades.
She has a rigid moral code, and could never do anything, no matter how trivial, which she felt to be other than right. This strict rule of conduct is not the result of the fear of ultimate punishment, upon which most exemplary conduct is based. It is, instead, a fervent belief in the intrinsic beauty of living — instinctive preference.
She is intolerant of meanness, of dishonesty, of vulgarity, and does not hesitate to denounce manifestations of them, no matter in what quarter. This she does so openly that it is very disquieting to the persons concerned. She has been accused of tactlessness and rudeness — and calmly admits both. She is, as a matter of fact, guilty of the former but never of the latter. Rudeness constitutes an unwarranted attack, and Eleanor has never been guilty of that. Her sense of fair play extends to those whom she dislikes, and her private prejudices never color her spoken opinions.
Her opinions are all very definite, logically arrived at, and not lightly changed. She can seldom be prevailed upon to voice them for publication.
”Who cares,” she argues, “what I think about a thing? Mine is no expert judgment. ‘Eleanor Boardman considers Willa Cather the greatest American novelist,’” she suggested, and, replying for the public, “‘Does she, indeed! Well, that’s just dandy — and what of it?’”
If you try to interview her, you will come away with a fine story on Greta Garbo. Greta is one of her closest friends — and Eleanor would like to look, act and be just like her. She admires Greta with all the fervor of a schoolgirl, and never tires of quoting her.
Eleanor is impulsive in the forming of friendships, but her first impressions are usually accurate, and she is seldom mistaken in people. She is equally impulsive in her dislikes, and will not go out of her way to change her first impressions, whether good or bad. Impatient of bigotry and stupidity, she is quick to anger at them. Her cheeks grow very pink and her eyes very wide and blue. She becomes voluble in her indignation, and can argue any one off the mat. Afterward, she is always depressed, and wonders if she will never be able to improve her bad disposition.
She is intensely proud, but neither cold nor aloof. Although she shrinks from contact with people in the bulk, her understanding of human nature is deep, tempered with tenderness and sympathy for its struggles. More than ordinarily courageous herself, she is indulgent of timidity in others. It is her compassionate insight into the prisoners of the prosaic that made possible her magnificent, heart-breaking, real performance in The Crowd.
She is keenly interested in her career only when there is the possibility of a picture like The Crowd. She hates doing mediocre pictures, no matter how profuse her close-ups might be. When a picture does turn out well, her gratification is not for her own work, but for the production as a complete work of skill. She is probably one of the greatest artists on the screen, but the first glimpse of her real potentialities did not come until The Crowd.
Although she has had a generous share of trouble, sorrow and distress, she is still avid of life. She loves it, and is absorbed by it. She is a sensitive, aware person, and vibrant in her eagerness. Emotionally pliant, she has a balance of common sense, and her final decisions are always sane ones.
She loathes night clubs, premieres and too-gala parties. But occasionally she has a sudden yen to go dancing. At such times it doesn’t matter to her where she goes, just so it isn’t too crowded. When she is bored, she makes no effort to conceal it. When she is enjoying herself, she is scintillating and irresistible.
She has a rich sense of humor. Her impromptu imitations — particularly of Garbo — are deliciously accurate, and she tells a story excellently. She finds humor in nearly everything and laughs a great deal, but never unkindly.
There is no possible doubt about the authenticity of her beauty. On the screen she wears scarcely any make-up, and none at all off it, not even powder. Her appearance is something which does not interest her. On rare occasions she has an impulse to dress up, when she is to attend some large gathering. She feels a certain responsibility about preserving the illusion of movie glamour, when she is seen in public. She has a lot of fun assembling exquisite wardrobes against such occasions, but her enthusiasm generally stops short of actually using them. She adores severely plain sweater-suits and, if she is going nowhere in particular, wears no stockings on her slim, brown legs. She never glances in mirrors, or pats her hair. When there is an impression to be made on some one of importance, her hair can be unwaved and she in tennis shoes, and Eleanor will be sublimely unconscious and at ease.
She learned to play the piano so she could accompany her husband, King Vidor, who sings melting negro spirituals. She would like to be an expert pianist, and wistfully struggles through certain favorite Debussys and Ravels.
She likes verse, being particularly keen on the poems of Johnny Weaver, and every so often she puts aside whatever current book she happens to be reading, and returns to Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh.
She plays a swift game of tennis and swims like a boy, but can seldom be prevailed upon for bridge. She likes to ride horseback, but was once thrown and has never been able to conquer a subsequent nervousness. She goes for long walks among the hills surrounding her home, and gathers wild flowers and bright leaves. On one occasion she ventured innocently among poison oak, and was away from the studio for a week.
She dislikes cheap publicity, especially if based on her private affairs. Her marriage, her recent motherhood, she does not deem contingent on her career; which, she thinks, is all that should be public interest.
Married to the brilliant young Vidor, and herself of pictures for several years, neither is completely immersed in their profession. Their friends, except for John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, are mostly of the literary world — Lawrence Stallings and his wife, Johnny Weaver and Peggy Wood, Donald Ogden Stewart, his wife, and his mother, of whom Eleanor is extremely fond.
Eleanor is a delightful conversationalist, and swears casually. Her voice is mellow, deep and inclined to a drawl. Her wit is pungent, often barbed and always very funny. If she finds she has inadvertently shocked some smug soul with her candor, it is her delight to continue and increase the shock. She esteems both conservatism and bonhomie, but their extremes — prudery and coarseness — offend her innate delicacy, and are her pet abominations.
She is disturbed by the fact that she shows little inclination toward the detail of housewifery. She thinks it would be more fitting were she able authoritatively to discuss menus and floor polishes with her servants, but quails at the prospect of learning how. She is, however, meticulous about her home and insists that it always be in perfect order.
She and her husband are building a house on a hilltop near their old home. Since Vidor is at work on a picture, the supervision of the new home falls to Eleanor. She is in her glory and refuses to be baffled by conduits, underground cables and multiple switches. She directs every detail of the construction — and intelligently, too. She loves to work with laths and nails, and when she couldn’t explain a certain niche which she wanted under an arch, she set to work and built it herself.
Aside from all this, may one say — and who is there to say one mayn’t? — that she is this reporter’s favorite actress.
Eleanor Boardman can seldom be prevailed upon to voice her personal opinions for publication.
Photo by: Ruth Harriet Louise (1903–1940)
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, November 1928
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Vidor
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King Vidor
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2002-08-05T11:23:23+00:00
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Vidor
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American writer and director (1894–1982)
King Wallis Vidor ( ; February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose 67-year film-making career successfully spanned the silent and sound eras. His works are distinguished by a vivid, humane, and sympathetic depiction of contemporary social issues. Considered an auteur director, Vidor approached multiple genres and allowed the subject matter to determine the style, often pressing the limits of film-making conventions.[1]
His most acclaimed and successful film in the silent era was The Big Parade (1925).[2] Vidor's sound films of the 1940s and early 1950s arguably represent his richest output. Among his finest works are Northwest Passage (1940), Comrade X (1940), An American Romance (1944), and Duel in the Sun (1946).[3][4] His dramatic depictions of the American western landscape endow nature with a sinister force where his characters struggle for survival and redemption.[5][6][7]
Vidor's earlier films tend to identify with the common people in a collective struggle, whereas his later works place individualists at the center of his narratives.[8][9]
He was considered an "actors' director": many of his players received Academy Award nominations or awards, among them Wallace Beery, Robert Donat, Barbara Stanwyck, Jennifer Jones, Anne Shirley, and Lillian Gish.[10]
Vidor was nominated five times by the Academy Awards for Best Director. In 1979, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator."[11] Additionally, he won eight national and international film awards during his career, including the Screen Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1957.[12]
In 1962, he was head of the jury at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival.[13] In 1969, he was a member of the jury at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival.[14]
Early life and career
[edit]
Vidor was born into a well-to-do family in Galveston, Texas, the son of Kate (née Wallis) and Charles Shelton Vidor, a lumber importer and mill owner. His grandfather, Károly Charles Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s.[15] Vidor's mother, Kate Wallis, of Scotch-English descent, was a relative of the second wife of iconic frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett.[16] The "King" in King Vidor is no sobriquet, but his given name in honor of his mother's favorite brother, King Wallis.[17][18]
At the age of six, Vidor witnessed the devastation of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Based on that formative experience, he published a historical memoir of the disaster titled "Southern Storm" for the May 1935 issue of Esquire magazine.[19][20] In an interview with the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1980 Vidor recalled the horrors of the hurricane's effects:
All the wooden structures of the town were flattened ... [t]he streets were piled high with dead people, and I took the first tugboat out. On the boat I went up into the bow and saw that the bay was filled with dead bodies, horses, animals, people, everything.[21]
In 1939, he would direct the cyclone scene for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz.[21]
Vidor was introduced to Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science by his mother at a very early age. Vidor would endow his films with the moral precepts of the faith, a "blend of pragmatic self-help and religious mysticism."[22]
Vidor attended grade school at the Peacock Military Academy, located in San Antonio, Texas.[23]
Amateur apprenticeship in Galveston
[edit]
As a boy, Vidor engaged in photographing and developing portraits of his relatives with a Box Brownie camera.[24]
At the age of sixteen Vidor dropped out of a private high school in Maryland and returned to Galveston to work as a nickelodeon ticket taker and projectionist. As an 18-year-old amateur newsreel cameraman Vidor began to acquire skills as a film documentarian. His first movie was based on footage taken of a local hurricane (not to be confused with the 1900 Galveston hurricane). He sold footage from a Houston army parade to a newsreel outfit (titled The Grand Military Parade) and made his first fictional movie, a semi-docucomedy concerning a local automobile race, In Tow (1913).[25]
Hotex Motion Picture Company
[edit]
Vidor, in a partnership with vaudevillian and movie entrepreneur Edward Sedgwick formed the Hotex Motion Picture Company in 1914 ("HO" for Houston, "TEX" for Texas) to produce low-budget one- or two-reelers. The enterprise garnered a national press release in Moving Picture World announcing its formation. Only still photos survive from these comedy-adventures, for which Hotex failed to collect any royalties.[26]
In 1915, newlyweds Vidor and actress Florence Arto Vidor along with business partner Sedgwick, moved to California in search of employment in the emerging Hollywood movie industry, arriving on the West Coast virtually penniless.[27]
Hollywood apprenticeship: 1915–1918
[edit]
Based on a screen test arranged by Texas actress Corinne Griffith and shot by Charles Rosher in Hollywood, Florence Vidor procured a contract with Vitagraph Studios, marking the start of her successful movie career. Vidor obtained minor roles acting at Vitagraph and Inceville studios (the spy drama The Intrigue (1916) survives, in which he plays a chauffeur). As a low-level office clerk at Universal, he was fired for trying to present his own scripts under the pseudonym "Charles K. Wallis", but soon was rehired by the studio as a writer of shorts.[28][29]
Judge Willis Brown series
[edit]
Beginning in 1915, Vidor served as screenwriter and director on a series of shorts about the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents by social reformer Judge Willis Brown. Written and produced by Brown, Vidor filmed ten of the 20-film series, a project in which Vidor declared he had "deeply believed". A single reel from Bud's Recruit is known to survive, the earliest extant footage from Vidor's film directing career.[30][31]
Brentwood Film Corporation and the "Preachment" films, 1918–1919
[edit]
In 1918, at the age of 24, Vidor directed his first Hollywood feature, The Turn in the Road (1919), a film presentation of a Christian Science evangelical tract sponsored by a group of doctors and dentists affiliated as the independent Brentwood Film Corporation. Vidor recalls of his first foray into Hollywood film-making:
I wrote a script [The Turn in the Road] and sent it around ... and nine doctors put up $1,000 each ... and it was a success. That was the beginning. I didn't have time to go to college.[32]
Vidor would make three more films for the Brentwood Corporation, all of which featured as yet unknown comedienne Zasu Pitts, who the director had discovered on a Hollywood streetcar. The films Better Times, The Other Half, and Poor Relations, all completed in 1919, also featured future film director David Butler and starred Vidor's then wife Florence Arto Vidor (married in 1915), a rising actor in Hollywood pictures. Vidor ended his association with the Brentwood group in 1920.[33]
"Vidor Village" and First National Exhibitors, 1920–1925
[edit]
King Vidor next embarked on a major project in collaboration with a New York-based film exhibitor First National. In a bid to compete with the increasingly dominant Hollywood studios, First National advanced Vidor funding to build a small film production facility in Santa Monica, California, dubbed Vidor Village. King Vidor issued a founding statement entitled "Creed and Pledge" that set forth moral anodynes for film-making, inspired by his Christian Science sympathies.[34][35]
I believe in the motion picture that carries a message to humanity.
I believe in the picture that will help humanity to free itself from the shackles of fear and suffering that have so long bound it in chains.
I will not knowingly produce a picture that contains anything that I do not believe to be absolutely true to human nature, anything that could injure anyone or anything unclean in thought or action.
Nor will I deliberately portray anything to cause fright, suggest fear, glorify mischief, condone cruelty or extenuate malice.
I will never picture evil or wrong, except to prove the fallacy of its line.
So long as I direct pictures, I will make only those founded on the principles of right, and I will endeavor to draw upon the inexhaustible source of good for my stories, my guidance and my inspiration.[36]
His "manifesto" was carried in Variety magazine's January 1920 issue.[37]
The first production from Vidor Village was his The Jack Knife Man (1920), a bleak and bitter story of an orphaned boy raised by an impoverished yet kindly hermit, performed by former stage actor Fred Turner. The recluse achieves financial success and is ultimately rewarded with the affection of a gentlewoman, played by Florence Vidor. Redolent with the precepts of the "Creed and Pledge", the film's "relentless realism" did not please the executives at First National. They demanded entertainment that would garner a mass share of box-office receipts so as to fill their theaters.[38]
As film critic and biographer John Baxter observed: "[t]his experience had a fundamental effect on Vidor's attitude toward film-making." Under pressure "as the studio system began to harden into place", the 26-year-old Vidor began to craft his films to conform to prevailing standards of the period. His 1920 film The Family Honor exemplifies this shift towards romantic comedies and away from the ideals that had informed The Jack Knife Man.[39]
Vidor's The Sky Pilot (1921) was a big-budget western-comedy shot on location in the high Sierra Nevada of California. John Bowers stars as the intrepid preacher and Colleen Moore (soon to be famous as the quintessential Hollywood "flapper") as the girl he loved and rescued from a deadly cattle stampede. The natural landscapes serve as an essential dramatic component in the film, as they would in subsequent Vidor movies. The cost overruns cut into First National profits, and they declined to fund any further Vidor projects.[40]
Vidor and Moore would begin a three-year romance on the set of The Sky Pilot that became "a Hollywood legend". The couple would resume their relationship after 40 years (in 1963), remaining close until Vidor's death in 1982.[41][42]
Love Never Dies (1921) is a "rural love story" with a spectacular disaster scene depicting a locomotive and box cars derailing and plunging into a river below. The dramatic presentation of rivers served as a standard motif in Vidor films. Impressed with this Vidor sequence, producer Thomas H. Ince helped to finance the picture.[43]
In 1922, Vidor produced and directed films that served as vehicles for his spouse, Florence Vidor, notable only for their "artificiality". These works conformed to the comedies of manners and romantic melodramas that were typical of his contemporary, Cecil B. DeMille at Famous Players–Lasky studios. Later, Vidor admitted to being overawed by DeMille's talents. Florence Vidor, in her later career, frequently starred in DeMille productions.[44]
Vidor's next picture, Conquering the Woman, was an unabashed imitation of DeMille's outstanding drama Male and Female (1919), starring Gloria Swanson. Vidor followed up with Woman, Wake Up and The Real Adventure (both 1922) and each depicting a female struggling successfully to assert herself in a male dominated world. As such, these may be considered as early examples of feminist-oriented cinema, but with entirely conventional endings.[45][46]
By the early 1920s, Florence Vidor had emerged as a major film star in her own right and wished to pursue her career independent of her spouse. The couple divorced in 1926, and shortly thereafter Florence married violinist Jascha Heifetz. Vidor would soon marry model and future film actress Eleanor Boardman.[47]
Vidor Village went bankrupt in 1922 and Vidor, now without a studio, offered his services to the top executives in the film industry.[48]
Metro and Peg o' My Heart (1922)
[edit]
Film producer Louis B. Mayer engaged Vidor to direct Broadway actress Laurette Taylor in a film version of her famous juvenile role as Peg O'Connell in Peg o' My Heart, written by her husband J. Hartley Manners. Despite viewing screen tests supplied by director D. W. Griffth, Vidor was anxious that the aging Taylor (born 1884) would not be convincing as her 18-year-old stage character on screen. Biographer Marguerite Courtney describes their first encounter:
in [her] frowzy wig and dead white makeup, the famous star looked closer to forty than eighteen. At the first sight of Laurette [Vidor] experienced acute relief. She came toward him smiling, and his camera-minded eye saw at once a face all round and animated, essentially youthful. Pumping her hand he burst out impulsively "For Heaven's sake, let's make a test with your own lovely hair!"
The process of adapting the stage version to film was nevertheless fraught with difficulties, complicated by a romantic attachment between director and star. The final product proved cinematically "lifeless".[49]
Pleased with Peg o' My Heart box-office receipts, Mayer matched Vidor and Taylor again, resulting in a second feature film success, Happiness (1923) also written by Manners, with Taylor playing a charming Pollyanna-like character. The film would mark Vidor's final collaboration with the couple.[50]
Next, Vidor was entrusted to direct Mayer's top female star Clara Kimball Young in The Woman of Bronze, a 1923 melodrama that resembled the formulaic films he had created with Florence Vidor at Vidor Village.[51]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM): 1923–1944
[edit]
Silent era: 1923–1928
[edit]
Vidor's yeoman service to Louis B. Mayer secured him entrée into Goldwyn Pictures in 1923, a holding soon to be amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Samuel Goldwyn and other film producers of the early 1920s favored "literary" texts as the basis for movie screenplays. Parvenu-rich movie executives wished to provide a patina of class or "tone" to an industry often regarded as vulgar and cash-driven.[51]
Vidor was content to adapt these "prestigious properties" so securing his reputation as a reliable studio asset.[52] His work during this period did not rise to the level of his later work, but a few films stand out. Wild Oranges (1924), from a story by Joseph Hergesheimer, is notable as a harbinger of his best work in the sound era. The natural features of the coastal regions of Georgia are endowed with sinister and homicidal potential, where a fugitive arrives to terrorize rural residents. As such, the film exhibits Vidor's trademark use of nature to symbolize aspects of the human conflict.[53]
Vidor and the John Gilbert collaborations: 1925–1926
[edit]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's cast of rising movie stars included soon-to-be matinee idol John Gilbert. Vidor directed him in His Hour (1924), based on an Elinor Glyn "febrile romance", and is one of the few films from Vidor's output of that period to survive. Gilbert, as the Russian nobleman Prince Gritzko, was so ardently performed as co-star Aileen Pringle's seducer that one scene was deleted.[54]
Vidor's typically "routine" movies of this period include Wine of Youth (1924) and Proud Flesh (1925) emphasize the "time-honored virtues" of familial and matrimonial loyalty, even among the liberated Jazz Age flappers.[55] King Vidor's tenure as a studio stringer was at an end. His next feature would transform his career and have a resounding impact on the late silent film era: The Big Parade.[56][57]
A silent-era magnum opus: The Big Parade: 1925
[edit]
In 1925 Vidor directed The Big Parade, among the most acclaimed films of the silent era, and a tremendous commercial success.[59] The Big Parade, a war romance starring John Gilbert, established Vidor as one of MGM's top studio directors for the next decade. The film would influence contemporary directors G. W. Pabst in Westfront 1918 and Lewis Milestone in All Quiet on the Western Front, both 1930.[60] Producer Irving Thalberg arranged for Vidor to film two more Gilbert vehicles: La Bohème and Bardelys the Magnificent, both released in 1926. In La Bohème, a film of "great and enduring merit", leading lady Lillian Gish exerted considerable control over the film's production. Bardelys the Magnificent, a picaresque swashbuckler mimicked the films of Douglas Fairbanks. Vidor would spoof the movie on his own Show People (1928) with comedienne Marion Davies.[61]
Vidor's next film would be a startling departure from romantic entertainment to an exposure of the "cruel deception of the American dream".[62]
The Crowd (1928) and cinematic populism
[edit]
In the late 1920s European films, especially from German directors, exerted a strong influence on filmmakers internationally. Vidor's The Crowd resonates with these populist films, a "pitiless study" of a young working man's descent into isolation and loss of morale who is ultimately crushed by the urban "assembly line", while his wife struggles to maintain some order in their relationship. Though the most uncharacteristic of Vidor's pictures, it was his personal favorite: the picture, he said "came out of my guts."
Employing relatively unknown actors, the film had modest box office success, but was widely praised by critics. In 1928, Vidor received an Oscar nomination, and his first for Best Director. M-G-M executives, who had been content to allow Vidor an "experimental" film found that bleak social outlook of The Crowd troubling – reflected in their one-year delay in releasing the film. The Crowd has since been recognized as one of the "masterpieces" of the late silent era.[63][64]
The Marion Davies comedies, 1928–1930
[edit]
Cosmopolitan Pictures, a subsidiary of M-G-M studios and controlled by influential newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, insisted that Vidor direct Marion Davies – Hearst's longtime mistress – in these Cosmopolitan-supervised films, to which Vidor acquiesced. Though not identified as a director of comedies, Vidor filmed three ""screwball"-like comedies that revealed Davies talents with her "drive-you-to-distraction persona".
The Patsy, a comedy of manners, brought Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson, veterans of Mack Sennett "slapstick" era out of retirement to play Davies' farcical upper-class parents. Davies performs a number of amusing celebrity imitations she was known for at social gatherings at Hearst's San Simeon estate, including Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Pola Negri and Mae Murray.[66] The scenario for Show People (1928) was inspired by the glamorous Gloria Swanson, who began her film career in slapstick. Davis' character Peggy Pepper, a mere comic, is elevated to the high-style star Patricia Pepoire. Vidor spoofs his own recently completed Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), an over-the-top swashbuckling costume drama featuring romantic icon John Gilbert. Some of the best-known film stars of the silent era appeared in cameos, as well as Vidor himself. Show People remains the enduring picture of the Vidor–Davies collaborations. [67]
Vidor's third and final film with Davies was his second sound film (after Hallelujah (1929)): Not So Dumb (1930), adapted from the 1921 Broadway comedy Dulcy by George S. Kaufman. The limitations of early sound, despite recent innovations, interfered with the continuity of Davies' performance that had enlivened her earlier silent comedies with Vidor.[68]
Early sound era: 1929–1937
[edit]
In early 1928, Vidor and his spouse Eleanor Boardman were visiting France in the company of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. There Vidor mixed with literary expatriates, among them James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Vidor was shaken by news that US film studios and theaters were converting to sound technology and he returned quickly to Hollywood, concerned about the impact on silent cinema.[69] Adjusting to the advent of sound, Vidor enthusiastically embarked upon his long-desired project of making a picture about rural black American life incorporating a musical soundtrack. He quickly completed writing the scenario for Hallelujah and began recruiting an all African-American cast.[70]
M-G-M studios had not yet decided which emerging sound technology they would invest in, Vitaphone or Movietone, a decision that would determine what camera system Vidor would use. Vidor circumvented the dilemma by appealing directly to President of Lowe's Inc. Nicholas Schenck, who authorized Vidor to begin shooting outdoor location sequences without sound and with the caveat that Vidor waive his $100,000 salary.[71]
Hallelujah (1929)
[edit]
Vidor's first sound film Hallelujah (1929) combines a dramatic rural tragedy with a documentary-like depiction of black agrarian community of sharecroppers in the South. Daniel L. Haynes as Zeke, Nina Mae McKinney as Chick and William Fontaine as Hot Shot developed a love-triangle that leads to a revenge murder. A quasi-musical, Vidor's innovative integration of sound into the scenes, including jazz and gospel adds immensely to the cinematic effect.[72]
Vidor, a third-generation Texan, encountered black workers employed at his father's sawmills when he was a child, and there he became familiar with their spirituals. As an adult, he was not immune to the racial prejudices common among whites in the South of the 1920s. His paternalistic claim to know the character of the "real negro" is reflected in his portrayal of some rural black characters as "childishly simple, lecherously promiscuous, fanatically superstitious, and shiftless". Vidor, nonetheless, avoids reducing his characters to Uncle Tom stereotypes and his treatment bears no resemblance to the overt racism in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915).[73]
The black sharecroppers resemble more the poor white agrarian entrepreneurs Vidor praised in his 1934 Our Daily Bread, emphasizing the class, rather than race, of his subjects. The film emerges as a human tragedy in which elemental forces of sexual desire and revenge contrast with family affection and community solidarity and redemption.[74]
Hallelujah enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response in the United States and internationally, praising Vidor's stature as a film artist and as a humane social commentator. Vidor was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards of 1929.[75][76]
M-G-M 1930–1931: Billy the Kid and The Champ
[edit]
Filmed just before passage of the Production Code of 1933, Vidor's Billy the Kid is free of the fixed moral dualities that came to typify subsequent Good Guy vs. Bad Guy Westerns in Hollywood. Starring former football champion Johnny Mack Brown as Billy and Wallace Beery as his nemesis Sheriff Pat Garrett, the protagonists display a gratuitous violence that anticipates Vidor's 1946 masterpiece Duel in the Sun (1946). Homicidal behavior resonates with the brutal and deadly desert landscape, Hemingwayesque in its brevity and realism. Studio executives were concerned that the excessive violence would alienate audiences, though the Prohibition era in the United States was saturated with news of the gangster-related killings. [77]
Shot partially in the new 70 mm Grandeur system, the film was conceived by producers to be an epic, but few cinemas were equipped to handle the new wide-screen technology. The film did poorly at the box-office.[78][79]
Upon his return to M-G-M after his sojourn to complete Street Scene for Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor embarked on his second picture starring actor Wallace Beery, this time with child actor Jackie Cooper in The Champ. Based on a story by Francis Marion, Vidor adapts a standard plot about a socially and economically impaired parent who relinquishes a child to insure his/her escape from squalid conditions to achieve an upwardly mobile future. The film is a descendant of director Charlie Chaplin's The Kid (1921), as well as Vidor's own early silent shorts for Judge Willis Brown. Vidor owed M-G-M a more conventional and "fool-proof" production after executives allowed him to make the more experimental Street Scene in 1931. The Champ would prove to be a successful vehicle for Berry and propel him to top-rank among M-G-M movie stars.[80]
Bird of Paradise and RKO Pictures : Sojourn in Hawaii, 1932
[edit]
After finishing the sentimental vehicle starring Wallace Beery, in The Champ, Vidor was loaned to Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) to make a "South Seas" romance for producer David Selznick filmed in the US territory of Hawaii. Starring Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea, the tropical location and mixed-race love theme in Bird of Paradise included nudity and sexual eroticism.[81]
During production Vidor began an affair with script assistant Elizabeth Hill that led to a series of highly productive screenplay collaborations and their marriage in 1937. Vidor divorced his wife, actress Eleanor Boardman shortly after Bird of Paradise was completed.[82][83]
Great Depression: 1933–1934
[edit]
The Stranger's Return (1933) and Our Daily Bread (1934) are Depression era films that present protagonists who flee the social and economic perils of urban America, plagued by high unemployment and labor unrest to seek a lost rural identity or make a new start in the agrarian countryside. Vidor's expressed enthusiasm for the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's exhortation in his first inaugural in 1933 for a shift of labor from industry to agriculture.[84]
In The Stranger's Return, a city girl (Miriam Hopkins) abandons her life in a great metropolis to visit her grandfather (Lionel Barrymore) in Iowa, the aging patriarch of a working farm. Her arrival upsets the schemes of parasitic relatives to seize the property in anticipation of Grandpa Storr's passing. The scenario presents the farm as "bountiful", even in the midst of the Dust Bowl where banks seized tens-of-thousands of independent family farms in the Midwest and drove millions into low wage seasonal agricultural labor.[85] The picture is a paean to family "blood" ties and rural generational continuity, manifested in the granddaughter's commitment (though raised in New York City) to inherit the family farm and honor its agrarian heritage.[86]
Vidor continued his "back to the land" theme in his 1934 Our Daily Bread. The picture is the second film of a trilogy he referred to as "War, Wheat and Steel". His 1925 film The Big Parade was "war" and his 1944 An American Romance was "steel". Our Daily Bread – "wheat" – is a sequel to his silent masterpiece The Crowd (1928).[87][88]
Our Daily Bread is a deeply personal and politically controversial work that Vidor financed himself when M-G-M executives declined to back the production. M-G-M was uncomfortable with its characterization of big business, and particularity banking institutions, as corrupt.[89] A struggling Depression-era couple from the city inherit a derelict farm, and in an effort to make it a productive enterprise, they establish a cooperative in alliance with unemployed locals who possess various talents and commitments. The film raises questions as to the legitimacy of the American system of democracy and to government imposed social programs.[90]
The picture garnered a mixed response among social and film critics, some regarding it as a socialistic condemnation of capitalism and others as tending towards fascism – a measure of Vidor's own ambivalence in organizing his social outlook artistically.[91][92]
The Goldwyn films: 1931–1937
[edit]
Street Scene (1931), Cynara (1932), The Wedding Night (1935), Stella Dallas (1937)
During the 1930s Vidor, though under contract to M-G-M studios, made four films under loan-out to independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, formerly with the Goldwyn studios that had amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924. Goldwyn's insistence on fidelity to the prestigious literary material he had purchased for screen adaptations imposed cinematic restraints on his film directors, including Vidor. The first of their collaborations since the silent era was Street Scene (1931)[93]
The adoption of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Elmer Rice depicts a microcosm in a major American metropolis and its social and economic inequalities. The cinematic limitations imposed by a single set restricted to a New York City block of tenements building and its ethnically diverse inhabitants presented Vidor with unique technical challenges. He and cinematographer George Barnes countered and complemented these structural restrictions by using a roving camera mounted on cranes, an innovation made possible by recent developments in early sound technology.[94]
The excellent cast, drawn largely from the Broadway production, contributed to the critical success of the film, as did the huge publicity campaign engineered by Goldwyn. Street Scene's immense box-office profits belied the financial and economic crisis of the early Depression years, when movie studios feared bankruptcy.[95]
Cynara (1932), a romantic melodrama of a brief, yet tragic affair between a British barrister and a shopgirl, was Vidor's second sound collaboration with Goldwyn. Starring two of Hollywood's biggest stars of the period, Ronald Colman and Kay Francis, the story by Francis Marion is a cautionary tale concerning upper- and lower-class sexual infidelities set in England. Framed, as in the play and novel, in a series of flashbacks told by the married barrister Warlock (Colman), the story ends in honorable redemption for the barrister and death for his mistress. Vidor was able to inject some "pure cinema" into a picture that was otherwise a "dialogue-heavy" talkie: "Colman [in London] tears up a piece of paper and throws the pieces out a window, where they fly into the air. Vidor cuts to St. Mark's Square in Venice (where Francis, his spouse is vacationing), with pigeons flying into the air".[96]
In his third collaboration with Goldwyn, Vidor was tasked with salvaging the producer's huge investment in Soviet-trained Russian actress Anna Sten. Goldwyn's effort to elevate Sten to the stature of Dietrich or Garbo had thus far failed despite his relentless promotion when Vidor began directing her in The Wedding Night (1935).[97]
A tale of a doomed affair between a married New Yorker (Gary Cooper) (whose character Vidor based on novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald) and a farm girl (Sten) from an Old World Polish family, Vidor provided thoughtful direction to Cooper and Sten while cinematographer Gregg Toland's devised effective lighting and photography. Despite good reviews the picture did not establish Sten as a star among movie-goers and she remained "Goldwyn's Folly".[98]
In 1937 Vidor made his final and most profitable picture with Samuel Goldwyn: Stella Dallas. A remake of Goldwyn's most successful silent movie, the 1925 Stella Dallas, also an adaption of Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel. Barbara Stanwyck stars as the eponymous "martyr of motherhood" in the sound re-make. Vidor analyzed director Henry King's handling of his silent production and incorporated or modified some of its filmic structure and staging. Stanwyck's performance, reportedly without undue oversight by Vidor, is outstanding, benefited by her selective vetting of Belle Bennett's famous portrayal. Vidor contributed to defining Stanwyck's role substantially in the final cut, providing a sharper focus on her character and delivering one of the great tear-jerkers in film history. [99]
Despite the success of the film it would be his last with Goldwyn, as Vidor had tired of the producer's outbursts on the set. Vidor emphatically declined to work with the "mercurial" producer again.[100]
Paramount Pictures: 1935–1936
[edit]
So Red the Rose (1935) and The Texas Rangers (1936)
Paramount production manager at Paramount Pictures, Ernst Lubitsch, persuaded Vidor to undertake the direction of a film based on a story that afforded a ""Southern" perspective, So Red the Rose, an American Civil War epic.
The topic appealed to the Texas-bred Vidor and he offered a dual vision of the antebellum South's response to the war among the white planter class, sentimentalizing their struggle and defeat. Here, the western "pioneer" plantation owners possess less of the anti-Northern fury that led to secession by their "Old South" counterparts. The scion of the estate, Duncan Bedford (Randolph Scott) initially refuses to join the Confederate army ("I don't believe Americans should fight Americans") but his sister Vallette Duncan (Margaret Sullavan) scorns his pacifism and singlehandedly diverts her slaves from rebellion. The white masters of the "Portobello" plantation in Mississippi emerge from the conflict content that North and South made equal sacrifices, and that a "New South" has emerged that is better off without its white aristocracy and slavery. With Portobello in ruins, Valette and Duncan submit to the virtues of hard work in a pastoral existence.[101]
The novel So Red the Rose (1934) by Stark Young in its narrative and theme anticipates author Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936). Vidor, initially tapped to direct Mitchell's epic, was ultimately assigned to director George Cukor.[102]
The box-office failure of So Red the Rose led the film industry to anticipate the same for Cukor's adaption of Mitchell's Civil War epic. To the contrary, Gone with the Wind (1939) enjoyed immense commercial and critical success.[103]
At a period in the 1930s when Western theme films were relegated to low-budget B movies, Paramount studios financed an A Western for Vidor at $625,000 (lowered to $450,000 when star Gary Cooper was replaced with Fred MacMurray in the lead role.)[104] The Texas Rangers, Vidor's second and final film for Paramount reduced, but did not abandon, the level of sadistic and lawless violence evidenced in his Billy the Kid. Vidor presents a morality play where the low-cunning of the outlaws cum vigilantes heroes is turned to the service of law-and-order when they kill their erstwhile accomplice in crime – the "Polka Dot Bandit.".[105][106]
The film's scenario and script was penned by Vidor and wife Elizabeth Hill, based loosely on The Texas Rangers: A History of Frontier Defense of the Texas Rangers by Walter Prescott Webb. Made on the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Texas Ranger Division the picture includes standard B western tropes, including Indian massacres of white settlers and a corrupt city official who receives small town justice at the hands of a jury composed of saloon denizens. The film presages, as does Vidor's Billy the Kid (1931), his portrayal of the savagery of civilization and nature in producer David O. Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946).[107][108][109]
In an effort to retain Vidor at Paramount, the production head William LeBaron offered him a biopic of Texas icon, Sam Houston. Vidor emphatically declined: "... "I've [had] such a belly-full of Texas after the Rangers that I find myself not caring whether Sam Houston takes Texas from the Mexicans or lets them keep it."[110]
Screen Directors Guild
[edit]
In the 1930s Vidor became a leading advocate for the formation of the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) and since 1960 called the Directors Guild of America (DGA), when television directors joined its ranks.
In an effort to enlarge movie director's meager influence in studio production decisions, Vidor personally exhorted a dozen or more leading directors, among them Howard Hawks, William Wellman, Ernst Lubitsch and Lewis Milestone to form a union, leading to the incorporation of the SDG in January 1936. By 1938, the collective bargaining unit had grown from a founding membership of 29 to an inclusive union of 600, representing Hollywood directors and assistant directors. The demands under Vidor's tenure at SDG were mild, seeking increased opportunities to examine scripts before filming and to make the initial cut on a movie.[111]
As the SDG's first president, and a founding member of the anti-Communist group the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals Vidor failed to bring the SDG into affiliation with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that had already organized actors and screenwriters (deemed a "Bolshevik" political front by anti-communist critics). Not until 1939 would the directors sign an accord with these sister guilds, under then SDG president Frank Capra.[112]
M-G-M: 1938–1944
[edit]
Upon completion of Stella Dallas and his disaffection from Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor returned to M-G-M under a five-film contract that would produce The Citadel (1938), Northwest Passage (1940), Comrade X (1940), H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941) and An American Romance (1944). In 1939, Vidor would also direct the final three weeks of primary filming for The Wizard of Oz (1939).[113]
Film historian John Baxter describes the demands that the studio system at M-G-M had on an auteur director such as Vidor in this period:
M-G-M's assembly line system caught up with even top directors like Vidor, who could be called on to pass judgment on a new property or even prepare a project, only to find themselves a few days later shifted to something else.[114]
These unconsummated projects at M-G-M include National Velvet (1944) and The Yearling (1946), the later in which Vidor presided over a failed attempt to produce a population of juvenile deer who would be age-appropriate throughout the production (female deer refused to reproduce out of season). Both films would be completed by the director Clarence Brown. Vidor further invested six months shooting an Amazon River survival-adventure, The Witch in the Wilderness from which he was diverted to perform pre-production for Northwest Passage (1940). This period would be one of transition for Vidor but would lead to an artistic phase where he created some of his richest and most characteristic works.[115]
The Citadel: The first picture under the contract and the first under the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) was The Citadel in 1938. Filmed in England at a time the British government and trade unions had placed restrictions designed to extract a portion of the highly lucrative American movie exports to the British Isles. M-G-M, as a tactical olive branch, agreed to hire British actors as cast members for The Citadel and provided them generous compensation. (American actress Rosalind Russel and Vidor were the only two non-Britons who served on the film's production).[116]
The movie is a close adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel of the same name, an exposé of the mercenary aspects of the medical profession that entices doctors to serve the upper-classes at the expense of the poor. Vidor's Christian Science-inspired detachment from the medical profession influence his handling of the story, in which an independent doctor's cooperative is favored over both socialized medicine and a profit-driven medical establishment.[117]
The protagonist, Dr. Andrew Manson (Robert Donat) ultimately resorts to an act of anarchism by using explosives to destroy a disease-producing sewer, but emerges personally vindicated.[118] A success at the Academy Awards, the film garnered nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Donat), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.[119]
During the late 1930s M-G-M enlisted Vidor to assume artistic and technical responsibilities, some of which went uncredited. The most outstanding of these was his shooting of the black-and-white "Kansas" sequences in The Wizard of Oz, including the notable musical production in which Dorothy Judy Garland sings "Over the Rainbow". Portions of the Technicolor sequences that depict Dorothy and her companions lulled into sleep on a field of poppies were also handled by Vidor.[120]
The sound era saw the eclipse of the Western movie that had its heyday in the silent era and by the 1930s the genre was relegated to the producers of B movies. By the end of the decade high-budget films depicting the Indian Wars in the America of the 18th and 19th century reappeared, notably Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and DeMille's North West Mounted Police (1940)[121]
In the summer of 1939, Vidor began filming in Idaho a Western-themed picture using the new Technicolor system. The picture that emerged is one of his "master works": Northwest Passage (1940).[122]
Northwest Passage: Based on an American colonial-era epic novel, the film describes a punitive expedition against an Abenaki (Iroquois) village by a unit of British Army irregulars during the French and Indian Wars. Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) leads his green-clad "Roberts Rangers" on a grueling trek through 200 miles of wilderness. The Rangers fall upon the village and brutally exterminate the inhabitants who are suspected of assaulting white settlements. A demoralized retreat ensues led by Rogers. Under retaliatory attack by Indians and a savage landscape the Rangers are pushed to the limits of their endurance, some reduced to cannibalism and madness.[123]
The script by Laurence Stallings and Talbot Jennings (and several uncredited writers) conveys the unabashed anti-Indian hatred that motivates Roger's men to their task.[124] The level of violence anticipates film noir of the post-World War II period and the McCarthy era.[125]
Vidor began filming in July 1939, just weeks before war was declared in Europe and the isolationist or interventionist policies were widely debated. The film influenced tropes that appeared in subsequent war films, depicting small military units operating behind enemy lines and relying on harsh tactics to destroy enemy combatants. The relevance of Northwest Passage's sanguinary adventurer to contemporary Americans confronted with a looming world war is never made explicit but raises moral questions on "military virtue" and how a modern war might be conducted. Though Vidor was "anti-fascist" his political predilections are left unstated in Northwest Passage.[126] Vidor established an unusually close professional relationship with the film's star, Spencer Tracy, and the actor delivered what Vidor considered a performance of "tremendous conviction".[127]
Vidor used the new three-strip Technicolor camera system (the two huge 800-pound [365 kg] cameras had to be transported by train). The color photography conveys more than the scenic beauty of Payette Lake, injecting documentary realism into key sequences. Notable are those of the Rangers portaging boats through a rugged mountain pass, and the famous river "human chain" crossing. Despite its enormous box office earnings, Northwest Passage failed to recoup its $2 million production costs. The cinematography earned an Oscer nomination in that category.[128]
Comrade X: A political comedy set in the Soviet Union, Comrade X (1940) was conceived as a vehicle for M-G-M's glamorous acquisition Hedy Lamarr, in the hopes they might duplicate the profits they reaped from M-G-M star Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). "Comrade" X is played by Clark Gable, a cynical American journalist who exposes Stalin-era cultural falsifications in his dispatches to his newspaper in the United States. Lamarr plays a Moscow tram conductor. Her coldly logical persona ultimately proves susceptible to Gable's America-inspired enthusiasms. Released in December 1940, the scurrilous tone of the dialogue toward the USSR officials was consistent with US government posture in the aftermath of the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 (after America's entry into WWII in December 1941), Russians became US allies in the war effort against the Axis powers. Reflecting these developments, M-G-M executives, just six months after the film's release, inserted a disclaimer assuring audiences that the movie was only a farce, not a hostile critique of the USSR. Writer Walter Reisch, who also scripted Ninotchka, earned an Oscar nomination for best original story.[129][130]
Vidor disparaged the picture as "an insignificant light comedy" that afforded him "a change of pace."[131] Vidor's next picture would be a cold-eyed examination of the institution of marriage and a much more personal work: H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941).[132]
H. M. Pulham, Esq.: With wife and screenwriting partner Elizabeth Hill, Vidor adapted John P. Marquand's highly popular novel of the same name. A story of a married man tempted to revive an affair with an old flame, Vidor draws upon memories of a failed romance from his own youth.[133]
Harry Pulham (Robert Young), a member of the New England's conservative upper-middle class, is stultified by the respectable routines of life and a proper marriage to his wife Kay (Ruth Hussey). Vidor examines Pulham's past in a series of flashbacks that reveal a youthful affair Harry had with an ambitious German immigrant, Marvin Myles (Hedy Lamarr) at a New York advertising agency. They prove incompatible, largely due to different class orientation and expectations: Marvin pursues her dynamic career in New York and Harry returns to the security of his Bostonian social establishment. In an act of desperate nostalgia, Pulham attempts to rekindle the relationship 20 years later, to no avail. His attempt at rebellion failed, Harry Pulham consciously submits to a life of conformity that falls short of freedom but offers self-respect and a modest contentment.[134]
H. M. Pulham, Esq was completed by Vidor after years of manufacturing "conventional successes" for M-G-M. The calm certitude of Harry Pulham in the face of enforced conformity may reflect Vidor's determination to artistically address larger issues in contemporary American society. His next, and final movie for M-G-M, would be the "Steel" component of his "War, Wheat and Steel" film trilogy: An American Romance (1944). [135][136]
An American Romance: Rather than demonstrate his patriotism by joining a military film unit Vidor attempted to create a paean to American democracy. His 1944 An American Romance represents the "steel" installment of Vidor's "War, Wheat and Steel" trilogy and serves as his "industrial epic".and emerged from an extremely convoluted screenwriting evolution.[137] Vidor personifies the relationship between man and the natural resources on which struggles to impose his purpose on nature.[138]
The lead role of immigrant Stefan Dubechek was offered to Spencer Tracy but the actor declined, an acute disappointment for the director who had greatly admired Tracy's performance in his Northwest Passage (1940).[139] Vidor's dissatisfaction with the studio's casting, including lead Brian Donlevy, led Vidor to concentrate on the industrial landscape to reveal the motivations of his characters.[140]
Despite producer Louis B. Mayer's personal enthusiasm for the picture, his studio deleted 30 minutes from the movie, mostly essential human interest sequences and only preserving the abundant documentary scenes. Disgusted by M-G-M's mutilations, Vidor terminated his 20-year association with the studio.[141] The film received negative reviews and was a financial failure. Some critics noted a shift in Vidor's focus from working class struggles to celebrating the ascent of a "Ford-like" industrial magnate. Film historian Raymond Durgnat considers the picture "his least personal, artistically weakest and most spiritually confused."[142][143]
The failure of An American Romance, after an artistic investment of three years, staggered Vidor and left him deeply demoralized. The break with M-G-M presented an opportunity to establish a more satisfying relationship with other studio producers. Emerging from this "spiritual" nadir he would create a Western of great intensity: Duel in the Sun (1946).[144]
A sound era magnum opus: Duel in the Sun (1946)
[edit]
At the end of 1944 Vidor considered a number of projects, including a remake of his silent era Wild Oranges (1924), this time with producer David O. Selznick.[145]
When Selznick purchased the rights to Niven Busch's novel Duel in the Sun in 1944, Vidor agreed to rewrite Oliver H. P. Garrett's screenplay and direct a miniature Western, "small" but "intense". Selznick's increasingly grandiose plans for the production involved his wish to promote the career of actress-mistress Jennifer Jones and to create a movie rivaling his successful 1939 Gone with the Wind. Selzick's personal and artistic ambitions for Duel in the Sun led to conflicts with Vidor over development of the themes which emphasized "sex, violence and spectacle".[146] Vidor walked off the set just before primary filming was completed, unhappy with Selznick's intrusive management. The producer would enlist eight additional directors to complete the picture. Though the final cut was made without Vidor's participation, the production reflects the participation of these talented filmmakers, among them William Dieterle and Josef von Sternberg. Vidor was awarded sole screen credit after Directors Guild arbitration.[147] [148]
Duel in the Sun is a melodramatic treatment of a Western theme concerning a conflict between two generations of the McCanles family. The elderly and crippled McCanles Lionel Barrymore presides with an iron fist over his a vast cattle estate with his invalid wife Laura Belle Candles Lillian Gish. Their two sons, Lewt and Jess, are polar opposites: the educated Jess "the good son" Joseph Cotten takes after his refined mother, while Lewt "the bad son" Gregory Peck emulates his domineering cattle baron father. The adoption of the young orphan girl Pearl Chavez, the "half-breed" offspring of a European gentleman and a native-American mother, whom Pearl's father has murdered and been executed for his crime, introduces a fatal element into the McCanles family. The film noir ending includes an attempted fratricide and a suicide-like love pact, destroying the McCanles family.[149]
The "unbridled sexuality" portrayed by Vidor between Pearl and Lewt created a furor that drew criticism from the US Congressmen and film censors, which led to the studio cutting several minutes before its final release.[152]
Selznick launched Duel in the Sun in hundreds of theaters, backed by a multiple-million dollar promotional campaign. Despite the film's poor critical reception (termed "Lust in the Dust" by its detractors) the picture's box office returns rivaled the highest-grossing film of the year, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).[153]
Film archivist Charles Silver offered this appraisal of the Vidor-Selznick collaboration:
"[W]hen Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones) rides out to kill Lewt (Gregory Peck), she is uncannily transformed into a phantasm of a young resolute Mrs. McCanles (Lillian Gish), thus killing the son she despises via the daughter she never had. This is perhaps the most outrageous conceit of an entirely outrageous movie, and it is brilliant. As Andrew Sarris has said: 'In cinema, as in all art, only those who risk the ridiculous have a real shot at the sublime.' In Duel in the Sun, an older, less hopeful, but still enterprising King Vidor came damn close to the bullseye."[154][155]
On Our Merry Way (A Miracle Can Happen), Universal Studios 1948
[edit]
In the aftermath of his critical failures in An American Romance (1944) and Duel in the Sun (1946), Vidor disengaged from Hollywood film production to purchase his Willow Creek Ranch in Paso Robles, California.[156]
A Miracle Can Happen (1948) is a film sketch that Vidor participated in with co-director Leslie Fenton during this period of relative inactivity. A "low-budget" Universal Studios release of the early baby boom era, this "omnibus" presents vignettes filmed or performed by an array of actors and directors (some of them returning from service in the armed forces) among them Burgess Meredith, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, James Stewart, John Huston and George Stevens. (An episode with British actor Charles Laughton was cut from the final release, a disappointment to Vidor.) The picture's title was changed shortly after opening to On Our Merry Way to promote its comedic virtues. Vidor dismissed the film from his oeuvre in later years.[157]
In 1948 Vidor was diverted from making a series of 16mm Westerns for television and produced on his ranch when Warner Brothers studios approached him to direct an adaption of author Ayn Rand's controversial novel The Fountainhead. Vidor immediately accepted the offer.[158]
Warner Brothers: 1949–1951
[edit]
Vidor's three films for Warner Brothers studios—The Fountainhead (1949), Beyond the Forest (1949) and Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)—were crafted to reconcile the excessive and amoral violence displayed in his Duel in the Sun (1946) with a constructive presentation of American individualism that comported with his Christian Science precepts of morality.[159][160]
The Fountainhead (1949): Unhappy with the screen adaptation offered by Warner Brothers for Ayn Rand's 1938 novel The Fountainhead, Vidor asked the author to write the script. Rand accepted but inserted a caveat into her contract requiring that she authorize any deviation from the book's story or dialogue. Vidor accepted the provision.[161]
Rand's political philosophy of Objectivism is distilled through the character of architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper), who adopts an uncompromising stance on the physical integrity of his proposed designs. When one of his architectural projects is compromised, he destroys the building with dynamite. At his trial, Roark offers a principled and forthright defense for his act of sabotage and is exonerated by the jury. Though Vidor was committed to developing his own populist notion of American individualism, Rand's didactic Objectivist scenario and script informs much of the film. The Roark character is loosely based on the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, both in the novel and Vidor's film version.[162][163]
Vidor's most outstanding cinematic innovation in The Fountainhead is his highly stylized images of the Manhattan high-rise interiors and skylines. The urban landscapes, created by Art Director Edward Carrere were strongly influenced by German Expressionism and contribute to the film's compelling film noir character. The eroticism inherent in the sets resonate with the on-screen sexual tension, augmented by the off-screen affair between Cooper and Patricia Neal, who plays the architect's ally-adversary Dominique Francon. [164]
The Fountainhead enjoyed profitable box-office returns but a poor critical reception. Satisfied with his experience at Warner's, Vidor signed a two-film contract with the studio. In his second picture he would direct Warner's most prestigious star Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest (1949).[165][166]
Beyond the Forest (1949): A lurid noir melodrama that tracks the descent of a petty-bourgeois Madame Bovary-like character, Rosa Moline (Bette Davis) into marital infidelity, murder and a sordid death, the picture has earned a reputation as a "Camp" classic. The film is often cited for providing the phrase "What a dump!", appropriated by playwright Edward Albee in his 1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and its 1966 screen adaptation.[167]
Despising the role assigned her by producer Jack Warner and feuding with director Vidor over her character's portrayal, Davis delivers a startling performance and one of the best of her mid-career. The role of Rosa Molina would be her last film with Warner Brothers after seventeen years with the studio.[168]
Vidor's characterization of Davis as the unsophisticated Gorgon-like Rosa (the film was titled La Garce, [The Bitch], in French releases) were widely rejected by her fans and contemporary film critics and reviews "were the worst of Vidor's career." [169]
Vidor and Max Steiner inserted a leitmotif into those sequences where Rosa obsessively longs for escape from the dull, rural Loyalton to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Chicago. The "Chicago" theme surfaces (a tune made famous by Judy Garland) in an ironic style reminiscent of film composer Bernard Herrmann. Steiner earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Score.[170]
Lightning Strikes Twice (1951): His final picture for Warner Brothers, Vidor attempted to create a film noir tale of a deadly love triangle starring Richard Todd, Ruth Roman and Mercedes McCambridge, a cast that did not suit Vidor. A standard Warner's melodrama, Vidor declared that the picture "turned out terribly" and is largely unrepresentative of his work except in its western setting and its examination of sexual strife, the theme of the film.[171] Vidor's next project was proposed by producer Joseph Bernhard after pre-production and casting were nearly complete: Japanese War Bride (1952).[172]
Japanese War Bride (1952): Twentieth Century Fox
[edit]
The topic of the film, white racial prejudice in post-WWII America, had been addressed in a number of Hollywood films of the period, including directors Joseph Losey's The Lawless (1950) and Mark Robson's Home of the Brave (1949).[173]
The story by co-producer Anson Bond concerns wounded Korean War veteran Jim Sterling (Don Taylor), who returns with his bride, Japanese nurse Tae (Shirley Yamaguchi), to his parents' farm in California's Central Valley. Conflicts arise when Jim's sister-in-law falsely accuses Tae of infidelity, sparking conflicts with the neighboring Nisei-owned farm. The picture locates acts of racism towards non-whites as personal neurosis rather than socially constructed prejudice.[174] Vidor's artistic commitments to the film were minimal in a production that was funded as a B Movie, though he meticulously documents the experience of workers in field and factory.[175]
Before beginning direction of Japanese War Bride, Vidor had already arranged with Bernhard to finance his next project and perhaps "the last great film" of his career: Ruby Gentry (1952).[176]
Ruby Gentry (1952): Twentieth Century Fox
[edit]
With Ruby Gentry, Vidor revisits the themes and scenario of Duel in the Sun (1946), in which an impoverished young woman, Jennifer Jones (Ruby née Corey, later Gentry), is taken in by a well-to-do couple. When the foster mother dies (Josephine Hutchinson) Ruby marries the widower (Karl Malden) for security, but he too dies under circumstances that cast suspicions on Ruby. She is harried by her evangelical preacher-sibling (James Anderson) and her love affair with the son of a local land-owing scion (Charlton Heston) leads to a deadly shootout, a climax that recalls Vidor's violent 1946 Western.[177]
Vidor deferred his own salary to make the low-budget work, filming the "North Carolina" landscapes on his California ranch. American critics generally disparaged the movie.[178]
Film historian Raymond Durgnat champions Ruby Gentry "as a truly great American film...film noir imbued with new fervor" that combines a radical social understanding with a Hollywood veneer and an intensely personal artistic statement. Vidor ranks Ruby Gentry among his most artistically gratifying works: "I had complete freedom in shooting it, and Selznick, who could have had an influence on Jennifer Jones, didn't intervene. I think I succeeded in getting something out of Jennifer, something quite profound and subtle."[179] The swamp sequence where Ruby and her lover Boake hunt one another is "perhaps the best sequence [Vidor] ever filmed."[180] Ruby Gentry showcases the essential elements of Vidor's oeuvre depicting the extremes of passion inherent in humanity and nature. Vidor commented on these elements as follows:
"There's one scene I like a lot...because it corresponds to something vital. It's the scene where the girl [Jennifer Jones] has the barrage demolished. At the moment when the earth is flooded, the man [Charlton Heston] is destroyed. All his ambitions crumble. I think there is a fine symbol there".[181]
Autobiography: A Tree is a Tree
[edit]
In 1953, Vidor's autobiography entitled A Tree is a Tree was published and widely praised. Film critic Dan Callahan provides this excerpt the book:
"I believe that every one of us knows that his major job on earth is to make some contribution, no matter how small, to this inexorable movement of human progress. The march of man, as I see it, is not from the cradle to the grave. It is instead, from the animal or physical to the spiritual. The airplane, the atom bomb, radio, radar, television are all evidences of the urge to overcome the limitations of the physical in favor of the freedom of the spirit. Man, whether he is conscious of it or not, knows deep inside that he has a definite upward mission to perform during the time of his life span. He knows that the purpose of his life cannot be stated in terms of ultimate oblivion."[182]
Light's Diamond Jubilee, General Electric, 1954
[edit]
As part of the 75th Anniversary of Thomas Edison's invention of electric light, Vidor adapted two short stories for television produced by David O. Selznick. The production aired on all the major American TV networks on October 24, 1954.[183]
Vidor's contributions included "A Kiss for the Lieutenant" by author Arthur Gordon starring Kim Novak, an amusing romantic vignette, as well as an adaption of novelist John Steinbeck's short story "Leader of the People" (1937) (from his novella The Red Pony) in which a retired wagon-master, Walter Brennan, rebuffed by his son Harry Morgan, finds a sympathetic audience for his War Horse reminiscences about the Old West in his grandson Brandon deWilde. Screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote the scripts for both segments.[184]
In 1954 Vidor, in collaboration with longtime associate and screenwriter Laurence Stallings, pursued a remake of the director's silent era The Turn in the Road (1919). Vidor's persistent efforts to revive this Christian Science-themed work spanning 15 years in the post-war period was never consummated, though a cast was proposed for an Allied Artists production in 1960. Setting aside this endeavor, Vidor opted to film a Western with Universal-International, Man Without a Star (1955).[185]
Man Without a Star, 1955
[edit]
Based on a story by Dee Linford of the same name and scripted by Borden Chase, Man Without a Star is an iconographic Western tale of remorseless struggle between a wealthy rancher Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain) and small homesteaders. Saddle-tramp and gunman Dempsey Rae (Kirk Douglas) is drawn into the vortex of violence, that Vidor symbolizes with ubiquitous barbed-wire. The cowboy ultimately prevails against the hired gunslinger Steve Miles (Richard Boone) who had years ago murdered Rae's younger brother.[186][187]
Kirk Douglas acted as both the star and uncredited producer in a collaborative effort with director Vidor. Neither was entirely satisfied with the result. Vidor failed to fully develop his thematic conception, the ideal of balancing personal freedoms with conservation of the land as a heritage.[188] Vidor and Douglas succeeded in creating Douglas's splendid character, Dempsey Rae, who emerges as a vital force, especially in the saloon-banjo sequence that screenwriter Borden Chase termed "pure King Vidor".[189]
Man Without a Star, rated as "a minor work" by biographer John Baxter, marks a philosophical transition in Vidor's outlook towards Hollywood: the Dempsey Rae figure, though retaining his personal integrity, "is a man without a star to follow; no ideal, no goal" reflecting a declining enthusiasm by the director for American topics. Vidor's final two movies, the epics War and Peace (an adaptation of the novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy), and Solomon and Sheba, a story from the Old Testament, followed the director's realization that his self-conceived film proposals would not be welcomed by commercial movie enterprises. This pair of historical costume dramas were created outside Hollywood, both filmed and financed in Europe.[190]
War and Peace (1956)
[edit]
Contrary to his aesthetic aversion to adapting historical spectaculars, in 1955 Vidor accepted independent Italian producer Dino De Laurentis's offer to create a screen adaption of Leo Tolstoy's vast historical romance of the late-Napoleonic era, War and Peace (1869).[191][192] In the public domain, War and Peace was under consideration for adaption by several studios. Paramount Pictures and De Laurenti rushed the film into production before a proper script could be formulated from Tolstoy's complex and massive tale, requiring rewrites throughout the shooting. The final cut, at three hours, was necessarily a highly compressed version of the literary work.[193][194]
Tolstoy's themes of individualism, the centrality of family and national allegiance and the virtues of agrarian egalitarianism were immensely appealing to Vidor. He commented on the pivotal character in the novel, Pierre Bezukhov (played by Henry Fonda): "The strange thing about it is the character of Pierre is the same character I had been trying to put on the screen in many of my own films." [195] Vidor was unsatisfied with the choice of Henry Fonda for the role of Pierre, and argued in favor of British actor Peter Ustinov. He was overruled by Dino de Laurentis, who insisted that the central figure in the epic appear as a conventional romantic leading man, rather than as the novel's "overweight, bespectacled" protagonist. [196] Vidor sought to endow Pierre's character so as to reflect the central theme of Tolstoy's novel: an individual's troubled striving to rediscover essential moral truths. The superficiality of the script and Fonda's inability to convey the subtleties of Pierre's spiritual journey thwarted Vidor's efforts to actualize the film's theme. Recalling these interpretive disputes, Vidor remarked that "though a damn good actor... [Fonda] just did not understand what I was trying to say." [197]
Vidor was delighted with the vitality of Audrey Hepburn's performance as Natasha Rostova, in contrast to the miscasting of the male leads. His assessment of the centrality of Natasha is based in the process of her maturation:
"Natasha permeated [War and Peace's] entire structure as the archetype of womankind which she so thoroughly represents. If I were forced to reduce the whole story of War and Peace to some basically simple statement, I would say that it is a story of the maturing of Natasha. She represents, to me, the anima of the story and she hovers over it all like immortality itself."[198]
Cinematographer Jack Cardiff devised one of the film's most visually striking sequences, the sunrise duel between Pierre (Henry Fonda) and Kuragin (Tullio Carminati), shot entirely on a sound-stage. Vidor performed second-production duties to oversee the spectacular battle reenactments and director Mario Soldati (uncredited) shot a number of scenes with the principal cast.[199][200]
American audiences showed modest enthusiasm at the box-office, but War and Peace was well received by film critics. The movie was met with huge popular approval in the USSR, a fact alarming to Soviet officials, coming as it did near the height of Cold War hostilities between America and Russia. The Soviet government responded in 1967 with its own heavily financed adaption of the novel, War and Peace (film series) (1967).[201]
War and Peace garnered Vidor further offers to film historical epics, among these King of Kings (1961), (directed by Nicholas Ray) as well as a project to develop a script about the life of 16th Century Spanish author Miguel Cervantes. Vidor finally settled on the Old Testament story of Solomon and Sheba, with Tyrone Power and Gina Lollobrigida tapped as the star-crossed monarchs. This would be Vidor's final Hollywood film of his career.[202]
Solomon and Sheba (1959)
[edit]
Solomon and Sheba is one of a cycle of bible-based epics popular favored by Hollywood during the 1950s. The film is best remembered as the Vidor's last commercial production of his long career in Hollywood.[203]
A tragic footnote is attached to this picture. Six weeks into production the leading man, 45-year-old star Tyrone Power, suffered a heart attack during a climactic sword fight scene. He died within the hour. Considered the "ultimate nightmare" for any major movie production, the entire film had to be re-shot, with the lead role of Solomon now recast with Yul Brynner.[204] The death of Tyrone Powers was less a financial disaster and more a creative loss. Vidor was bereft of an actor who had grasped the complex nature of the Solomon figure, adding depth to Powers' performance. Brynner and Vidor were instantly at loggerheads when the leading man substituted a portrayal of an "anguished monarch" for an Israelite king who would "dominate each situation without conflict." Vidor reported, "it was an attitude that affected the depth of his performance and probably the integrity of the film."[205] Leading lady Gina Lollobrigida adopted Brynner's approach to her character development of her Queen of Sheba, adding another facet of discord with the director.[206]
Solomon and Sheba includes some impressive action sequences, including a widely cited battle finale in which Solomon's tiny army faces an approaching onslaught of mounted warriors. His troops turn their burnished shields to the sun, the reflected light blinding the enemy hordes and sending them careening into an abyss. Astonishing sequences such as these abound in Vidor's work, prompting film historian Andrew Sarris to observe "Vidor was a director for anthologies [who] created more great moments and fewer great films than any director of his rank."[207] Despite the setbacks that plagued the production and the ballooning costs associated with the reshoot, Solomon and Sheba "more than earned back its costs."[208]
Contrary to claims that Solomon and Sheba ended Vidor's career, he continued to receive offers to film major productions after its completion. The reasons for the director's disengagement from commercial film-making are related to his age (65) and to his desire to pursue smaller and more personal movie projects. Reflecting on independent productions, Vidor remarked, "I'm glad I got out of it."[209]
Post-Hollywood projects, 1959–1981
[edit]
Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1964)
[edit]
In the mid-1960s Vidor crafted a 26-minute 16mm movie that sets forth his philosophy on the nature of individual perception. Narrated by the director, and quoting from theologian-philosophers Jonathan Edwards and Bishop Berkeley, the images serve to complement the abstract ideas he sets forth. The film is a discourse on subjective idealism, which maintains that the material world is an illusion, existing only in the human mind: humanity creates the world they experience.[210]
As Vidor describes in Whitmanesque terms:
"Nature gets the credit for what in truth should be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song, the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken; they should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation."[211]
Truth and Illusion provides an insight into the significance of Vidor's themes in his work, and is consistent with his Christian Science precepts.[212]
Micheal Neary served as assistant director on the film, and Fred Y. Smith completed the editing. The movie was never released commercially.[213]
The Metaphor: King Vidor meets with Andrew Wyeth (1980)
[edit]
Vidor's documentary The Metaphor consists of a number of interviews between the director and painter Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth had contacted Vidor in the late 1970s expressing admiration for his work. The artist emphasized that much of his material had been inspired by the director's 1925 war-romance The Big Parade.[214]
The documentary records the discussions between Vidor and both Wyeth and his spouse Betsy. A montage is formed by inter-cutting images of Wyeth's paintings with short clips from Vidor's The Big Parade. Vidor attempts to reveal an "inner metaphor" demonstrating the sources of artistic inspiration.[215]
Considering the film only a work in progress at the time of his death, the documentary had its premiere at the American Film Institute in 1980.[216] It was never given a general release and is rarely screened.[217]
Unproduced film projects
[edit]
Northwest Passage (Book 2): Vidor attempted to make a sequel to his film Northwest Passage in which Rogers' Rangers find the Northwest Passage, although filming never began because author Kenneth Roberts refused to cooperate with the project, and because MGM thought the cost in making the first film in Technicolor had proven prohibitive enough.[218]
Bright Light (late 1950s): a biographical study of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy.[219]
Conquest (formerly The Milly Story): In 1960, Vidor resumed efforts to make a sound version of his 1919 The Turn in the Road. His reconceived screenplay concerns a Hollywood director disillusioned with the film industry who inherits a gas station from his father in the fictional Colorado town of "Arcadia". The script's dialogue contains oblique references to a number of Vidor's silent films including (The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928)). Conquest introduces a mysterious young woman, "a feminine archetype" (a figure in Jungian philosophy) who serves as "the answer to everyone's problems" while pumping gas at the station. She disappears suddenly, leaving the director inspired, and he returns to Hollywood. Impressed by Italian director Federico Fellini's 8 ½ (1963), Vidor briefly corresponded with Fellini while writing Conquest. Vidor soon abandoned his 15-year effort to make the "unfashionable" movie, despite Sid Grauman – like Vidor an adherent to Christian Science – having purchased the rights. Even the modest budgetary requests were rejected by the tiny Allied Artists and they dropped the project.[220]
The Marble Faun: a "quite faithful" version of the 1860 story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.[219]
The Crowd: Vidor developed revisions of his 1928 silent masterpiece, including a 1960s sequel of Ann Head's 1967 novel Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jones (made as a TV feature without his input), and in the early 1970s another effort, Brother Jon.[221]
A Man Called Cervantes: Vidor was involved in script writing for an adaption of Bruno Frank's novel, but withdrew from the project, unhappy with script changes. The movie was shot and released in 1967 as Cervantes, but Vidor withdrew his name from the production.[222]
William Desmond Taylor: Vidor researched the murder of silent era actor-director William Desmond Taylor, killed under mysterious circumstances in 1922. Though no screenplay was forthcoming, author Sidney D. Kirkpatrick alleges in his novel, A Cast of Killers (1986), that Vidor solved the murder.[223]
The Actor: In 1979, Vidor sought financing for a biography of the ill-fated James Murray, star of Vidor's The Crowd (1928).[224]
Academic Presentations
[edit]
Vidor lectured occasionally on film production and directing in the late 1950s and the 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. He published a non-technical handbook providing anecdotes from his film career, On Film Making, in 1972.
On at least one occasion, Vidor made a presentation to film historian Arthur Knight's class at USC.[217][225]
Vidor as actor: Love and Money (1982)
[edit]
Vidor served as an 'extra" or made cameo appearances during his film career. An early film still exists from an unidentified Hotex Motion Picture Company silent short made in 1914, when he was 19 years old (he wears a Keystone Cop costume and false beard). While attempting to break into Hollywood as a director and screenwriter, Vidor took "bit parts" for Vitagraph Studios and Inceville in 1915–1916. During the height of his fame he made a number of cameo appearances in his own films, including The Patsy in 1926 and Our Daily Bread in 1934.
He did not appear as a featured actor until 1981, at the age of 85. Vidor provided a "charming" tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Walter Klein, a senile grandfather, in director James Toback's Love and Money. Vidor's motivation in accepting the role was a desire to observe contemporary movie-making technology. Love and Money was released in 1982, shortly before Vidor's death.[226]
Personal life
[edit]
In 1944 Vidor, a Republican,[227] joined the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.
Vidor published his autobiography, A Tree is a Tree, in 1953. 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 filming exterior shots).
King Vidor was a Christian Scientist and wrote occasionally for church publications.[228][229][230]
Marriages
[edit]
Vidor was married three times and had three daughters:
Florence Arto (m. 1915–1924)
(later married Jascha Heifetz)
Suzanne (1918–2003)
(adopted by Jascha Heifetz)
Eleanor Boardman (m. 1926–1931)
Antonia (1927–2012)
Belinda (1930–2023)
Elizabeth Hill (m. 1932–1978)
Death
[edit]
Vidor died at age 88 of a heart attack at his ranch in Paso Robles, California, on November 1, 1982.
Filmography
[edit]
Academy Awards and nominations
[edit]
Year Award Film Result 1927–28 Best Director The Crowd Frank Borzage – 7th Heaven 1929–30 Hallelujah Lewis Milestone – All Quiet on the Western Front 1931–32 Outstanding Production The Champ Irving Thalberg – Grand Hotel Best Director Frank Borzage – Bad Girl 1938 The Citadel Frank Capra – You Can't Take It with You 1956 War and Peace George Stevens – Giant 1979 Academy Honorary Award for his incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator
Directed Academy Award performances
[edit]
Year Performer Film Result Academy Award for Best Actor 1931–32 Wallace Beery The Champ Won 1938 Robert Donat The Citadel Nominated Academy Award for Best Actress 1937 Barbara Stanwyck Stella Dallas Nominated 1946 Jennifer Jones Duel in the Sun Nominated Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress 1937 Anne Shirley Stella Dallas Nominated 1946 Lillian Gish Duel in the Sun Nominated
Academy Awards in King Vidor films
[edit]
Year Film Academy Award
Nominations Academy Award
wins 1927–28 The Crowd
2
0
1929–30 Hallelujah
1
0
1931–32 The Champ
4
2
1936 The Texas Rangers
1
0
1938 The Citadel
4
0
1940 Northwest Passage
1
0
Comrade X
1
0
1946 Duel in the Sun
2
0
1949 Beyond the Forest
1
0
1956 War and Peace
3
0
Other awards
[edit]
In 1964, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[232] At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded with the Honorable Prize for his contribution to cinema.[233] In 2020, Vidor was honored with a retrospective at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, showcasing more than 30 of his films.[234][235]
Notes
[edit]
References
[edit]
Arroyo, José. 2016. Beyond the Forest (King Vidor, USA, 1949) https://notesonfilm1.com/2016/10/21/beyond-the-forest-king-vidor-usa-1949/ Retrieved July 15, 2015.
Baxter, John. 1970. Hollywood in the Thirties. International Film Guide Series. Paperback Library, New York. LOC Card Number 68–24003.
Baxter, John. 1976. King Vidor. Simon & Schuster, Inc. Monarch Film Studies. LOC Card Number 75–23544.
Berlinale archive 2020. 2020. Cynara. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/programme/detail/202011039.html Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Berlinale 2020. 2020. King Vidor Retrospective 2020: A Very Wide-ranging Director. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/berlinale-topics/interview-retrospective-2020.html Retrieved June 20, 2020.
Berlinale, 2020. 2020. Comrade X. https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202002542 Retrieved July 2, 2020.
Berlinale 2020. 2020. The Texas Rangers. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/programme/detail/202002560.html Retrieved June 30, 2020
Callahan, Dan. 2007. Vidor, King. Senses of Cinema. February 2007, Issue 42 http://sensesofcinema.com/2007/great-directors/vidor/ Retrieved June 10, 2020.
Durgnat, Raymond and Simmon, Scott. 1988. King Vidor, American. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-05798-8
Fristoe, Roger. TMC. Comrade X. Turner Classic Movies. https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/1101 Retrieved June 29, 2020.
Gallagher, Tag. 2007. American Triptych: Vidor, Hawks and Ford. Senses of Cinema. February 2007 http://sensesofcinema.com/2007/the-moral-of-the-auteur-theory/vidor-hawks-ford/ Retrieved May 30, 2020.
Gustafsson, Fredrik. 2016. King Vidor, An American Romantic La furia umana. LFU/28 Winter 2016. http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/61-archive/lfu-28/548-fredrik-gustafsson-king-vidor-an-american-romantic Retrieved June 4, 2020.
Hampton, Howard. 2013. Into the Morass. Film Comment. July–August 2013 Issue https://www.filmcomment.com/article/beyond-the-forest-king-vidor-bette-davis/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Higham, Charles. 1972. "Long Live Vidor, A Hollywood King" https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/03/archives/long-live-vidor-a-hollywood-king-long-live-vidor-who-was-a-king-of.html Retrieved June 10, 2020
Higham, Charles. 1973. The Art of the American Film: 1900–1971. Doubleday & Company, Inc. New York. ISBN 0-385-06935-9. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 70-186026.
Hodsdon, Bruce. 2013. The Crowd. August 2013 CTEQ Annotations of Film Issue 68. http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-crowd/ Retrieved June 24, 2020.
Holliman, Rod. TMC. The Crowd. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/100/The-Crowd/ Retrieved June 20, 2020.
Koszarski, Richard. 1976. Hollywood Directors: 1914–1940. Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76–9262.
Landazuri, Margarita. TMC. The Wedding Night (1935). Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/95243/The-Wedding-Night/articles.html Retrieved June 21, 2020
Landazuri, Margarita. TMC. Cynara (1932).Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.turner.com/tcmdb/title/72067/Cynara/articles.html Retrieved June 21, 2020
Melville, David. 2013. Scary Monsters (and Super Tramps) – Beyond the Forest. Senses of Cinema. CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 68 http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/scary-monsters-and-super-tramps-beyond-the-forest/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. The Essentials: The Champ. Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/12500/Champ-The/ Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. H. M. PULHAM, ESQ. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/77194/H-M-Pulham-Esq-/ Retrieved June 30, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. Duel in the Sun. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.turner.com/tcmdb/title/73733/Duel-in-the-Sun/articles.html Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Reinhardt, Bernd. 2020. Rediscovering Hallelujah (1929), director King Vidor's sensitive film with all-black cast: 70th Berlin International Film Festival. World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved May 24, 2020. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/07/ber2-a07.html
Sarris, Andrew. 1973. Primal Screen. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780671213411
Shaw, Dan. 2013. The Fountainhead. Senses of Cinema. CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 68 August 2013. http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-fountainhead/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Silver, Charles. 2010. King Vidor's Hallelujah http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/06/15/king-vidors-hallelujah/ Retrieved June 24, 2020
Silver, Charles. 2012. King Vidor's Northwest Passage https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/10/09/king-vidors-northwest-passage/ Retrieved July 3, 2020.
Silver, Charles. 1982. Duel in the Sun. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN19827 Archived July 13, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 3, 2020.
Simmons, Scott. 2004. The Invention of the Western Film: Duel in the Sun http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN15062 Archived July 9, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Simmons, Scott. 1988. The Fountainhead (1949). Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN6980 Archived July 11, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Smith, Richard Harland. TMC. Billy the Kid (1930). Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/14902/Billy-the-Kid/articles.html Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Stafford, Jeff. TMC. The Fountainhead 1949. Turner Classi Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/596/The-Fountainhead/articles.html Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Whiteley, Chris. 2010. King Vidor (1894–1982) Hollywood Golden Age. http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/moguls/king_vidor.html Retrieved July 21, 2020.
Biography portal
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https://collections.new.oscars.org/Details/Archive/70038689
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|
ACADEMY COLLECTIONS
|
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"Adlib Internet Server",
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Academy Collections brings together the holdings of the Academy Film Archive and a portion of the holdings of the Margaret Herrick Library for search and discovery.
|
en
|
/Content/Images/favicon/favicon.ico
| null |
The wedding of King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman, September 8, 1926.
Item | Group portraits
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https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0090187/
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Eleanor Boardman
|
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[
"Eleanor Boardman"
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Eleanor Boardman. Actress: Ein Mensch der Masse. Philadelphia-born Eleanor Boardman had always wanted to be an actress, and as soon as she graduated high school she headed for New York to conquer Broadway. When Broadway proved not quite ready to be conquered yet, she took whatever jobs she could find, including one as an artist's model. In that capacity she heard that the Selwyn Organization, a major producer of Broadway...
|
en
|
IMDb
|
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0090187/
|
Philadelphia-born Eleanor Boardman had always wanted to be an actress, and as soon as she graduated high school she headed for New York to conquer Broadway. When Broadway proved not quite ready to be conquered yet, she took whatever jobs she could find, including one as an artist's model. In that capacity she heard that the Selwyn Organization, a major producer of Broadway plays, was looking for girls with no stage experience. Since she was more than qualified in that respect, she tried out for the job and before she knew it she was in the chorus line of "Rock-a-Bye-Baby" until the show closed three months later. She then got a job in another Selwyn production, "A Very Good Young Man", but that show closed not long after opening. It was at this time that a casting director for Goldwyn Pictures hit the Broadway scene looking for new faces. She tested for him and impressed him enough that he finally picked her out of a pool of more than 1000 young girls who tested for the opportunity to go to Hollywood. She made her first film in 1922 and stayed in the business until 1935, when she retired. She was married twice, first to director King Vidor from 1926-1931, then to director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast from 1940 to his death in 1968. She died in Santa Barbara, CA, in 1991.
|
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https://goldenglobes.com/articles/forgotten-hollywood-john-gilbert-articles-forgotten-hollywood-john-gilbert/
|
en
|
Forgotten Hollywood: John Gilbert
|
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2021-01-25T12:45:26+00:00
|
On January 9, 1936, the Reading Eagle’s front page headline blared: “Fight to Save Life of ‘Great Lover’ Futile.” Actor John Gilbert, who “thrilled mi...
|
en
|
Golden Globes
|
https://goldenglobes.com/articles/forgotten-hollywood-john-gilbert-articles-forgotten-hollywood-john-gilbert/
|
On January 9, 1936, the Reading Eagle’s front page headline blared: “Fight to Save Life of ‘Great Lover’ Futile.” Actor John Gilbert, who “thrilled millions,” had died of a heart attack.
The article breathlessly reported that Gilbert had died at 7 a.m. that morning: “But even then, Dr Madsen [his personal physician] didn’t give up. Modern medical science has revived dead men before. And there was a chance, this time. A call was sent to the West Los Angeles Fire Department. And there began a drama as tense and poignant as any Gilbert ever portrayed on the screen. Careening along the curving tree lined avenues of the fashionable suburb where the actor lived, the red firetruck with its inhalator sped on its mission of mercy. . . Tirelessly, the rubber bellows of the machine rose and fell as air was forced into the lungs that had ceased to breathe. Powerful shots of adrenaline were forced into his veins. But it was of no avail. After an hour’s work, Dr Madsen gave the word for the firemen to cease their efforts.”
Gilbert had died at the age of 38 and left behind four ex-wives and two daughters.
For a decade during the silent movie era, Gilbert was one of the biggest box office stars, MGM’s most profitable actor, inheriting the mantle of ‘The Great Lover’ with the passing of Rudolph Valentino. The Big Parade in 1925, directed by King Vidor, was his first hit; Erich von Stroheim’s The Merry Widow that same year and Tod Browning’s 1927 The Show continued to pack theaters with swooning female fans.
But Gilbert was a great lover offscreen as well. His affairs with Hollywood’s leading ladies, such as Marlene Dietrich, Laurette Taylor, Barbara La Marr, Lupe Velez, Lila Lee, Bebe Daniels were all well documented. But his most publicized amour was the love of his life, Greta Garbo, to whom he proposed three times.
At the height of his fame, he was making $250,000 a picture with a 6-picture deal signed with MGM. According to his biographer, British historian Kevin Brownlow, Gilbert was astonished at his fame. In an interview cited by Brownlow, Gilbert said, “Everywhere I hear whispers and gasps in acknowledgment of my presence…[t]he whole thing became too fantastic for me to comprehend. Acting, the very thing I had been fighting and ridiculing for seven years, had brought me success, riches and renown. I was a great motion picture artist. Well, I’ll be damned!”
Gilbert was born John Cecil Pringle in 1897 in Logan, Utah to parents who were actors and perpetually on the road, alternately dragging the son with them or leaving him behind in various schools. When the family finally moved to California, Gilbert was sent to the Hitchcock Military Academy in San Rafael. He worked brief stints as a rubber goods salesman in San Francisco and a stage manager in a stock company in Spokane. His entrée into showbiz was by playing extra roles at the Thomas Ince Studios in 1915 for $2 a day. He slowly moved through the ranks to bigger roles, working for studios like Kay-Bee and Triangle, and he also learned to write and direct movies, churning them out under the name Jack Gilbert.
In 1921, Gilbert signed a three-year contract with the Fox Film Corporation where, now renamed John Gilbert, he made almost 20 films, some of them lost, with stars like Barbara La Marr, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Renee Adoree. With 1922’s Monte Cristo, his reputation as a romantic leading man soared.
In 1924, he moved to MGM, and his big hits were He Who Gets Slapped with Norma Shearer, The Merry Widow made the following year with Mae Murray, and La Boheme with Lillian Gish in 1926, Gish personally selecting him to star opposite her. 1925’s The Big Parade, for which he received $10,000 a week, cemented his stardom, and drew MGM ahead of Paramount for the first time. It was the most profitable silent film of all time and the second highest grossing at the box office.
At this time, 20 year-old Swede, Greta Garbo arrived in Hollywood. She and Gilbert were cast in 1926’s Flesh and the Devil and so began a strange love affair. Their onscreen chemistry was palpable, the director Clarence Brown saying, “After I finished a scene with them, I felt like an intruder. I’d have to walk away, to let them finish what they were doing” referring to their love scenes. Gilbert fell hard for the starlet, she was lonely in Hollywood, and the studio played up their romance to the hilt with publicity photos and planted press articles. Their stardom shot through the roof. Gilbert wanted to marry her, but she kept wavering. A double ceremony was proposed with the Eleanor Boardman-King Vidor nuptials at the Malibu house of Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst’s mistress. Garbo was a no-show.
Leatrice Gilbert Fountain, Gilbert’s daughter, describes in her book about her father “Dark Star: The Untold Story of the Meteoric Rise and Fall of Silent Screen Star John Gilbert” (1985) what happened next as told to her by Boardman. “When Garbo didn’t show up on time for the wedding John was naturally upset. Nervous, he began drinking. Louis B. Mayer told him, “What’s the matter with you, Gilbert? What do you have to marry her for? Why don’t you just fuck her and forget about it?” A fight began with Gilbert punching Mayer in the face and banging his head into the wall. Mayer’s glasses flew into the air. Eddie Mannix, ex-bouncer and Mayer lackey, pulled the two apart. Mayer screamed, “You’re finished, Gilbert. I’ll destroy you if it costs me a million dollars.”
This incident appeared to be the start of Mayer’s hatred for Gilbert leading to his role in destroying Gilbert’s career. But more on that later.
Garbo, who most historians now acknowledge was more interested in women than men, still moved in with Gilbert after the wedding debacle, and Gilbert played mentor and coach, advising her to go on strike till the studio raised her $750 a week salary. She was his hostess at the weekly tennis parties at his Bel Air home where the elite of Hollywood such as Jean Harlow, Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer, King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman were regulars.
In 1927, Gilbert and Garbo made Love, a redo of Anna Karenina, which was advertised as “Garbo and Gilbert in Love;” the following year they made A Woman of Affairs.
The lovesick Gilbert tried proposing again in 1929. When Garbo refused again and moved out, he rushed off and married Broadway actress Ina Claire in Las Vegas, only six weeks after they met. She would be his third wife and they divorced in 1931. He had married Olivia Burwell in 1918 and they divorced in 1922. His second wife was actress Leatrice Joy who he married in 1921 in Tijuana before his divorce from Burwell was final. They had to get that marriage annulled because of the scandal; they remarried in 1922. They then divorced in 1924 when Joy was pregnant with their daughter Leatrice. Joy accused him of striking her in his alcoholic rages and also of infidelity.
In 1932, for the fourth time, he married his costar Virginia Bruce. An amusing clipping in the Syracuse Herald of August 11 tells of how Gilbert interrupted Bruce’s filming on the MGM lot and announced they were to be married at 6 o’clock that evening.
““Oh, John,” Miss Bruce began. “Six o’ clock,” Gilbert cut in. “But there’s so much to be done –” “Six o’clock. My bungalow. Be there.” In this manner did Gilbert, the screen’s ‘great lover,’ set the stage for his wedding last night to Miss Bruce. And Miss Bruce was there in 15 minutes, all washed and dressed in bridal apparel, establishing some sort of a record for speed, if what the press agents said was true.”
They had a daughter, Susan Ann, then unsurprisingly, divorced in 1934.
By this time, Gilbert’s career had fallen precipitously. Bound by his contract to MGM, Mayer cast him in unsuitable roles with mediocre directors, determined to force him out of his contract, but Gilbert wouldn’t cave. With the advent of sound films, it was rumored that Mayer sabotaged Gilbert, removing the bass from his recorded voice in his first talkie, 1929’s His Glorious Night (directed by Lionel Barrymore), causing his voice to be artificially high-pitched, squeaking “I love you” again and again to his costar Catherine Dale Owen, and leaving audiences laughing.
After a handful of other movies that didn’t do much business, he appeared with Garbo one last time at her insistence in Queen Christina, but that did not resurrect his career. Gilbert’s drinking went out of control. His old lover Marlene Dietrich stepped in to help, reportedly hiding his liquor bottles and trying to find him work. He hung on for a few years, but his career was over. His last film was The Captain Hates the Sea for Columbia in 1934. In 1935, he suffered a heart attack. A second heart attack took his life in 1936. His ashes rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
In 1960, Gilbert was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1755 Vine Street.
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https://www.alamy.com/1925-los-angeles-usa-the-movie-actress-eleanor-boardman-1898-1991-wife-of-celebrated-director-king-vidor-1894-1982-from-1926-to-image342596155.html
|
en
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1925 , LOS ANGELES , USA : The movie actress ELEANOR BOARDMAN ( 1898 – 1991 ) , wife of celebrated director KING VIDOR ( 1894
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"pubblicity still",
"ritratto"
] | null |
[
"Alamy Limited"
] | null |
Download this stock image: 1925 , LOS ANGELES , USA : The movie actress ELEANOR BOARDMAN ( 1898 – 1991 ) , wife of celebrated director KING VIDOR ( 1894 - 1982 ) from 1926 to - 2AWAGTY from Alamy's library of millions of high resolution stock photos, illustrations and vectors.
|
en
|
https://www.alamy.com/1925-los-angeles-usa-the-movie-actress-eleanor-boardman-1898-1991-wife-of-celebrated-director-king-vidor-1894-1982-from-1926-to-image342596155.html
|
You can only use this image in editorial media and for personal use. Editorial media includes use as a visual reference to support your article, story, critique or educational text. Personal use allows you to make a single personal print, card or gift for non-commercial use. Not for resale.
It shouldn’t be used for commercial use which includes advertising, marketing, promotion, packaging, advertorials, and consumer or merchandising products.
|
||||||
1313
|
yago
|
0
| 27
|
http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/2011/11/proud-flesh-1925-another-eleanor.html
|
en
|
ithankyou: Proud Flesh (1925) Eleanor Boardman & King Vidor (again!)
|
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" Proud Flesh is King Vidor's gentle farewell to his passing youth..." wrote Charles Silver in programme notes for a 1972 showing of the fi...
|
http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
|
http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/2011/11/proud-flesh-1925-another-eleanor.html
|
This Vidor undeniably did with his next film, The Big Parade, but is Proud Flesh all that insubstantial? The film is certainly a fairly simple construct and one that was undeniably built around Eleanor Boardman... designed to show off the former model in a variety of opulent settings, wearing a stunning array of dresses, scarves and, a wonderful silver head-wrap.
If Vidor hadn’t popped the question to his future wife at this point, he was certainly thinking about it as he ensures that she looks great throughout.
The film’s central sequence has her meeting Pat O’Malley on the windswept cliffs at Cypress Point. He arrives to find her running wild, throwing her arms out to the open sea and letting the wind move her around in total freedom. All artifice of class is lost and she just is…and, in this setting, she finally allows herself to fall for him…just as he’d hoped. This section is almost dream-like and another superb set piece along the lines of Vidor’s "boat through the willows" tour de force in Bardleys.
But it’s Boardman’s acting that really elevates proceedings, she’s just so natural and capable. She tells the story with a range of expressions that are believable and engaging even to modern audiences. Not that she’s taxed too much by this tale but she makes the most of it with ease and elegance.
The film is never-the-less, stylish and full of wit, starting off, “for apparently no reason at all” with the San Francisco earthquake during which Boardman’s character, Fernanda Borel is born. She grows up in Spain in upper class circumstances and we see her romanced by the artful Don Diego (played by Harrison Ford…no, not that one), a man who has taken this process to new levels. Don Diego sub contracts the singing and has a band of helpers who help elevate him to Fernanda’s level for she has – “the most charming balcony in Barcelona” (the intertitles are a hoot!).
Fernanda aims to get Don Diego to reveal his true feelings by pretending she is moving to her uncle’s house in San Francisco. Seemingly he doesn’t fall for it and she is forced into following through and emigrating. Don Diego secretly follows her and by the time they are re-united she has already met a wealthy plumber, Pat O’Malley (played by, erm, Pat O’Malley). Finding O’Malley uncouth the Spanish couple tease him relentlessly. But, cruel as she may be, Fernanda does develop a soft spot for the earnest hero.
There are the usual twists and Vidor has us hanging on as long as possible before true love wins out. It's as if he was toying with an already well-trodden story progression and is pushing our response to Fernanda and Don Diego’s cruelty as far as he can. But, Fernada sees sense in the end and returns to the guy who feels it most. Don Diego is broken hearted for all of two minutes – the time it takes him to find a new date in his little black book. O’Malley and Fernanda presumably live happily ever after with the former's pet dog and assured of hot water and efficient central heating for always!
Very engaging even on a zillionth generation copy…another film you’d hope would get a proper DVD release someday.
For, as Charles Silver wrote, “Eleanor Boardman…possessed an ethereal loveliness which could elevate a trifle like Proud Flesh into something resembling art”. Yes, she did... and she could!
|
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1313
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yago
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3
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|
https://time.com/archive/6743344/new-pictures-sep-2-1929/
|
en
|
New Pictures: Sep. 2, 1929
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https://time.com/favicon.ico
|
https://time.com/favicon.ico
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"TIME"
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1929-09-02T04:00:00+00:00
|
The Dance of Life (Paramount). When Arthur Hopkins and George Manker Waiters wrote the play Burlesque, they somehow extracted, the maximum amount of sentimentality from a story which was even then...
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
TIME
|
https://time.com/archive/6743344/new-pictures-sep-2-1929/
|
The Dance of Life (Paramount). When Arthur Hopkins and George Manker Waiters wrote the play Burlesque, they somehow extracted, the maximum amount of sentimentality from a story which was even then not altogether new but which became for the first time extraordinarily successful. How a loyal dancing girl forced her alcoholic, small-time husband into a big part, how she stuck to him when good luck made him forget her, how she bucked him up in failure, was immediately used with variations as a theme for so many pictures that it was hard to believe that Paramount’s delayed production of the original, disguised under a title from Sexpert Havelock Ellis, would seem more than, a paraphrase of its own imitations. The Dance of Life is too long and overdetailed; it is handicapped with a tedious theme-song. Its virtues are faithfulness to its background, fairly legitimate sentiment, expert acting by the same people who played Burlesque on the stage except Nancy Carroll who, instead of Barbara Stanwyck, plays Bonnie.
Hallelujah (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Before the end of this picture you get the idea that King Vidor, who wrote and directed it, does not know much about Negroes but that he has guessed and reasoned out a lot. His story, simple yet sophisticated, does not goas deep into the way a black man’s mind works as, for instance, Eugene O’Neill went in Emperor Jones. It is a white man’s comment on the relationship between sex and religion, a comment in which sympathy and emotion replace the irony so easy to this kind of writing. After shooting his brother in an argument about a crap game, a Negro named Zeke turns preacher and converts the girl, Chick, who got him in the game. She beats up his rival with a poker, saying. “Ain’t no one goin’ to stand in my path to glory.” This is the best line in Hallelujah, but Zeke (Daniel L. Haynes) has other good ones in the sermon in which, dressed as a locomotive engineer, he describes the cannonball express to hell. Sometimes local color dams up the story, but mostly, in spite of the temptation of spirituals, it is under control. Vidor’s skill as a picturemaker is enough alone to make Hallelujah one of the best films of the year. Best actress : brown-yellow Nina Mae McKinney. not yet 18, who became a Manhattan chorus girl at 12, was picked by Vidor from the chorus of Blackbirds. Best tune: “The End of the Road” by Irving Berlin. Most dramatic sequence: Hot Shot (William Fountaine) running through the swamp when Preacher Zeke comes after him to avenge Chick’s death.
Called smartest U. S. director, King Vidor grew up in Galveston, Tex., went to Tome School in Maryland. When he left school he wrote short stories, published few, then wrote 51 scenarios, sold the 52nd to a small producer in Texas. He directed himself in the leading role, made little money out of it. Several years later, after marrying Florence Vidor, not then famed as a cinemactress, he got his first good job writing and directing stories for General Film Co. Recently he was divorced by Florence Vidor, married Eleanor Boardman whom he directed in The Crowd.
Wrath of the Seas (German-British). Parts of this picture, made with the co-operation of the British and German governments, are fine newsreels of the Battle of Jutland. Other parts, made with the co-operation of Nils Asther, one Agnes Esterhazt and one Bernhard Goetzke, show a German naval commander drearily betrayed by his wife. The triangle is grafted on Jutland by connecting scenes with British extras made up as sailors but looking more like members of an amateur dramatic club in a benefit performance of Pinafore. Best shot: a British warship taking the sudden, hardly perceptible list which means that she is going to sink.
Half Marriage (RKO). After several reels of almost continuous kissing, Olive Borden is faced with a moment when the bad fellow who has been trying to get her away from her husband chases her up to the roof, makes a pass at her, falls over the edge, is killed. She wants to take the blame, and her husband wants to take the blame. The worst of it is that she has to explain to her father, who is a billionaire, that she is married. She had kept this a secret all the time and lived in her own house. Only the occasional entry of Vaudevillain Ken Murray and his orchestra relieve the dreadful tedium of Half Marriage. Typical line of dialog: “When you hold me like this, I’m gaga.”
|
||
1313
|
yago
|
3
| 7
|
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0090187/bio/
|
en
|
Eleanor Boardman
|
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Eleanor Boardman. Actress: Ein Mensch der Masse. Philadelphia-born Eleanor Boardman had always wanted to be an actress, and as soon as she graduated high school she headed for New York to conquer Broadway. When Broadway proved not quite ready to be conquered yet, she took whatever jobs she could find, including one as an artist's model. In that capacity she heard that the Selwyn Organization, a major producer of Broadway...
|
en
|
IMDb
|
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0090187/bio/
|
Philadelphia-born Eleanor Boardman had always wanted to be an actress, and as soon as she graduated high school she headed for New York to conquer Broadway. When Broadway proved not quite ready to be conquered yet, she took whatever jobs she could find, including one as an artist's model. In that capacity she heard that the Selwyn Organization, a major producer of Broadway plays, was looking for girls with no stage experience. Since she was more than qualified in that respect, she tried out for the job and before she knew it she was in the chorus line of "Rock-a-Bye-Baby" until the show closed three months later. She then got a job in another Selwyn production, "A Very Good Young Man", but that show closed not long after opening. It was at this time that a casting director for Goldwyn Pictures hit the Broadway scene looking for new faces. She tested for him and impressed him enough that he finally picked her out of a pool of more than 1000 young girls who tested for the opportunity to go to Hollywood. She made her first film in 1922 and stayed in the business until 1935, when she retired. She was married twice, first to director King Vidor from 1926-1931, then to director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast from 1940 to his death in 1968. She died in Santa Barbara, CA, in 1991.
|
|||||
1313
|
yago
|
0
| 31
|
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/17/arts/eleanor-boardman-actress-93.html
|
en
|
Eleanor Boardman, Actress, 93
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1991-12-17T00:00:00
|
en
|
/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
|
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/17/arts/eleanor-boardman-actress-93.html
|
Eleanor Boardman, who starred in silent movies after gaining attention as a model for the Eastman Kodak Company, died at her home on Thursday. She was 93 years old.
She died in her sleep, said her stepdaughter, Suzanne Parry.
Miss Boardman, who was born in Philadelphia, gained nationwide recognition as the "Kodak Girl" on Eastman Kodak's advertising posters. From modeling, she moved into movies, starring in silent films including "Stranger's Banquet," "The Silent Accuser," "Memory Lane" and "Tell It to the Marines."
In 1928 she had a leading role in "The Crowd," directed by King Vidor, whom she married. The couple divorced in 1933. She later married the French director Harry D. D'Arrast.
Among her other credits were "She Goes to War," "Mamba," "The Flood" and a remake of "The Squaw Man."
|
||||||
1313
|
yago
|
2
| 28
|
https://www.geni.com/people/Eleanor-d-Abbadie-d-Arrast/6000000010682234861
|
en
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Eleanor d'Abbadie d'Arrast
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2023-08-14T11:55:20-07:00
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Genealogy for Eleanor d'Abbadie d'Arrast (Boardman) (1898 - 1991) family tree on Geni, with over 260 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives.
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From cover girl to movie star, Eleanor Boardman led a charmed life. Boardman was popular during the silent film era and is best remembered for her role in King Vidor's classic silent film "The Crowd" (1928). She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6922 Hollywood Boulevard.
She was born on August 19, 1898 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended an art school, before leaving for New York as a teenager to pursue her dreams of becoming an actress. Once there Eleanor was selected as the "Eastman Kodak Girl", and a series of photos of Eleanor put out by that company attracted the attention of Hollywood director King Vidor who she would eventually marry after his divorce from actress Florence Vidor.
In 1922 Eleanor won a film contract with Goldwyn Pictures and moved to Hollywood to start her career. She was honored as a WAMPAS (Western Associated Motion Picture Advertisers) Baby star that year. Later she signed a contract with M-G-M. Although she made a number of silent films, mostly playing elegant ladies of fashion, such as her role in the now lost "Bardelys the Magnificent" (1926) with John Gilbert, it is for King Vidor's classic silent film "The Crowd" (made in 1926 - released in 1928) that Eleanor will be best remembered. Her performance was outstanding and flawless as the plain Mary, the wife of the "common man", played by the ill-fated actor James Murray.
During her marriage to King Vidor, Eleanor had two daughters. In 1931 the couple divorced and a custody battle for the girls ensued for a number of years, even after Eleanor moved to Europe and married director Henri d'Abbadie d'Arrast, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1968. Her last film was made in 1935 in Spain with Henri as director. After Henri died, Eleanor moved from Europe to Montecito, California, to a home she designed herself. She remained there until her death from old age on December 12, 1991.
Sources
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yago
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https://www.amazon.com/prime-video/actor/King-Vidor/amzn1.dv.gti.cec15f94-2650-465a-9861-0448b9067e46/
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King Vidor: Movies, TV, and Bio
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Browse King Vidor movies and TV shows available on Prime Video and begin streaming right away to your favorite device.
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https://www.amazon.com/prime-video/actor/King-Vidor/amzn1.dv.gti.cec15f94-2650-465a-9861-0448b9067e46/
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King Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter of Hungarian descent. He was born in Galveston, Texas to lumberman Charles Shelton Vidor and his wife Kate Wallis. King's paternal grandfather Károly (Charles) Vidor had fled Hungary as a refugee following the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848 (1849-1849). The Kingdom of Hungary had attempted to gain independence from the Austrian Empire, but the revolutionary troops failed against the allied armies of the Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire. After the restoration of Habsburg power, Hungary was placed under brutal martial law. Karoly fled the country and settled in Galveston, Texas by the early 1850s.
During his childhood, King Vidor was a witness of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. The hurricane caused between 6,000 and 12,000 fatalities in the United States, based on varying estimates. Most of these deaths occurred in the vicinity of Galveston. Every house in the city sustained damage, about 3600 houses were completely destroyed, and an estimated 10,000 people were left homeless, out of a population of about 38,000. King Vidor would later give a somewhat fictionalized account of his hurricane experience in a 1935 interview.
By the early 1910s, Vidor was working as a freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist. In 1913, he directed the short film "The Grand Military Parade", his directing debut. In 1915, Vidor moved to Hollywood, California and was hired as a screenwriter and short-film director by Judge Willis Brown (1881-1931), owner of the Boy City Film Company in Culver City. Brown had gained fame as a judge of the Utah Juvenile Court and a progressive expert on boys' reformation, but had been kicked out of service when it was discovered that he did not actually have a law degree. Brown had established himself as a film producer in order to produce films depicting his main concerns about American society: juvenile delinquency and racial discrimination. Vidor served as a screenwriter and director of at least 10 films with these topics, while working for Brown.
In 1919, Vidor directed his first feature film: "The Turn in the Road". It was a silent drama film, depicting a businessman who loses his faith in God and any interest in industry, when his beloved wife dies in childbirth. Vidor's first major hit was the feature "Peg o' My Heart" (1922), an adaptation of a popular Broadway theatrical play. Following this success, Vidor was signed to a long-term contract for the studio Goldwyn Pictures. The studio was under the administration of Polish-American producer Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974). In 1924, Goldwyn Pictures merged with Metro Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures into a new company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Vidor remained on contract with this new company.
In the 1920s, Vidor's most famous silent feature films were the war film "The Big Parade" (1925), the Academy-Award nominated drama "The Crowd" (1928), the comedy "Show People"" (1928), and the comedy-drama "The Patsy" (1928). His first sound film was the drama "Hallelujah" (1929), about the life of sharecroppers. It was one of the first Hollywood films with a cast consisting fully of African-Americans. Vidor expressed an interest in "showing the Southern Negro as he is" and attempted to depict African-American life beyond the popular stereotypes of the era.
Vidor faced no problem in transitioning from silent film to sound film, and continued regularly working on feature films until the late 1950s. His last major film was the Biblical-romance "Solomon and Sheba" (1959), featuring love, court intrigues, and military invasions during the reign of legendary Solomon, King of Israel (estimated to the 10th century BC). Afterwards he worked on short films and documentaries, his last film being the documentary "The Metaphor" (1980). The 86-year-old Vidor chose to retire from filmmaking in 1980.
In 1982, at the age of 88, Vidor died at his ranch in Paso Robles, California from an unspecified heart disease. His remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered in his ranch.
Vidor was nominated 5 times for the Academy Award for Best Director, without ever winning. He was nominated for the feature films "The Crowd" (1928), "Hallelujah" (1929), "The Champ" (1931), "The Citadel" (1938), and "War and Peace" (1956). He won an Academy Honorary Award in 1979. Part of his modern fame rests on an uncredited part as an assistant director. Vidor directed the scenes set in Kansas for the novel adaptation "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).
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Posts about king vidor written by Backlots
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Backlots
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https://backlots.net/tag/king-vidor/
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Hello readers, and happy Halloween! I’ve been so busy these days that I didn’t have time to put together my Hitchcock Halloween blogathon, but stay tuned in the coming days for the announcement of Backlots’ 4th annual Dueling Divas blogathon, which will go on this year as usual!
Today is the final day of this year’s CMBA Blogathon, in which members of the esteemed Classic Movie Blog Association are writing about stars that have been lost in the annals of history. So many stars of yesteryear have faded due to unfortunate circumstance, and as classic film writers, we are doing our small part to bring back some of the glory that these stars enjoyed in their heyday.
The star that I have chosen for the blogathon is the talented and beautiful Eleanor Boardman, a hugely popular star in the silent era with enormous acting talent and uniquely soft yet defined features. Retiring in 1935 and spending a long and healthy retirement out of the spotlight, hers was the definition of a full life, lived her own way. In addition to having been a movie star, Boardman also spent time as a correspondent for the Hearst newspapers and worked in France for the International News Service, writing a column about American life in Paris.
Eleanor Boardman was born in Philadelphia on August 19, 1898, into a strict Presbyterian family. The method by which young Eleanor became an actress is disputed–by her own account, she left home to study art and interior design at the Academy of Fine Art, while former husband King Vidor claims that she rebelled against the stifling atmosphere of her home life to choose a career path of which her parents did not approve. But what we do know is that as a teenager, Eleanor was named the “Eastman Kodak Girl” and by 1922, she had come to the attention of Goldwyn Pictures, who gave her a contract for $750 a week. She moved to California to begin work and soon met and fell in love with up-and-coming director, King Vidor, who had seen pictures of her as a teenager and was immediately smitten.
In 1923, Boardman made Three Wise Fools with Vidor and subsequently made five more films with him as director in the next four years. The most masterful of the six films that Boardman made with Vidor is The Crowd (1928), a beautiful and sorrowful look at a man in social and economic turmoil. Eleanor Boardman plays his long-suffering wife, and gives a magnificent and nuanced portrayal of a woman conflicted between her love for her husband and her obligation to herself. The movie is one of my personal favorite silent films, and it is clear that Vidor understood instinctively how to direct Boardman toward her best work.
Vidor and Boardman finally married in 1926, in a ceremony that was supposed to be a double wedding with John Gilbert and Greta Garbo at the Beverly Hills home of Marion Davies. But when Garbo failed to show, Gilbert was left alone at the altar with Boardman and Vidor, who proceeded with the marriage. The photos from this event are immensely uncomfortable.
Boardman’s marriage to King Vidor produced two daughters, Antonia (born in 1927) and Belinda (born in 1930). But in 1931, shortly after the birth of their daughter Belinda, the marriage began to fail and they divorced the same year.
Following her divorce from Vidor, Boardman met writer Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. Boardman decided to retire from films in 1935, and in 1940 she married Arrast. Shortly after the marriage, she was hired by William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service to go to Paris to write a column entitled “Americans in Paris,” to appear in the newspapers once a week. She spent a year in Paris writing the column, meeting socialites and writing to her heart’s content, until she contracted tuberculosis and was forced to abandon the job to go to Switzerland to recover.
She returned to the United States with Arrast, and following his death in 1968 Boardman moved to Montecito, CA. She spent her remaining years in Montecito until her death at age 93 in 1991.
I was lucky enough to talk to Eleanor Boardman’s daughter, Belinda, a few months ago. The spitting image of her mother, Belinda talks articulately and beautifully about the full life she led with her illustrious mother and father, the parties and social scene of Hollywood, and the careers of her parents. Her words about her mother are always kind. Eleanor Boardman’s star burned brightly for a short period of time, but that was exactly how she wanted it. She lived her life her way.
Thanks to the CMBA for hosting this blogathon. Some of the material for this article comes from an interview conducted by Alan Greenberg with Eleanor Boardman in the 1980s. I have the privilege of access to portions of this interview, and have used it to fill in information about the life of this fascinating star. Many thanks also to Alan Greenberg for letting me listen to it.
See you next time!
By Lara Gabrielle Fowler
For many decades, Hollywood has been fascinated with movies about movies. Ranging from the highest celebrations of Hollywood stardom (Singin’ In the Rain) to analyses of the most terrible tragedies of the industry (A Star is Born), the films that come out of this penchant for self-examination consistently do extremely well at the box office to this day, often winning major industry awards and proving that audiences and critics alike share this passion for “Hollywood on Hollywood.”
Singin’ In the Rain (1952), about the coming of sound to Hollywood, has earned a place as the only musical in the top 10 of “AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies” list.
Argo (2012), about a plot to rescue Iranian hostages by creating a blockbuster Hollywood movie, won the Oscar for Best Picture last year.
Self-awareness in movies dates back to the earliest days of cinema. Mack Sennett often appeared as himself in the Keystone Kops movies, acknowledging the disconnect between reality and the movies and making an attempt to sew them together to create a fluid illusion for the audience member. In “The Playhouse” (1921), Buster Keaton attends a show in which he plays all the parts. He (as his character) quips “This Keaton fellow seems to be the whole show!” This was a nudge to the audience, a peek over the 4th wall to let the audience know that Keaton is aware of himself as an actor.
Building on these early indications of self-awareness, the first full-scale “Hollywood on Hollywood” movie appeared in 1928 with the King Vidor comedy Show People, about the transformation of a young country girl into a major movie star. Starring Marion Davies and based on the early career of Gloria Swanson, Show People is a thorough and intelligent look at the complexities of stardom, and its quality rivals that of the later movies who drew from its precedent. It is truly a movie that, despite the passage of 85 years, solidly stands the test of time.
Peggy Pepper is the young Georgia girl who wants to be in movies, so her father drives her out to Hollywood where she lands a contract as a comedic bit player, often getting squirts in the face with seltzer water. She befriends a fellow comedic actor named Billy Boone, and they act together in low-budget films while remaining best of friends offscreen. At the screening of her first movie, Peggy gets an autograph request from none other than Charlie Chaplin (playing himself in a cameo) and promptly faints. Several other stars make cameos in the film, including Marion Davies herself. When Peggy sees Marion Davies, she reacts with disdain, an extremely clever demonstration of the film’s self-awareness.
Soon, Peggy is signed to “High Art Studios,” where she becomes a big star and slowly loses touch with society as her ego grows. She shuns Billy Boone as a lower-class actor, even though he tries desperately to maintain their friendship and bring her back to reality. She runs into him on a film set and reacts coldly to him, until he squirts her with seltzer water like he used to in their low-budget films together. She becomes enraged and storms off.
Shortly thereafter, she is informed by her studio head that theaters around the country are pulling her movies because her image is becoming too snooty. She is about to get married to a fake count Andre Telefair, when Billy bursts in and squirts her in the face with seltzer water, then throws a pie in the face of the fake count. This brings Peggy to her senses, and she and Billy make up. Peggy’s next movie is set in a World War I village, and she convinces director King Vidor (the real life director of Show People), to hire Billy as her new leading man, as a surprise. Billy is thrilled to see that Peggy is his leading lady, and the film ends as Peggy and Billy kiss on the set of their new movie together.
Show People is one of the finest silent movies to come out of the 1920s. It is strikingly modern, and could easily have been made today, needing very few changes. Though it is a comedy, one can see the influence it had on such later Hollywood on Hollywood movies such as A Star is Born, chronicling a male actor’s assistance to an actress, and that star witnessing her rise over his. It is said that this movie is loosely based on the career of Gloria Swanson, who later starred in her own Academy Award-winning film about Hollywood–the incomparable Sunset Boulevard.
See you next time!
|
||||
1313
|
yago
|
2
| 35
|
https://backlots.net/tag/king-vidor/
|
en
|
king vidor
|
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Posts about king vidor written by Backlots
|
en
|
https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
|
Backlots
|
https://backlots.net/tag/king-vidor/
|
Hello readers, and happy Halloween! I’ve been so busy these days that I didn’t have time to put together my Hitchcock Halloween blogathon, but stay tuned in the coming days for the announcement of Backlots’ 4th annual Dueling Divas blogathon, which will go on this year as usual!
Today is the final day of this year’s CMBA Blogathon, in which members of the esteemed Classic Movie Blog Association are writing about stars that have been lost in the annals of history. So many stars of yesteryear have faded due to unfortunate circumstance, and as classic film writers, we are doing our small part to bring back some of the glory that these stars enjoyed in their heyday.
The star that I have chosen for the blogathon is the talented and beautiful Eleanor Boardman, a hugely popular star in the silent era with enormous acting talent and uniquely soft yet defined features. Retiring in 1935 and spending a long and healthy retirement out of the spotlight, hers was the definition of a full life, lived her own way. In addition to having been a movie star, Boardman also spent time as a correspondent for the Hearst newspapers and worked in France for the International News Service, writing a column about American life in Paris.
Eleanor Boardman was born in Philadelphia on August 19, 1898, into a strict Presbyterian family. The method by which young Eleanor became an actress is disputed–by her own account, she left home to study art and interior design at the Academy of Fine Art, while former husband King Vidor claims that she rebelled against the stifling atmosphere of her home life to choose a career path of which her parents did not approve. But what we do know is that as a teenager, Eleanor was named the “Eastman Kodak Girl” and by 1922, she had come to the attention of Goldwyn Pictures, who gave her a contract for $750 a week. She moved to California to begin work and soon met and fell in love with up-and-coming director, King Vidor, who had seen pictures of her as a teenager and was immediately smitten.
In 1923, Boardman made Three Wise Fools with Vidor and subsequently made five more films with him as director in the next four years. The most masterful of the six films that Boardman made with Vidor is The Crowd (1928), a beautiful and sorrowful look at a man in social and economic turmoil. Eleanor Boardman plays his long-suffering wife, and gives a magnificent and nuanced portrayal of a woman conflicted between her love for her husband and her obligation to herself. The movie is one of my personal favorite silent films, and it is clear that Vidor understood instinctively how to direct Boardman toward her best work.
Vidor and Boardman finally married in 1926, in a ceremony that was supposed to be a double wedding with John Gilbert and Greta Garbo at the Beverly Hills home of Marion Davies. But when Garbo failed to show, Gilbert was left alone at the altar with Boardman and Vidor, who proceeded with the marriage. The photos from this event are immensely uncomfortable.
Boardman’s marriage to King Vidor produced two daughters, Antonia (born in 1927) and Belinda (born in 1930). But in 1931, shortly after the birth of their daughter Belinda, the marriage began to fail and they divorced the same year.
Following her divorce from Vidor, Boardman met writer Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. Boardman decided to retire from films in 1935, and in 1940 she married Arrast. Shortly after the marriage, she was hired by William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service to go to Paris to write a column entitled “Americans in Paris,” to appear in the newspapers once a week. She spent a year in Paris writing the column, meeting socialites and writing to her heart’s content, until she contracted tuberculosis and was forced to abandon the job to go to Switzerland to recover.
She returned to the United States with Arrast, and following his death in 1968 Boardman moved to Montecito, CA. She spent her remaining years in Montecito until her death at age 93 in 1991.
I was lucky enough to talk to Eleanor Boardman’s daughter, Belinda, a few months ago. The spitting image of her mother, Belinda talks articulately and beautifully about the full life she led with her illustrious mother and father, the parties and social scene of Hollywood, and the careers of her parents. Her words about her mother are always kind. Eleanor Boardman’s star burned brightly for a short period of time, but that was exactly how she wanted it. She lived her life her way.
Thanks to the CMBA for hosting this blogathon. Some of the material for this article comes from an interview conducted by Alan Greenberg with Eleanor Boardman in the 1980s. I have the privilege of access to portions of this interview, and have used it to fill in information about the life of this fascinating star. Many thanks also to Alan Greenberg for letting me listen to it.
See you next time!
By Lara Gabrielle Fowler
For many decades, Hollywood has been fascinated with movies about movies. Ranging from the highest celebrations of Hollywood stardom (Singin’ In the Rain) to analyses of the most terrible tragedies of the industry (A Star is Born), the films that come out of this penchant for self-examination consistently do extremely well at the box office to this day, often winning major industry awards and proving that audiences and critics alike share this passion for “Hollywood on Hollywood.”
Singin’ In the Rain (1952), about the coming of sound to Hollywood, has earned a place as the only musical in the top 10 of “AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies” list.
Argo (2012), about a plot to rescue Iranian hostages by creating a blockbuster Hollywood movie, won the Oscar for Best Picture last year.
Self-awareness in movies dates back to the earliest days of cinema. Mack Sennett often appeared as himself in the Keystone Kops movies, acknowledging the disconnect between reality and the movies and making an attempt to sew them together to create a fluid illusion for the audience member. In “The Playhouse” (1921), Buster Keaton attends a show in which he plays all the parts. He (as his character) quips “This Keaton fellow seems to be the whole show!” This was a nudge to the audience, a peek over the 4th wall to let the audience know that Keaton is aware of himself as an actor.
Building on these early indications of self-awareness, the first full-scale “Hollywood on Hollywood” movie appeared in 1928 with the King Vidor comedy Show People, about the transformation of a young country girl into a major movie star. Starring Marion Davies and based on the early career of Gloria Swanson, Show People is a thorough and intelligent look at the complexities of stardom, and its quality rivals that of the later movies who drew from its precedent. It is truly a movie that, despite the passage of 85 years, solidly stands the test of time.
Peggy Pepper is the young Georgia girl who wants to be in movies, so her father drives her out to Hollywood where she lands a contract as a comedic bit player, often getting squirts in the face with seltzer water. She befriends a fellow comedic actor named Billy Boone, and they act together in low-budget films while remaining best of friends offscreen. At the screening of her first movie, Peggy gets an autograph request from none other than Charlie Chaplin (playing himself in a cameo) and promptly faints. Several other stars make cameos in the film, including Marion Davies herself. When Peggy sees Marion Davies, she reacts with disdain, an extremely clever demonstration of the film’s self-awareness.
Soon, Peggy is signed to “High Art Studios,” where she becomes a big star and slowly loses touch with society as her ego grows. She shuns Billy Boone as a lower-class actor, even though he tries desperately to maintain their friendship and bring her back to reality. She runs into him on a film set and reacts coldly to him, until he squirts her with seltzer water like he used to in their low-budget films together. She becomes enraged and storms off.
Shortly thereafter, she is informed by her studio head that theaters around the country are pulling her movies because her image is becoming too snooty. She is about to get married to a fake count Andre Telefair, when Billy bursts in and squirts her in the face with seltzer water, then throws a pie in the face of the fake count. This brings Peggy to her senses, and she and Billy make up. Peggy’s next movie is set in a World War I village, and she convinces director King Vidor (the real life director of Show People), to hire Billy as her new leading man, as a surprise. Billy is thrilled to see that Peggy is his leading lady, and the film ends as Peggy and Billy kiss on the set of their new movie together.
Show People is one of the finest silent movies to come out of the 1920s. It is strikingly modern, and could easily have been made today, needing very few changes. Though it is a comedy, one can see the influence it had on such later Hollywood on Hollywood movies such as A Star is Born, chronicling a male actor’s assistance to an actress, and that star witnessing her rise over his. It is said that this movie is loosely based on the career of Gloria Swanson, who later starred in her own Academy Award-winning film about Hollywood–the incomparable Sunset Boulevard.
See you next time!
|
||||
1313
|
yago
|
0
| 7
|
https://backlots.net/2014/10/31/cmba-forgotten-stars-blogathon-eleanor-boardman/
|
en
|
CMBA FORGOTTEN STARS BLOGATHON: Eleanor Boardman
|
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2014-10-31T00:00:00
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Hello readers, and happy Halloween! I've been so busy these days that I didn't have time to put together my Hitchcock Halloween blogathon, but stay tuned in the coming days for the announcement of Backlots' 4th annual Dueling Divas blogathon, which will go on this year as usual! Today is the final day of this…
|
en
|
https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
|
Backlots
|
https://backlots.net/2014/10/31/cmba-forgotten-stars-blogathon-eleanor-boardman/
|
Hello readers, and happy Halloween! I’ve been so busy these days that I didn’t have time to put together my Hitchcock Halloween blogathon, but stay tuned in the coming days for the announcement of Backlots’ 4th annual Dueling Divas blogathon, which will go on this year as usual!
Today is the final day of this year’s CMBA Blogathon, in which members of the esteemed Classic Movie Blog Association are writing about stars that have been lost in the annals of history. So many stars of yesteryear have faded due to unfortunate circumstance, and as classic film writers, we are doing our small part to bring back some of the glory that these stars enjoyed in their heyday.
The star that I have chosen for the blogathon is the talented and beautiful Eleanor Boardman, a hugely popular star in the silent era with enormous acting talent and uniquely soft yet defined features. Retiring in 1935 and spending a long and healthy retirement out of the spotlight, hers was the definition of a full life, lived her own way. In addition to having been a movie star, Boardman also spent time as a correspondent for the Hearst newspapers and worked in France for the International News Service, writing a column about American life in Paris.
Eleanor Boardman was born in Philadelphia on August 19, 1898, into a strict Presbyterian family. The method by which young Eleanor became an actress is disputed–by her own account, she left home to study art and interior design at the Academy of Fine Art, while former husband King Vidor claims that she rebelled against the stifling atmosphere of her home life to choose a career path of which her parents did not approve. But what we do know is that as a teenager, Eleanor was named the “Eastman Kodak Girl” and by 1922, she had come to the attention of Goldwyn Pictures, who gave her a contract for $750 a week. She moved to California to begin work and soon met and fell in love with up-and-coming director, King Vidor, who had seen pictures of her as a teenager and was immediately smitten.
In 1923, Boardman made Three Wise Fools with Vidor and subsequently made five more films with him as director in the next four years. The most masterful of the six films that Boardman made with Vidor is The Crowd (1928), a beautiful and sorrowful look at a man in social and economic turmoil. Eleanor Boardman plays his long-suffering wife, and gives a magnificent and nuanced portrayal of a woman conflicted between her love for her husband and her obligation to herself. The movie is one of my personal favorite silent films, and it is clear that Vidor understood instinctively how to direct Boardman toward her best work.
Vidor and Boardman finally married in 1926, in a ceremony that was supposed to be a double wedding with John Gilbert and Greta Garbo at the Beverly Hills home of Marion Davies. But when Garbo failed to show, Gilbert was left alone at the altar with Boardman and Vidor, who proceeded with the marriage. The photos from this event are immensely uncomfortable.
Boardman’s marriage to King Vidor produced two daughters, Antonia (born in 1927) and Belinda (born in 1930). But in 1931, shortly after the birth of their daughter Belinda, the marriage began to fail and they divorced the same year.
Following her divorce from Vidor, Boardman met writer Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. Boardman decided to retire from films in 1935, and in 1940 she married Arrast. Shortly after the marriage, she was hired by William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service to go to Paris to write a column entitled “Americans in Paris,” to appear in the newspapers once a week. She spent a year in Paris writing the column, meeting socialites and writing to her heart’s content, until she contracted tuberculosis and was forced to abandon the job to go to Switzerland to recover.
She returned to the United States with Arrast, and following his death in 1968 Boardman moved to Montecito, CA. She spent her remaining years in Montecito until her death at age 93 in 1991.
I was lucky enough to talk to Eleanor Boardman’s daughter, Belinda, a few months ago. The spitting image of her mother, Belinda talks articulately and beautifully about the full life she led with her illustrious mother and father, the parties and social scene of Hollywood, and the careers of her parents. Her words about her mother are always kind. Eleanor Boardman’s star burned brightly for a short period of time, but that was exactly how she wanted it. She lived her life her way.
Thanks to the CMBA for hosting this blogathon. Some of the material for this article comes from an interview conducted by Alan Greenberg with Eleanor Boardman in the 1980s. I have the privilege of access to portions of this interview, and have used it to fill in information about the life of this fascinating star. Many thanks also to Alan Greenberg for letting me listen to it.
See you next time!
|
||||
1313
|
yago
|
1
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#564) The Crowd (1928)
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2021-05-07T00:00:00
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#564) The Crowd (1928) OR “The Wages of Sims” Directed by King Vidor Written by Vidor & John V.A. Weaver. Titles by Joe Farnham. Class of 1989 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn2vOXZBo90 The Plot: John Sims (James Murray) arrives in New York with the dream of becoming someone important. While working a desk job for an insurance company, John…
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The Horse's Head
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https://thehorseshead.blog/2021/05/07/564-the-crowd-1928/
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#564) The Crowd (1928)
OR “The Wages of Sims”
Directed by King Vidor
Written by Vidor & John V.A. Weaver. Titles by Joe Farnham.
Class of 1989
The Plot: John Sims (James Murray) arrives in New York with the dream of becoming someone important. While working a desk job for an insurance company, John meets Mary (Eleanor Boardman) on a double date. The two immediately fall for each other and are soon married. Like any marriage, theirs has ups and downs, along with the arrival of two children (Freddie Burke Frederick and Alice Mildred Puter). When tragedy strikes the Sims family, John realizes that his dream won’t make itself happen, and that in order to truly be important he has to stand out from the rest of…the population.
Why It Matters: The NFR praises the “inventive and visceral” cinematography of Henry Sharp, the “highly emotional” screenplay, and the “naturalistic performances” of the leads.
But Does It Really?: Of the first 25 films to make the National Film Registry, I would probably rank this at number 25. “The Crowd” is a well-made piece of melodrama with good cinematography, but it doesn’t deliver on the same level as the other 24 films on the original list. By itself, “The Crowd” is worth a watch and deserving of its NFR standing (somewhere between “historical” and “aesthetic” significance), but it’s a B+ effort lost on the initial list of A+ movies.
Everybody Gets One: To help with the film’s everyman aesthetic, King Vidor insisted on casting unknowns for the leads. Although he had a few speaking roles to his credit, James Murray was working as an extra when Vidor saw him on the MGM lot and thought he looked right for the part of John. Eleanor Boardman’s casting journey as Mary was a little simpler: she was married to King Vidor at the time.
Wow, That’s Dated: This movie has many of the dated elements we associate with ’20s-’30s big city living, such as having a Murphy bed, going to Niagara Falls on your honeymoon, and expectant fathers waiting outside the delivery room.
Title Track: As one character relates to John when he arrives in New York, “You gotta be good in that town if you want to beat the crowd.”
Seriously, Oscars?: “The Crowd” opened in the spring of 1928, making it eligible for the 1st annual Academy Awards in 1929. The film received two nominations: Best Director for King Vidor (losing to Frank Borzage for “7th Heaven“) and Best Unique and Artistic Picture (losing to “Sunrise“). King Vidor would have to wait another 50 years before receiving an Oscar; a lifetime achievement award in 1979.
Other notes
Following a run of successful pictures for MGM in the ’20s (including “The Big Parade“), King Vidor wanted his next film to be less commercial and more experimental. While Louis B. Mayer was against the idea, Irving Thalberg understood Vidor’s vision and gave the film the go ahead.
Vidor was inspired by the expressionism of F.W. Murnau to attempt more artsy cinematography. This is more than evident in one of the film’s opening shots. The camera glides into the office building, over endless rows of pencil pushers, and arrives at John’s desk for a closeup. No doubt a revelation in its day, and the shot that shows up in plenty of your Chuck Workman clip packages.
To achieve a realistic depiction of New York City, King Vidor and Henry Sharp filmed the real streets with hidden cameras. In one shot of a traffic cop telling cars to move along, that’s an actual cop speaking directly to Vidor behind the camera.
John, Mary, Bert, Jane: Everyone in this movie has the blandest names. Where’s Spike Lee?
This movie gives us the hot take that clowns are neither amusing nor scary, they’re just doing a job.
This is the fourth movie I’ve covered from circa 1928 where the main characters go to Coney Island/a Coney Island type beachside amusement park. Was that all there was to do in the ’20s? Doesn’t anyone go to the movies?
Wow, a pre-Code movie with implications of sex. Quelle scandale.
And another movie for my “Die Hard” Not Christmas list. I’ve really got to get around to covering “Die Hard“.
Mary’s brothers Jim & Dick are the Patty & Selma of this movie: the older siblings who consistently disapprove of their sister’s husband. In one of the brother’s case, Dick is aptly named.
In addition to the film’s visual storytelling, there is also significantly less intertitles than the usual silent movie. When Mary tells John she is pregnant, the entire scene is done without intertitles, but you always know what’s happening.
Mary, to John shortly after giving birth: “I’m sorry you suffered so.” HE suffered? Who wrote this?
Today’s movie inflation: the $8 raise John gets is about $122 today, and his $500 bonus is about $7600.
This movie uses such obscure phraseology as “crab” (an informal verb, meaning “to grumble”) and “darn” (as in to mend an article of clothing).
Well, things got super depressing real fast. I’m getting very tired of the 1920s’ fondness for tragic melodrama.
“The crowd laughs with you always, but it will cry with you for only a day.” Ain’t that the truth.
More Murnau influence as we get images superimposed over John’s head as he struggles to work: his daughter, the cars, spinning numbers. It all works.
Also dated: the profession of door-to-door vacuum salesman. At least he doesn’t have to hawk bibles.
It just occurred to me that neither of John and Mary’s kids have names. Their son is credited only as “Junior” (presumably John Jr.) while the daughter is credited as “Daughter”. Did they run out of generic names?
The film’s final shot is a reverse of the office shot, as the camera pans out from John and Mary enjoying the show to the entire theater packed with audience members. Once again, John and Mary becomes anonymous figures in…this group of people.
Legacy
“The Crowd” was completed in 1927, but Louis B. Mayer hated the film and held its release for almost a year. New, more upbeat endings were filmed and tested, but everyone kept coming back to Vidor’s original ending.
“The Crowd” was a modest success with audiences, some of whom were turned away by the film’s stark realism and opted for more escapist fantasy. The film would not get a more positive reappraisal until after WWII.
Neither of the film’s leads made the leap to superstardom. Eleanor Boardman divorced King Vidor and left Hollywood in the early ’30s. James Murray’s bout with alcoholism cost him his acting career, and King Vidor found him panhandling on the streets. Murray drowned in the Hudson River in 1936 at age 35. King Vidor wrote a screenplay based on Murray’s life called “The Actor”, but the film was never made.
The characters of John and Mary Sims would return in 1934’s “Our Daily Bread”, easily the most obscure sequel to make it onto the NFR.
Many filmmakers have cited “The Crowd” as an influence, from Jean-Luc Goddard to Billy Wilder, the latter whom copied the office shots for “The Apartment“.
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https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-at-the-wedding-of-king-vidor-and-eleanor-boardman-are-from-left-irving-128518042.html
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At the wedding of King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman are, from left, Irving Thalberg, Vidor, the Reverend E.P. Ryland, Boardman Stock Photo
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Download this stock image: At the wedding of King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman are, from left, Irving Thalberg, Vidor, the Reverend E.P. Ryland, Boardman, - HD2E22 from Alamy's library of millions of high resolution stock photos, illustrations and vectors.
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https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-at-the-wedding-of-king-vidor-and-eleanor-boardman-are-from-left-irving-128518042.html
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At the wedding of King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman are, from left, Irving Thalberg, Vidor, the Reverend E.P. Ryland, Boardman,
Captions are provided by our contributors.
RMID:Image ID :HD2E22
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At the wedding of King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman are, from left, Irving Thalberg, Vidor, the Reverend E.P. Ryland, Boardman, Marion Davies, George Van Cleve (Davies' brother-in-law), John Gilbert, September 8, 1926
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Vidor
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King Vidor
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Vidor
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American writer and director (1894–1982)
King Wallis Vidor ( ; February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose 67-year film-making career successfully spanned the silent and sound eras. His works are distinguished by a vivid, humane, and sympathetic depiction of contemporary social issues. Considered an auteur director, Vidor approached multiple genres and allowed the subject matter to determine the style, often pressing the limits of film-making conventions.[1]
His most acclaimed and successful film in the silent era was The Big Parade (1925).[2] Vidor's sound films of the 1940s and early 1950s arguably represent his richest output. Among his finest works are Northwest Passage (1940), Comrade X (1940), An American Romance (1944), and Duel in the Sun (1946).[3][4] His dramatic depictions of the American western landscape endow nature with a sinister force where his characters struggle for survival and redemption.[5][6][7]
Vidor's earlier films tend to identify with the common people in a collective struggle, whereas his later works place individualists at the center of his narratives.[8][9]
He was considered an "actors' director": many of his players received Academy Award nominations or awards, among them Wallace Beery, Robert Donat, Barbara Stanwyck, Jennifer Jones, Anne Shirley, and Lillian Gish.[10]
Vidor was nominated five times by the Academy Awards for Best Director. In 1979, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator."[11] Additionally, he won eight national and international film awards during his career, including the Screen Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 1957.[12]
In 1962, he was head of the jury at the 12th Berlin International Film Festival.[13] In 1969, he was a member of the jury at the 6th Moscow International Film Festival.[14]
Early life and career
[edit]
Vidor was born into a well-to-do family in Galveston, Texas, the son of Kate (née Wallis) and Charles Shelton Vidor, a lumber importer and mill owner. His grandfather, Károly Charles Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s.[15] Vidor's mother, Kate Wallis, of Scotch-English descent, was a relative of the second wife of iconic frontiersman and politician Davy Crockett.[16] The "King" in King Vidor is no sobriquet, but his given name in honor of his mother's favorite brother, King Wallis.[17][18]
At the age of six, Vidor witnessed the devastation of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Based on that formative experience, he published a historical memoir of the disaster titled "Southern Storm" for the May 1935 issue of Esquire magazine.[19][20] In an interview with the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1980 Vidor recalled the horrors of the hurricane's effects:
All the wooden structures of the town were flattened ... [t]he streets were piled high with dead people, and I took the first tugboat out. On the boat I went up into the bow and saw that the bay was filled with dead bodies, horses, animals, people, everything.[21]
In 1939, he would direct the cyclone scene for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz.[21]
Vidor was introduced to Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science by his mother at a very early age. Vidor would endow his films with the moral precepts of the faith, a "blend of pragmatic self-help and religious mysticism."[22]
Vidor attended grade school at the Peacock Military Academy, located in San Antonio, Texas.[23]
Amateur apprenticeship in Galveston
[edit]
As a boy, Vidor engaged in photographing and developing portraits of his relatives with a Box Brownie camera.[24]
At the age of sixteen Vidor dropped out of a private high school in Maryland and returned to Galveston to work as a nickelodeon ticket taker and projectionist. As an 18-year-old amateur newsreel cameraman Vidor began to acquire skills as a film documentarian. His first movie was based on footage taken of a local hurricane (not to be confused with the 1900 Galveston hurricane). He sold footage from a Houston army parade to a newsreel outfit (titled The Grand Military Parade) and made his first fictional movie, a semi-docucomedy concerning a local automobile race, In Tow (1913).[25]
Hotex Motion Picture Company
[edit]
Vidor, in a partnership with vaudevillian and movie entrepreneur Edward Sedgwick formed the Hotex Motion Picture Company in 1914 ("HO" for Houston, "TEX" for Texas) to produce low-budget one- or two-reelers. The enterprise garnered a national press release in Moving Picture World announcing its formation. Only still photos survive from these comedy-adventures, for which Hotex failed to collect any royalties.[26]
In 1915, newlyweds Vidor and actress Florence Arto Vidor along with business partner Sedgwick, moved to California in search of employment in the emerging Hollywood movie industry, arriving on the West Coast virtually penniless.[27]
Hollywood apprenticeship: 1915–1918
[edit]
Based on a screen test arranged by Texas actress Corinne Griffith and shot by Charles Rosher in Hollywood, Florence Vidor procured a contract with Vitagraph Studios, marking the start of her successful movie career. Vidor obtained minor roles acting at Vitagraph and Inceville studios (the spy drama The Intrigue (1916) survives, in which he plays a chauffeur). As a low-level office clerk at Universal, he was fired for trying to present his own scripts under the pseudonym "Charles K. Wallis", but soon was rehired by the studio as a writer of shorts.[28][29]
Judge Willis Brown series
[edit]
Beginning in 1915, Vidor served as screenwriter and director on a series of shorts about the rehabilitation of juvenile delinquents by social reformer Judge Willis Brown. Written and produced by Brown, Vidor filmed ten of the 20-film series, a project in which Vidor declared he had "deeply believed". A single reel from Bud's Recruit is known to survive, the earliest extant footage from Vidor's film directing career.[30][31]
Brentwood Film Corporation and the "Preachment" films, 1918–1919
[edit]
In 1918, at the age of 24, Vidor directed his first Hollywood feature, The Turn in the Road (1919), a film presentation of a Christian Science evangelical tract sponsored by a group of doctors and dentists affiliated as the independent Brentwood Film Corporation. Vidor recalls of his first foray into Hollywood film-making:
I wrote a script [The Turn in the Road] and sent it around ... and nine doctors put up $1,000 each ... and it was a success. That was the beginning. I didn't have time to go to college.[32]
Vidor would make three more films for the Brentwood Corporation, all of which featured as yet unknown comedienne Zasu Pitts, who the director had discovered on a Hollywood streetcar. The films Better Times, The Other Half, and Poor Relations, all completed in 1919, also featured future film director David Butler and starred Vidor's then wife Florence Arto Vidor (married in 1915), a rising actor in Hollywood pictures. Vidor ended his association with the Brentwood group in 1920.[33]
"Vidor Village" and First National Exhibitors, 1920–1925
[edit]
King Vidor next embarked on a major project in collaboration with a New York-based film exhibitor First National. In a bid to compete with the increasingly dominant Hollywood studios, First National advanced Vidor funding to build a small film production facility in Santa Monica, California, dubbed Vidor Village. King Vidor issued a founding statement entitled "Creed and Pledge" that set forth moral anodynes for film-making, inspired by his Christian Science sympathies.[34][35]
I believe in the motion picture that carries a message to humanity.
I believe in the picture that will help humanity to free itself from the shackles of fear and suffering that have so long bound it in chains.
I will not knowingly produce a picture that contains anything that I do not believe to be absolutely true to human nature, anything that could injure anyone or anything unclean in thought or action.
Nor will I deliberately portray anything to cause fright, suggest fear, glorify mischief, condone cruelty or extenuate malice.
I will never picture evil or wrong, except to prove the fallacy of its line.
So long as I direct pictures, I will make only those founded on the principles of right, and I will endeavor to draw upon the inexhaustible source of good for my stories, my guidance and my inspiration.[36]
His "manifesto" was carried in Variety magazine's January 1920 issue.[37]
The first production from Vidor Village was his The Jack Knife Man (1920), a bleak and bitter story of an orphaned boy raised by an impoverished yet kindly hermit, performed by former stage actor Fred Turner. The recluse achieves financial success and is ultimately rewarded with the affection of a gentlewoman, played by Florence Vidor. Redolent with the precepts of the "Creed and Pledge", the film's "relentless realism" did not please the executives at First National. They demanded entertainment that would garner a mass share of box-office receipts so as to fill their theaters.[38]
As film critic and biographer John Baxter observed: "[t]his experience had a fundamental effect on Vidor's attitude toward film-making." Under pressure "as the studio system began to harden into place", the 26-year-old Vidor began to craft his films to conform to prevailing standards of the period. His 1920 film The Family Honor exemplifies this shift towards romantic comedies and away from the ideals that had informed The Jack Knife Man.[39]
Vidor's The Sky Pilot (1921) was a big-budget western-comedy shot on location in the high Sierra Nevada of California. John Bowers stars as the intrepid preacher and Colleen Moore (soon to be famous as the quintessential Hollywood "flapper") as the girl he loved and rescued from a deadly cattle stampede. The natural landscapes serve as an essential dramatic component in the film, as they would in subsequent Vidor movies. The cost overruns cut into First National profits, and they declined to fund any further Vidor projects.[40]
Vidor and Moore would begin a three-year romance on the set of The Sky Pilot that became "a Hollywood legend". The couple would resume their relationship after 40 years (in 1963), remaining close until Vidor's death in 1982.[41][42]
Love Never Dies (1921) is a "rural love story" with a spectacular disaster scene depicting a locomotive and box cars derailing and plunging into a river below. The dramatic presentation of rivers served as a standard motif in Vidor films. Impressed with this Vidor sequence, producer Thomas H. Ince helped to finance the picture.[43]
In 1922, Vidor produced and directed films that served as vehicles for his spouse, Florence Vidor, notable only for their "artificiality". These works conformed to the comedies of manners and romantic melodramas that were typical of his contemporary, Cecil B. DeMille at Famous Players–Lasky studios. Later, Vidor admitted to being overawed by DeMille's talents. Florence Vidor, in her later career, frequently starred in DeMille productions.[44]
Vidor's next picture, Conquering the Woman, was an unabashed imitation of DeMille's outstanding drama Male and Female (1919), starring Gloria Swanson. Vidor followed up with Woman, Wake Up and The Real Adventure (both 1922) and each depicting a female struggling successfully to assert herself in a male dominated world. As such, these may be considered as early examples of feminist-oriented cinema, but with entirely conventional endings.[45][46]
By the early 1920s, Florence Vidor had emerged as a major film star in her own right and wished to pursue her career independent of her spouse. The couple divorced in 1926, and shortly thereafter Florence married violinist Jascha Heifetz. Vidor would soon marry model and future film actress Eleanor Boardman.[47]
Vidor Village went bankrupt in 1922 and Vidor, now without a studio, offered his services to the top executives in the film industry.[48]
Metro and Peg o' My Heart (1922)
[edit]
Film producer Louis B. Mayer engaged Vidor to direct Broadway actress Laurette Taylor in a film version of her famous juvenile role as Peg O'Connell in Peg o' My Heart, written by her husband J. Hartley Manners. Despite viewing screen tests supplied by director D. W. Griffth, Vidor was anxious that the aging Taylor (born 1884) would not be convincing as her 18-year-old stage character on screen. Biographer Marguerite Courtney describes their first encounter:
in [her] frowzy wig and dead white makeup, the famous star looked closer to forty than eighteen. At the first sight of Laurette [Vidor] experienced acute relief. She came toward him smiling, and his camera-minded eye saw at once a face all round and animated, essentially youthful. Pumping her hand he burst out impulsively "For Heaven's sake, let's make a test with your own lovely hair!"
The process of adapting the stage version to film was nevertheless fraught with difficulties, complicated by a romantic attachment between director and star. The final product proved cinematically "lifeless".[49]
Pleased with Peg o' My Heart box-office receipts, Mayer matched Vidor and Taylor again, resulting in a second feature film success, Happiness (1923) also written by Manners, with Taylor playing a charming Pollyanna-like character. The film would mark Vidor's final collaboration with the couple.[50]
Next, Vidor was entrusted to direct Mayer's top female star Clara Kimball Young in The Woman of Bronze, a 1923 melodrama that resembled the formulaic films he had created with Florence Vidor at Vidor Village.[51]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM): 1923–1944
[edit]
Silent era: 1923–1928
[edit]
Vidor's yeoman service to Louis B. Mayer secured him entrée into Goldwyn Pictures in 1923, a holding soon to be amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Samuel Goldwyn and other film producers of the early 1920s favored "literary" texts as the basis for movie screenplays. Parvenu-rich movie executives wished to provide a patina of class or "tone" to an industry often regarded as vulgar and cash-driven.[51]
Vidor was content to adapt these "prestigious properties" so securing his reputation as a reliable studio asset.[52] His work during this period did not rise to the level of his later work, but a few films stand out. Wild Oranges (1924), from a story by Joseph Hergesheimer, is notable as a harbinger of his best work in the sound era. The natural features of the coastal regions of Georgia are endowed with sinister and homicidal potential, where a fugitive arrives to terrorize rural residents. As such, the film exhibits Vidor's trademark use of nature to symbolize aspects of the human conflict.[53]
Vidor and the John Gilbert collaborations: 1925–1926
[edit]
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's cast of rising movie stars included soon-to-be matinee idol John Gilbert. Vidor directed him in His Hour (1924), based on an Elinor Glyn "febrile romance", and is one of the few films from Vidor's output of that period to survive. Gilbert, as the Russian nobleman Prince Gritzko, was so ardently performed as co-star Aileen Pringle's seducer that one scene was deleted.[54]
Vidor's typically "routine" movies of this period include Wine of Youth (1924) and Proud Flesh (1925) emphasize the "time-honored virtues" of familial and matrimonial loyalty, even among the liberated Jazz Age flappers.[55] King Vidor's tenure as a studio stringer was at an end. His next feature would transform his career and have a resounding impact on the late silent film era: The Big Parade.[56][57]
A silent-era magnum opus: The Big Parade: 1925
[edit]
In 1925 Vidor directed The Big Parade, among the most acclaimed films of the silent era, and a tremendous commercial success.[59] The Big Parade, a war romance starring John Gilbert, established Vidor as one of MGM's top studio directors for the next decade. The film would influence contemporary directors G. W. Pabst in Westfront 1918 and Lewis Milestone in All Quiet on the Western Front, both 1930.[60] Producer Irving Thalberg arranged for Vidor to film two more Gilbert vehicles: La Bohème and Bardelys the Magnificent, both released in 1926. In La Bohème, a film of "great and enduring merit", leading lady Lillian Gish exerted considerable control over the film's production. Bardelys the Magnificent, a picaresque swashbuckler mimicked the films of Douglas Fairbanks. Vidor would spoof the movie on his own Show People (1928) with comedienne Marion Davies.[61]
Vidor's next film would be a startling departure from romantic entertainment to an exposure of the "cruel deception of the American dream".[62]
The Crowd (1928) and cinematic populism
[edit]
In the late 1920s European films, especially from German directors, exerted a strong influence on filmmakers internationally. Vidor's The Crowd resonates with these populist films, a "pitiless study" of a young working man's descent into isolation and loss of morale who is ultimately crushed by the urban "assembly line", while his wife struggles to maintain some order in their relationship. Though the most uncharacteristic of Vidor's pictures, it was his personal favorite: the picture, he said "came out of my guts."
Employing relatively unknown actors, the film had modest box office success, but was widely praised by critics. In 1928, Vidor received an Oscar nomination, and his first for Best Director. M-G-M executives, who had been content to allow Vidor an "experimental" film found that bleak social outlook of The Crowd troubling – reflected in their one-year delay in releasing the film. The Crowd has since been recognized as one of the "masterpieces" of the late silent era.[63][64]
The Marion Davies comedies, 1928–1930
[edit]
Cosmopolitan Pictures, a subsidiary of M-G-M studios and controlled by influential newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, insisted that Vidor direct Marion Davies – Hearst's longtime mistress – in these Cosmopolitan-supervised films, to which Vidor acquiesced. Though not identified as a director of comedies, Vidor filmed three ""screwball"-like comedies that revealed Davies talents with her "drive-you-to-distraction persona".
The Patsy, a comedy of manners, brought Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson, veterans of Mack Sennett "slapstick" era out of retirement to play Davies' farcical upper-class parents. Davies performs a number of amusing celebrity imitations she was known for at social gatherings at Hearst's San Simeon estate, including Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Pola Negri and Mae Murray.[66] The scenario for Show People (1928) was inspired by the glamorous Gloria Swanson, who began her film career in slapstick. Davis' character Peggy Pepper, a mere comic, is elevated to the high-style star Patricia Pepoire. Vidor spoofs his own recently completed Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), an over-the-top swashbuckling costume drama featuring romantic icon John Gilbert. Some of the best-known film stars of the silent era appeared in cameos, as well as Vidor himself. Show People remains the enduring picture of the Vidor–Davies collaborations. [67]
Vidor's third and final film with Davies was his second sound film (after Hallelujah (1929)): Not So Dumb (1930), adapted from the 1921 Broadway comedy Dulcy by George S. Kaufman. The limitations of early sound, despite recent innovations, interfered with the continuity of Davies' performance that had enlivened her earlier silent comedies with Vidor.[68]
Early sound era: 1929–1937
[edit]
In early 1928, Vidor and his spouse Eleanor Boardman were visiting France in the company of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. There Vidor mixed with literary expatriates, among them James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Vidor was shaken by news that US film studios and theaters were converting to sound technology and he returned quickly to Hollywood, concerned about the impact on silent cinema.[69] Adjusting to the advent of sound, Vidor enthusiastically embarked upon his long-desired project of making a picture about rural black American life incorporating a musical soundtrack. He quickly completed writing the scenario for Hallelujah and began recruiting an all African-American cast.[70]
M-G-M studios had not yet decided which emerging sound technology they would invest in, Vitaphone or Movietone, a decision that would determine what camera system Vidor would use. Vidor circumvented the dilemma by appealing directly to President of Lowe's Inc. Nicholas Schenck, who authorized Vidor to begin shooting outdoor location sequences without sound and with the caveat that Vidor waive his $100,000 salary.[71]
Hallelujah (1929)
[edit]
Vidor's first sound film Hallelujah (1929) combines a dramatic rural tragedy with a documentary-like depiction of black agrarian community of sharecroppers in the South. Daniel L. Haynes as Zeke, Nina Mae McKinney as Chick and William Fontaine as Hot Shot developed a love-triangle that leads to a revenge murder. A quasi-musical, Vidor's innovative integration of sound into the scenes, including jazz and gospel adds immensely to the cinematic effect.[72]
Vidor, a third-generation Texan, encountered black workers employed at his father's sawmills when he was a child, and there he became familiar with their spirituals. As an adult, he was not immune to the racial prejudices common among whites in the South of the 1920s. His paternalistic claim to know the character of the "real negro" is reflected in his portrayal of some rural black characters as "childishly simple, lecherously promiscuous, fanatically superstitious, and shiftless". Vidor, nonetheless, avoids reducing his characters to Uncle Tom stereotypes and his treatment bears no resemblance to the overt racism in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915).[73]
The black sharecroppers resemble more the poor white agrarian entrepreneurs Vidor praised in his 1934 Our Daily Bread, emphasizing the class, rather than race, of his subjects. The film emerges as a human tragedy in which elemental forces of sexual desire and revenge contrast with family affection and community solidarity and redemption.[74]
Hallelujah enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response in the United States and internationally, praising Vidor's stature as a film artist and as a humane social commentator. Vidor was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards of 1929.[75][76]
M-G-M 1930–1931: Billy the Kid and The Champ
[edit]
Filmed just before passage of the Production Code of 1933, Vidor's Billy the Kid is free of the fixed moral dualities that came to typify subsequent Good Guy vs. Bad Guy Westerns in Hollywood. Starring former football champion Johnny Mack Brown as Billy and Wallace Beery as his nemesis Sheriff Pat Garrett, the protagonists display a gratuitous violence that anticipates Vidor's 1946 masterpiece Duel in the Sun (1946). Homicidal behavior resonates with the brutal and deadly desert landscape, Hemingwayesque in its brevity and realism. Studio executives were concerned that the excessive violence would alienate audiences, though the Prohibition era in the United States was saturated with news of the gangster-related killings. [77]
Shot partially in the new 70 mm Grandeur system, the film was conceived by producers to be an epic, but few cinemas were equipped to handle the new wide-screen technology. The film did poorly at the box-office.[78][79]
Upon his return to M-G-M after his sojourn to complete Street Scene for Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor embarked on his second picture starring actor Wallace Beery, this time with child actor Jackie Cooper in The Champ. Based on a story by Francis Marion, Vidor adapts a standard plot about a socially and economically impaired parent who relinquishes a child to insure his/her escape from squalid conditions to achieve an upwardly mobile future. The film is a descendant of director Charlie Chaplin's The Kid (1921), as well as Vidor's own early silent shorts for Judge Willis Brown. Vidor owed M-G-M a more conventional and "fool-proof" production after executives allowed him to make the more experimental Street Scene in 1931. The Champ would prove to be a successful vehicle for Berry and propel him to top-rank among M-G-M movie stars.[80]
Bird of Paradise and RKO Pictures : Sojourn in Hawaii, 1932
[edit]
After finishing the sentimental vehicle starring Wallace Beery, in The Champ, Vidor was loaned to Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) to make a "South Seas" romance for producer David Selznick filmed in the US territory of Hawaii. Starring Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea, the tropical location and mixed-race love theme in Bird of Paradise included nudity and sexual eroticism.[81]
During production Vidor began an affair with script assistant Elizabeth Hill that led to a series of highly productive screenplay collaborations and their marriage in 1937. Vidor divorced his wife, actress Eleanor Boardman shortly after Bird of Paradise was completed.[82][83]
Great Depression: 1933–1934
[edit]
The Stranger's Return (1933) and Our Daily Bread (1934) are Depression era films that present protagonists who flee the social and economic perils of urban America, plagued by high unemployment and labor unrest to seek a lost rural identity or make a new start in the agrarian countryside. Vidor's expressed enthusiasm for the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's exhortation in his first inaugural in 1933 for a shift of labor from industry to agriculture.[84]
In The Stranger's Return, a city girl (Miriam Hopkins) abandons her life in a great metropolis to visit her grandfather (Lionel Barrymore) in Iowa, the aging patriarch of a working farm. Her arrival upsets the schemes of parasitic relatives to seize the property in anticipation of Grandpa Storr's passing. The scenario presents the farm as "bountiful", even in the midst of the Dust Bowl where banks seized tens-of-thousands of independent family farms in the Midwest and drove millions into low wage seasonal agricultural labor.[85] The picture is a paean to family "blood" ties and rural generational continuity, manifested in the granddaughter's commitment (though raised in New York City) to inherit the family farm and honor its agrarian heritage.[86]
Vidor continued his "back to the land" theme in his 1934 Our Daily Bread. The picture is the second film of a trilogy he referred to as "War, Wheat and Steel". His 1925 film The Big Parade was "war" and his 1944 An American Romance was "steel". Our Daily Bread – "wheat" – is a sequel to his silent masterpiece The Crowd (1928).[87][88]
Our Daily Bread is a deeply personal and politically controversial work that Vidor financed himself when M-G-M executives declined to back the production. M-G-M was uncomfortable with its characterization of big business, and particularity banking institutions, as corrupt.[89] A struggling Depression-era couple from the city inherit a derelict farm, and in an effort to make it a productive enterprise, they establish a cooperative in alliance with unemployed locals who possess various talents and commitments. The film raises questions as to the legitimacy of the American system of democracy and to government imposed social programs.[90]
The picture garnered a mixed response among social and film critics, some regarding it as a socialistic condemnation of capitalism and others as tending towards fascism – a measure of Vidor's own ambivalence in organizing his social outlook artistically.[91][92]
The Goldwyn films: 1931–1937
[edit]
Street Scene (1931), Cynara (1932), The Wedding Night (1935), Stella Dallas (1937)
During the 1930s Vidor, though under contract to M-G-M studios, made four films under loan-out to independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, formerly with the Goldwyn studios that had amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924. Goldwyn's insistence on fidelity to the prestigious literary material he had purchased for screen adaptations imposed cinematic restraints on his film directors, including Vidor. The first of their collaborations since the silent era was Street Scene (1931)[93]
The adoption of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Elmer Rice depicts a microcosm in a major American metropolis and its social and economic inequalities. The cinematic limitations imposed by a single set restricted to a New York City block of tenements building and its ethnically diverse inhabitants presented Vidor with unique technical challenges. He and cinematographer George Barnes countered and complemented these structural restrictions by using a roving camera mounted on cranes, an innovation made possible by recent developments in early sound technology.[94]
The excellent cast, drawn largely from the Broadway production, contributed to the critical success of the film, as did the huge publicity campaign engineered by Goldwyn. Street Scene's immense box-office profits belied the financial and economic crisis of the early Depression years, when movie studios feared bankruptcy.[95]
Cynara (1932), a romantic melodrama of a brief, yet tragic affair between a British barrister and a shopgirl, was Vidor's second sound collaboration with Goldwyn. Starring two of Hollywood's biggest stars of the period, Ronald Colman and Kay Francis, the story by Francis Marion is a cautionary tale concerning upper- and lower-class sexual infidelities set in England. Framed, as in the play and novel, in a series of flashbacks told by the married barrister Warlock (Colman), the story ends in honorable redemption for the barrister and death for his mistress. Vidor was able to inject some "pure cinema" into a picture that was otherwise a "dialogue-heavy" talkie: "Colman [in London] tears up a piece of paper and throws the pieces out a window, where they fly into the air. Vidor cuts to St. Mark's Square in Venice (where Francis, his spouse is vacationing), with pigeons flying into the air".[96]
In his third collaboration with Goldwyn, Vidor was tasked with salvaging the producer's huge investment in Soviet-trained Russian actress Anna Sten. Goldwyn's effort to elevate Sten to the stature of Dietrich or Garbo had thus far failed despite his relentless promotion when Vidor began directing her in The Wedding Night (1935).[97]
A tale of a doomed affair between a married New Yorker (Gary Cooper) (whose character Vidor based on novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald) and a farm girl (Sten) from an Old World Polish family, Vidor provided thoughtful direction to Cooper and Sten while cinematographer Gregg Toland's devised effective lighting and photography. Despite good reviews the picture did not establish Sten as a star among movie-goers and she remained "Goldwyn's Folly".[98]
In 1937 Vidor made his final and most profitable picture with Samuel Goldwyn: Stella Dallas. A remake of Goldwyn's most successful silent movie, the 1925 Stella Dallas, also an adaption of Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel. Barbara Stanwyck stars as the eponymous "martyr of motherhood" in the sound re-make. Vidor analyzed director Henry King's handling of his silent production and incorporated or modified some of its filmic structure and staging. Stanwyck's performance, reportedly without undue oversight by Vidor, is outstanding, benefited by her selective vetting of Belle Bennett's famous portrayal. Vidor contributed to defining Stanwyck's role substantially in the final cut, providing a sharper focus on her character and delivering one of the great tear-jerkers in film history. [99]
Despite the success of the film it would be his last with Goldwyn, as Vidor had tired of the producer's outbursts on the set. Vidor emphatically declined to work with the "mercurial" producer again.[100]
Paramount Pictures: 1935–1936
[edit]
So Red the Rose (1935) and The Texas Rangers (1936)
Paramount production manager at Paramount Pictures, Ernst Lubitsch, persuaded Vidor to undertake the direction of a film based on a story that afforded a ""Southern" perspective, So Red the Rose, an American Civil War epic.
The topic appealed to the Texas-bred Vidor and he offered a dual vision of the antebellum South's response to the war among the white planter class, sentimentalizing their struggle and defeat. Here, the western "pioneer" plantation owners possess less of the anti-Northern fury that led to secession by their "Old South" counterparts. The scion of the estate, Duncan Bedford (Randolph Scott) initially refuses to join the Confederate army ("I don't believe Americans should fight Americans") but his sister Vallette Duncan (Margaret Sullavan) scorns his pacifism and singlehandedly diverts her slaves from rebellion. The white masters of the "Portobello" plantation in Mississippi emerge from the conflict content that North and South made equal sacrifices, and that a "New South" has emerged that is better off without its white aristocracy and slavery. With Portobello in ruins, Valette and Duncan submit to the virtues of hard work in a pastoral existence.[101]
The novel So Red the Rose (1934) by Stark Young in its narrative and theme anticipates author Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936). Vidor, initially tapped to direct Mitchell's epic, was ultimately assigned to director George Cukor.[102]
The box-office failure of So Red the Rose led the film industry to anticipate the same for Cukor's adaption of Mitchell's Civil War epic. To the contrary, Gone with the Wind (1939) enjoyed immense commercial and critical success.[103]
At a period in the 1930s when Western theme films were relegated to low-budget B movies, Paramount studios financed an A Western for Vidor at $625,000 (lowered to $450,000 when star Gary Cooper was replaced with Fred MacMurray in the lead role.)[104] The Texas Rangers, Vidor's second and final film for Paramount reduced, but did not abandon, the level of sadistic and lawless violence evidenced in his Billy the Kid. Vidor presents a morality play where the low-cunning of the outlaws cum vigilantes heroes is turned to the service of law-and-order when they kill their erstwhile accomplice in crime – the "Polka Dot Bandit.".[105][106]
The film's scenario and script was penned by Vidor and wife Elizabeth Hill, based loosely on The Texas Rangers: A History of Frontier Defense of the Texas Rangers by Walter Prescott Webb. Made on the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Texas Ranger Division the picture includes standard B western tropes, including Indian massacres of white settlers and a corrupt city official who receives small town justice at the hands of a jury composed of saloon denizens. The film presages, as does Vidor's Billy the Kid (1931), his portrayal of the savagery of civilization and nature in producer David O. Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946).[107][108][109]
In an effort to retain Vidor at Paramount, the production head William LeBaron offered him a biopic of Texas icon, Sam Houston. Vidor emphatically declined: "... "I've [had] such a belly-full of Texas after the Rangers that I find myself not caring whether Sam Houston takes Texas from the Mexicans or lets them keep it."[110]
Screen Directors Guild
[edit]
In the 1930s Vidor became a leading advocate for the formation of the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) and since 1960 called the Directors Guild of America (DGA), when television directors joined its ranks.
In an effort to enlarge movie director's meager influence in studio production decisions, Vidor personally exhorted a dozen or more leading directors, among them Howard Hawks, William Wellman, Ernst Lubitsch and Lewis Milestone to form a union, leading to the incorporation of the SDG in January 1936. By 1938, the collective bargaining unit had grown from a founding membership of 29 to an inclusive union of 600, representing Hollywood directors and assistant directors. The demands under Vidor's tenure at SDG were mild, seeking increased opportunities to examine scripts before filming and to make the initial cut on a movie.[111]
As the SDG's first president, and a founding member of the anti-Communist group the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals Vidor failed to bring the SDG into affiliation with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) that had already organized actors and screenwriters (deemed a "Bolshevik" political front by anti-communist critics). Not until 1939 would the directors sign an accord with these sister guilds, under then SDG president Frank Capra.[112]
M-G-M: 1938–1944
[edit]
Upon completion of Stella Dallas and his disaffection from Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor returned to M-G-M under a five-film contract that would produce The Citadel (1938), Northwest Passage (1940), Comrade X (1940), H. M. Pulham, Esq. (1941) and An American Romance (1944). In 1939, Vidor would also direct the final three weeks of primary filming for The Wizard of Oz (1939).[113]
Film historian John Baxter describes the demands that the studio system at M-G-M had on an auteur director such as Vidor in this period:
M-G-M's assembly line system caught up with even top directors like Vidor, who could be called on to pass judgment on a new property or even prepare a project, only to find themselves a few days later shifted to something else.[114]
These unconsummated projects at M-G-M include National Velvet (1944) and The Yearling (1946), the later in which Vidor presided over a failed attempt to produce a population of juvenile deer who would be age-appropriate throughout the production (female deer refused to reproduce out of season). Both films would be completed by the director Clarence Brown. Vidor further invested six months shooting an Amazon River survival-adventure, The Witch in the Wilderness from which he was diverted to perform pre-production for Northwest Passage (1940). This period would be one of transition for Vidor but would lead to an artistic phase where he created some of his richest and most characteristic works.[115]
The Citadel: The first picture under the contract and the first under the Screen Directors Guild (SDG) was The Citadel in 1938. Filmed in England at a time the British government and trade unions had placed restrictions designed to extract a portion of the highly lucrative American movie exports to the British Isles. M-G-M, as a tactical olive branch, agreed to hire British actors as cast members for The Citadel and provided them generous compensation. (American actress Rosalind Russel and Vidor were the only two non-Britons who served on the film's production).[116]
The movie is a close adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel of the same name, an exposé of the mercenary aspects of the medical profession that entices doctors to serve the upper-classes at the expense of the poor. Vidor's Christian Science-inspired detachment from the medical profession influence his handling of the story, in which an independent doctor's cooperative is favored over both socialized medicine and a profit-driven medical establishment.[117]
The protagonist, Dr. Andrew Manson (Robert Donat) ultimately resorts to an act of anarchism by using explosives to destroy a disease-producing sewer, but emerges personally vindicated.[118] A success at the Academy Awards, the film garnered nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Donat), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.[119]
During the late 1930s M-G-M enlisted Vidor to assume artistic and technical responsibilities, some of which went uncredited. The most outstanding of these was his shooting of the black-and-white "Kansas" sequences in The Wizard of Oz, including the notable musical production in which Dorothy Judy Garland sings "Over the Rainbow". Portions of the Technicolor sequences that depict Dorothy and her companions lulled into sleep on a field of poppies were also handled by Vidor.[120]
The sound era saw the eclipse of the Western movie that had its heyday in the silent era and by the 1930s the genre was relegated to the producers of B movies. By the end of the decade high-budget films depicting the Indian Wars in the America of the 18th and 19th century reappeared, notably Ford's Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and DeMille's North West Mounted Police (1940)[121]
In the summer of 1939, Vidor began filming in Idaho a Western-themed picture using the new Technicolor system. The picture that emerged is one of his "master works": Northwest Passage (1940).[122]
Northwest Passage: Based on an American colonial-era epic novel, the film describes a punitive expedition against an Abenaki (Iroquois) village by a unit of British Army irregulars during the French and Indian Wars. Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) leads his green-clad "Roberts Rangers" on a grueling trek through 200 miles of wilderness. The Rangers fall upon the village and brutally exterminate the inhabitants who are suspected of assaulting white settlements. A demoralized retreat ensues led by Rogers. Under retaliatory attack by Indians and a savage landscape the Rangers are pushed to the limits of their endurance, some reduced to cannibalism and madness.[123]
The script by Laurence Stallings and Talbot Jennings (and several uncredited writers) conveys the unabashed anti-Indian hatred that motivates Roger's men to their task.[124] The level of violence anticipates film noir of the post-World War II period and the McCarthy era.[125]
Vidor began filming in July 1939, just weeks before war was declared in Europe and the isolationist or interventionist policies were widely debated. The film influenced tropes that appeared in subsequent war films, depicting small military units operating behind enemy lines and relying on harsh tactics to destroy enemy combatants. The relevance of Northwest Passage's sanguinary adventurer to contemporary Americans confronted with a looming world war is never made explicit but raises moral questions on "military virtue" and how a modern war might be conducted. Though Vidor was "anti-fascist" his political predilections are left unstated in Northwest Passage.[126] Vidor established an unusually close professional relationship with the film's star, Spencer Tracy, and the actor delivered what Vidor considered a performance of "tremendous conviction".[127]
Vidor used the new three-strip Technicolor camera system (the two huge 800-pound [365 kg] cameras had to be transported by train). The color photography conveys more than the scenic beauty of Payette Lake, injecting documentary realism into key sequences. Notable are those of the Rangers portaging boats through a rugged mountain pass, and the famous river "human chain" crossing. Despite its enormous box office earnings, Northwest Passage failed to recoup its $2 million production costs. The cinematography earned an Oscer nomination in that category.[128]
Comrade X: A political comedy set in the Soviet Union, Comrade X (1940) was conceived as a vehicle for M-G-M's glamorous acquisition Hedy Lamarr, in the hopes they might duplicate the profits they reaped from M-G-M star Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). "Comrade" X is played by Clark Gable, a cynical American journalist who exposes Stalin-era cultural falsifications in his dispatches to his newspaper in the United States. Lamarr plays a Moscow tram conductor. Her coldly logical persona ultimately proves susceptible to Gable's America-inspired enthusiasms. Released in December 1940, the scurrilous tone of the dialogue toward the USSR officials was consistent with US government posture in the aftermath of the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 (after America's entry into WWII in December 1941), Russians became US allies in the war effort against the Axis powers. Reflecting these developments, M-G-M executives, just six months after the film's release, inserted a disclaimer assuring audiences that the movie was only a farce, not a hostile critique of the USSR. Writer Walter Reisch, who also scripted Ninotchka, earned an Oscar nomination for best original story.[129][130]
Vidor disparaged the picture as "an insignificant light comedy" that afforded him "a change of pace."[131] Vidor's next picture would be a cold-eyed examination of the institution of marriage and a much more personal work: H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941).[132]
H. M. Pulham, Esq.: With wife and screenwriting partner Elizabeth Hill, Vidor adapted John P. Marquand's highly popular novel of the same name. A story of a married man tempted to revive an affair with an old flame, Vidor draws upon memories of a failed romance from his own youth.[133]
Harry Pulham (Robert Young), a member of the New England's conservative upper-middle class, is stultified by the respectable routines of life and a proper marriage to his wife Kay (Ruth Hussey). Vidor examines Pulham's past in a series of flashbacks that reveal a youthful affair Harry had with an ambitious German immigrant, Marvin Myles (Hedy Lamarr) at a New York advertising agency. They prove incompatible, largely due to different class orientation and expectations: Marvin pursues her dynamic career in New York and Harry returns to the security of his Bostonian social establishment. In an act of desperate nostalgia, Pulham attempts to rekindle the relationship 20 years later, to no avail. His attempt at rebellion failed, Harry Pulham consciously submits to a life of conformity that falls short of freedom but offers self-respect and a modest contentment.[134]
H. M. Pulham, Esq was completed by Vidor after years of manufacturing "conventional successes" for M-G-M. The calm certitude of Harry Pulham in the face of enforced conformity may reflect Vidor's determination to artistically address larger issues in contemporary American society. His next, and final movie for M-G-M, would be the "Steel" component of his "War, Wheat and Steel" film trilogy: An American Romance (1944). [135][136]
An American Romance: Rather than demonstrate his patriotism by joining a military film unit Vidor attempted to create a paean to American democracy. His 1944 An American Romance represents the "steel" installment of Vidor's "War, Wheat and Steel" trilogy and serves as his "industrial epic".and emerged from an extremely convoluted screenwriting evolution.[137] Vidor personifies the relationship between man and the natural resources on which struggles to impose his purpose on nature.[138]
The lead role of immigrant Stefan Dubechek was offered to Spencer Tracy but the actor declined, an acute disappointment for the director who had greatly admired Tracy's performance in his Northwest Passage (1940).[139] Vidor's dissatisfaction with the studio's casting, including lead Brian Donlevy, led Vidor to concentrate on the industrial landscape to reveal the motivations of his characters.[140]
Despite producer Louis B. Mayer's personal enthusiasm for the picture, his studio deleted 30 minutes from the movie, mostly essential human interest sequences and only preserving the abundant documentary scenes. Disgusted by M-G-M's mutilations, Vidor terminated his 20-year association with the studio.[141] The film received negative reviews and was a financial failure. Some critics noted a shift in Vidor's focus from working class struggles to celebrating the ascent of a "Ford-like" industrial magnate. Film historian Raymond Durgnat considers the picture "his least personal, artistically weakest and most spiritually confused."[142][143]
The failure of An American Romance, after an artistic investment of three years, staggered Vidor and left him deeply demoralized. The break with M-G-M presented an opportunity to establish a more satisfying relationship with other studio producers. Emerging from this "spiritual" nadir he would create a Western of great intensity: Duel in the Sun (1946).[144]
A sound era magnum opus: Duel in the Sun (1946)
[edit]
At the end of 1944 Vidor considered a number of projects, including a remake of his silent era Wild Oranges (1924), this time with producer David O. Selznick.[145]
When Selznick purchased the rights to Niven Busch's novel Duel in the Sun in 1944, Vidor agreed to rewrite Oliver H. P. Garrett's screenplay and direct a miniature Western, "small" but "intense". Selznick's increasingly grandiose plans for the production involved his wish to promote the career of actress-mistress Jennifer Jones and to create a movie rivaling his successful 1939 Gone with the Wind. Selzick's personal and artistic ambitions for Duel in the Sun led to conflicts with Vidor over development of the themes which emphasized "sex, violence and spectacle".[146] Vidor walked off the set just before primary filming was completed, unhappy with Selznick's intrusive management. The producer would enlist eight additional directors to complete the picture. Though the final cut was made without Vidor's participation, the production reflects the participation of these talented filmmakers, among them William Dieterle and Josef von Sternberg. Vidor was awarded sole screen credit after Directors Guild arbitration.[147] [148]
Duel in the Sun is a melodramatic treatment of a Western theme concerning a conflict between two generations of the McCanles family. The elderly and crippled McCanles Lionel Barrymore presides with an iron fist over his a vast cattle estate with his invalid wife Laura Belle Candles Lillian Gish. Their two sons, Lewt and Jess, are polar opposites: the educated Jess "the good son" Joseph Cotten takes after his refined mother, while Lewt "the bad son" Gregory Peck emulates his domineering cattle baron father. The adoption of the young orphan girl Pearl Chavez, the "half-breed" offspring of a European gentleman and a native-American mother, whom Pearl's father has murdered and been executed for his crime, introduces a fatal element into the McCanles family. The film noir ending includes an attempted fratricide and a suicide-like love pact, destroying the McCanles family.[149]
The "unbridled sexuality" portrayed by Vidor between Pearl and Lewt created a furor that drew criticism from the US Congressmen and film censors, which led to the studio cutting several minutes before its final release.[152]
Selznick launched Duel in the Sun in hundreds of theaters, backed by a multiple-million dollar promotional campaign. Despite the film's poor critical reception (termed "Lust in the Dust" by its detractors) the picture's box office returns rivaled the highest-grossing film of the year, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).[153]
Film archivist Charles Silver offered this appraisal of the Vidor-Selznick collaboration:
"[W]hen Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones) rides out to kill Lewt (Gregory Peck), she is uncannily transformed into a phantasm of a young resolute Mrs. McCanles (Lillian Gish), thus killing the son she despises via the daughter she never had. This is perhaps the most outrageous conceit of an entirely outrageous movie, and it is brilliant. As Andrew Sarris has said: 'In cinema, as in all art, only those who risk the ridiculous have a real shot at the sublime.' In Duel in the Sun, an older, less hopeful, but still enterprising King Vidor came damn close to the bullseye."[154][155]
On Our Merry Way (A Miracle Can Happen), Universal Studios 1948
[edit]
In the aftermath of his critical failures in An American Romance (1944) and Duel in the Sun (1946), Vidor disengaged from Hollywood film production to purchase his Willow Creek Ranch in Paso Robles, California.[156]
A Miracle Can Happen (1948) is a film sketch that Vidor participated in with co-director Leslie Fenton during this period of relative inactivity. A "low-budget" Universal Studios release of the early baby boom era, this "omnibus" presents vignettes filmed or performed by an array of actors and directors (some of them returning from service in the armed forces) among them Burgess Meredith, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, James Stewart, John Huston and George Stevens. (An episode with British actor Charles Laughton was cut from the final release, a disappointment to Vidor.) The picture's title was changed shortly after opening to On Our Merry Way to promote its comedic virtues. Vidor dismissed the film from his oeuvre in later years.[157]
In 1948 Vidor was diverted from making a series of 16mm Westerns for television and produced on his ranch when Warner Brothers studios approached him to direct an adaption of author Ayn Rand's controversial novel The Fountainhead. Vidor immediately accepted the offer.[158]
Warner Brothers: 1949–1951
[edit]
Vidor's three films for Warner Brothers studios—The Fountainhead (1949), Beyond the Forest (1949) and Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)—were crafted to reconcile the excessive and amoral violence displayed in his Duel in the Sun (1946) with a constructive presentation of American individualism that comported with his Christian Science precepts of morality.[159][160]
The Fountainhead (1949): Unhappy with the screen adaptation offered by Warner Brothers for Ayn Rand's 1938 novel The Fountainhead, Vidor asked the author to write the script. Rand accepted but inserted a caveat into her contract requiring that she authorize any deviation from the book's story or dialogue. Vidor accepted the provision.[161]
Rand's political philosophy of Objectivism is distilled through the character of architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper), who adopts an uncompromising stance on the physical integrity of his proposed designs. When one of his architectural projects is compromised, he destroys the building with dynamite. At his trial, Roark offers a principled and forthright defense for his act of sabotage and is exonerated by the jury. Though Vidor was committed to developing his own populist notion of American individualism, Rand's didactic Objectivist scenario and script informs much of the film. The Roark character is loosely based on the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, both in the novel and Vidor's film version.[162][163]
Vidor's most outstanding cinematic innovation in The Fountainhead is his highly stylized images of the Manhattan high-rise interiors and skylines. The urban landscapes, created by Art Director Edward Carrere were strongly influenced by German Expressionism and contribute to the film's compelling film noir character. The eroticism inherent in the sets resonate with the on-screen sexual tension, augmented by the off-screen affair between Cooper and Patricia Neal, who plays the architect's ally-adversary Dominique Francon. [164]
The Fountainhead enjoyed profitable box-office returns but a poor critical reception. Satisfied with his experience at Warner's, Vidor signed a two-film contract with the studio. In his second picture he would direct Warner's most prestigious star Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest (1949).[165][166]
Beyond the Forest (1949): A lurid noir melodrama that tracks the descent of a petty-bourgeois Madame Bovary-like character, Rosa Moline (Bette Davis) into marital infidelity, murder and a sordid death, the picture has earned a reputation as a "Camp" classic. The film is often cited for providing the phrase "What a dump!", appropriated by playwright Edward Albee in his 1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and its 1966 screen adaptation.[167]
Despising the role assigned her by producer Jack Warner and feuding with director Vidor over her character's portrayal, Davis delivers a startling performance and one of the best of her mid-career. The role of Rosa Molina would be her last film with Warner Brothers after seventeen years with the studio.[168]
Vidor's characterization of Davis as the unsophisticated Gorgon-like Rosa (the film was titled La Garce, [The Bitch], in French releases) were widely rejected by her fans and contemporary film critics and reviews "were the worst of Vidor's career." [169]
Vidor and Max Steiner inserted a leitmotif into those sequences where Rosa obsessively longs for escape from the dull, rural Loyalton to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Chicago. The "Chicago" theme surfaces (a tune made famous by Judy Garland) in an ironic style reminiscent of film composer Bernard Herrmann. Steiner earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Score.[170]
Lightning Strikes Twice (1951): His final picture for Warner Brothers, Vidor attempted to create a film noir tale of a deadly love triangle starring Richard Todd, Ruth Roman and Mercedes McCambridge, a cast that did not suit Vidor. A standard Warner's melodrama, Vidor declared that the picture "turned out terribly" and is largely unrepresentative of his work except in its western setting and its examination of sexual strife, the theme of the film.[171] Vidor's next project was proposed by producer Joseph Bernhard after pre-production and casting were nearly complete: Japanese War Bride (1952).[172]
Japanese War Bride (1952): Twentieth Century Fox
[edit]
The topic of the film, white racial prejudice in post-WWII America, had been addressed in a number of Hollywood films of the period, including directors Joseph Losey's The Lawless (1950) and Mark Robson's Home of the Brave (1949).[173]
The story by co-producer Anson Bond concerns wounded Korean War veteran Jim Sterling (Don Taylor), who returns with his bride, Japanese nurse Tae (Shirley Yamaguchi), to his parents' farm in California's Central Valley. Conflicts arise when Jim's sister-in-law falsely accuses Tae of infidelity, sparking conflicts with the neighboring Nisei-owned farm. The picture locates acts of racism towards non-whites as personal neurosis rather than socially constructed prejudice.[174] Vidor's artistic commitments to the film were minimal in a production that was funded as a B Movie, though he meticulously documents the experience of workers in field and factory.[175]
Before beginning direction of Japanese War Bride, Vidor had already arranged with Bernhard to finance his next project and perhaps "the last great film" of his career: Ruby Gentry (1952).[176]
Ruby Gentry (1952): Twentieth Century Fox
[edit]
With Ruby Gentry, Vidor revisits the themes and scenario of Duel in the Sun (1946), in which an impoverished young woman, Jennifer Jones (Ruby née Corey, later Gentry), is taken in by a well-to-do couple. When the foster mother dies (Josephine Hutchinson) Ruby marries the widower (Karl Malden) for security, but he too dies under circumstances that cast suspicions on Ruby. She is harried by her evangelical preacher-sibling (James Anderson) and her love affair with the son of a local land-owing scion (Charlton Heston) leads to a deadly shootout, a climax that recalls Vidor's violent 1946 Western.[177]
Vidor deferred his own salary to make the low-budget work, filming the "North Carolina" landscapes on his California ranch. American critics generally disparaged the movie.[178]
Film historian Raymond Durgnat champions Ruby Gentry "as a truly great American film...film noir imbued with new fervor" that combines a radical social understanding with a Hollywood veneer and an intensely personal artistic statement. Vidor ranks Ruby Gentry among his most artistically gratifying works: "I had complete freedom in shooting it, and Selznick, who could have had an influence on Jennifer Jones, didn't intervene. I think I succeeded in getting something out of Jennifer, something quite profound and subtle."[179] The swamp sequence where Ruby and her lover Boake hunt one another is "perhaps the best sequence [Vidor] ever filmed."[180] Ruby Gentry showcases the essential elements of Vidor's oeuvre depicting the extremes of passion inherent in humanity and nature. Vidor commented on these elements as follows:
"There's one scene I like a lot...because it corresponds to something vital. It's the scene where the girl [Jennifer Jones] has the barrage demolished. At the moment when the earth is flooded, the man [Charlton Heston] is destroyed. All his ambitions crumble. I think there is a fine symbol there".[181]
Autobiography: A Tree is a Tree
[edit]
In 1953, Vidor's autobiography entitled A Tree is a Tree was published and widely praised. Film critic Dan Callahan provides this excerpt the book:
"I believe that every one of us knows that his major job on earth is to make some contribution, no matter how small, to this inexorable movement of human progress. The march of man, as I see it, is not from the cradle to the grave. It is instead, from the animal or physical to the spiritual. The airplane, the atom bomb, radio, radar, television are all evidences of the urge to overcome the limitations of the physical in favor of the freedom of the spirit. Man, whether he is conscious of it or not, knows deep inside that he has a definite upward mission to perform during the time of his life span. He knows that the purpose of his life cannot be stated in terms of ultimate oblivion."[182]
Light's Diamond Jubilee, General Electric, 1954
[edit]
As part of the 75th Anniversary of Thomas Edison's invention of electric light, Vidor adapted two short stories for television produced by David O. Selznick. The production aired on all the major American TV networks on October 24, 1954.[183]
Vidor's contributions included "A Kiss for the Lieutenant" by author Arthur Gordon starring Kim Novak, an amusing romantic vignette, as well as an adaption of novelist John Steinbeck's short story "Leader of the People" (1937) (from his novella The Red Pony) in which a retired wagon-master, Walter Brennan, rebuffed by his son Harry Morgan, finds a sympathetic audience for his War Horse reminiscences about the Old West in his grandson Brandon deWilde. Screenwriter Ben Hecht wrote the scripts for both segments.[184]
In 1954 Vidor, in collaboration with longtime associate and screenwriter Laurence Stallings, pursued a remake of the director's silent era The Turn in the Road (1919). Vidor's persistent efforts to revive this Christian Science-themed work spanning 15 years in the post-war period was never consummated, though a cast was proposed for an Allied Artists production in 1960. Setting aside this endeavor, Vidor opted to film a Western with Universal-International, Man Without a Star (1955).[185]
Man Without a Star, 1955
[edit]
Based on a story by Dee Linford of the same name and scripted by Borden Chase, Man Without a Star is an iconographic Western tale of remorseless struggle between a wealthy rancher Reed Bowman (Jeanne Crain) and small homesteaders. Saddle-tramp and gunman Dempsey Rae (Kirk Douglas) is drawn into the vortex of violence, that Vidor symbolizes with ubiquitous barbed-wire. The cowboy ultimately prevails against the hired gunslinger Steve Miles (Richard Boone) who had years ago murdered Rae's younger brother.[186][187]
Kirk Douglas acted as both the star and uncredited producer in a collaborative effort with director Vidor. Neither was entirely satisfied with the result. Vidor failed to fully develop his thematic conception, the ideal of balancing personal freedoms with conservation of the land as a heritage.[188] Vidor and Douglas succeeded in creating Douglas's splendid character, Dempsey Rae, who emerges as a vital force, especially in the saloon-banjo sequence that screenwriter Borden Chase termed "pure King Vidor".[189]
Man Without a Star, rated as "a minor work" by biographer John Baxter, marks a philosophical transition in Vidor's outlook towards Hollywood: the Dempsey Rae figure, though retaining his personal integrity, "is a man without a star to follow; no ideal, no goal" reflecting a declining enthusiasm by the director for American topics. Vidor's final two movies, the epics War and Peace (an adaptation of the novel by Russian author Leo Tolstoy), and Solomon and Sheba, a story from the Old Testament, followed the director's realization that his self-conceived film proposals would not be welcomed by commercial movie enterprises. This pair of historical costume dramas were created outside Hollywood, both filmed and financed in Europe.[190]
War and Peace (1956)
[edit]
Contrary to his aesthetic aversion to adapting historical spectaculars, in 1955 Vidor accepted independent Italian producer Dino De Laurentis's offer to create a screen adaption of Leo Tolstoy's vast historical romance of the late-Napoleonic era, War and Peace (1869).[191][192] In the public domain, War and Peace was under consideration for adaption by several studios. Paramount Pictures and De Laurenti rushed the film into production before a proper script could be formulated from Tolstoy's complex and massive tale, requiring rewrites throughout the shooting. The final cut, at three hours, was necessarily a highly compressed version of the literary work.[193][194]
Tolstoy's themes of individualism, the centrality of family and national allegiance and the virtues of agrarian egalitarianism were immensely appealing to Vidor. He commented on the pivotal character in the novel, Pierre Bezukhov (played by Henry Fonda): "The strange thing about it is the character of Pierre is the same character I had been trying to put on the screen in many of my own films." [195] Vidor was unsatisfied with the choice of Henry Fonda for the role of Pierre, and argued in favor of British actor Peter Ustinov. He was overruled by Dino de Laurentis, who insisted that the central figure in the epic appear as a conventional romantic leading man, rather than as the novel's "overweight, bespectacled" protagonist. [196] Vidor sought to endow Pierre's character so as to reflect the central theme of Tolstoy's novel: an individual's troubled striving to rediscover essential moral truths. The superficiality of the script and Fonda's inability to convey the subtleties of Pierre's spiritual journey thwarted Vidor's efforts to actualize the film's theme. Recalling these interpretive disputes, Vidor remarked that "though a damn good actor... [Fonda] just did not understand what I was trying to say." [197]
Vidor was delighted with the vitality of Audrey Hepburn's performance as Natasha Rostova, in contrast to the miscasting of the male leads. His assessment of the centrality of Natasha is based in the process of her maturation:
"Natasha permeated [War and Peace's] entire structure as the archetype of womankind which she so thoroughly represents. If I were forced to reduce the whole story of War and Peace to some basically simple statement, I would say that it is a story of the maturing of Natasha. She represents, to me, the anima of the story and she hovers over it all like immortality itself."[198]
Cinematographer Jack Cardiff devised one of the film's most visually striking sequences, the sunrise duel between Pierre (Henry Fonda) and Kuragin (Tullio Carminati), shot entirely on a sound-stage. Vidor performed second-production duties to oversee the spectacular battle reenactments and director Mario Soldati (uncredited) shot a number of scenes with the principal cast.[199][200]
American audiences showed modest enthusiasm at the box-office, but War and Peace was well received by film critics. The movie was met with huge popular approval in the USSR, a fact alarming to Soviet officials, coming as it did near the height of Cold War hostilities between America and Russia. The Soviet government responded in 1967 with its own heavily financed adaption of the novel, War and Peace (film series) (1967).[201]
War and Peace garnered Vidor further offers to film historical epics, among these King of Kings (1961), (directed by Nicholas Ray) as well as a project to develop a script about the life of 16th Century Spanish author Miguel Cervantes. Vidor finally settled on the Old Testament story of Solomon and Sheba, with Tyrone Power and Gina Lollobrigida tapped as the star-crossed monarchs. This would be Vidor's final Hollywood film of his career.[202]
Solomon and Sheba (1959)
[edit]
Solomon and Sheba is one of a cycle of bible-based epics popular favored by Hollywood during the 1950s. The film is best remembered as the Vidor's last commercial production of his long career in Hollywood.[203]
A tragic footnote is attached to this picture. Six weeks into production the leading man, 45-year-old star Tyrone Power, suffered a heart attack during a climactic sword fight scene. He died within the hour. Considered the "ultimate nightmare" for any major movie production, the entire film had to be re-shot, with the lead role of Solomon now recast with Yul Brynner.[204] The death of Tyrone Powers was less a financial disaster and more a creative loss. Vidor was bereft of an actor who had grasped the complex nature of the Solomon figure, adding depth to Powers' performance. Brynner and Vidor were instantly at loggerheads when the leading man substituted a portrayal of an "anguished monarch" for an Israelite king who would "dominate each situation without conflict." Vidor reported, "it was an attitude that affected the depth of his performance and probably the integrity of the film."[205] Leading lady Gina Lollobrigida adopted Brynner's approach to her character development of her Queen of Sheba, adding another facet of discord with the director.[206]
Solomon and Sheba includes some impressive action sequences, including a widely cited battle finale in which Solomon's tiny army faces an approaching onslaught of mounted warriors. His troops turn their burnished shields to the sun, the reflected light blinding the enemy hordes and sending them careening into an abyss. Astonishing sequences such as these abound in Vidor's work, prompting film historian Andrew Sarris to observe "Vidor was a director for anthologies [who] created more great moments and fewer great films than any director of his rank."[207] Despite the setbacks that plagued the production and the ballooning costs associated with the reshoot, Solomon and Sheba "more than earned back its costs."[208]
Contrary to claims that Solomon and Sheba ended Vidor's career, he continued to receive offers to film major productions after its completion. The reasons for the director's disengagement from commercial film-making are related to his age (65) and to his desire to pursue smaller and more personal movie projects. Reflecting on independent productions, Vidor remarked, "I'm glad I got out of it."[209]
Post-Hollywood projects, 1959–1981
[edit]
Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1964)
[edit]
In the mid-1960s Vidor crafted a 26-minute 16mm movie that sets forth his philosophy on the nature of individual perception. Narrated by the director, and quoting from theologian-philosophers Jonathan Edwards and Bishop Berkeley, the images serve to complement the abstract ideas he sets forth. The film is a discourse on subjective idealism, which maintains that the material world is an illusion, existing only in the human mind: humanity creates the world they experience.[210]
As Vidor describes in Whitmanesque terms:
"Nature gets the credit for what in truth should be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song, the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken; they should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation."[211]
Truth and Illusion provides an insight into the significance of Vidor's themes in his work, and is consistent with his Christian Science precepts.[212]
Micheal Neary served as assistant director on the film, and Fred Y. Smith completed the editing. The movie was never released commercially.[213]
The Metaphor: King Vidor meets with Andrew Wyeth (1980)
[edit]
Vidor's documentary The Metaphor consists of a number of interviews between the director and painter Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth had contacted Vidor in the late 1970s expressing admiration for his work. The artist emphasized that much of his material had been inspired by the director's 1925 war-romance The Big Parade.[214]
The documentary records the discussions between Vidor and both Wyeth and his spouse Betsy. A montage is formed by inter-cutting images of Wyeth's paintings with short clips from Vidor's The Big Parade. Vidor attempts to reveal an "inner metaphor" demonstrating the sources of artistic inspiration.[215]
Considering the film only a work in progress at the time of his death, the documentary had its premiere at the American Film Institute in 1980.[216] It was never given a general release and is rarely screened.[217]
Unproduced film projects
[edit]
Northwest Passage (Book 2): Vidor attempted to make a sequel to his film Northwest Passage in which Rogers' Rangers find the Northwest Passage, although filming never began because author Kenneth Roberts refused to cooperate with the project, and because MGM thought the cost in making the first film in Technicolor had proven prohibitive enough.[218]
Bright Light (late 1950s): a biographical study of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy.[219]
Conquest (formerly The Milly Story): In 1960, Vidor resumed efforts to make a sound version of his 1919 The Turn in the Road. His reconceived screenplay concerns a Hollywood director disillusioned with the film industry who inherits a gas station from his father in the fictional Colorado town of "Arcadia". The script's dialogue contains oblique references to a number of Vidor's silent films including (The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928)). Conquest introduces a mysterious young woman, "a feminine archetype" (a figure in Jungian philosophy) who serves as "the answer to everyone's problems" while pumping gas at the station. She disappears suddenly, leaving the director inspired, and he returns to Hollywood. Impressed by Italian director Federico Fellini's 8 ½ (1963), Vidor briefly corresponded with Fellini while writing Conquest. Vidor soon abandoned his 15-year effort to make the "unfashionable" movie, despite Sid Grauman – like Vidor an adherent to Christian Science – having purchased the rights. Even the modest budgetary requests were rejected by the tiny Allied Artists and they dropped the project.[220]
The Marble Faun: a "quite faithful" version of the 1860 story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.[219]
The Crowd: Vidor developed revisions of his 1928 silent masterpiece, including a 1960s sequel of Ann Head's 1967 novel Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jones (made as a TV feature without his input), and in the early 1970s another effort, Brother Jon.[221]
A Man Called Cervantes: Vidor was involved in script writing for an adaption of Bruno Frank's novel, but withdrew from the project, unhappy with script changes. The movie was shot and released in 1967 as Cervantes, but Vidor withdrew his name from the production.[222]
William Desmond Taylor: Vidor researched the murder of silent era actor-director William Desmond Taylor, killed under mysterious circumstances in 1922. Though no screenplay was forthcoming, author Sidney D. Kirkpatrick alleges in his novel, A Cast of Killers (1986), that Vidor solved the murder.[223]
The Actor: In 1979, Vidor sought financing for a biography of the ill-fated James Murray, star of Vidor's The Crowd (1928).[224]
Academic Presentations
[edit]
Vidor lectured occasionally on film production and directing in the late 1950s and the 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. He published a non-technical handbook providing anecdotes from his film career, On Film Making, in 1972.
On at least one occasion, Vidor made a presentation to film historian Arthur Knight's class at USC.[217][225]
Vidor as actor: Love and Money (1982)
[edit]
Vidor served as an 'extra" or made cameo appearances during his film career. An early film still exists from an unidentified Hotex Motion Picture Company silent short made in 1914, when he was 19 years old (he wears a Keystone Cop costume and false beard). While attempting to break into Hollywood as a director and screenwriter, Vidor took "bit parts" for Vitagraph Studios and Inceville in 1915–1916. During the height of his fame he made a number of cameo appearances in his own films, including The Patsy in 1926 and Our Daily Bread in 1934.
He did not appear as a featured actor until 1981, at the age of 85. Vidor provided a "charming" tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Walter Klein, a senile grandfather, in director James Toback's Love and Money. Vidor's motivation in accepting the role was a desire to observe contemporary movie-making technology. Love and Money was released in 1982, shortly before Vidor's death.[226]
Personal life
[edit]
In 1944 Vidor, a Republican,[227] joined the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.
Vidor published his autobiography, A Tree is a Tree, in 1953. 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 filming exterior shots).
King Vidor was a Christian Scientist and wrote occasionally for church publications.[228][229][230]
Marriages
[edit]
Vidor was married three times and had three daughters:
Florence Arto (m. 1915–1924)
(later married Jascha Heifetz)
Suzanne (1918–2003)
(adopted by Jascha Heifetz)
Eleanor Boardman (m. 1926–1931)
Antonia (1927–2012)
Belinda (1930–2023)
Elizabeth Hill (m. 1932–1978)
Death
[edit]
Vidor died at age 88 of a heart attack at his ranch in Paso Robles, California, on November 1, 1982.
Filmography
[edit]
Academy Awards and nominations
[edit]
Year Award Film Result 1927–28 Best Director The Crowd Frank Borzage – 7th Heaven 1929–30 Hallelujah Lewis Milestone – All Quiet on the Western Front 1931–32 Outstanding Production The Champ Irving Thalberg – Grand Hotel Best Director Frank Borzage – Bad Girl 1938 The Citadel Frank Capra – You Can't Take It with You 1956 War and Peace George Stevens – Giant 1979 Academy Honorary Award for his incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator
Directed Academy Award performances
[edit]
Year Performer Film Result Academy Award for Best Actor 1931–32 Wallace Beery The Champ Won 1938 Robert Donat The Citadel Nominated Academy Award for Best Actress 1937 Barbara Stanwyck Stella Dallas Nominated 1946 Jennifer Jones Duel in the Sun Nominated Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress 1937 Anne Shirley Stella Dallas Nominated 1946 Lillian Gish Duel in the Sun Nominated
Academy Awards in King Vidor films
[edit]
Year Film Academy Award
Nominations Academy Award
wins 1927–28 The Crowd
2
0
1929–30 Hallelujah
1
0
1931–32 The Champ
4
2
1936 The Texas Rangers
1
0
1938 The Citadel
4
0
1940 Northwest Passage
1
0
Comrade X
1
0
1946 Duel in the Sun
2
0
1949 Beyond the Forest
1
0
1956 War and Peace
3
0
Other awards
[edit]
In 1964, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[232] At the 11th Moscow International Film Festival in 1979, he was awarded with the Honorable Prize for his contribution to cinema.[233] In 2020, Vidor was honored with a retrospective at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, showcasing more than 30 of his films.[234][235]
Notes
[edit]
References
[edit]
Arroyo, José. 2016. Beyond the Forest (King Vidor, USA, 1949) https://notesonfilm1.com/2016/10/21/beyond-the-forest-king-vidor-usa-1949/ Retrieved July 15, 2015.
Baxter, John. 1970. Hollywood in the Thirties. International Film Guide Series. Paperback Library, New York. LOC Card Number 68–24003.
Baxter, John. 1976. King Vidor. Simon & Schuster, Inc. Monarch Film Studies. LOC Card Number 75–23544.
Berlinale archive 2020. 2020. Cynara. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/programme/detail/202011039.html Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Berlinale 2020. 2020. King Vidor Retrospective 2020: A Very Wide-ranging Director. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/berlinale-topics/interview-retrospective-2020.html Retrieved June 20, 2020.
Berlinale, 2020. 2020. Comrade X. https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202002542 Retrieved July 2, 2020.
Berlinale 2020. 2020. The Texas Rangers. https://www.berlinale.de/en/archive-2020/programme/detail/202002560.html Retrieved June 30, 2020
Callahan, Dan. 2007. Vidor, King. Senses of Cinema. February 2007, Issue 42 http://sensesofcinema.com/2007/great-directors/vidor/ Retrieved June 10, 2020.
Durgnat, Raymond and Simmon, Scott. 1988. King Vidor, American. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-05798-8
Fristoe, Roger. TMC. Comrade X. Turner Classic Movies. https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/1101 Retrieved June 29, 2020.
Gallagher, Tag. 2007. American Triptych: Vidor, Hawks and Ford. Senses of Cinema. February 2007 http://sensesofcinema.com/2007/the-moral-of-the-auteur-theory/vidor-hawks-ford/ Retrieved May 30, 2020.
Gustafsson, Fredrik. 2016. King Vidor, An American Romantic La furia umana. LFU/28 Winter 2016. http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/61-archive/lfu-28/548-fredrik-gustafsson-king-vidor-an-american-romantic Retrieved June 4, 2020.
Hampton, Howard. 2013. Into the Morass. Film Comment. July–August 2013 Issue https://www.filmcomment.com/article/beyond-the-forest-king-vidor-bette-davis/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Higham, Charles. 1972. "Long Live Vidor, A Hollywood King" https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/03/archives/long-live-vidor-a-hollywood-king-long-live-vidor-who-was-a-king-of.html Retrieved June 10, 2020
Higham, Charles. 1973. The Art of the American Film: 1900–1971. Doubleday & Company, Inc. New York. ISBN 0-385-06935-9. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 70-186026.
Hodsdon, Bruce. 2013. The Crowd. August 2013 CTEQ Annotations of Film Issue 68. http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-crowd/ Retrieved June 24, 2020.
Holliman, Rod. TMC. The Crowd. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/100/The-Crowd/ Retrieved June 20, 2020.
Koszarski, Richard. 1976. Hollywood Directors: 1914–1940. Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 76–9262.
Landazuri, Margarita. TMC. The Wedding Night (1935). Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/95243/The-Wedding-Night/articles.html Retrieved June 21, 2020
Landazuri, Margarita. TMC. Cynara (1932).Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.turner.com/tcmdb/title/72067/Cynara/articles.html Retrieved June 21, 2020
Melville, David. 2013. Scary Monsters (and Super Tramps) – Beyond the Forest. Senses of Cinema. CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 68 http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/scary-monsters-and-super-tramps-beyond-the-forest/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. The Essentials: The Champ. Turner Movie Classics. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/12500/Champ-The/ Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. H. M. PULHAM, ESQ. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/movies/77194/H-M-Pulham-Esq-/ Retrieved June 30, 2020.
Miller, Frank. TMC. Duel in the Sun. Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.turner.com/tcmdb/title/73733/Duel-in-the-Sun/articles.html Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Reinhardt, Bernd. 2020. Rediscovering Hallelujah (1929), director King Vidor's sensitive film with all-black cast: 70th Berlin International Film Festival. World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved May 24, 2020. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/07/ber2-a07.html
Sarris, Andrew. 1973. Primal Screen. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 9780671213411
Shaw, Dan. 2013. The Fountainhead. Senses of Cinema. CTEQ Annotations on Film Issue 68 August 2013. http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/the-fountainhead/ Retrieved July 11, 2020.
Silver, Charles. 2010. King Vidor's Hallelujah http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2010/06/15/king-vidors-hallelujah/ Retrieved June 24, 2020
Silver, Charles. 2012. King Vidor's Northwest Passage https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/10/09/king-vidors-northwest-passage/ Retrieved July 3, 2020.
Silver, Charles. 1982. Duel in the Sun. Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN19827 Archived July 13, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 3, 2020.
Simmons, Scott. 2004. The Invention of the Western Film: Duel in the Sun http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN15062 Archived July 9, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Simmons, Scott. 1988. The Fountainhead (1949). Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. http://archive.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN6980 Archived July 11, 2020, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Smith, Richard Harland. TMC. Billy the Kid (1930). Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/14902/Billy-the-Kid/articles.html Retrieved June 26, 2020.
Stafford, Jeff. TMC. The Fountainhead 1949. Turner Classi Movies. http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/596/The-Fountainhead/articles.html Retrieved July 7, 2020.
Whiteley, Chris. 2010. King Vidor (1894–1982) Hollywood Golden Age. http://www.hollywoodsgoldenage.com/moguls/king_vidor.html Retrieved July 21, 2020.
Biography portal
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https://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/eleanor-boardman/
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Eleanor Boardman
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Find the location of Eleanor Boardman's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, read a biography, see related stars and browse a map of important places in their career.
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https://d1qqc1e9kvmdh8.cloudfront.net/img/favicon.ico
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latimes.com
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https://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/eleanor-boardman/
|
Actress Born Aug. 19, 1898 in Philadelphia, PA
Eleanor Boardman was an actress during the silent film era who was married to director King Vidor.
A native of Philadelphia, Boardman won nationwide fame as the "Kodak Girl" on posters that advertised Eastman Kodak photographic products.
Her subsequent Hollywood career, which included few talkies, peaked with her leading role in "The Crowd" in 1928. Vidor directed the silent film.
Boardman also appeared in such silents as "Stranger's Banquet," "The Silent Accuser," "Memory Lane" and "Tell It to the Marines."
Her brief fling with talkies included such films as "She Goes to War," "Mamba," "The Flood" and a remake of "The Squaw Man."
Boardman in effect retired from the film business in 1931.
She divorced Vidor in 1933. They waged several court battles over the next decade over support and custody of their two daughters. Vidor won custody when Boardman took the girls to live in pre-World War II Europe. But she returned to the United States and regained custody of the children.
Boardman was also married to French director Harry D. D'Arrast.
She was 93 when she died.
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Portrait of the actress Eleanor Boardman by Thomas Staedeli
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.
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The actress Eleanor Boardman had her first job at the age of 15 when she worked as a model for Eastman Kodak. She was very successful and became the "Kodak Girl".
Finally she decided to try her luck in Hollywood. She got her first contract at Goldwyn Pictures in 1922 and took part in "The Strangers' Banquet" (22), "Gimme" (23) and "Vanity Fair" (23).
Especially director King Vidor became an important support for her career in the next years. She shot with him the movies "Three Wise Fools" (23), "Wine of Youth" (24), "The Wife of the Centaur" (25), "Proud Flesh" (25), "Bardelys the Magnificent" (26) and their greatest common success "The Crowd" (28).
They got married in 1926.
When Goldwyn Pictures merged to MGM she kept at the new company and played for the company regularly in movies till 1932. To her well-known movies for MGM belong among others "The Circle" (25), "She Goes to War" (29), "The Great Meadow" (31) and "Women Love Once" (31).
She left MGM in 1932 and got a divorce from King Vidor. She went to Europe where she appeared in her last two movies "La traviesa molinera" (34) and "The Three Cornered Hat" (35) before she retired from the filmbusiness. She lived with her second husband Henri d'Abbadie d?Arrast in the Pyrenees till 1968. After the death of her husband she moved to Montecito, California where she died at the age of 93.
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https://pixels.com/featured/king-vidor-with-his-wife-eleanor-boardman-edward-steichen.html
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King Vidor With His Wife Eleanor Boardman Photograph by Edward Steichen
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King Vidor With His Wife Eleanor Boardman is a photograph by Edward Steichen which was uploaded on March 10th, 2017. The photograph may be purchased as wall art, home decor, apparel, phone cases, greeting cards, and more. All products are produced on-demand and shipped worldwide within 2 - 3 business days.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Boardman
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Eleanor Boardman
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2004-09-19T12:11:51+00:00
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Boardman
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American film actress
Olive Eleanor Boardman (August 19, 1898 – December 12, 1991) was an American film actress of the silent era.
Early life and career
[edit]
Olive Eleanor Boardman was born on August 19, 1898, the youngest child to George W. Boardman and Janice Merriam "Jennie" Stockman Boardman. She had two older sisters named Merriam and Esther.[1][2] In 1920, she was working as a contractor.[3]
Educated in Philadelphia,[4] Boardman originally acted on stage, but she lost her voice while starring in The National Anthem. She then entered a nationwide contest for new actors and actresses for silent films. She was chosen from among 1,000 competitors by Goldwyn Pictures as their "New Face of 1922". Her initial screen test was unsuccessful, but a second test resulted in a contract.[5] After several successful supporting roles, she played the lead in Souls for Sale in 1923. That same year, Boardman's growing popularity was reflected by her inclusion on the list of WAMPAS Baby Stars.[citation needed]
She appeared in more than 30 films during her career, including director King Vidor's The Crowd (1928). Her performance in that film is widely recognized as one of the outstanding performances in American silent film. In 1932, after some success in sound films, she parted ways with MGM. Her final film was The Three Cornered Hat, which was made in Spain in 1935. After that production, she retired from acting and retreated from Hollywood. Her last appearances were in an interview filmed for Kevin Brownlow and David Gill's British documentary series Hollywood (1980) and the series MGM: When the Lion Roars (1992).[citation needed]
Personal life
[edit]
Boardman was married to film director King Vidor,[5]: 111 with whom she had two daughters, Antonia and Belinda. They married in 1926 and were divorced on April 11, 1933.[6] Fellow actors John Gilbert and Greta Garbo had allegedly planned a double wedding with them, but Garbo broke the plans at the last minute.[5]: 111
On May 23, 1929, a federal grand jury returned an indictment that charged Boardman with evading income tax payments in 1925, 1926, and 1927. Simultaneously, an information filed in federal court accused Vidor of income tax evasion in 1925 and 1926. J. Marjorie Berger, an income tax counselor in Hollywood, had earlier been indicted on charges of preparing a false income tax return for the couple for 1925.[7]
Boardman's second husband was Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast,[8] to whom she was married from 1940. She divided her time between the United States and their chateau in the Pyrenees Mountains. After her husband's death in 1968, she permanently relocated to the United States, where she settled into Montecito, California, living in a house she designed.
Death
[edit]
Boardman died in her sleep at her Santa Barbara, California, home on December 12, 1991, at the age of 93.[9] Her ashes were scattered in Santa Barbara near her home.[citation needed]
Recognition
[edit]
For her contributions to the film industry, Boardman has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her star is located at 6928 Hollywood Boulevard.[10]
Filmography
[edit]
Year Title Role Notes 1922 The Strangers' Banquet Jean McPherson Lost film 1923 Gimme Clothilde Kingsley Lost film Vanity Fair Amelia Sedley Lost film Souls for Sale Miss Remember Steddon Three Wise Fools Rena Fairchild / Sydney Fairfield The Day of Faith Jane Maynard Lost film 1924 True as Steel Ethel Parry Incomplete film Wine of Youth Mary Hollister Sinners in Silk Penelope Stevens Lost film The Turmoil Mary Vertrees The Silent Accuser Barbara Jane Lost film So This Is Marriage? Beth Marsh Lost film The Wife of the Centaur Joan Converse Lost film 1925 The Way of a Girl Rosamond Proud Flesh Fernanda The Circle Elizabeth Cheney Exchange of Wives Margaret Rathburn The Only Thing Thyra, Princess of Svendborg The Auction Block Lorelei Knight Lost film 1926 Memory Lane Mary Bardelys the Magnificent Roxalanne de Lavedan Tell It to the Marines Nurse Norma Dale 1928 The Crowd Mary Diamond Handcuffs Tillie 1929 She Goes to War Joan 1930 Mamba Helen von Linden Redemption Lisa 1931 The Great Meadow Diony Hall The Flood Joan Marshall Women Love Once Helen Fields The Squaw Man Lady Diana Kerhill 1935 The Three Cornered Hat The Miller's Wife
References
[edit]
Biography portal
Film portal
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Sieh dir auf Facebook Beiträge, Fotos und vieles mehr an.
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King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman
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https://calisphere.org/crop/999x999/26094/d0955ec0858a8f80a8ff22af4cf97a4f
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Photo of King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman, attending the premiere of "Marianne". Photo dated: September 1, 1929.
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ithankyou: King Vidor & Queen Eleanor… Wine of Youth (1924)
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It’s one of the main missions of this blog for me to discover (or rediscover) the talent and creativity of (mostly) silent film. Before I st...
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https://travsd.wordpress.com/2021/08/19/eleanor-boardman-the-face-in-the-crowd/
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Eleanor Boardman: The Face in “The Crowd”
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2021-08-19T00:00:00
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The few who remember the name Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) today know her chiefly for being King Vidor's second wife and for starring in his 1928 masterpiece The Crowd. Boardman's screen career was very brief, lasting less than a decade, fewer than three dozen films. In fact she has nearly as many interesting credits outside cinema…
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(Travalanche)
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https://travsd.wordpress.com/2021/08/19/eleanor-boardman-the-face-in-the-crowd/
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The few who remember the name Eleanor Boardman (1898-1991) today know her chiefly for being King Vidor’s second wife and for starring in his 1928 masterpiece The Crowd.
Boardman’s screen career was very brief, lasting less than a decade, fewer than three dozen films. In fact she has nearly as many interesting credits outside cinema than in it. She started out as an artist’s model, and was apparently the one John R. Neill used for the character of Betsy Bobbin in L. Frank Baum’s book Tik-Tok of Oz (1914):
She was apparently for a time also the Eastman Kodak Girl in print adverts. She was in the chorus of a couple of Edgar Selwyn musicals, which led naturally to a contract with Goldwyn (co-founded by Selwyn). her first film was The Strangers Banquet (1922) with Hobart Bosworth, Claire Windsor, Rockliffe Fellowes, and Ford Sterling. She was also in the 1923 version of Vanity Fair, before her first starring picture Souls for Sale, working with Vidor for the first time in Three Wise Fools, and being named a WAMPAS Baby Star, all in the same year. She and Vidor were married in 1926, with Marion Davies as witness. Tell It to the Marines (1926) with Lon Chaney was another one of her silents. Her smattering of talkies included Flood (1931) with Monte Blue, and Cecil B. DeMille’s 1931 remake of The Squaw Man.
Boardman and Vidor divorced in 1933. By that time she had two daughters to raise, so she effectively dropped out of pictures, although she did return for one Spanish film, The Three Cornered Hat in 1935. In 1940 she married Argentine-French screenwriter-director Harry D’Abbadie D’Arrast, dividing time between the U.S. and Europe until his death in 1968.
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https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/18034%257C45996/Eleanor-Boardman/
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Not Available
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Turner Classic Movies presents the greatest classic films of all time from one of the largest film libraries in the world. Find extensive video, photos, articles, forums, and archival content from some of the best movies ever made only at TCM.com.
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Watch TCM
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http://prod.tcm.com/unavailable/
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Welcome, DISH customer! Please note that we cannot save your viewing history due to an arrangement with DISH.
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http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/2011/10/king-vidor-queen-eleanor-wine-of-youth.html
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ithankyou: King Vidor & Queen Eleanor… Wine of Youth (1924)
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It’s one of the main missions of this blog for me to discover (or rediscover) the talent and creativity of (mostly) silent film. Before I st...
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King Vidor Reigns Over Lincoln Center As Part of Retrospective
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From August 5th through the 14th, Film at Lincoln Center presented a major retrospective devoted to the director, King Vidor. Below is a commentary on the screenings that I attended.
La Bohème from 1926 was Vidor’s next work after his very successful The Big Parade—one of his strongest silent films, unfortunately screened in this series only in a digital format. It is based on Henri Murger’s famous Scenes of Bohemian Life, the source for Giacomo Puccini’s classic opera, and was a project selected by Lillian Gish who was then at the peak of her career. Her magnificent performance as Mimi is one of the most memorable aspects of this moving work. Although the director had some disagreements with the actress about her approach, he nonetheless went on to say that “The movies have never known a more dedicated artist than Lillian Gish.” (John Gilbert who was the lead in Vidor’s previous feature, is also superb as Rodolfe.) Gish had substantial control over the production but the material was evidently congenial to the director who here displays his mastery of melodrama, a genre of which he was to become one of the finest practitioners in Hollywood, alongside such sterling exemplars as D.W. Griffith, John M. Stahl, Douglas Sirk, and Vincente Minnelli, among others. La Bohème features striking photography by Hendrik Sartov, who had worked with Gish previously, but regrettably the original elements do not appear to have survived in a pristine state, diminishing what visual pleasures it must have originally afforded. The presentation featured live piano accompaniment by the excellent Donald Sosin who performed along with all the silents in the series.
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Details
Parent Category: Film Festivals
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 30 August 2022 02:01
Written by Jack Angstreich
Hallelujah
From August 5th through the 14th, Film at Lincoln Center presented a major retrospective devoted to the director, King Vidor. Below is a commentary on the screenings that I attended.
La Bohème from 1926 was Vidor’s next work after his very successful The Big Parade—one of his strongest silent films, unfortunately screened in this series only in a digital format. It is based on Henri Murger’s famous Scenes of Bohemian Life, the source for Giacomo Puccini’s classic opera, and was a project selected by Lillian Gish who was then at the peak of her career. Her magnificent performance as Mimi is one of the most memorable aspects of this moving work. Although the director had some disagreements with the actress about her approach, he nonetheless went on to say that “The movies have never known a more dedicated artist than Lillian Gish.” (John Gilbert who was the lead in Vidor’s previous feature, is also superb as Rodolfe.) Gish had substantial control over the production but the material was evidently congenial to the director who here displays his mastery of melodrama, a genre of which he was to become one of the finest practitioners in Hollywood, alongside such sterling exemplars as D.W. Griffith, John M. Stahl, Douglas Sirk, and Vincente Minnelli, among others. La Bohème features striking photography by Hendrik Sartov, who had worked with Gish previously, but regrettably the original elements do not appear to have survived in a pristine state, diminishing what visual pleasures it must have originally afforded. The presentation featured live piano accompaniment by the excellent Donald Sosin who performed along with all the silents in the series.
The Crowd, another of Vidor’s most important silent films and one of his most expressionistic despite its commitment to naturalism, is about the marital and economic struggles of a low-level worker in a large New York firm. It too has an extraordinary pair of leads: Eleanor Boardman—the director’s second wife—and James Murray, whom he discovered and who went on to have a tragic life that later inspired an unproduced screenplay by the filmmaker. The theme of the American Dream was to prove a crucial one in the Vidor’s career and his work displays a remarkable class-consciousness—he went on to re-use these protagonists in his even greater Our Daily Bread of 1934, one of the most left-wing films ever produced in Hollywood, which was screened in this series only in a digital format. A bravura crane shot traversing an endless series of office desks would seem to have influenced similar shots in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment and Orson Welles’s The Trial. In an interview with Cahiers du Cinéma, Jean-Luc Godard said, “Make films about the people, they said; but The Crowd had already been made, so why remake it?” I hope someday to have an opportunity to see Kevin Brownlow’s restoration of the film with a score by Carl Davis. Dave Kehr’s capsule review for the Chicago Reader is worth quoting:
King Vidor’s 1928 classic, with James Murray as the “average man” picked out of the crowd by Vidor’s gliding camera. In his autobiography, Vidor claims he sold the project to Irving Thalberg as a sequel to his hit war film,The Big Parade: “Life is like a battle, isn’t it?” Accordingly, the misfortunes that befall Murray are hardly average, but the melodramatic elements are integral to Vidor’s vision of individual struggle. The camera style owes something to Murnau, but the sense of space—the vast environments that define and attack his protagonists—is Vidor’s own.
Immediately after The Crowd—and released in the same year—Vidor directed two romantic comedies—a genre that he only infrequently essayed—that demonstrated the delightful talents of the underrated Marion Davies. The first, The Patsy, is the more substantial. In a hilarious sequence, the actress does amazing impressions of Gish, Mae Murray and Pola Negri. Marie Dressler is amusing too as the character’s unsympathetic mother. The second film, Show People, a spoof of Hollywood, is slighter but quite charming and co-stars the appealing William Haines as the love interest of the heroine. Davies does an equally astonishing impression of Gloria Swanson here.
Vidor’s subsequent feature of the following year, Hallelujah, a religious musical with an all-Black cast, is one of his most perfectly realized and was a personal project partly financed with his own salary, although it proved to be a popular success. The director commented on the inspiration for the film:
I used to watch the negroes in the South, which was my home. I studied their music, and I used to wonder at the pent-up romance in them.
In his 1953 autobiography, A Tree is a Tree, he said about Hallelujah:
The sincerity and fervour of their religious expression intrigued me, as did the honest simplicity of their sexual drives. In many instances the intermingling of these two activities seemed to offer strikingly dramatic content.
The film is also notable for the indelible first screen appearance of Nina Mae McKinney.
Street Scene, from 1931, is an adaptation of the eponymous, acclaimed play by Elmer Rice—it later became an opera with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Langston Hughes—but, like Hallelujah, is photographed, very creatively, like a silent movie, despite almost entirely being filmed on a single set. The distinguished source, however, like that of many stage works turned into motion pictures, does seem to hamper the film somewhat—one would have liked for a scenarist to have re-written the dialogue for the new medium. One asset is the incomparably beautiful Sylvia Sidney in the lead role. The justly famous theme music—it is a clever pastiche of George Gershwin—is by Alfred Newman.
Vidor’s following feature, The Champ, released the same year and which was an enormous success, is less original and more conventional in style but nonetheless incredibly moving, especially for Jackie Cooper’s astounding child performance. The film helped revive Wallace Beery’s career. As heartbreaking but more complex as a work of social criticism is Stella Dallas from 1937, a superior remake of the excellent Henry King silent of the same name—again with a Newman score and elegantly photographed by the superb Rudolph Maté. The effect of the director’s accomplishedmise-en-scèneis amplified by a marvelous cast, particularly Barbara Stanwyck, Anne Shirley, and Alan Hale.
Vidor’s next work, The Citadel, released the following year—an adaptation of a novel by A.J. Cronin, who wrote the classic novel, The Stars Look Down, famously filmed by Carol Reed—seems less personally charged despite Vidor’s admiration of the material but is certainly worth seeing. Handsomely photographed by Harry Stradling, it too has a wonderful cast, including Robert Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson, Rex Harrison, Francis L. Sullivan, Cecil Parker, Nora Swinburne, and Felix Aylmer.
After this, Vidor contributed most of the outstanding black-and-white Kansas sequences in David O. Selznick’s The Wizard of Oz, as well as those of “Over the Rainbow” And “We’re Off to See the Wizard”; he then completed a masterpiece, Northwest Passage of 1940—shot in glorious Technicolor—a patriotic itinerary Western about the French and Indian Wars of the eighteenth century, which was screened in an astonishing 35-millimeter print from the archive of the George Eastman Museum. The director replaced W. S. Van Dyke after shooting began but his visual imagination was wholly engaged despite this. The cast includes a charismatic Spencer Tracy and an unusually good Robert Young in lead roles.
His following film, Comrade X, released the same year, is an entertaining, if lightweight and less personal, comedy—an apparent attempt to duplicate the success of Ernst Lubitsch’s Ninotchka—attractively photographedby Joseph Ruttenberg, and with an amusing screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, with uncredited work by Herman J. Mankiewicz. Of the leads, Clark Gable is characteristically excellent while the stunningly gorgeous Hedy Lamarr is surprisingly so. The fine secondary cast includes Eve Arden, Felix Bressart, Oscar Homolka, and Sig Rumann, the latter especially hilarious.
Vidor attempted something more significant and more in line with his thematic preoccupations with his next opus, which was released the following year, H.M. Pulham, Esq.,from the novel by John P. Marquand, which Harold Bloom unpredictably prophesied—in The Western Canon—would prove to be a permanent book. Certainly a creditable achievement, the film nonetheless seemed to me to be less imposing than one might have expected given the director’s expected affinity for the material. One weakness may be Robert Young’s performance which lacks the pathos and wit that Ronald Colman brought to a comparable role in a more satisfying adaptation of a work by the same author, The Late George Apley, by a filmmaker of comparable stature to Vidor, Joseph Mankiewicz. Lamarr is again unusually convincing as the bewitching object of his youthful affection. The supporting cast includes Ruth Hussey, Charles Coburn, and Van Heflin. The director’s note on H.M. Pulham, Esq. is worth citing:
Here was American life today told in terms of American humor, romance and a generous sprinkling of our home-grown satire. In addition, the story covered a span of more than 30 years, and I saw a chance to present a sort of American cavalcade of the significant events of this century while telling the human story of an American gentleman.
The book is written in the first person. It was all told from Harry Pulham's viewpoint. This is responsible for much of the deep human psychology of the novel. Here was a challenge. Could a motion picture be told completely in the first person? It would mean that nothing could happen in the entire picture unless it was seen or witnessed or experienced by Pulham. We decided to try it. The result is that in the picture nothing happens that is not experienced by Pulham.
So Robert Young is in every scene of the picture or is in the room when every scene happens. In the case of telephone conversations, no one is shown at the other end of the line. We only hear what Pulham hears. We do not see the other person at any time, for this would be letting the audience see something that Harry Pulham didn't see.
Much more ambitious was Vidor’s next work, An American Romance, a very personal project released in 1944, the third part of an informal “War, Wheat and Steel” trilogy with The Big Parade and Our Daily Bread.(The novelist John Fante was an uncredited contributor to the screenplay.) Unhappily, the film was severely cut by about fifty minutes and was unsuccessful commercially. What remains, artfully photographed in Technicolor by Harold Rosson, is of genuine interest, however, if maybe not amongst the director’s supreme achievements—two sequences of industrial assembly are especially compelling. An American Romance stars Brian Donlevy—whom the director thought was miscast—and Ann Richards. (Vidor originally wanted Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, and Joseph Cotten, all of whom were unavailable.) This too was shown in stellar 35-millimeter print from the George Eastman Museum. In A Tree is a Tree, Vidor had this to say about his experience after finishing the film:
When the picture was previewed in Inglewood, Louis B. Mayer came to me on the sidewalk in front of the theater, put his arm around my shoulders and said, 'I've just seen the greatest picture our company ever made'. However, an order came from the New York office to cut half an hour. They cut the human elements of the story instead of the documentary sections, explaining that this was the only way a half hour could be taken out without complications in the musical soundtrack. In other words, the film was edited according to the soundtrack and not according to the inherent story values. At the lowest emotional level I have reached since I have been on Hollywood, I went to my office, packed up and moved out of the studio. The picture was not a box office success. Many of the inhabitants of Hollywood and Beverly Hills have never seen the film and many do not even know it was made. I spent 3 years of my life on the project and MGM spent close to $3,000,000.
His next movie, the grandiose Duel in the Sun from 1946, a sublime Western photographed in dazzling Technicolor, is mesmerizing despite considerable interference from its producer, Selznick, as well as cuts demanded by ratings review boards. Disagreements with Selznick purportedly caused Vidor to quit the project two days before the end of shooting. Like other prominent films of the producer, such as The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, uncredited direction was undertaken by many hands, including Josef von Sternberg (who also served as color consultant), William Dieterle, William Cameron Menzies, Otto Brower, Sidney Franklin, along with Selznick himself but, even so, Vidor’s vision is discernible. (Duel in the Sun also had three cinematographers: Rosson again, Lee Garmes, and Ray Rennahan.) The source for the story is a novel by Niven Busch whose distinguished contributions as a screenwriter include Howard Hawks’s The Crowd Roars, Tay Garnett’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raoul Walsh’s Pursued, and uncredited work on Minnelli’s Gigi; he also wrote the book that was the basis for Anthony Mann’s The Furies. Jennifer Jones is uncommonly convincing in the lead role and breathtakingly alluring. Gregory Peck gives a brilliant, atypical performance as her rakish lover. The secondary cast is probably the most notable of Vidor’s entire career, including Gish again, Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Herbert Marshall, Walter Huston, Charles Bickford, Harry Carey, Sidney Blackmer, Otto Kruger and, above all, Butterfly McQueen. The film was screened in a superlative 35-millimeter print from the Museum of Modern Art.
The erotic intensity of Duel in the Sun is continued in The Fountainhead from 1949–after Ayn Rand’s bestselling novel—one of the pinnacles of Vidor’s œuvre. The director’s ambivalence toward the author’s ideology generates a productive tension with the material. Rand’s dialogue is deliriously crazy; for the director, it serves as one vehicle for the expression of the larger-than-life passions that surge through his characters’ lives, as one can observe in many of his most essential films, such as Hallelujah, Duel in the Sun, and later in Beyond the Forest—released the same year but disappointingly not screened in this series—and Ruby Gentry from 1952, shown here only in a 16-millimeter print. With his cinematographer, Robert Burks—most celebrated for his terrific collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock—he found the most enthralling visual correlatives for these almost cosmic energies. A glamorous and entrancing Patricia Neal is a revelation in a cast that includes Gary Cooper, Raymond Massey, and Ray Collins.
Vidor’s Hollywood career concluded with Solomon and Sheba in 1958, a difficult production that he did not judge as fully successful. In 1964, he executed a very strange essay-film in 16-millimeter Kodachrome, Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics, which reflects his religious views—he was a Christian Scientist—and which is a kind of brief for philosophical idealism. (For an intriguing defense of this work, as well as an interpretation of the director’s style, see Fred Camper’s fascinating article, “The Myth of the Avant-Garde Film.”) He completed another short documentary in 16-millimeter in 1980, Metaphor, mostly a record of conversations on the title’s subject between Vidor and Andrew Wyeth, his favorite American painter. Wyeth’s favorite film was The Big Parade, which he claimed to have seen at least 180 times! Both films were screened in a digital format. As a footnote to the retrospective, the final program also featured Journey to Galveston, also from 1980, an estimable short 16-millimeter portrait of Vidor—shown in digital—at his ranch, directed by Catherine Berge, who talked at length about the background to the film before the presentation.
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The Oz Enthusiast
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"Bill Campbell",
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Eleanor Boardman was a silent film star of the 1920's, who was married to director King Vidor - who worked on the MGM Wizard of Oz. (They di...
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http://theozenthusiast.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
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http://theozenthusiast.blogspot.com/2008/04/eleanor-boardman.html
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Eleanor Boardman
Eleanor Boardman was a silent film star of the 1920's, who was married to director King Vidor - who worked on the MGM Wizard of Oz. (They divorced several years before the movie was made). However, she has a much closer Oz connection. She was born in 1898 in Philadelphia, which was also the birthplace of W. W. Denslow, and John R. Neill. She gained some recognition at the age of 15, modeling as The Kodak Girl before entering films in 1922, but for Oz collectors she is best known as the model for Betsy Bobbin on the cover of Tik-Tok of Oz. I believe Peter Hanff learned of this connection when he met her daughter in California some years ago.
Tik-Tok was pubished in 1914, which would have made Eleanor about 16 years old at the time.
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Turner Classic Movies presents the greatest classic films of all time from one of the largest film libraries in the world. Find extensive video, photos, articles, forums, and archival content from some of the best movies ever made only at TCM.com.
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Welcome, DISH customer! Please note that we cannot save your viewing history due to an arrangement with DISH.
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King Vidor With His Wife Eleanor Boardman by Edward Steichen
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Publication: Vanity FairImage Type: PhotographDate: August 1st, 1927Description: Director King Vidor with his wife, actress Eleanor Boardman.
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Conde Nast
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/King-Vidor
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King Vidor | Biography, Movies, Assessment, & Facts
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"Michael Barson"
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1998-07-20T00:00:00+00:00
|
King Vidor, American motion-picture director whose films of the 1920s and ’30s were among the most creative of those produced in Hollywood. Among his most admired works were The Big Parade (1925), Hallelujah (1929), The Champ (1931), Stella Dallas (1937), and The Citadel (1938).
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en
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/favicon.png
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Encyclopedia Britannica
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/King-Vidor
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Silent films
As a schoolboy, Vidor was an assistant projectionist in a nickelodeon. In 1913 he directed his first film, Hurricane in Galveston, a short about the natural disaster in 1900, which Vidor had witnessed as a boy. Two years later he went to Hollywood, where he worked as an extra, a clerk, and a scriptwriter while his wife, Florence Vidor (divorced 1925), became a well-known silent-film actress. In 1918 Vidor returned to directing and made 16 short films. The following year he helmed his first feature, The Turn in the Road, a drama that he also wrote. He subsequently directed a number of films, some of which starred his wife.
In 1922 Vidor began working at Metro, which later merged (1924) into the entity known as MGM. His breakthrough was the antiwar masterpiece The Big Parade (1925), which became MGM’s biggest moneymaker to that time and vaulted lead John Gilbert to stardom. The epic, which centres on three soldiers during World War I, offered a honest portrayal of war, with Vidor effectively conveying the gruesome nature of trench warfare; George W. Hill directed parts of the film, but his work was uncredited. The film helped establish Vidor’s reputation as a trailblazer, and many of his subsequent films were notable for reflecting his humanistic vision. Such was the case with The Crowd (1928), which was another success for the director. The urban drama, which he cowrote, starred Eleanor Boardman (Vidor’s wife in 1926–31) and James Murray as a couple struggling in a harsh and impersonal New York City. The Crowd earned Vidor the first of his five Academy Award nominations for best director. In 1928 he directed Marion Davies in a pair of notable comedies, a genre he would rarely return to. In The Patsy the actress portrayed a misfit socialite who falls in love with her sister’s boyfriend; the silent film was notable for a scene in which Davies imitates several of Hollywood’s top female stars. Show People was a thinly disguised account of Gloria Swanson’s rise to stardom.
Early sound features
Although the coming of sound had ended many careers, it was a challenge that Vidor quickly mastered. Hallelujah, which was made into a talkie in postproduction, may have been the best picture of 1929, and it remains one of the seminal films of that transitional period. The drama was the first feature from a major studio to have an all-black cast, and Vidor had to invest his own salary in order to get the project approved. It starred Daniel L. Haynes as Zeke, a cotton picker who turns to religion after accidentally killing his brother; Nina Mae McKinney was especially memorable as a scheming dancer. The critics praised Vidor’s blend of melodrama and music, and he earned another Oscar nomination for best director. American audiences, however, were not quite ready to embrace the ground-breaking film, and it was a box-office failure.
If Vidor was disappointed, he did not let it affect his next project. The popular Not So Dumb (1930), adapted from a George S. Kaufman–Marc Connelly Broadway play, was another effervescent comedy with Davies. However, Billy the Kid (1930), with Johnny Mack Brown as the famed outlaw and Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett, the sheriff who killed him, was a box-office disappointment. Much better was the inventively naturalistic Street Scene (1931), from Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. The moving drama, which was set on a New York street, follows the lives of the various residents. The acting was especially notable, with Sylvia Sidney appearing in one of her best roles. Vidor’s success continued with The Champ (1931), an unabashedly maudlin—but wildly popular—tale of father-son love. Beery starred as a washed-up boxer who looks to make a comeback in order to keep custody of his son (Jackie Cooper). The film received an Academy Award nomination for outstanding production, and Beery won the statuette for best actor (shared with Fredric March). In addition, Vidor earned another Oscar nod for best director.
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In 1932 Vidor directed Cynara, a mediocre drama about a straying husband that starred Ronald Colman and Kay Francis, and Bird of Paradise, which cast Joel McCrea as an American who visits a South Seas island and falls in love with a woman (Dolores Del Rio) who is to be sacrificed to a volcano god. Next was The Stranger’s Return (1933), which centres on an unhappily married woman who leaves New York City and moves in with her grandfather (Lionel Barrymore), who owns a farm in the Midwest; it is a little-remembered drama about the merits of returning to one’s bucolic roots. That theme was explored with a different slant in what became Vidor’s biggest artistic gamble, Our Daily Bread (1934), a Depression-era drama about a struggling couple who create a farm collective. An unapologetically didactic picture (heavily influenced by Sergey Eisenstein and other Soviet filmmakers) about the rewards of communal living, it was not popular with audiences, and Vidor—who had once again invested his own money to get the production off the ground—reaped a major financial loss.
The elaborate romance The Wedding Night (1935) was made for producer Samuel Goldwyn, who intended it to be a showcase for Anna Sten (in her third American movie), a Russian-born actress he unsuccessfully tried to turn into the next Greta Garbo. Despite the presence of Gary Cooper, the film was not a commercial success, though the reviews were largely positive. So Red the Rose (1935) was a passable Civil War romance starring Margaret Sullavan as a wealthy Southerner who struggles to keep her family’s plantation and Randolph Scott as the pacifist turned Confederate officer she loves. In 1936 Vidor made The Texas Rangers (1936), an unpretentious well-paced western, with Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie as ex-bandits who become Rangers and are tasked with finding a former partner-in-crime (Lloyd Nolan).
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https://backlots.net/2014/10/31/cmba-forgotten-stars-blogathon-eleanor-boardman/
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CMBA FORGOTTEN STARS BLOGATHON: Eleanor Boardman
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Hello readers, and happy Halloween! I've been so busy these days that I didn't have time to put together my Hitchcock Halloween blogathon, but stay tuned in the coming days for the announcement of Backlots' 4th annual Dueling Divas blogathon, which will go on this year as usual! Today is the final day of this…
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en
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https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
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Backlots
|
https://backlots.net/2014/10/31/cmba-forgotten-stars-blogathon-eleanor-boardman/
|
Hello readers, and happy Halloween! I’ve been so busy these days that I didn’t have time to put together my Hitchcock Halloween blogathon, but stay tuned in the coming days for the announcement of Backlots’ 4th annual Dueling Divas blogathon, which will go on this year as usual!
Today is the final day of this year’s CMBA Blogathon, in which members of the esteemed Classic Movie Blog Association are writing about stars that have been lost in the annals of history. So many stars of yesteryear have faded due to unfortunate circumstance, and as classic film writers, we are doing our small part to bring back some of the glory that these stars enjoyed in their heyday.
The star that I have chosen for the blogathon is the talented and beautiful Eleanor Boardman, a hugely popular star in the silent era with enormous acting talent and uniquely soft yet defined features. Retiring in 1935 and spending a long and healthy retirement out of the spotlight, hers was the definition of a full life, lived her own way. In addition to having been a movie star, Boardman also spent time as a correspondent for the Hearst newspapers and worked in France for the International News Service, writing a column about American life in Paris.
Eleanor Boardman was born in Philadelphia on August 19, 1898, into a strict Presbyterian family. The method by which young Eleanor became an actress is disputed–by her own account, she left home to study art and interior design at the Academy of Fine Art, while former husband King Vidor claims that she rebelled against the stifling atmosphere of her home life to choose a career path of which her parents did not approve. But what we do know is that as a teenager, Eleanor was named the “Eastman Kodak Girl” and by 1922, she had come to the attention of Goldwyn Pictures, who gave her a contract for $750 a week. She moved to California to begin work and soon met and fell in love with up-and-coming director, King Vidor, who had seen pictures of her as a teenager and was immediately smitten.
In 1923, Boardman made Three Wise Fools with Vidor and subsequently made five more films with him as director in the next four years. The most masterful of the six films that Boardman made with Vidor is The Crowd (1928), a beautiful and sorrowful look at a man in social and economic turmoil. Eleanor Boardman plays his long-suffering wife, and gives a magnificent and nuanced portrayal of a woman conflicted between her love for her husband and her obligation to herself. The movie is one of my personal favorite silent films, and it is clear that Vidor understood instinctively how to direct Boardman toward her best work.
Vidor and Boardman finally married in 1926, in a ceremony that was supposed to be a double wedding with John Gilbert and Greta Garbo at the Beverly Hills home of Marion Davies. But when Garbo failed to show, Gilbert was left alone at the altar with Boardman and Vidor, who proceeded with the marriage. The photos from this event are immensely uncomfortable.
Boardman’s marriage to King Vidor produced two daughters, Antonia (born in 1927) and Belinda (born in 1930). But in 1931, shortly after the birth of their daughter Belinda, the marriage began to fail and they divorced the same year.
Following her divorce from Vidor, Boardman met writer Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. Boardman decided to retire from films in 1935, and in 1940 she married Arrast. Shortly after the marriage, she was hired by William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service to go to Paris to write a column entitled “Americans in Paris,” to appear in the newspapers once a week. She spent a year in Paris writing the column, meeting socialites and writing to her heart’s content, until she contracted tuberculosis and was forced to abandon the job to go to Switzerland to recover.
She returned to the United States with Arrast, and following his death in 1968 Boardman moved to Montecito, CA. She spent her remaining years in Montecito until her death at age 93 in 1991.
I was lucky enough to talk to Eleanor Boardman’s daughter, Belinda, a few months ago. The spitting image of her mother, Belinda talks articulately and beautifully about the full life she led with her illustrious mother and father, the parties and social scene of Hollywood, and the careers of her parents. Her words about her mother are always kind. Eleanor Boardman’s star burned brightly for a short period of time, but that was exactly how she wanted it. She lived her life her way.
Thanks to the CMBA for hosting this blogathon. Some of the material for this article comes from an interview conducted by Alan Greenberg with Eleanor Boardman in the 1980s. I have the privilege of access to portions of this interview, and have used it to fill in information about the life of this fascinating star. Many thanks also to Alan Greenberg for letting me listen to it.
See you next time!
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https://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/king-vidors-the-crowd-1928-revelatory-and-still-modern/
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King Vidor’s “The Crowd” (1928): Revelatory and Still Modern
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I had never heard of "The Crowd," King Vidor's amazing 1928 film about a feckless young man's progress in work, love and life in New York City, until a few days ago. It was shown at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last night as the opening film of the Mary Pickford Celebration…
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Under the Hollywood Sign
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https://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/king-vidors-the-crowd-1928-revelatory-and-still-modern/
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I had never heard of “The Crowd,” King Vidor’s amazing 1928 film about a feckless young man’s progress in work, love and life in New York City, until a few days ago. It was shown at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences last night as the opening film of the Mary Pickford Celebration of Silent Film in a handsomely restored 35mm print from Warner Bros. To put it mildly, it was stunning. Starring James Murray in the lead and Eleanor Boardman (Mrs. King Vidor) as his beautiful, long-suffering wife, the film contained more complex character development than any feature film in recent memory–and without dialogue.
As film historian Kevin Brownlow pointed out, “The Crowd” influenced many subsequent films and their directors. Billy Wilder owes the biggest debt to Vidor, as “The Apartment” contains not only its office scenario–the huge room full of clerks especially–but exterior shots of New York skyscrapers and thronged streets. (Not to mention that the Jack Lemmon character in “The Apartment” could arguably be seen as a more responsible version of “The Crowd’s” John.) In “The Hudsucker Proxy” The Coen Brothers used many of the same visual elements, along with a John-like wide-eyed clerk played by Tim Robbins. No less a genius that Vittorio DeSica told Vidor that he based “Bicycle Thief” on “The Crowd,” and clearly he took the street and theater scenes from it. Yet despite its influence, “The Crowd” was forgotten for decades and only recently reconstructed. I hope Warner Bros. will release it on DVD soon for the larger audience it deserves.
Those who missed “The Crowd” can still catch tomorrow night’s film, Ernst Lubisch’s “The Student Prince in Old Heidleberg,” starring Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer and Jean Hersholt. Released in 1927 from MGM, “The Student Prince” was the brainchild of Irving G.Thalberg, who hired Lubisch to adapt a 1924 operetta based on the 1989 novel of the same name. Those unacquainted with “The Lubisch Touch” will see it in action here. For tickets, go to http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/index.html
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https://immortalephemera.com/5491/eleanor-boardman/
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Eleanor Boardman by Tammy Stone
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2005-06-12T06:37:15+00:00
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A biography and career overview for silent film star Eleanor Boardman accompanied by images of Eleanor Boardman Movie Cards and Movie Collectibles.
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en
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Immortal Ephemera
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https://immortalephemera.com/5491/eleanor-boardman/
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The Silent Collection by Tammy Stone
From cover girl to movie star, Eleanor Boardman led a charmed life. Then again, it’s difficult to gauge all these years later what life was really like in those hectic days when movies were becoming a phenomenon of mass popularity, when the studio heads didn’t know quite what they wanted out of actors and everything was one big experiment. But one thing seems sure: they liked what they saw the minute Eleanor came into town.
While they didn’t turn her into an instant star a la Mary Pickford, Clara Bow or Norma Talmadge, they consistently employed Eleanor for her inordinate beauty and utter ease in front of the cameras. In those heady days, this translated into a very decent career of 35 films or so – not as prolific as many of her peers, but enough to garner her attention – and a life among the stars.
Boardman was born in Philadelphia on August 19, 1898, three years after the movies had become available to the public. Her early family life, however, was not compatible with the world that the movies were opening up. Her parents were extremely religious, and believed that films were wicked, and that watching them was tantamount to a sin. Luckily for us, Eleanor did not at all agree with her parents, and from the start sought out her own, independent lifestyle.
She was successful at it too. When she was a teenager, she became a model, and famously so when she signed on with Eastman Kodak to be one of what would be many “Kodak Girls.” Eleanor seemed to be able to smell out good opportunities, as this job was no mere modeling gig; Kodak, as we all know, would become the eminent manufacturer of motion picture film stock. But we jump ahead – first Eleanor worked her way up the modeling ranks, and when she reached the tender ages of fifteen and sixteen, she became the official “Kodak Girl.” This essentially meant that she was their leading model and the most recognizable face used to sell all Kodak products. (Much like today, we associate Kate Moss with Calvin Klein and Cindy Crawford with The Gap.)
For Eleanor, in the very early 1920s, this meant that her face appeared in an ad displayed all over the country. But she didn’t leave her career ambitions up to fate, hoping against hope to be discovered by a movie mogul, as happened to so many would-be stars before and after her. Instead, she packed up her bags and moved to Hollywood, bent on becoming an actress.
She didn’t have too long to wait. In 1922, the Goldwyn Pictures company signed her on as a contract player, and they liked her enough to renew her contract two years later, when they officially became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She ultimately stayed with MGM until 1932. The studio clearly admired her ravishing beauty, but Eleanor also possessed a rare sophistication not found among all the young starlets. What’s more, she also had a real knack for acting. All this pretty much made her a perfect package as a contract player, and the reason for her lasting success.
She also became the target for romantic affection, and this certainly didn’t hurt her career. She had eyes for only one, but she sure knew how to pick them. In 1926, Eleanor married King Vidor, already a well known filmmaker who would, by the late 1950s, make nearly sixty films, many of them classics. This extremely talented producer, director, actor and even presenter fell in love with Eleanor soon after he met her, and the rest, as they say, is history.
But the story only begins here. Before Eleanor and King Vidor were married, he was already appreciative of her acting abilities, and cast her in some of his best-remembered films, including Three Wise Fools (1923), Wine of Youth (1924), Wife of the Centaur (1925), Proud Flesh (1925) and Bardelys the Magnificent (1926). She worked with some impressive costars in these films, from John Gilbert to Johnnie Walker and Harrison Ford (not that Harrison Ford!)
Perhaps the greatest work for both of them was 1928’s The Crowd, also an MGM production, in which James Murray starred as an alienated man in a vast urban jungle. Eleanor starred opposite him as the love interest, and the film ended up exceeding everyone’s expectations; surprisingly, Eleanor was the object of the best critical praise, since this was a movie meant to bolster the James Murray’s career. The Crowd did so well that 53 years after its initial release, it enjoyed a revival in England, where it played to sold out crowds at 1981’s London Film Festival. All that time later, a critic marveled at Eleanor’s talent: What a superbly controlled performance Eleanor Boardman gives; and what a sweetness she had, uncloying, instinct with life.” (John Coleman, The New Statesman).
Of course, with fame comes a price, and in Hollywood, this price is usually malicious gossip. In Eleanor’s case, rumors started flying among those who love to label celebrities that Eleanor was “the most outspoken girl in Hollywood.” (It could have been a lot worse!)
The star certainly did have the opportunity to speak out in a lot of places, given she was on everyone’s guest list for years. Among her elite hosts were William Randolph Hearst (the notorious newspaper mogul who inspired Citizen Kane) and Marion Davies, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, the Gish sisters and John Barrymore. In other words, the who’s who of early Hollywood.
Although Eleanor’s film career started late into the silent era, she did survive the transition to sound, at least for awhile.
Between 1927 and 1932 she made several talkies, but then she left MGM, divorced King Vidor, and went to Spain to make what be her two last films: 1934’s It Happened in Spain and 1935’s The Three Cornered Hat (Henri d’Abbadie d’Arrast directed). D’Arrast and Eleanor had something in common, as both were now well-known figures in Hollywood, but trying their luck out overseas. They also got along exceptionally well, and married soon after they finished the film.
After this, Eleanor lived the life of royalty, dividing her time between the U.S. and Europe, where the happy couple owned a chateau in the Pyrenees. In 1968, after d’Arrast died, Eleanor decided to move back to her native country, and settled in Montecito, California.
Ever ambitious, she didn’t settle into any old house, but designed one herself so that she could live out her last days in comfort in style: exactly as she had lived. And she lived long – she passed away on December 12, 1991, at the age of 93, perhaps not the most luminescent star in Hollywood, but one of the most stable, talented and enduring.
Tammy Stone is a freelance writer and journalist based in Toronto. Watch for her regular column on the greats of the Silent Screen in each issue of The Movie Profiles & Premiums Newsletter. Tammy invites you to write her with any questions or comments on her column.
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-16-mn-340-story.html
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E. Boardman; Was Actress in Silent Films
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"MYRNA OLIVER"
] |
1991-12-16T00:00:00
|
Eleanor Boardman, actress during the silent film era who was married to director King Vidor, has died.
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en
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/apple-touch-icon.png
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Los Angeles Times
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https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-12-16-mn-340-story.html
|
Eleanor Boardman, actress during the silent film era who was married to director King Vidor, has died. She was 93.
Miss Boardman died Thursday in her sleep at her Santa Barbara home, her stepdaughter, Suzanne Parry, said.
A native of Philadelphia, Miss Boardman won nationwide fame as the “Kodak Girl” on posters that advertised Eastman Kodak photographic products.
Her subsequent Hollywood career, which included few talkies, peaked with her leading role in “The Crowd” in 1928. Vidor directed the silent film.
Miss Boardman also appeared in such silents as “Stranger’s Banquet,” “The Silent Accuser,” “Memory Lane” and “Tell It to the Marines.”
Her brief fling with talkies included such films as “She Goes to War,” “Mamba,” “The Flood” and a remake of “The Squaw Man.”
Miss Boardman in effect retired from the film business in 1931.
She divorced Vidor in 1933. They waged several court battles over the next decade over support and custody of their two daughters. Vidor won custody when Miss Boardman took the girls to live in pre-World War II Europe. But she returned to the United States and regained custody of the children.
Miss Boardman was also married to French director Harry D. D’Arrast.
Survivors include her two daughters, Belinda Vidor Holliday, of Middleton in Northern California, and Antonia Vidor Whitnah, of Carmel, and four grandchildren.
At Miss Boardman’s request, there will be no services.
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1313
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yago
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0
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http://ithankyouarthur.blogspot.com/2011/10/king-vidor-queen-eleanor-wine-of-youth.html
|
en
|
ithankyou: King Vidor & Queen Eleanor… Wine of Youth (1924)
|
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It’s one of the main missions of this blog for me to discover (or rediscover) the talent and creativity of (mostly) silent film. Before I st...
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https://condenaststore.com/featured/king-vidor-with-his-wife-eleanor-boardman-edward-steichen.html
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King Vidor With His Wife Eleanor Boardman by Edward Steichen
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Publication: Vanity FairImage Type: PhotographDate: August 1st, 1927Description: Director King Vidor with his wife, actress Eleanor Boardman.
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Conde Nast
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1313
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yago
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2
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|
http://cinecollage.net/king-vidor.html
|
en
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cineCollage :: King Vidor
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King Vidor presents a problem for those critics who like to herd directors into the convenient pens that auteur theory has so solidly erected. Unusually eclectic, he flitted from the sober realism of Street Scene (1931) to the lurid melodramatics of Duel In The Sun (1946) via the womenâs picture Stella Dallas (1937).
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King Vidor (1894-1982)
"King Vidor presents a problem for those critics who like to herd directors into the convenient pens that auteur theory has so solidly erected. Unusually eclectic, he flitted from the sober realism of Street Scene (1931) to the lurid melodramatics of Duel in the Sun (1946) via the womenâs picture Stella Dallas (1937). A yawning ideological gap also existed among his films, and David Thomson isnât the only critic to spot the ease with which Vidor could move from the neo-socialism of Our Daily Bread (1934) to the crypto-fascism of The Fountainhead (1949). Itâs quite typical of Vidor that the former, about the bitter travails of a farm commune, was condemned for being both left and right wing." [2]
"King Wallis Vidor (February 8, 1894-November 1, 1982) originated in Galveston, Texas, retaining vivid memories all his life of a devastating flood and hurricane that hit the town when he was a child. A storm provided the subject of his moviemaking debut in 1909, which he shot with his friend Roy Clough and the latterâs crude homemade camera. A summer job as a ticket taker and substitute projectionist in a nickelodeon had engendered a lifelong fascination: âI was interested in photography and movement even before I started photographing things with a camera.â
At 18 Vidor was appointed Texas representative for New York-based Mutual Weekly newsreel company, partnering with a chauffeur who owned perhaps the only movie camera in the Lone Star State. After making a series of documentaries and short comedies, and marrying an aspiring actress named Florence Arto, he made his way to Hollywood in 1915.
Florence Vidor earned $10 a week as a contract player for Vitagraph Company while the fledgling filmmaker tried to peddle scenarios, writing more than 50 before finally selling one to Vitagraph for $30. He also worked as an extra for $1.50 a day, and managed to get onto the set of Intolerance to observe D. W. Griffith in action. âYou couldnât think of a greater experience or opportunity than to be on that set. I would have done just about anything to get in and watch what was going on.â
Mechanically inclined and too self-conscious to be an actor, the ambitious young man set his sights on becoming a director. For him, Hollywood was âjust one great Disneyland. It was a place where I wanted to be, and I wanted to be part of it⦠Everything to do with movies fascinated me. I didnât have thoughts about anything else.â
Prop man, assistant cameraman or what have you, Vidor took âany sort of studio work I could scare up,â to study the craft of filmmaking in those pre-union days. âI picked up all I could - I didn't separate things - writing et cetera was all part of it. On one film we were short musicians [to play mood music], so the cameraman played the violin and I cranked the camera; itâs all of the same craft,â he stated in a 1978 interview. âI'm not much on advice, but I would advise young people who want to make films to get in there and learn; learn the whole business. It's all one-learn how an actor feels. What I've learned is that you have to get in there and do it.â
The Texas native eventually got a job at Universal as a company clerk, supplementing his pay check by selling the studio a number of scenarios - written under the pseudonym of Charles K. Wallis (using his fatherâs first name) to override the company rule against buying scripts from employees. In 1919, after directing a series of two-reel dramatic films about the problems of adolescents for Judge Willis Brown, a juvenile court judge, Vidor decided it was time to make the big jump to features. When an agent tried and failed to sell his services, he wrote an original script with the intent of refusing offers for it unless he were hired to direct, praying it would have âsuch merit that all the studios would want it.â
The Turn in the Road was envisioned as âthe story of a young man, stunned by some personal tragedy, hesitating in his march through life to ask, âWhat is Truth?â â Though the story had âa miracle and some metaphysical talk in it,â reflecting the directorâs Christian Science upbringing, a dentist - one of Judge Brownâs backers - took a one-week option on the script and quickly secured financing for the $9,000 production from a group of doctors he knew.
Vidor made several films for his benefactors, to whom he felt obligated. He then accepted a two picture deal with First National Exhibitors, which he parlayed into his own boutique studio, Vidor Village. He gained experience directing films featuring Colleen Moore (with whom he initiated a secret romance they rekindled decades later) and ZaSu Pitts (whom he discovered on a streetcar), as well as his wife, but was forced to close the studio and freelance. Metroâs Peg oâ My Heart was one of two he made with stage actress Laurette Taylor.
Three Wise Fools (1923) represented his first film for Goldwyn, not to mention the first of six he would make with future wife Eleanor Boardman. Estranged from Florence Vidor - by now a rising star in Cecil B. DeMilleâs stable - a fast romance with Boardman ensued, coinciding with his rise through the ranks at Goldwyn and its successor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Vidor rejected the opportunity to direct MGMâs 1925 Ben-Hur but his fortunes forever changed one day when he told Irving Thalberg âI was tired of making ephemeral films.â As he later recalled, âI had the idea to do a film that came to town and wasnât forgotten in a few weeks.â Asked if he had any ideas in mind, he voiced a desire to make a film about war, wheat or steel; when the producer expressed interest in a war movie, âI said that I had only an approach. I wanted it to be the story of a young American who was neither patriotic nor a pacifist, but who went to war and reacted normally to all the things that happened to him.â
The Big Parade (1925) ran six months at Graumanâs Chinese and two years at the Astor Theatre on Broadway. The unexpected success of the film resulted in the opportunity to make The Crowd. But despite the high praise won by the latter, Vidor recalled, âbecause it didnât jam the aisles of the gigantic movie emporiums it was referred to in some Hollywood circles as an âartistic flop.â â It did however earn him the first of five Academy Award nominations as Best Director.
The success of The Big Parade also moved William Randolph Hearst to acquire his services in directing the magnateâs mistress, Marion Davies. Despite his initial disinterest in working with her, together they made a trio of comedies including Vidorâs last two silent efforts, The Patsy and Show People. âMr. Hearst never gave up until he had me directing Miss Davies. Mind you, this was not an unpleasant chore,â recalled Vidor. âThe approach came in the form of a request to do a favor for Mr. Mayer, and, in addition, earn a substantial income.â
While on vacation in Paris, Vidor saw a Variety headline heralding the coming of sound. âI was excited, but greatly saddened. I realized that much magic would disappear from the screen.â MGMâs opposition to his idea for a talkie about African Americans with an all-black castâwhich heâd originally wanted to make as a silent - disappeared when he offered to invest his salary. Nicholas Schenck, chairman of Loewâs Inc., told him, âIf thatâs the way you feel about it, Iâll let you make a picture about whores.â
Vidorâs first talkie, the all-black musical Hallelujah (1929), brought him a second Oscar nomination as Best Director. It did not, however, make him wealthy; he spent decades wrestling with the studio over his earnings on the film, as he had on The Crowd. (âHis idealism in pledging his salary to get the film made cost him $31,000â of the $100,000 his Hallelujah contract called for, noted Scott Eyman.)
Ever the innovator, Vidor next shot Billy the Kid on location in Arizona in both 35mm and widescreen 70mm, only to see the latter version scrapped because exhibitors were âstill paying for the installation of sound equipment and didnât want any more revolutions!â He then made Street Scene (an adaptation of the play by Elmer Rice), and The Champ (based on a story by Frances Marion), which resulted in a third nomination for him and an Oscar for Wallace Beery. Bird of Paradise introduced the director to his third wife, script girl Elizabeth âBettyâ Hill.
Vidor was forced to borrow the production money âby mortgaging everything I hadâ to make Our Daily Bread (1934), a story about farm co-ops, when every major studio turned it down; the film won a League of Nations Award âfor its contribution to humanity.â His Wedding Night (1935) garnered the Venice Film Festival award for Best Director; Vidor co-founded the Screen Directorâs Guild (now the Directorâs Guild of America) the same year, serving not only as a guiding force in the groupâs formation but its first president âin decisive and difficult years,â as historian David Thomson noted.
Stella Dallas (adapted from the popular novel by Olive Higgins Prouty) was followed by The Citadel (1938). Filmed in England, the A. J. Cronin story of an idealistic young doctor earned a fourth Oscar nomination for Vidor, as well as a nod for his wife Elizabeth, who co-wrote the screenplay.
Vidor directed Gone With the Wind âfor just one weekendâ before David O. Selznick brought in Victor Fleming at Clark Gableâs request; happy to be free of the assignment âbecause they had turned it into such a mess with all those drafts of the script,â he then took over for Fleming on the final days of The Wizard of Oz, filming the black and white Kansas prologue (in which Judy Garland poignantly sings âOver the Rainbowâ) and epilogue sans credit. âVidor may have simply executed the script,â observed David Thomson of the assignment, âBut look at the scene again⦠and ask whether anything in that classic is more touching or more filled with prairie yearning.â
Northwest Passage (1940), starring Spencer Tracy as the commander of a group of Indian fighters and filmed on location in Idaho, gave the director his first opportunity to make a film in color (having turned down Selznickâs offer to direct The Adventures of Tom Sawyer). Though he was involved in the planning stages of The Yearling as early as 1941, the years-long delay due to a myriad of production problems resulted in Clarence Brown taking over the direction of that film.
The director contemplated enlistment in the Army Air Corps during World War II, but decided âI could best serve my country by making a film on American know-how, on the âarsenal-of-democracyâ themeâ formulated by President Roosevelt. To this end he dramatized the story of steel, the third of his three big themes, from the viewpoint of an immigrant. An American Romance (1944) was embraced by MGM and Louis B. Mayer, at least initially, but was not a huge success.
Asked by author Clive Denton about the change in his style after the war, Vidor noted, âmy career was designed somewhat along the line that in order to make the films that were closest to my heart one might say came from oneâs own inside - in other words the auteur theory - I must keep up my box office name in order to be permitted to do the stories and films which were obviously not box office.â Duel in the Sun (1946) began as âa personal film⦠a moderate-sized Western with an unknown cast,â but thanks to producer David O. Selznick ended up an all-star epic on the scale of Gone With the Wind. Though the lavish production became a huge box office hit it was not a happy experience for Vidor, who walked off the picture when Selznick bawled him out one too many times.
The Fountainhead (1949), based on the Ayn Rand novel, was not a personal project but Vidor felt âvery much in accord with this story⦠because I had just gone through Jungian analysis a few years before, and I was then very conscious of this recognition of the self, the dignity of the self, and the power and divinity one has.â He brought in Rand herself to do the adaptation after a husband and wife team âwrote a script that spoiled what the book intended to be, and what the characters intended to be.â
Though he wanted to direct The African Queen for Warner Bros., he accepted the assignment to direct Beyond the Forest with Bette Davis instead. Vidor wrapped his five-decade Hollywood career with a pair of epics, War and Peace (1956) and Solomon and Sheba (1959). The former brought him his fifth and final Oscar nomination, the Golden Globe and Directorâs Guild of America nominations. In between the two, he said no to the remake of a classic heâd passed up during the silent era. âMany times Iâve thought what a fool I was to turn down Ben-Hur for a less important picture. Many times Iâve thought that.â
In an attempt to remain active as studio executives became increasingly younger and less cognizant of his work, the director formed Vid-Mor Productions with his old friend Colleen Moore and initiated his own projects. Chief among them was the secret adventure on which he embarked in 1967 - an attempt to solve the scandalous 1922 murder of film director William Desmond Taylor and write a screenplay about it. After interviewing fellow silent era survivors, gaining access to police files, and solving the matter to his satisfaction, he pulled the plug on the still too-sensitive project. (The case and backstory would eventually become the basis for Sidney D. Kirkpatrickâs book, A Cast of Killers).
There were numerous other late-career efforts that never came to fruition, including a personal one reflecting âmy own individualityâ modeled partly on his 1919 feature Turn in the Road, âthat eventually becameâ The Milly Story; one based on Hawthorneâs gothic romance, The Marble Faun; and still another based on Bruno Frankâs biographical novel, A Man Called Cervantes.
âI never have thought of the word âretirement.â Iâve never had it in my vocabulary,â Vidor told David Shepard. To that end he began working on a number of documentaries and personal films, among them Truth and Illusion, a 16mm short about metaphysics. âI'm interested in life as a study. I've learned not to spend it too freely,â said Vidor. âI consider myself a metaphysician; I've taken time to comprehend the life pattern. Itâs important to me to make something of life, to have an understanding of it. My conclusion is that we make our own world, entirely; we can't blame anybody else for anything.â
The Metaphor (1979), a documentary he made with Andrew Wyeth about the painterâs workâwhich was influenced by The Big Parade, a film Wyeth saw 160 timesârepresents Vidorâs last directorial credit. However, it was not his final film. Late in 1979 he accepted an acting job, playing the supporting role of a grandfather, in James Tobackâs Love & Money (released in 1982). Vidor took the role at the behest of production manager Richard McWhorter, replacing Harry Ritz of the Ritz Brothers when the latter went into insulin shock after one dayâs work.
Vidor, who was presented with an honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1979, died of congestive heart failure at his beloved Willow Tree Ranch in Paso Robles, California, at the reported age of 87. He was survived by his daughters, Suzanne (by Florence) Antonia and Belinda (by Eleanor), eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren." [1]
Gallery
Filmography
The Metaphor (1980)
Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1964)
Solomon and Sheba (1959)
War and Peace (1956)
Man Without a Star (1955)
Light's Diamond Jubilee (1954)
Ruby Gentry (1952)
Japanese War Bride (1952)
Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)
Beyond the Forest (1949)
The Fountainhead (1949)
On Our Merry Way (1948) ... aka A Miracle Can Happen
Duel in the Sun (1946)
An American Romance (1944)
H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)
Comrade X (1940)
Northwest Passage (1940)
The Wizard of Oz (1939) (director: Kansas scenes)
The Citadel (1938)
Stella Dallas (1937)
The Texas Rangers (1936)
So Red the Rose (1935)
The Wedding Night (1935)
Our Daily Bread (1934)
The Stranger's Return (1933)
Cynara (1932)
Bird of Paradise (1932)
The Champ (1931)
Street Scene (1931)
Billy the Kid (1930)
Not So Dumb (1930)
Hallelujah (1929)
Show People (1928)
The Patsy (1928)
The Crowd (1928)
Bardelys the Magnificent (1926)
La bohème (1926)
The Big Parade (1925)
Proud Flesh (1925)
The Wife of the Centaur (1924)
His Hour (1924)
Wine of Youth (1924)
Happiness (1924)
Wild Oranges (1924)
Three Wise Fools (1923)
The Woman of Bronze (1923)
Peg o' My Heart (1922)
Conquering the Woman (1922)
Dusk to Dawn (1922)
Real Adventure (1922)
Love Never Dies (1921)
The Sky Pilot (1921)
The Jack-Knife Man (1920)
The Family Honor (1920)
Poor Relations (1919)
The Other Half (1919)
Better Times (1919)
The Turn in the Road (1919)
The Three Fives (1918)
Kid Politics (1918)
The Case of Bennie (1918)
Love of Bob (1918)
Dog vs. Dog (1918)
I'm a Man (1918)
The Preacher's Son (1918)
A Boy Built City (1918)
Thief or Angel (1918)
The Rebellion (1918)
The Accusing Toe (1918)
Marrying Off Dad (1918)
Tad's Swimming Hole (1918)
The Lost Lie (1918)
The Chocolate of the Gang (1918)
Bud's Recruit (1918)
Hurricane in Galveston (1913)
The Grand Military Parade (1913)
Resources
[1] Jordan Young, King Vidor's THE CROWD: The Making of a Silent Classic (Past Times Publishing Co., 2014) pp 69-76
[2] Jessica Winter, The Rough Guide to Film 1 (Rough Guides, 2007) pp 580
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Posts about king vidor written by Backlots
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Hello readers, and happy Halloween! I’ve been so busy these days that I didn’t have time to put together my Hitchcock Halloween blogathon, but stay tuned in the coming days for the announcement of Backlots’ 4th annual Dueling Divas blogathon, which will go on this year as usual!
Today is the final day of this year’s CMBA Blogathon, in which members of the esteemed Classic Movie Blog Association are writing about stars that have been lost in the annals of history. So many stars of yesteryear have faded due to unfortunate circumstance, and as classic film writers, we are doing our small part to bring back some of the glory that these stars enjoyed in their heyday.
The star that I have chosen for the blogathon is the talented and beautiful Eleanor Boardman, a hugely popular star in the silent era with enormous acting talent and uniquely soft yet defined features. Retiring in 1935 and spending a long and healthy retirement out of the spotlight, hers was the definition of a full life, lived her own way. In addition to having been a movie star, Boardman also spent time as a correspondent for the Hearst newspapers and worked in France for the International News Service, writing a column about American life in Paris.
Eleanor Boardman was born in Philadelphia on August 19, 1898, into a strict Presbyterian family. The method by which young Eleanor became an actress is disputed–by her own account, she left home to study art and interior design at the Academy of Fine Art, while former husband King Vidor claims that she rebelled against the stifling atmosphere of her home life to choose a career path of which her parents did not approve. But what we do know is that as a teenager, Eleanor was named the “Eastman Kodak Girl” and by 1922, she had come to the attention of Goldwyn Pictures, who gave her a contract for $750 a week. She moved to California to begin work and soon met and fell in love with up-and-coming director, King Vidor, who had seen pictures of her as a teenager and was immediately smitten.
In 1923, Boardman made Three Wise Fools with Vidor and subsequently made five more films with him as director in the next four years. The most masterful of the six films that Boardman made with Vidor is The Crowd (1928), a beautiful and sorrowful look at a man in social and economic turmoil. Eleanor Boardman plays his long-suffering wife, and gives a magnificent and nuanced portrayal of a woman conflicted between her love for her husband and her obligation to herself. The movie is one of my personal favorite silent films, and it is clear that Vidor understood instinctively how to direct Boardman toward her best work.
Vidor and Boardman finally married in 1926, in a ceremony that was supposed to be a double wedding with John Gilbert and Greta Garbo at the Beverly Hills home of Marion Davies. But when Garbo failed to show, Gilbert was left alone at the altar with Boardman and Vidor, who proceeded with the marriage. The photos from this event are immensely uncomfortable.
Boardman’s marriage to King Vidor produced two daughters, Antonia (born in 1927) and Belinda (born in 1930). But in 1931, shortly after the birth of their daughter Belinda, the marriage began to fail and they divorced the same year.
Following her divorce from Vidor, Boardman met writer Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast, with whom she would spend the rest of her life. Boardman decided to retire from films in 1935, and in 1940 she married Arrast. Shortly after the marriage, she was hired by William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service to go to Paris to write a column entitled “Americans in Paris,” to appear in the newspapers once a week. She spent a year in Paris writing the column, meeting socialites and writing to her heart’s content, until she contracted tuberculosis and was forced to abandon the job to go to Switzerland to recover.
She returned to the United States with Arrast, and following his death in 1968 Boardman moved to Montecito, CA. She spent her remaining years in Montecito until her death at age 93 in 1991.
I was lucky enough to talk to Eleanor Boardman’s daughter, Belinda, a few months ago. The spitting image of her mother, Belinda talks articulately and beautifully about the full life she led with her illustrious mother and father, the parties and social scene of Hollywood, and the careers of her parents. Her words about her mother are always kind. Eleanor Boardman’s star burned brightly for a short period of time, but that was exactly how she wanted it. She lived her life her way.
Thanks to the CMBA for hosting this blogathon. Some of the material for this article comes from an interview conducted by Alan Greenberg with Eleanor Boardman in the 1980s. I have the privilege of access to portions of this interview, and have used it to fill in information about the life of this fascinating star. Many thanks also to Alan Greenberg for letting me listen to it.
See you next time!
By Lara Gabrielle Fowler
For many decades, Hollywood has been fascinated with movies about movies. Ranging from the highest celebrations of Hollywood stardom (Singin’ In the Rain) to analyses of the most terrible tragedies of the industry (A Star is Born), the films that come out of this penchant for self-examination consistently do extremely well at the box office to this day, often winning major industry awards and proving that audiences and critics alike share this passion for “Hollywood on Hollywood.”
Singin’ In the Rain (1952), about the coming of sound to Hollywood, has earned a place as the only musical in the top 10 of “AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies” list.
Argo (2012), about a plot to rescue Iranian hostages by creating a blockbuster Hollywood movie, won the Oscar for Best Picture last year.
Self-awareness in movies dates back to the earliest days of cinema. Mack Sennett often appeared as himself in the Keystone Kops movies, acknowledging the disconnect between reality and the movies and making an attempt to sew them together to create a fluid illusion for the audience member. In “The Playhouse” (1921), Buster Keaton attends a show in which he plays all the parts. He (as his character) quips “This Keaton fellow seems to be the whole show!” This was a nudge to the audience, a peek over the 4th wall to let the audience know that Keaton is aware of himself as an actor.
Building on these early indications of self-awareness, the first full-scale “Hollywood on Hollywood” movie appeared in 1928 with the King Vidor comedy Show People, about the transformation of a young country girl into a major movie star. Starring Marion Davies and based on the early career of Gloria Swanson, Show People is a thorough and intelligent look at the complexities of stardom, and its quality rivals that of the later movies who drew from its precedent. It is truly a movie that, despite the passage of 85 years, solidly stands the test of time.
Peggy Pepper is the young Georgia girl who wants to be in movies, so her father drives her out to Hollywood where she lands a contract as a comedic bit player, often getting squirts in the face with seltzer water. She befriends a fellow comedic actor named Billy Boone, and they act together in low-budget films while remaining best of friends offscreen. At the screening of her first movie, Peggy gets an autograph request from none other than Charlie Chaplin (playing himself in a cameo) and promptly faints. Several other stars make cameos in the film, including Marion Davies herself. When Peggy sees Marion Davies, she reacts with disdain, an extremely clever demonstration of the film’s self-awareness.
Soon, Peggy is signed to “High Art Studios,” where she becomes a big star and slowly loses touch with society as her ego grows. She shuns Billy Boone as a lower-class actor, even though he tries desperately to maintain their friendship and bring her back to reality. She runs into him on a film set and reacts coldly to him, until he squirts her with seltzer water like he used to in their low-budget films together. She becomes enraged and storms off.
Shortly thereafter, she is informed by her studio head that theaters around the country are pulling her movies because her image is becoming too snooty. She is about to get married to a fake count Andre Telefair, when Billy bursts in and squirts her in the face with seltzer water, then throws a pie in the face of the fake count. This brings Peggy to her senses, and she and Billy make up. Peggy’s next movie is set in a World War I village, and she convinces director King Vidor (the real life director of Show People), to hire Billy as her new leading man, as a surprise. Billy is thrilled to see that Peggy is his leading lady, and the film ends as Peggy and Billy kiss on the set of their new movie together.
Show People is one of the finest silent movies to come out of the 1920s. It is strikingly modern, and could easily have been made today, needing very few changes. Though it is a comedy, one can see the influence it had on such later Hollywood on Hollywood movies such as A Star is Born, chronicling a male actor’s assistance to an actress, and that star witnessing her rise over his. It is said that this movie is loosely based on the career of Gloria Swanson, who later starred in her own Academy Award-winning film about Hollywood–the incomparable Sunset Boulevard.
See you next time!
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1313
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yago
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https://immortalephemera.com/18773/eleanor-boardman-in-the-newspapers/
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Eleanor Boardman in the Newspapers
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2012-06-17T07:50:52+00:00
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Eleanor Boardman trivia discovered throughout original 1920s and 1930s period newspaper articles. A somewhat random Eleanor Boardman biography emerges.
|
en
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Immortal Ephemera
|
https://immortalephemera.com/18773/eleanor-boardman-in-the-newspapers/
|
Killing Time
TCM wasn't playing anything of interest for me Saturday night, so after catching up on my emails I opened up my Now Playing Guide to see if anything good was airing on Sunday.
It's the special Father's Day schedule, of course--Happy Father's Day to any dads reading this over Sunday morning coffee.
My eyes quickly wandered down the page to the midnight, or in this case 12:45 am, Sunday Silent feature, The Circle (1925). Never seen it. Sure I'll record it as I always do the Sunday Silents. Hopefully one day I'll watch.
The star is Eleanor Boardman. Just for the heck of it I opened up my NewspaperArchive.com account and gave a search for Miss Boardman who I knew nothing about outside of her having starred with James Murray in The Crowd, a silent classic I have actually watched. A few times.
And so (possibly!) a new feature was born to the site. The old newspaper articles were a fun distraction for a few hours so I decided to share some of the snippets with you that really caught my eye. Of course, I've illustrated it all with vintage Eleanor Boardman collectible images.
Eleanor Boardman in the Newspapers ...
September 6, 1925, Daisy Dean's column "News Notes from Movieland," published on page 13 of the Nevada Star Journal warns Lillian Gish to look out. MGM producer John M. Stahl thinks Eleanor Boardman looks just like Miss Gish and an additional, unnamed, source, says that while watching Boardman act one "gets the same reaction as that from the elder Gish girl."
Dean compares the visual stats noting that Boardman is two inches taller and eight pounds heavier than Gish, with blue eyes and light brown hair as opposed to Gish's grey blue eyes and blonde hair.
Dean concludes that "It'll take a person with a world of dramatic ability to dethrone the lovely Lillian from the place which she occupies in the hearts of the American movie-loving public. Will Eleanor Boardman be able to fill the bill?"
April 4, 1926, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph of Bluefield, West Virginia, gives over 3-1/2 column inches of text on page 9 to note that Eleanor Boardman has gone blonde for the first time for her latest film, Elinor Glyn's The Only Thing -- This must be a corker of a movie garnering a 1.3 star rating on the IMDb's 10 star scale with 27 voters reporting, surely the absolute worst result I've ever encountered on the site!
The unsigned blurb provides the relevant details noting that Boardman has been a film player three years, playing leads for the last two and a half years, and this is the first time ever audiences will see her as a blonde. "This time a famed brunette beauty, none other than Eleanor Boardman, donned a golden wig ..."
May 23, 1929, the good people of the Mason City Globe Gazette of Mason City, Iowa, were kind enough to plaster Boardman's face on page 4 of their paper with a banner overhead declaring "In Tax Probe." A brief caption under Boardman's photo states that the actress has been "indicted in Los Angeles for making improper income tax returns to the government."
Hey, it's not all good news.
June 9, 1929, Virginia Gwin of The Galveston Daily News reports on a visit back to Galveston by the King Vidors. Mr. Vidor is a local boy made good while the glamorous Mrs. Vidor, Eleanor Boardman, arrived "clad in a modish costume of gray, from the top of her hear to the tip of lizard skin shoes."
Gwin reports that King Vidor "reminisced a bit, remembering that his first picture was made at the race track here," and that he handled all aspects of production on it. (Was this 1913's Hurricane in Galveston?)
The local celebrity and his wife had attended a Kiwanis luncheon and "were besieged with requests for autographs." The Vidors graciously complied with the requests.
June 10, 1928, West Virginian readers of the movie section on page 24 of the Charleston Daily Mail were greeted by the headline "Underworld Girls Study Their Dress."
The article talks about Eleanor Boardman's difficulty in selecting a wardrobe for her part as the moll in MGM's Diamond Handcuffs.
Boardman says: "The society woman ... knows exactly what to wear because the Paris fashions tell her. The ordinary business girl knows, because the modern stores have all this data on hand and merchants follow modes and can give any woman perfect designing."
But a gangster's girl often finds herself in a short skirt because she's working on limited funds and trying to outguess the current fashions. If skirts are shorter she'll guess they will be even shorter still going forward and spend her often ill-gotten funds on a skirt "just a bit higher than the accepted mode."
Sounds like someone, either MGM or Boardman herself, are anticipating some complaints over a little more leg than usual. Still photos anyone?
August 1, 1930, the Cumberland Evening Times of Cumberland, MD, masquerades a text advertisement amongst the articles in its movie section telling all about Boardman's latest film, Mamba. The piece is clearly labeled "Advertisement" at the bottom of the reportage.
Mamba was worth a little extra publicity as the ad not only calls attention to novelty of the film having sound, but goes on at length about it being filmed entirely in Technicolor as well!
The awkward headline to the story was "'Mamba' Has Third Dimensional Quality."
"It has none of the faults that color pictures frequently have," thanks largely to "the careful arrangement of colors and scenes." Basically the ad is claiming that the subject was a good one for a color film, a jungle adventure, and calls the movie "spectacular, but it has not sacrificed the drama in order to startle the eye."
Special attention is called to Eleanor Boardman at the end of the piece stating that "Color and sound photography have added greatly to the subtle personality of Eleanor Boardman. There is a rose petal loveliness about her skin that is enchanting in the close-ups and her voice is flexible."
August 9, 1931, a short blurb under the banner of "Hollywood" on page 31 of the Montana Butte Standard provides the interesting fact, quoted in full, that: "Eleanor Boardman became famous as the Eastman Kodak girl before her entrance into motion pictures." This page also distracted me with headlines of "Stanwyck's Best Film" currently featuring at the Rialto, Night Nurse. Boardman will be showing at the same Rialto Theater herself, opposite Paul Lukas in Women Love Once.
September 9, 1931, Eleanor Boardman is featured in Elizabeth Stephenson's "Hobbies of the Stars" series of articles appearing in the Key West Citizen, this one on page 6 of the Florida based newspaper.
Boardman's reported hobby is pretty boring: her home in Beverly Hills. A background in art is mentioned and a promising career as an interior decorator is claimed before going to discuss the pleasures Boardman derives from filling her home with rare and beautiful objects such as "colorful old tapestries, paintings by masters and moderns and scores of interesting small objects."
More interesting are a few other interests and personal details given in the article. Her only pets are two bird dogs and she likes to spend her time both painting and playing the piano. She enjoys swimming and plays tennis and golf, each "with better than average skill."
Eleanor Boardman also keeps a good library and is said to be "distinguished for her wit and gems of repartee" which are "quoted in Hollywood much as Dorothy Parker is quoted in New York." Stephenson qualifies that Boardman's wit is "a kindlier, less cynical sort," just in case you're no fan of Parker's sharp tongue.
October 26, 1933, the Evening Independent of Massillon, Ohio features a large photo of Boardman on the front cover of the paper with the headline "Eleanor Boardman to Wed Again."
Boardman's image dwarfs an inset photo of "prominent motion picture director" Harry D'Arrast placed just under her cheek. The caption notes that Boardman has recently obtained a divorce from King Vidor and that the "rumors making the rounds in Hollywood" link her to D'Arrast, whom she's vacationing with near Madrid, Spain.
Eleanor Boardman would marry Harry D'Arrast, but not until 1940.
Conclusion
You can read a more standard Eleanor Boardman biography submitted by a freelancer elsewhere on the Immortal Ephemera site.
That was fun. What I like about this is that there's no beginning or end, just some random trivia type items that I enjoy reading myself.
I can make this as long or as short as I care too and I basically went until I glazed over reading repetitive wire stories printed over and over in papers around the country during the 1920's and 30's.
Still, hope I found some interesting bits from you and you enjoyed the watered down version of my Saturday night research!
We'll definitely be doing it again sometime!
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5018
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dbpedia
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https://hbr.org/1993/11/mastering-chaos-at-the-high-tech-frontier-an-interview-with-silicon-graphicss-ed-mccracken
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Mastering Chaos at the High-Tech Frontier: An Interview with Silicon Graphics’s Ed McCracken
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“The key to achieving competitive advantage isn’t reacting to chaos; it’s producing that chaos.”
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dbpedia
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https://tedium.co/2018/10/04/sgi-collector-history/
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Silicon Graphics Revival: The Fans Keeping the SGI Alive
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Decades after Silicon Graphics' heyday, its supercomputers have found themselves a new home with a small community full of enthusiasts—some just teenagers.
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Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.
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https://tedium.co/2018/10/04/sgi-collector-history/
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Hey all, Ernie here with a recent piece of mine that also showed up in Motherboard. In case you haven’t read it yet, it’s a good one and highlights both SGI and the the excellent community IRIX.cc. Read on, and hope you dig!
Today in Tedium: Recently, I was faced with an unusual question about a piece of hardware that very few people have ever used. The question: What makes a giant workstation, one that once cost as much as a house when it was first produced in the early ’90s and makes as much noise as a vacuum, so appealing to a 16-year-old? Unlike an old Super NES or Amiga, there isn’t really a nostalgia factor to the Silicon Graphics Onyx when it was released a quarter-century ago, unless you spent time designing games rather than playing them during the Clinton era. But the video evidence was there: A Canadian teenager had gotten his hands on an Onyx, a device best known as the primary software development platform for the Nintendo 64, and in the video he published highlighting the ins and outs of the gigantic machine, he was clearly psyched about it. He’s not alone, either: A passion for SGI lingers well into the modern day. Today’s Tedium talks all about it. — Ernie @ Tedium
Your last chance: Starting Monday, I’m building the zines, and if you aren’t a patron by then, you’re going to miss out on the cool thing we’re making! For those that haven’t, read the details here and support us on Patreon at a $5 level or above to get your hands on something tangible. (There’s also an $8 tier for international fans as well!) Act now before you miss your shot.
1991
The year Silicon Graphics first released its Indigo workstation computer. While not the first computer it released, it hit a price-performance range that put it in the reach of larger parts of the business world. (It cost $8,000, which wasn’t cheap, but was attainable.) The machine, based on the MIPS architecture, became the one that defined SGI’s brand and reputation as a creator of hardware for the production of 3D graphics. Later SGI machines, such as the Indy, aimed at a lower-cost professional market, while larger ones, such as the supercomputer-powered Onyx line, focused on performance without compromise.
The hardware may be the same, but the SGI community is evolving
Something you might not pick up from a cursory watch of the video profile of the SGI Onyx, featured above, is that its creator, who calls himself Dodoid online, represents something of the new face of a relatively old form of computer collecting.
One does not acquire a 250-pound Onyx supercomputer by accident. This is an incredibly complex machine—with graphics that were beyond state of the art at the time of its release and still hold their own today, loaded with gigabytes of RAM at a time when computers of its era counted RAM in the tens of megabytes, reliant on a MIPS chip architecture at a time when PCs used Intel and Apple used PowerPC, and with a facade that recalls a fancy air conditioner more than anything else—and Dodoid is deeply familiar with its many parts. Perhaps it’s for that reason, and his matter-of-fact approach to presenting the machine, that his video has received nearly 600,000 views on YouTube since it was posted last month.
Dodoid, shown with an Onyx. (YouTube screenshot)
Dodoid, who prefers to keep his online presence separate from his his real-life one, was born in 2002, at a point when SGI was already in the midst of a lengthy decline in influence—and nearly a decade after SGI had its pop-culture peak after one of its workstations was sabotaged by Wayne Knight’s character in Jurassic Park. It’s a fascinating machine, but not exactly a common one.
But long-timers in the SGI community, like Ian Mapleson, a British computing expert who has long run a website that sells equipment for the machines, were quick to compliment Dodoid’s work.
“Dodoid is awesome,” he told me in an email. “His enthusiasm reminds me of me back when I first got into SGIs in 1993, though honestly he’s a heck of a lot smarter than I am, and he’s jumped into all this tech stuff 15 years earlier than I did.”
The 16-year-old, who pays for his SGI hobby via a laptop resale business, finds himself a leading light in the SGI scene due in no small part to that passion, though shifts in the SGI community itself have also played a role: Just a few months ago, the main forum for the community, a site called Nekochan, was shut down, precipitating a subcultural sea change.
Its founder, a man named Peter Plank (who goes by Nekonoko online), publicly blamed the shutdown on the challenges of complying with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). While GDPR played a role in the shutdown of a number of legacy data-driven platforms, most notably Klout, it’s possible that even a community of supercomputer enthusiasts would face the same kinds of legal problems, though a stringent regulatory rule like GDPR could potentially put any organization on notice. Nonetheless, Nekochan is gone.
Plank, who I haven’t been able to contact despite multiple requests for an interview, hasn’t offered any further context as to the shutdown or whether the site, with its wiki and in-depth forums, will return in some way, but whatever his reasoning, the situation has created a deep information void in the SGI community.
Mapleson noted that the site’s four-month hiatus has left a long line of broken URLs in its wake. “It’s been gone so long now that Google has wiped those entries from its search system as well, so now it’s almost as if the site never was,” he wrote.
These machines, full of parts that could break down at any time and reliant on an operating system that stopped being officially updated more than a decade ago, have basically stayed alive out of the sheer will of its small community of users. With the shut down of Nekochan, that will was tested.
Replacing this font of vintage workstation knowledge is IRIX.cc, a website intended to get around a Nekochan rule against reselling software, but now at the center of the SGI community. Raion, a 24-year-old Virginia sysadmin who helps run the site and asked not to use his real name for privacy reasons, said that Nekochan’s shutdown required him to significantly increase resources for the site. But the really hard part about it is the additional moderation need that the community requires.
“I do the very best I can to give answers to anybody who comes in or if I don’t know the answer, I try to ping a user who may know,” he explained. “Running a community such as this is 10 percent knowledge and 90 percent leadership.”
Considering the complexity of the machines, institutional knowledge is an incredibly important part of SGI’s continuing survival. But, when it comes to Nekochan, at least, one might wonder if the issues that come with running an online community for more than a decade played a role in its demise.
Dodoid, who also asked not to use his real name, suggested the existence of an online community around SGI, even with the elements of friendship and camaraderie that naturally build up around hobbies of this nature, highlights something of a degree of necessity.
“IRIX.cc only took over when Nekochan died and it became clear that it wasn’t coming back,” Dodoid, who serves as a moderator for the community, explained. “Something else could only take over if the same happened to IRIX.cc. All this to say, the community is tight-knit out of necessity. We have to stick together and one site has to be the focal point of our world.”
To put it another way, he explained, IRIX.cc is the center of the SGI world because that’s where everyone has landed—whether they actually like the platform or not.
The SGI community has only occasionally gotten notice from the outside world. In 2004, for example, the community got a shout-out from Wired, which highlighted many of the major players at the time, including Mapleson and Plank.
But this kind of exposure is rare, and SGI systems don’t get anywhere near the notice that more mainstream vintage systems, like the Commodore Amiga, the Apple II, and the DOS-era IBM PC, have received.
Which creates an interesting dynamic for folks that haven’t closely observed the SGI scene. Retro collecting for SGI doesn’t work like you’d expect.
Some SGI Indy machines. (Courtesy Dodoid)
Five things you should know about buying an SGI workstation in 2018
There’s no emulation, so you have to buy a machine. While there have been a handful of attempts to bring SGI hardware to life in software form through emulation, nothing has actually replicated the experience as of yet. “Trying out an SGI is difficult since there isn’t very many of them, and there is no emulation,” Raion told me. The result is that you have to show a certain level of commitment before even trying a machine out—finding someone that has a machine, or buying one of your own. (Raion recommends the minitower-sized SGI O2, released in 1996, as a good starter machine for beginners.)
You can get one for cheaper than you’d expect. While buying an SGI machine isn’t necessarily a cheap hobby, machines can be had at a deep discount if you know where to look—and that probably isn’t eBay. Dodoid got his Onyx, along with a desk-side variant of the Origin 2000, a specced-out O2, an Octane2, and a whole bunch of spare parts for $600 Canadian ($456 in US dollars). The secret? He bought from a Montreal-based collector who was looking to offload, and he was patient. On the other hand, Mapleson warns that the supply chain is thinning out as SGI machines become less and less common. “One can still find bargains, but it’s less likely,” he stated.
Don’t even think about using the cases in a mod. SGI cases are particularly beautiful and well-designed, but by no means should you expect to gut one for the purpose of installing a mod. “Within the community, there’s a sort of unspoken agreement that SGIs are way, way too rare and ‘special’ to let this happen, and that any user trying to do this should not be sold an SGI,” Dodoid told me. “Hard to buy an SGI to stick a Mini ITX board inside if everyone who owns an SGI refuses to sell it to you.” Noting this interest, Dodoid came up with a 3D-printed case, styled after the SGI Indigo, that fits the ODROID single-board computer.
There are a lot of moving parts. A. Lot. Dodoid’s breakdown of the Onyx highlights the sheer number of individual cards needed to run that particular machine, and if one of them breaks, it could be a huge headache. (Or, based on your demeanor, a fulfilling challenge.) Even with the smaller workstations, they have very specific quirks—one example that I frequently heard during my research was how older machines had keyboards and mice with ports that looked physically the same as the then-common PS/2 ports on PCs, but if you were to plug a PC-compatible mouse into one of these old SGIs, it could fry a machine. “Many people underestimate how different SGI machines are from PCs and Macs of the era,” explained Aaron Rogers, an SGI collector who runs the YouTube channel SiliconClassics.
They can’t really be compared to modern technology. Just because many SGI machines have a reputation as speed demons, and a traditional cost that implies as such, doesn’t mean that they should be compared to anything modern—for one thing, their purpose is completely different. “SGIs still have some specialized uses, and there are still a few of them out there doing important jobs, but my Onyx is not gonna beat a modern consumer device as a games machine,” Dodoid explained.
“Most SGI hobbyists are familiar with the use of SGIs in the movie/effects industries, 3D visual simulation and VR, but few realize they have been critical in a variety of industrial and process control industries, from textile and PCB manufacturing to medical scanners, training systems and even meat processing in an abattoir.”
— Ian Mapleson, explaining the surprisingly wide reach of SGI machines, which he’s been able to get a feel for due to his experience as being one of the few people that specializes in selling parts and devices for the platform. The broad range of the machines, which he notes goes beyond what the company’s own marketing suggested, has put him in a variety of onsite settings as he’s helped work on the machines—particularly, hospitals. “Thus, it’s been great to learn about so many different aspects of the commercial world; I’ve visited power stations, textile factories, and of course movie companies,” he stated. “By email I’ve known and helped many more, in every corner of the globe.”
Ian Mapleson, shown with an Onyx 3800. (courtesy of the subject)
How an enthusiast community changes over a quarter-century
The thing about SGI that makes it interesting to consider from an online community standpoint is that, even though it’s fairly small now, it has a reach that dates back to some of the earliest days of the internet.
Mapleson has experience on the SGI platform dating back to the days even before the web browser Netscape—a company cofounded by longtime SGI head Jim Clark—so as a result, he’s seen the SGI community shift a lot over the last quarter-century. Mapleson says that during the early 90s, hobbyists were fairly uncommon, and only appeared in force after the used market had built up to some degree in the late 90s. Before that, SGI-focused commenters came from academia, the business world, and even SGI itself, and would often use Usenet to communicate.
The volatile nature of Usenet, the place where the flame war gained its name, was generally not as deeply felt on the SGI groups, which were not in the “alt” section and were moderated. Responses were generally delayed, which helped define the tenor of the general conversation, and the groups were helped along with detailed FAQs.
Of course, all of these knowledgeable folks weren’t exactly welcoming to outsiders.
“I remember one perfectly sensible question from a PC user who asked, ‘What is an SGI?’; the answer he received, ‘If you don’t know, you can’t afford one,’ was of course amusing to everyone else at the time, but it was also a sign of where things were going wrong,” Mapleson recalled.
An SGI Fuel next to a ZX81. (courtesy of Mapleson)
As the web era got going, a number of SGI enthusiast sites gained momentum (often with out-of-date designs that could be used on IRIX-capable web browsers), but one site or another faded from view or stopped getting updates. Nekochan, when formed in the early 2000s, was one of many sites focused on SGI issues. But it eventually became much more of a centralized resource for the community.
The differences between Usenet and web technology, Mapleson noted, had an effect on the way people in the community worked with one another.
“In a way, the instant nature of modern forums like Nekochan make it too easy for people to react to something with emotion rather than intellect, they say things they later regret; people know they can edit posts of course, but by then, the damage may have been done,” Mapleson stated. “With Usenet, basic arguments were less likely, the system as a whole felt more formal.”
Nekochan was active for around 15 years, outliving SGI itself and allowing the culture to coalesce around the site. During this period, the SGI employees faded from view and the hobbyists became more prominent. While people like Mapleson, who have a professional interest in the platform as well as a personal one, have maintained a presence in the scene, other long-timers have faded in and out of view.
SiliconClassics’ Aaron Rogers, who was responsible for the discovery of the source code for the Nintendo 64 game Turok: Dinosaur Hunter on an SGI Indy workstation last year, notes that his interest in the platform has faded some over time.
“I think I’ve taken my interest in SGI as far as I care to, at least for now,” he wrote in an email. “I own all the SGI systems I ever wanted and most of them have been stuck in storage for years.”
A community of this nature, focused on a line of computers that few people outside of the world of film, academia, and industry have even had a chance to try, is going to be by default fairly insular. If old-timers fall away, at some point, so does the institutional knowledge.
That’s why users like Dodoid and Raion, young and fairly passionate about what the SGI platform represents, are so important to this community right now.
Silicon Graphics machines, whether the workstations or the supercomputers, represent a interesting niche in retro computing, in that they’re machines that won’t likely be recreated in a “classic” form, that cost a sizable amount of money to collect, and in some form factors, can be very expensive to even maintain.
They were at a higher point on the food chain, used in specialized places, and as a result the nostalgia factor isn’t quite so deeply felt. It’s the fascination that keeps these machines alive.
Rogers of SiliconClassics compared SGI fans to “car enthusiasts,” in part because the systems “demand a lot from their owners.”
“Once you dedicate that much effort to a hobby, it owns you,” he explained.
It’s that level of dedication that might encourage potential upgrades in the future. Just as old-school PCs have found new life with CompactFlash cards in place of hard drives, and Amigas have seen processor upgrade cards that turn them into relative speed demons, there is interest in creating tools that can help SGI machines keep up in the modern age.
Dodoid’s development rig, driven by a Silicon Graphics O2.
Dodoid has been working on a project called D1, a hardware/software solution that, when complete, would use a combination of a PCI-based coprocessor card and additional software to allow users to run modern Linux-based apps on IRIX. “Applications running on the D1 appear on the IRIX desktop, have access to the SGI’s filesystem, etc.,” he explained. “So it’s basically like you can run modern software on a fast CPU on your SGI.”
Among other things, this could help solve a lingering problem for the platform: A lack of modern web browsers.
While SGI machines do quite well for themselves in terms of graphics and sheer data processing power, the specific needs of the web browser, along with Javascript, have passed it by.
Mapleson says that, even though he’s spent years selling various parts for SGI machines, this is the thing that prevents him from using an IRIX-based machine as a daily driver. He encouraged SGI enthusiasts to help support Dodoid’s work on this front.
“If he can help bring to SGIs the ability to make use of the modern web in a manner that means one doesn’t suffer from the performance issues present on a standard SGI, that will make a significant difference to their usability,” Mapleson stated.
(Beyond D1, Dodoid is also working on major upgrades to IRIX.cc’s infrastructure.)
Of course, upgrades are one thing, but the real secret to making all this outdated hardware work effectively is the community—something Raion is very cognizant of as more potential SGI users, or one time Nekochan regulars, come out of the woodwork and land on IRIX.cc’s doorstep. Unlike the days of Usenet, Raion emphasizes the important of keeping a positive tone and welcoming approach—something that could help keep the interest in SGI alive.
“I don’t intend the community to go downhill again,” he told me. “I would sooner go homeless than see this community lose out on its home again.”
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OPERATING RISC: UNIX STANDARDS IN THE 1990s
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March 1992. This case was written by Paul Kritikos and Will Mitchell. The case is based on public sources. Some figures are based on case-writers' estimates. We appreciate comments from David Girouard, Robert E. Thomas, and Michael Wolff. The note "Product Standards and Competitive Advantage" (Will Mitchell, 1992) supplements this case.
OPERATING RISC:
UNIX STANDARDS IN THE 1990s
Revision history:
February, 1992: Unix4.doc (Paul)
February 16-20, 1992: Ustd1.doc (Will)
March 28, 1992: Ustd3.doc (Will)
December 1994: ustd5 (minor revision)
The latest International Computerquest Corporation analysis of the market for Unix-based computers landed on three desks on the same morning. Noel Sharp, founder, chief executive officer, chief engineer, and chief bottle washer for the Superbly Quick Architecture Workstation Company (SQUAWC) in Mountain View, California hoped to see strong growth predicted for the market for systems designed to help architects improve their designs. In New York, Bo Thomas, senior strategist for the Unix systems division of A Big Computer Company (ABC), hoped that general commercial markets for Unix-based computer systems would show strong growth, but feared that the company's traditional mainframe and mini-computer sales would suffer as a result. Airborne in the middle of the Atlantic, Jean-Helmut Morini-Stokes, senior engineer for the Unix division of European Electronic National Industry (EENI), immediately looked to see if European companies would finally have an impact on the American market for Unix-based systems. After looking for analysis concerning their own companies, all three managers checked the outlook for the alliances competing to establish a Unix operating system standard.
Although their companies were alike only in being fictional, the three managers faced the same product standards issues. How could they hasten the adoption of a Unix standard? The market simply would not grow until computer buyers and application software developers could count on operating system stability. And how could their companies benefit once the standard was determined? The following report summarises issues in the Unix-based computer market during 1991 and early 1992.
1. UNIX BACKGROUND
1.1 What is Unix And What Is It Used For?
Unix is a combination of a computer operating system and utility programs. Written mainly in a technical computer programming language called "C", Unix programs can be moved among different computers, thereby facilitating the work of software developers and end users. Unix allows a single user to operate several computing jobs at the same time, which is known as multitasking.
Since its commercial appearance in 1975, all major hardware vendors have introduced products that operate under Unix. Versions of Unix exist for all types of computers, including mainframe, mini, and microcomputers; almost all technical workstations; and most supercomputers. By 1988 there were more than 600,000 Unix installations worldwide and by 1991, the list of Unix commercial users included most Fortune 100 companies. Despite this level of success, Unix has still had a relatively minor impact in commercial markets by 1991 and had yet to live up to its commercial promise. Unix was still the operating system of the future, not the present.
1.2 Unix History
The Unix operating system was created in the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) Bell Labs in 1969 by Ken Thomson, Dennis Ritchie, and their colleagues, who aimed to develop an operating system that would isolate computer hardware from application software. The first edition of the system was documented in a manual in 1971 and the sixth edition became the first commercially available version of Unix, in 1975.
AT&T at first viewed Unix as an academic and research tool. Lacking major commercial goals for the system, AT&T licensed Unix widely for a nominal fee. AT&T also was inhibited from entering commercial computer markets because of agreements that it had reached with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) concerning antitrust issues in its telecommunications business. Licensees paid for the right to use the Unix "kernel" (the core operating system) and then developed enhancements to the program, such as new utilities, different algorithms, security modifications, real-time capabilities, and symmetric multiprocessing. The first version of Unix to gain favour in academic institutions and other research-oriented sites emerged from the University of California at Berkeley, which developed and distributed BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) Unix.
Contrary to AT&T's expectations, Unix also became popular in commercial settings. The first entrant was Xenix, a version of Unix designed to operate on 16-bit microcomputers that was co-developed by Microsoft and the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) and introduced in late 1980. AT&T also introduced Unix System III in 1980, while the first version of Unix designed to operate on mainframe computers was released in early 1981. In 1984, AT&T introduced Unix System V Release 2 (SVR2), marking its major entry to the commercial market as well as signalling its intent to promote System V as the product standard. In 1985, AT&T followed with System V Release 3 (SVR3). In addition, AT&T designed the System V Interface Definition (SVID) and published the System V Verification Suite (SVVS) for product testing, obliging developers to pass SVVS before they can begin shipping any derivative using the SVR3 licence. AT&T could force licensees that did not comply with the testing procedures to withdraw their product from the market. Following relaxation of the FTC-imposed restrictions on its participation in the computer market, AT&T introduced a microcomputer designed to use Unix about 1986, competing with IBM-compatible and Apple microcomputers that used the DOS and Apple operating systems.
Despite its lead, AT&T could not dominate the Unix market. With the widely available Unix kernel, many other hardware manufacturers and software specialists introduced Unix variants that were not derived from System V and so were free of SVVS restrictions. By 1991, more than 250 versions of Unix had been introduced for commercial or research use.
Many factors contribute to Unix's attraction. Companies can take advantage of open systems architecture, which is Unix's ability to operate on different hardware platforms, thereby avoiding commitment to a single hardware vendor. Consequently, a company can choose hardware and software based more on price-performance ratios and less on the compatibility of current and future applications. In addition, Unix can reduce the costs of personnel training and data information management by 50% or more. These costs constitute a major expense, sometimes exceeding hardware and software costs. Software developers can use Unix to reduce development costs, because it potentially enables them to write one application for many systems rather than modify it for each hardware platform. Nonetheless, several serious obstacles confronted Unix commercial acceptance in 1991. The following tables summarise the advantages and disadvantages of Unix.
Table 1. Factors Contributing To Unix Acceptance
1. Open Systems. Unix runs on almost all vendors' computing platforms.
2. Portability. The same program runs on many different computers.
3. Functionality. Unix supports multitasking, multiuser applications, networks, and high level applications. All were once only available with minis and mainframes.
4. Government Acceptance. The US Government and the EC support Unix.
5. RISC. RISC-based workstations, which generally use a version of Unix, are becoming popular as their prices drop, offering a better price/performance ratio than other systems.
6. User Interface. Several user-friendly interfaces have been developed.
7. Applications. Many popular applications have been released for Unix systems. In addition, many Unix configurations accommodate the use of DOS.
8. OS/2 and Windows. Unix major competitors are in their infancy.
Table 2. Obstacles To Unix Commercial Acceptance
1. Many Variants. Many existing variants are not totally compatible.
2. Applications. Despite growing availability, less software is available than for other operating systems.
3. Employee Resistance. Corporate personnel is not familiar with Unix.
4. Installed Base. Billions of dollars invested in other systems.
5. Security. Unix has acquired the reputation of being weak in the area of security.
xx 6. Technical Limits. As a relatively new system, Unix has technical problems to be overcome.
1.3 Unix Standards Issues
Two related issues provided the chief obstacles to Unix's success: lack of product standards and lack of software availability. The existence of many versions hindered Unix acceptability in business applications. More than 30 variants of Unix were available commercially in 1991, with versions offered by virtually every major hardware vendor and many software specialists. Unfortunately, the versions were not totally compatible. Software applications written for one Unix variant could not operate on other Unix systems without expensive and difficult modifications. Moreover, moving applications among different hardware platforms is often unsuccessful, even in the Unix environment. The lack of a product standard produced the first major impediment to Unix acceptance, because end-users incurred major cost and problems in integrating their applications.
The small (although growing) number of applications that operate on Unix systems created the second severe impediment to full commercial adoption. In the computer industry, the most important measure of operating system success is the number and variety of application software programs that have been developed for it. Many information system managers would not adopt Unix because of the lack of available application software.
The scarcity of application software stemmed from the lack of a product standard. Software developers find it extremely costly and difficult to support multiple versions of the operating system. Software houses were slow to develop business applications designed for Unix operating systems and slow to upgrade the Unix software that they had introduced.
2. UNIX ALLIANCES
2.1 Open Software Foundation versus Unix International
The first major effort to promote Unix standardisation began in 1984, when several leading European, American, and Japanese computer manufacturers formed the X/Open group. Leading members included Siemens, AT&T, and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). IBM was notably absent from the founding membership, and did not join until several years later. X/Open planned to encourage the development of standard core features for commercial Unix systems, in order to increase available software and to secure portability of the applications. X/Open adopted AT&T's System V as the basis for the standard. One interpretation of this choice is that X/Open's members decided to run the risk of exploitation by AT&T rather than by IBM.
Although X/Open continues to exist, its consensus approach to standardisation began to break down in October 1987, when AT&T and the technical workstation leader Sun Microsystems announced their intention to pursue co-development of a standard Unix operating system based on AT&T's System V, Berkeley's BSD 4.2, and the graphical capabilities of Sun's Sun-OS. The new system would be available to other companies under proprietary license. AT&T and Microsoft also agreed to standardise Xenix and AT&T's microcomputer Unix. The goal was to bring the most popular versions of Unix together, although each partner had different motives. AT&T wanted allies to back up its product and attract more software developers. Sun wanted to secure the long-term success of its new SPARC (Scalable Process ARChitecture) microprocessor.
Several major vendors feared that AT&T would gain a competitive edge in software and hardware development. Many firms also feared that the joint effort would make Unix more dependent on Sun's hardware. In response, IBM, DEC, and five other hardware manufacturers established the Open Software Foundation (OSF) in May 1988. The nonprofit consortium aimed to develop a standard version of Unix that did not draw on AT&T's proprietary technology. By the end of 1988, two more major firms had joined the OSF as full sponsors, and many firms joined in secondary positions. The full sponsors would contribute $13.5 million over three years and would control the Board of Directors, while secondary memberships were available for as little as a few thousand dollars. Unlike X/Open, OSF planned to produce an operating system that it would licence to its members, rather than function only as an advisory body.
Efforts to enroll AT&T in OSF were fruitless. OSF offered to use System V as its core system, but wanted all partners sharing in future developments while AT&T wanted to control development of System V. Instead, the OSF decided to base its system on IBM's AIX, with members encouraged to submit suggestions. By 1991, OSF membership reached about 200 computer manufacturers, peripheral and component hardware manufacturers, software developers, and standards organisations.
AT&T and Sun responded by allying with several other computer vendors to form the Unix International, Incorporated (UI) trade association. UI members would advise AT&T, and would promote the development of System V. Its Board of Directors consisted of company executives, with votes based on financial contribution. Contributions were comparable to those required of OSF sponsors, ranging from $500,000 to $5,000 based on the class of membership (Principal, General, Associate, and Academic Associate). AT&T retained proprietary control of Unix and future modifications. By 1991, UI had almost two hundred members from more than 15 countries. Members included computer manufacturers, software developers, industry consultants, academic and research institutions, and government bodies.
Many less powerful companies joined both UI and the OSF. Notable examples are major microprocessor and software developers such as Motorola, Intel, and Oracle. However, there was no overlap among the full sponsors of the OSF and the principal members of UI.
The OSF and UI aimed to control the future of Unix market by creating the standard versions of the operating system and supporting software. In November 1989, AT&T introduced a commercial version of System V Release 4 (SVR4). AT&T expected SVR4 to be compatible with almost 80% of Unix installations. In late 1990, the OSF consortia released a commercial version of OSF/1, based on IBM's AIX and Carnegie Mellon's MACH operating systems. Although several attempts were made to combine UI and the OSF and coordinate development of the competing operating systems, no successful negotiations had occurred by 1991. The battle for standardisation will be the issue of 1990s.
Table 3. OSF and UI Alliance Founders
Open System Foundation (May 1988) Unix International (December 1988)
IBM AT&T
DEC Sun
Hewlett Packard Amdahl
Apollo Control Data (CDC)
Groupe Bull NCR
Siemens Prime
Nixdorf Unisys
Hitachi (late 1988) Olivetti
Fujitsu
Some other notable members Some other notable members
Hitachi (Japan) Santa Cruz Operation
Wang NEC (Japan)
Intergraph MIPS
Data General
Pyramid Technology
Unisys
Cray
Gould
Altos
Some firms that are members of both alliances
Data General, Motorola, Intel, Silicon Graphics, Swedish Telecom, Stratus
2.2 Desktop Computing
In 1991, several computer firms sought to emulate the experience of the Intel-based microcomputer market in guiding the development of the emerging desktop computer market. Early in its history, the Intel market adopted IBM's Personal Computer design and Microsoft's operating system as standards. As a result, multiple software and peripheral makers committed to supplying microcomputers that followed the Intel-based standards, and microcomputers based on Intel CPUs became the largest market for computers of any type because of these commitments. The technical workstation industry, by contrast, has not adopted meaningful operating system and CPU standards, and has not been as successful.
In April 1991, a group of 21 companies led by Compaq, the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Microsoft, and MIPS initiated an effort to set standards for future desktop computers. Their Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) initiative includes developing a RISC-based computer standard using the MIPS CPU and the OSF's version of Unix as the operating system. ACE also includes a specification for low-end microstations that is based on Intel CPUs and Microsoft's Windows NT (New Technology) 32-bit operating system. The ACE initiative specifies that both the OSF and Windows NT operating systems will run on all computers that comply with the ACE standard whether Intel-based or RISC-based. Hence, in theory, software written for an ACE standard computer will be able to run on low-end ACE desktop computers as well as high-end ACE workstations. ACE member compliance to these standards will insure a large installed base for the alliance.
Major competitors of ACE members responded to the ACE initiative with standards-setting efforts of their own. Sun announced the development of Solaris, an operating system that would run on both Intel-based computers and on Sun's Sparc RISC-based computers. Hewlett-Packard attempted to interest ACE members in developing computers around its RISC CPU.
The strongest response came from an alliance between Apple Computers, IBM, and Motorola. Under their agreement, the companies would develop low-end computers using Motorola CISC CPUs and derivatives of Apple's Macintosh operating system. More powerful computers would use the IBM-Motorola PowerPC RISC CPU and operating systems derived from the Macintosh and from Apple's and IBM's versions of Unix. The alliance plans to replace this interim operating system with an object oriented operating system (code named "Pink") -- primarily developed by Apple -- later in the decade. Software developed for any platform would be able to run on all platforms. Therefore, like ACE and Sun's Solaris, the Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance plans to provide unified computing standards that will satisfy low-end to high-end desktop computing needs.
3. CROSS-CURRENTS OF INDUSTRY FORTUNE
3.1 Downstream: Changing Product-Market Segments
Product Segments
In 1991, key product segments of the computer market included mainframes, minicomputers, microcomputers (personal computers), technical workstations, and supercomputers. IBM dominated the mainframe segment, where it offered proprietary operating systems. Unix-based systems had made their inroads to the other segments.
Important product features included price (which had dropped rapidly in the recent past), computational speed (which had grown rapidly), and additional features such as random access memory (RAM) available for data processing, information storage capabilities, and graphics capabilities. Traditionally, mainframe computers such as IBM's 370 were expensive, fast, and offered large memory, computational capacity, and storage. Microcomputers were relatively inexpensive, slow, and had restricted memory and storage. Minicomputers, such as DEC's VAX systems, fit somewhere in the middle. Technical workstations, such as systems offered by Apollo and Sun, first competed with minicomputers by offering more speed, better graphics capabilities, and comparable price. Expensive supercomputers, such as systems offered by Cray, offered massive data manipulation capabilities.
The lines between the product segments are quite blurred. By 1991, technical workstations had begun to compete strongly with minicomputers, and even offered some capabilities similar to low-end mainframes and supercomputers. Microcomputers using 32-bit microprocessors, meanwhile, had acquired capabilities similar to low-end technical workstations and minicomputers. In the near future, the microcomputer and technical workstation product segments are likely to converge into the desktop computer segment, which is sometimes referred to as the "microstation" segment. The minicomputer category may drop out of future product segments.
Market Segments
The market for Unix-based computer systems is often segmented by noncommercial, nontechnical commercial, and technical end-uses. The noncommercial segment includes government and academic users. The nontechnical commercial segment includes data processing in the financial, medical, and other industries. The technical segment includes scientific and engineering uses in the automotive, aerospace, electronics, defence, and entertainment industries.
Table 4. Unix-Based Computer Market End-Use Segments ($ billion)
1987.(actual) 1992.(predicted)
Noncommercial $2.1 (30%) $7.2 (40%)
Nontechnical commercial 2.1 (30%) 5.9.(33%)
Technical 3.2 (40%) 4.8 (27%)
$7.4 (100%) $17.9 (100%)
Source: Frost & Sullivan (1988)
Market segmentation can also take into account user size and intermediate buyers. Sales to large users, including corporations and public institutions, accounted for 40%-50% of Unix-based systems sales in 1987 and were expected to grow more quickly than to smaller buyers. Large users purchase hundreds of machines at one time, for whole departments or plants.
Two overlapping types of intermediate buyers also are relevant, hardware original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and software value added resellers (VARs). OEMs are companies that incorporate a workstation vendor's hardware and (perhaps) operating system with their own hardware. Most OEMs provide system integration and technical assistance to their customers (end users). Hardware vendors give OEMs significant discounts, sometimes reaching 40% of the list price. VARs design software that tends to be dedicated to a particular line of hardware and then sell a hardware-software package to an end-user. VARs provide technical assistance to users, and often undertake system integration and installation for the users. A VAR usually specialises in certain applications such as CAD/CAM or design automation, or industries such as aerospace or architects. OEMs accounted for 40% of total shipments in 1987, while VARs accounted for about 10-20% of sales and were growing rapidly.
Major changes were taking place in product-market combinations during 1991, particularly as microcomputers and workstations found use in commercial markets. Technical workstations (including high-end microcomputers) accounted for only 5% of commercial computer purchases in the early 1990s, compared to 20% of the money spent on computing systems by engineering users, but were rapidly gaining ground in commercial fields. Sun was the first to successfully target financial houses. Established players in the commercial minicomputer segments, such as DEC and IBM, soon followed. Thousands of workstations can now be found in Wall Street and in commercial banks. Massive purchasing is the norm. Solomon Brother, for instance, bought 450 workstations in 1989 for its traders in New York, London and Tokyo. Many other industries have been lured to the workstation. Hyatt Hotel's information system, for example, now consists mainly of workstations.
3.2 Upstream: Central Processing Unit Technical Segmentation
Because there are tight links between operating system design and central processing unit (CPU) requirements, a key technical distinction is the type of CPU used by a particular computer. Just as applications software often cannot be transferred from one operating system to another, most operating systems are designed to run on a particular CPU line.
Mainframe, mini, and supercomputers often used proprietary architecture, which reduced the potential for multiplatform operating systems standarisation. Among technical workstations and microcomputers, two types of microprocessors were vying for acceptance in 1991: complex instruction set computing (CISC) and reduced instruction set computing (RISC) CPUs. CISC CPUs, such as Intel's 80386 and Motorola's 6040, tended to be cheaper but slower. The Intel and Motorola designs had become the product standards for CISC computing, and the two companies were the major source of CISC microprocessors. RISC CPUs were challenging CISC technology in 1991. The most popular RISC CPUs were produced by Motorola, MIPS, and Sun, while HP, IBM, DEC, and several other firms also offered proprietary designs. A RISC standard had not yet been established.
RISC technology is based on the concept that "simpler is better". Computers spend most of their time operating a limited number of available instructions, so that an architecture that efficiently uses only the most common instructions results in better computer performance. A RISC CPU has a smaller instruction set than that of CISC.
RISC processors have substantial advantages over CISC. First, they sometimes support more complex applications. Second, their speed in operating applications may be double that of CISC. Third, new generations of RISC CPUs can be developed and brought to market more quickly than CISC owing to the simpler design.
RISC architecture also has drawbacks. Because most existing software applications for microcomputers were written for CISC technology, many major vendors such as IBM and Compaq were reluctant to make a major switch to RISC. In addition, RISC based computers need two or three times the memory of a CISC based computer to operate the same software, which increases cost. Moreover, writing a program in RISC often takes longer than in CISC, although compiler advances might address this issue.
More expensive technical workstations tended to be built around RISC CPUs, while microcomputers and lower-end technical workstations usually used CISC. Although most experts predict continued demand for CISC processors, RISC posed a major challenge to CISC as its prices declined and application software became available. Vendors planned to produce hybrid RISC/CISC workstations, but many predicted that RISC would become the dominant microprocessor by the end of the decade. Even in 1991, a CISC 80486 based top-of-the-line system was priced at the same level as some RISC-based workstations with higher performance. Although only 330,000 RISC chips were sold in 1991 (total sales of less than $1 billion), compared to more than 20 million Intel chips, sales growth of RISC-based systems was expected to grow rapidly.
RISC manufacturers followed two licensing strategies in 1991. Some firms licensed their processor architecture to as many other firms as possible, hoping to become the industry standard. Players of this type include Sun, MIPS, Motorola, Intel, and Hewlett Packard. Other firms produced proprietary architecture that they did not license to other firms. IBM, Pyramid, and Intergraph were the major players in the second group. IBM, though, began to change its historic proprietary strategy in 1992, licensing rights to use the chip to Bull and Wang. (IBM also purchased a 5%-10% stake in Bull.)
Table 5 following lists RISC market shares in 1990, while the appendices at the end of the report list report semiconductor sales and market shares in 1990.
Table 5. RISC market shares in 1990
Sun 36%
MIPS 24%
Motorola 11%
Other 29%
Total 100%
Source: Economist (1990)
3.3 Social Cross-Stream
Public agencies comprised a major market for Unix-based systems in the United States, although their relative importance was declining as the commercial segment grew. For instance, the U.S. Air Force and many major American cities purchase workstations. AT&T was a supplier for military use.
In Europe, the Commission of European Communities (CEC) supported Unix by requiring "open systems philosophies" in the public procurement contracts of their member countries. The CEC itself purchased about 1,000 workstation per year, buying from most European companies.
In Japan, the Sigma project aimed to enhance the position of Japanese companies in the development of software. Participants in the project, which include Japanese firms and subsidiaries of US multinationals, provided most of the $192 financial support, while public agencies provided organisational assistance. The project was expected to be a driving force toward standardisation and to affect the market in the Pacific Rim.
Several public and quasi-public bodies address operating system standards in the United States, Europe, and Japan. American bodies include the National Bureau of Standards, POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface), and the Corporation of Open Systems. These bodies lack authority to set a standard, and act instead by publishing technical specifications with which manufacturers may comply voluntarily. A good meeting the specifications will then be compatible with other compliant products. For instance, a user can expect to connect two hardware components that are "POSIX-compliant". Manufacturers' representatives participate in most such agencies.
3.4 Product Cross-Stream
Complementary Products: Application Software
A computer can gain broad market access only if software is available for it. So popular are some software packages, such as the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, that a machine can lose sales only because the programs are not available for it. Although the Unix's application library is much smaller than that of DOS (and the DOS-compatible OS/2), every major vendor of microcomputer software has started adjusting its products to the Unix environment. Microsoft, Ashton Tate, Borland, and Lotus Development Corporation had released or announced Unix versions of their most popular software applications to operate under the Unix operating system. These applications include Lotus 1-2-3, QuatroPro, Excel, Microsoft-Word, Wordperfect, Multiplan, dBase, and Paradox. Ironically, Microsoft is a major supplier of Unix software, despite having codeveloped OS/2 (Operating System 2), a major Unix competitor. Major statistical packages such as SAS were also available in Unix versions.
Local Area Network (LAN) developers had also begun to take advantage of Unix portability. Novel developed Portable Ware to operate under Unix. Hewlett Packard and Microsoft developed the LAN Manager/X, a Unix version of the OS/2 LAN Manager/X, that enabled communication between OS/2 and Unix-based file servers. AT&T released LM/X, a Unix tool for the integration of DOS, OS/2, and Unix into a single network. The integration was not yet complete, however, and some application programs operated at best slowly when linked across operating system.
The multimedia market also promised major growth in the 1990s. DEC, for instance, planned to introduce multimedia hardware and software that would let users of LAN-attached PCs capture, store, retrieve, display, edit, print, and distribute full-motion or still-frame video with accompanying audio. Whether multimedia products would use Unix and RISC, or whether other operating systems and chips (such as Digital Signal Processing microprocessors) was an open question.
Substitute Products: Operating Systems
Proprietary operating systems, such as IBM's S/370 and DEC's VMS, provide the traditional substitutes for Unix in the mainframe and minicomputer product segments. OS/2, DOS, and Microsoft-Windows were the major competing operating systems alternatives to Unix for microcomputers. Early predictions were that OS/2 would dominate, backed up by IBM and Microsoft, but it had not lived up to its promise. Windows, which allows some degree of multitasking and is compatible with DOS applications, now appeared to provide the primary challenge to Unix. Operating system market shares are listed in the following table, while characteristics are summarised in an appendices at the end of the report.
Table 6. Worldwide Operating System Market Shares
1988 actual 1993 forecast
($121 billion) ($185 billion)
DOS, OS/2, Windows 26% 29%
S/370 (IBM) 24% 19%
Unix 9% 19%
VMS (DEC) 5% 6%
Mac 3% 5%
System/3X (IBM) 3%
AS/400 (IBM) 4%
Others 30% 18%
Total 100% 100%
Source: Computer Technology Research Corp. (1990)
The most popular Unix versions in 1991 included System V Release 4 (SVR4), AIX, Ultrix, Xenix, and BSD 4.3. AIX and SVR4, supported by the OSF and UI respectively, were expected to challenge for leadership. Their 1988 market shares as well as predictions for 1992 are given in the table below.
Table 7. Unix Market Shares
1988 actual 1992 predicted
AIX, OSF/1 (IBM, OSF) 1% 41%
SVR3, SVR4 (AT&T, UI) 24% 34%
BSD 4.3 (UC Berkeley) 39% 16%
Xenix (SCO) 12% 3%
Ultrix (DEC) 2% -
Others 22% 6%
100% 100%
Source: Computer Technology Research Corp. (1990)
3.5 Midstream
Unix-related revenue realised by computer sector firms between 1986 and 1990 is listed in the appendices following this report.
Computer Generalists
All major computer market players, including IBM, DEC, HP, and AT&T, and Unisys offer Unix-based systems.
A Big Computer Company (ABC) was minor player in this category. ABC had developed proprietary RISC technology and its own variant of Unix.
International Business Machines (IBM). IBM was the leader in the overall computer market, with total sales exceeding $69 billion in 1990, but it's profitability was declining. IBM was very strong in the mainframe market, where it had a 70% market share. The company was also strong in the minicomputer segment, and entered the microcomputer market in 1984 with the IBM PC. This entry led to the standardisation of the DOS operating system and Intel's 80x86 microprocessor series. IBM was a founding member of the OSF, and its AIX operating system provides part of the base for the Foundation's Unix development efforts. IBM had also recently initiated a venture with Apple and Motorola to codevelop an operating system for RISC-based systems.
IBM was the most vertically integrated computer vendor, producing its own dynamic random access memory chips (DRAMS). The company traditionally emphasised proprietary products and rarely licensed technology to other firms (although it had planned to license older memory chip technology in the failed US Memories alliance), but licensed rights to its RISC technology in 1992. IBM planned to rely on its own RISC technology. IBM was often slow to introduce new products, although it recently had attempted to speed product commercialisation. The company's main strengths included an unmatched global sales force, high investment in R&D ($6.6 billion in 1990), and significant leverage over software developers.
IBM pioneered RISC architecture during the 1970s, but the RT microcomputer was a failure when it was introduced in 1985. The overpriced and underpowered system captured only 2% of the market the first year, and IBM withdrew it. The company aggressively reentered with the RS/6000 family in 1990 and viewed this as a major growth opportunity. Sales of the system, which was designed to be connected to virtually any system, reached more than $1 billion during 1990. IBM enrolled a number of software developers to write programs for the new line based on IBM's AIX version of Unix and many independent developers followed. However, several workstation products promised for 1991 were slow to appear. IBM is described in more detail in the appendices following this report.
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). DEC, based in Massachusetts, was very strong in the minicomputer segment, where it challenged IBM with its popular VAX line. A large proportion of DEC's markets consisted of engineers, who use DEC's machine in design applications. DEC introduced technical workstations when workstations began to cut into its minicomputer sales. After three years of development, DEC introduced the successful DECstation 3100 in 1989, which was soon followed by the DECstation 2000 and Decsystem 5400 lines. DEC's major strengths included financial and technical abilities, an enormous installed base of VAX machines, and detailed knowledge of the technical market.
DEC traditionally developed proprietary operating systems, but followed an open system strategy with workstations and was a founding member of the OSF. Having been ousted out of the microcomputer market because it did not use MS-DOS, DEC embraced Unix and develop its own version, called ULTRIX (based on University of California at Berkeley's version). Applications written in ULTRIX's three versions do not operate on VAXs, although the company hopes to develop interfaces. The list of ULTRIX-compatible applications is relatively short. DEC developed a RISC microprocessor. After initially deemphasising the internal product, and licensing in manufacturing rights for the MIPS RISC design, DEC introduced a system based on its own RISC chip in 1992. The chip, named Alpha, would be available for license and Cray planned to introduce a supercomputer that used the microprocessor.
Hewlett Packard (HP). Hewlett Packard offers minicomputers, microcomputers, and technical workstations. During the mid-1980s, HP redesigned its minicomputer line and, when high end microcomputers and workstations started cutting into minicomputer sales, introduced microcomputers and technical workstations. HP doubled its technical workstation market share in May 1989 by acquiring Apollo computers, which lacked the financial strength to support independent growth. HP and Apollo combined equaled 27% market share at the time of the acquisition, only two points behind Sun. The acquisition also enhanced HP's networking capabilities, where Apollo was considered to be strong. HP's technical workstation market share has not kept pace in the past two years, partly because of difficulties in integrating Apollo, which was much more aggressive than the traditionally conservative HP. Nonetheless, HP's sales of workstations and peripherals exceeded $4 billion in 1990, passing the company's minicomputers revenues. In March 1991, HP introduced a new workstation line that matched the performance of IBM units, while being substantially cheaper. HP developed a proprietary Unix operating system and a RISC microprocessor that it licensed to several Japanese and Korean manufacturers. HP was a founding member of the OSF.
American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). AT&T was primarily a software firm in the computer industry, but it had positions in the minicomputer, workstation, and microcomputer hardware markets. The company's microcomputer, using its Unix operating system, had little impact. The company was a significant player in commercial markets for Unix-based systems, and it recent acquisition of NCR strengthened that position. The NCR acquisition also provided more internal hardware manufacturing capability, where most AT&T products had previously been subcontracted or assembled from purchased components. In order to position Unix products in the microcomputer market, AT&T announced a Unix version for the microcomputer environment called "Unix-Lite" in 1990. AT&T was a founding member of UI. The company had not developed its own RISC technology.
Minicomputer Specialists
Firms offering minicomputers using Unix included Amdahl, Prime, Data General, Control Data, and Gould. These firms focused almost entirely on the commercial market segment, although some also sold technical systems. Some minicomputer firms relied on proprietary CPUs but others, such as Data General, had introduced RISC-based systems. Firms in this category had long been pressed by IBM, DEC, and HP, and now faced strong competition from Sun.
Technical Workstation Specialists
Several players in the Unix-based computer market specialised primarily in technical workstation segments, including Sun, Silicon Graphics, Intergraph, and NeXT.
Superbly Quick Architecture Workstation Company (SQUAWC) was a minor player in this category, selling systems designed for architects. SQUAWC used commercially available RISC and Unix technology for its systems.
Sun Microsystems. Sun was the technical workstation leader. It's strength lay in scientific and engineering segments, but the company was broaching financial and other commercial systems segments. Sun was a major player in the product standardisation process. Sun and five of its licensees founded the SPARC vendor council in mid 1980's to promote SPARC architecture. Sun also allied with AT&T to promote SVR4 as the Unix standard. Sun is described in more detail in the appendices following this report.
Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI). SGI specialised in technical workstations designed for graphics applications, such as animations, visual simulation and mechanical design. Silicon Graphics is member both of UI and OSF and uses both Motorola's 68020 CISC and MIPS's Risc-based chips. In March 1992, Silicon Graphics announced that is was acquiring MIPS.
Intergraph. Intergraph was the dominant CAD/CAM vendor. In 1987 it acquired Clipper Division from Fairchild Semiconductor company, a producer of RISC-based CPU that Intergraph fabricated in cooperation with Fujitsu. Intergraph targeted the low end of the technical workstation market.
Microcomputer Specialists
Microcomputer specialists offering Unix-based systems included Apple, Compaq, Dell, and Altos, with Altos being the market leader. Most such systems relied on commercial CISC CPU technology and provided Xenix as the operating system. Most firms offered the ability to operate both Unix and DOS, although the performance of such hybrids had been disappointing so far.
Microprocessor CPU Specialists
Intel's 80x86 and Motorola's 68000 series dominated the market for CISC technology, with Intel being the CISC leader. The two companies had also developed RISC technology, with Motorola having a lead on Intel.
Motorola. Motorola's 88000 series was a new entrant to the RISC market, and a performance leader. Many companies had announced plans to introduce systems based on the CPU. Unfortunately for the company, programs written for the popular Motorola 68000 series CISC CPU, which was the first processor used in workstations, would not operate on the 88000 series. Sun and DEC bought the 68000 CISC chip from Motorola for some of their models, but they use non-Motorola CPUs for their top-of-the-line RISC models. Motorola had recently allied with Apple and IBM to develop a graphically-oriented operating system for RISC-based systems.
MIPS Microsystems. MIPS was an early leader in RISC technology, introducing its first CPU about 1986. MIPS licensed usage and manufacturing rights to more than 20 firms, including DEC, Siemens, Fujitsu, NEC, and Bull. In March 1992, Silicon Graphics announced that it would acquire MIPS, shortly after DEC announced that it would introduce a computer based on its own RISC technology.
Pyramid Technology. Pyramid offered proprietary RISC technology. It was the first company to introduced a RISC-based system and was a niche player with a substantial CPUs market share for high end workstations ($200,000 to $350,000).
Competitors Outside The United States
The American firms IBM, Sun, HP, and DEC were major players in international markets, while no foreign firm had achieved substantial presence in the American market for Unix-based computer systems. In Europe, there was a strong movement toward Unix and RISC architecture. European demand for Unix systems and software accounted for 11% of the market ($2.4 billion) in 1990, and was increasing by 35% to 40% a year. The Japanese Unix market, growing at a 15% annual rate from a $1.3 billion base in 1990, was dominated by HP, Sun, and Sony. Several strong European and Japanese firms seemed likely to become major global players, including Siemens, Group Bull, and Olivetti in Europe, and Toshiba, Sony, Hitachi, Fujitsu, and NEC in Japan. Fujitsu already owned about 44% of the American firm, Amdahl, and had purchased most of the British firm, ICL, in December 1990.
European Electronic National Industry (EENI) was a player in this category. EENI had licensed RISC from MIPS, and was using a Unix operating system that was compatible with OSF/1 for its systems.
Siemens. Siemens intended to be a major international computer manufacturer, but until 1989 70% of its computer revenues were generated in Germany. Siemens then acquired Nixdorf Computer AG, thereby becoming the second largest computer maker in Europe, where Siemens-Nixdorf held more than 16% Unix market share in 1990. Siemens-Nixdorf was also among the top twenty producers of Unix-related computer products in the United States. Siemens was the second largest producer of semiconductors in Europe (after Philips). Current alliance partners included MIPS and Fujitsu.
Groupe Bull and Olivetti. The French firm Bull had a strong European minicomputer position, while the Italian company Olivetti produced microcomputers. Bull was not a major player in the Unix market, but had undertaken microprocessor and Unix alliances. Bull acquired the Zenith computer operations in 1991, thereby forging a minor presence in the United States computer market. Bull sold a 5% stake to NEC in 1991 and a similar stake to IBM early in 1992. Olivetti had a European Unix market share of about 4%. Both companies do not possess their own RISC-based chips, but rely on MIPS.
Sony. Sony entered the Unix market in 1987 with a workstation called NEWS, offering a better price/performance ratio than that of competing American products, and achieved a 16% Japanese market share in 1989. Sony worked with local software developers to write applications for the new computer and soon had over 200 applications in its library. Sony had recently allied with Motorola to introduce a model based on Motorola's 68030 CISC CPU. Sony participated in the U.S. market, where it targeted VARs and CAD/CAM applications, but lacked software applications and achieved a market share of only 1% in 1989. Sony licensed RISC technology from MIPS.
Toshiba. Toshiba was a major semiconductor producer and a leader in portable microcomputers. The company entered the Unix-based technical workstation market in 1988, where it offered low-price products based on SPARC RISC technology. Toshiba had alliances with Sun, HP, Olivetti, and Siemens.
Hitachi. Hitachi was among the world leaders in semiconductors, and a strong mainframe and minicomputer computer vendor in Japan. The company had strong international alliances with corporations such as Motorola and Olivetti. Hitachi introduced a line of workstations based on HP's RISC processors in 1988, and in 1989 began to participate in RISC design with HP.
4. WHAT NEXT?
The standards questions were clear to Sharp, Thomas, and Morini-Stokes. Should they continue to ally with other firms to promote Unix standards or should they pursue standards independently? If they continued to rely on an alliance, should they stay with their current partners or change? Should they promote a merger of the OSF and UI? Perhaps they should simply acquire another firm, rather than ally with it? And what of the same questions for desktop computer standards strategy?
The answers were not as obvious as the questions, even for fictional managers of fictional companies.
And what if the companies were not fictional?
* How would Sharp answer the questions if the company were Sun, rather than SQUAC? Intergraph, rather than SQUAC?
* How would Thomas answer the questions if the company were IBM, rather than ABC? HP, rather than ABC?
* How would Morini-Stokes answer the question if the company were Siemens, rather than EENI? Olivetti, rather than EENI?
Appendix 1. Unix-Related Revenue
Appendix 2. Semiconductor Revenue And Market Share, 1990
Appendix 3. Operating System Characteristics
Some important characteristics of several operating systems are listed below.
System V Release 4 (SVR4): AT&T, UI
Strengths
� Multiuser and multitasking capabilities
� Distributed computing abilities (Connect microcomputers with technical workstations and mainframe computers)
� Portable: Any application written to Unix can operate in any Unix platform
� Comprehensive network capabilities
Problems
� Many Unix versions are not 100% compatible
� Lack of standards
� Unfriendly to end users, although new graphical user interfaces (GUI) such as Open Look and Motif (which are promoted by UI and the OSF) may help
� Not many software applications
� Some deficiencies in security issues
� Requires significant computer/disk capacity
VAX/VMS: DEC
Strengths
� Excellent for applications that involve integrity of data, high availability, redundancy, time management
� Many additional features, such as remodeled diagnostics, bad block recovery, and remote file access
� Supports symmetric multiprocessing (all processors perform operations simultaneously)
� Multiuser and multitasking capabilities
Problems
� System works only with DEC's VAX computer line
Operating System 2 (OS/2): Microsoft and IBM
Strengths
� Developed by two major players, IBM and Microsoft
� Operates MS-DOS software without any changes
� Operates with Intel's 80286, 80386, and 80486 and microprocessors
� Operates much more complex applications compared to MS-DOS (provides up to 10 MB of memory)
� Multitasking and multiuser capabilities
� Networking ability
� Dynamic linking (efficient use of memory)
Problems
� Shipping delays
� Expensive to switch from MS-DOS system
� Lacks software
� Not as user friendly as Apple's Macintosh operating system
MS-DOS: Microsoft
Strengths
� Millions of users
� Many applications available
� Basic factor in microcomputer revolution
Problems
� Not multiuser or multitasking
� Limited network abilities
� Does not support complex applications
� Inefficient user interface, less friendly to end user
MS-Windows: Microsoft
Strengths
� Multitasking capabilities
� Compatible with applications software designed for DOS
� Better user interface than DOS
� Low financial cost to purchase
Problems
� No multiuser capabilities
� Non-trivial switching costs due to learning time
� Poorer user-interface than Macintosh
� Little software available that cannot operate in DOS environment, so little incentive to switch
AIX: IBM, OSF
Strengths
� Supported by IBM, OSF
� Compatible with a number of mainframe systems
� Support almost all other operating systems
� Technical excellence (multiuser, multitasking, data base management, connectivity etc)
Problems
� Not fully developed
Xenix: Microsoft, Santa Cruz Operation (SCO)
� Suited to personal computers
� Microsoft promoting Windows as PC standard
Ultrix: DEC
Strengths
� Multiprocessing
� Supported by DEC
Problems
� Limited number of applications
� Weak in compatibility with other operating systems
BSD 4.3: Berkeley
Often used as the base of proprietary systems.
Appendix 4. IBM's Unix Strategy
Due to the rapid sales expansion of technical workstations and trimming of sales from high-end microcomputers and low-end minicomputer, IBM decided to make Unix-based computer markets a major focus for the 1990s. AIX was IBM's operating system vehicle to enter the market for Unix-based computers. In 1991, IBM offered versions of AIX for many of its popular hardware platforms such as System/370 mainframe computers, RISC/system 6000 technical workstation, and high-end microcomputers. AIX-based systems might cannibalise some sales of other systems (mainly low end mainframes), but the company wanted to offer full line of products in commercial markets for computer systems.
IBM's Unix strategy had several key features, some which differ markedly from its past practices. First, the company planned to comply with all accepted operating system standards and attempt to improve them, rather than pursue nonstandard product development. AIX, its operating system, would support all existing standards and incorporated most key features of previously released versions of Unix. AIX written in the C programming language and offered required features such as multiuser, multitasking, portability, and applications tools. In addition, the program allowed interface to DOS, taking advantage of the millions of DOS users that can access many other systems.
Second, sales would be pursued mainly in the business market, rather than scientific and engineering markets. IBM wanted to target segments such as financial applications and office equipment where growth was expected to be phenomenal. IBM was well-equipped to serve business segments. IBM's reputation for excellent service and vendor reliability was a critical advantage, and the number of applications installed by the competitors was relatively small. In addition, thousands of corporations around the world have acquired IBM's System/370 and all desired connectivity between Unix and their existing systems.
Appendix 5. Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems was founded by several young Stanford graduates in 1982, when the workstation industry was virtually non-existent. The company was the leader in the technical workstation industry, with 1990 total sales reaching $2 billion. The growth of the company has been attributed to its open system philosophy and its technical innovation.
Before Sun, technical workstation customers bought computers and operating systems from Apollo and Hewlett Packard. Operating system were strictly proprietary and application software had to be written for the existing operating systems. Thus, customers had limited ability to expand software and hardware.
Sun introduced an open system philosophy by developing a version of Unix, Sun-OS, and then licencing its technology to other manufacturers. Initially, Sun's main sales targets were software engineers and scientific researchers, for whom the key factors were price, performance, and software availability. Sun built its early systems around Motorola's high-performance 68020 CISC microprocessors, used inexpensive "off the shelf" components, and made its system compatible with as much existing software as possible. Benefitting by its technical strength, its willingness to license at reasonable rates, and the absence of giants such as DEC and IBM, Sun grew rapidly. Sun gained a 25% technical workstation market share and, as its revenues jumped from $9 million in 1983 to $210 million in 1986. Sun continues to invest heavily in R&D, with its 14% of sales far exceeding the 8% industry average. In 1989, although sales were growing, the company experienced its first quarter loss in earnings.
In addition to Unix operating system, Sun began to develop its own microprocessor. The company introduced the SPARC CPU based on RISC architecture in 1985. SPARC was more powerful than CISC technology and was tailored to Unix. By 1987, 40 vendors had licensed SPARC technology to manufacture their microprocessors. By 1988, Sun had stopped manufacturing its own CPUs and started purchasing from outside vendors.
Sun used several alliances to promote microprocessor and Unix designs. First, Sun and five vendors founded the SPARC vendor council to promote SPARC architecture. Sun also allied with AT&T to promote the use of Unix based on SPARC technology. Sun's alliances frightened several competitors, leading to the formation of the Open Software Foundation in opposition.
Sun's CEO, Scott McNealy, referred to the company's corporate culture as "controlled chaos". Sun attempted to foster innovation and quick responses by pushing decision making to the lower levels of management. Sun's relations with its competitors were sometimes as chaotic and demanding, and McNealy was not popular with all members of the computer industry. Some industry analysts claimed that the initials "OSF" stood for "Oppose Sun Forever".
Appendix 6. The Emerging Multimedia Market
The multimedia market promised major growth in the 1990s. DEC, for instance, offers multimedia products for local-area network-attached personal computers that let users capture, store, retrieve, display, edit, print and distribute full-motion or still-frame video with synchronized audio. The products will include hardware that lets a PC capture audio and video data as well as software in order to manage the capture and display of audio, still images and full-motion video. DEC will also deliver server software that allows real-time distribution of multimedia information, including the ability to display digital video on a PC from a file on a server. Whether multimedia products would use Unix and RISC, or whether some other operating system and chips (such as Digital Signal Processing microprocessors) was an open question.
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2022-03-23T12:50:00+00:00
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How digital graphics remade the material world
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Artforum
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https://www.artforum.com/columns/how-digital-graphics-remade-the-material-world-251706/
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IMAGE OBJECTS: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF COMPUTER GRAPHICS. BY JACOB GABOURY. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2021. 312 pages.
JURASSIC PARK, the 1993 blockbuster sensation, contains a sly, almost Velázquezian instance of mise en abyme. In the eponymous theme park’s futuristic genomics lab and control room, scientists fabricate the ultimate prehistoric spectacle using desktop computers, software applications, and file systems manufactured by the real-life Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). These prominently featured SGI workstations don’t just play an essential role in the film’s narrative structure—allowing for plot progression via on-screen graphic visualization—they in fact reveal the very machines used to produce the film’s digital special effects, including many of its hulking dinosaurs. The diegetic embeddedness of this equipment displays an ironic fidelity to reality: The characters in the movie parody the technological processes by which the film itself is made mimetically plausible to viewers.
This depiction of SGI workstations on-set satirizes one of the cardinal rules of computer-generated images: that they must be realistic enough to erase their own medium-specific technical origins. Relatively successful in adhering to this rule, SGI computers were used in the production of every Academy Award nominee for best visual effects between 1995 and 2002. Jurassic Park’s use of the company’s technology, mimicked by a number of big budget movies of that time, helped inaugurate the rise of digital graphics in Hollywood. That rise occurred in tandem with similar developments across the cultural vernacular, with graphical imagery rearing its head in television, video games, architectural design, and software. The large-scale adoption of computer graphics throughout the culture industries, and their enthusiastic reception by audiences, critics, and consumers, marks a significant shift in popular visual aesthetics in the late twentieth century.
But the material and intellectual infrastructure needed to bring about this shift required decades of work. Not simply a technical revolution, it was a conceptual and, perhaps, a phenomenological one as well. Jacob Gaboury locates the genesis of this revolution in the fertile period of research conducted at the US Department of Defense–funded College of Engineering at the University of Utah between 1965 and 1980. His new book, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics, maps the legacy of the Utah faculty and its graduates, as well as their methods, as they migrated from academic research to commercial ventures, which included the founding of SGI in addition to Pixar, Adobe, Atari, Netscape, WordPerfect, and a host of other ventures.
Gaboury’s book paves a way for a discourse on computer graphics independent from the already robust literature on midcentury correspondences between art and engineering, such as those of the Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) group and the endeavors of Bell Labs, the ICA London’s watershed 1968 “Cybernetic Serendipity” show, the information aesthetics of Max Bense and the Stuttgart school, the systems-theoretic criticism of Jack Burnham, or the ecology oriented design advocated by György Kepes, Charles Eames, and the New Bauhaus. Whereas the latter largely circumscribes computer-generated images to the lineage of artistic modernism, Image Objects situates the field’s idiosyncratic strategies within the realm of popular culture and everyday experience. Gaboury thus seeks to recuperate the history of computer graphics from the dominant art-historical and technological disciplines, such as those of film and photography, that tend to subsume it, and in doing so makes a series of bold claims, chief among them being that graphics played a pivotal role in the reorientation of the computer from a logical and mathematical tool to the graphical and interactive medium it is today. For that reason, the book is a unique interrogation of the contemporary optical regime, structured as it is by black boxes and screens.
Gaboury’s book can be considered an “archaeology” for two reasons. First, Image Objects ends, as the author notes, where most histories of computer graphics begin—with the advent of the first mass-manufactured Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) in the early 1980s—and thus constitutes a kind of prehistory. Second, each of its five chapters excavates a particular technical object, most of which form the conceptual basis of tools still used today. These objects are not always material in the strict sense of the term: One chapter examines an algorithm called the “Z-buffer,” employed for representing depth values, while another recounts the emergence of a computer programming model partially inspired by Sketchpad, Ivan Sutherland’s early computer-aided design (CAD) program. Each presents an occasion for thematic exploration and conceptual recombination, revealing particular facets of the medium of computer graphics—its genealogy, techniques, culture, and influence.
Gaboury’s decision to orient the book around discrete yet materially elusive objects isn’t simply a methodological preference; rather, it mimes the monadic theory of objects underpinning the work done in computer graphics at this time, according to which everything in the world is conceived of as an abstract entity available for modeling, simulation, and interaction. The author credits computer graphics for this world-image. He argues that the field’s preoccupation with accurately rendering surfaces, shapes, textures, and lighting entailed a new conception of reality; every object in one’s environment became qualitatively flattened in its construction, dissolving into a set of control points available for manipulation. From this standpoint, objects were not appreciated for their functional or sensuous specificities, but as vehicles for the representation of solutions to problems, neutral surrogates for any object at all.
Take the Utah teapot. This object—familiar to designers as a standard reference model in contemporary software suites like Autodesk 3ds Max, LightWave 3D, and AutoCAD, and the focus of an entire chapter in Image Objects—is now an inside joke in the field, its appearance evoking an entire half-century of research, practice, and industry. Based on a simple ceramic Melitta vessel and first modeled by Utah researcher Martin Newell in 1974, it initially served a practical purpose at a time when the department was tired of testing new algorithms on easily generated shapes; researchers wanted new, readily recognizable objects that synthesized then-recent mathematical solutions for parsing complex, irregular curvature, including Bézier curves, Coons patches, NURB surfaces, and b-splines. Newell’s teapot, once digitized and displayed as a wireframe, was instantly popularized through a set of academic papers and, eventually—after a text file containing its patch parameters was shared over the ARPANET network—the precursor to today’s internet.
The ubiquity of the Utah teapot in computer graphics, then as today, testifies to the University of Utah program’s vast web of influence. It also indexes a time in which, via formalized translation methods between tangible and virtual objects, the standards for rendering digital images began to refract back onto the design of the physical commodities now populating our perceptual field. What Gaboury calls the “slipstream aesthetic”—initially attributable to the World War II–era engineering of smooth, aerodynamic bends and arcs found in aircraft, automobiles, and ships—became suffused in all kinds of consumables meant to be gripped by the human hand: The “blob-like appearance of your water bottle or video game controller” are two reflections of it, informed to a great extent by the mediation of graphical techniques. By pushing computing into tighter intimacy with the physical world—away from the execution of procedural calculations in time, toward the assembly of relational objects in space—computer graphics altered the general conceptualization of the modern computer’s functioning, even its purpose. That intimacy always carried within it a profound ambivalence: The simultaneous anticipation and anxiety once evoked by postmodern theory’s simulacrum society and today by VR and the Metaverse are expressions of it. But this new world wrought by computing was implicit in Jurassic Park’s control room: where a language perfected for describing reality was endowed with the capacity to make it.
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https://www.si.edu/object/microcomputer-silicon-graphics-o2-workstation%253Anmah_1824721
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Microcomputer, Silicon Graphics O2 Workstation
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Object Details
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Darfon Electronics Corp
Description
The Silicon Graphics O2 microcomputer was designed as an entry-level high-quality graphics and image processing workstation. The chassis is dark blue with a black base, marked on front with "SiliconGraphics" on the top, and "O2" on the base.
The keyboard is a standard black computer keyboard marked "sgi" in the upper right corner and has an extra-long interface cable.
The three button mechanical mouse is dark gray and has an extra-long interface cable.
The carrying bag is a blue and black padded fabric bag with zippers, velcro closures, two handles, and a detachable shoulder strap. Inside are two pockets with flap closures, one open pocket, one zippered pocket, and an open sleeve for carrying the keyboard.
The objects in accession 2016.0057 and non-accession 2016.3032 are related.
Donor Glenn Cholister was issued this Silicon Graphics workstation not long after he went to work for the company in February of 199 . As a systems engineer, he used it to provide 24 hour customer support from his home office.
Location
Currently not on view
Credit Line
Gift of Glenn Cholister
ID Number
2016.0057.01
accession number
2016.0057
catalog number
2016.0057.01
Object Name
microcomputer
Physical Description
fabric (overall, carrying bag material)
silicon (overall, microcomputer material)
plastic (overall, microcomputer material)
Measurements
overall: 32 cm x 36 cm x 50 cm; 12 19/32 in x 14 3/16 in x 19 11/16 in
microcomputer: 30 cm x 24 cm x 32 cm; 11 13/16 in x 9 7/16 in x 12 19/32 in
keyboard: 4 cm x 46.5 cm x 17 cm; 1 9/16 in x 18 5/16 in x 6 11/16 in
keyboard interface cable: 285 cm; 112 7/32 in
carrying bag: 32 cm x 36 cm x 50 cm; 12 19/32 in x 14 3/16 in x 19 11/16 in
mouse: 3 cm x 15.5 cm x 12 cm; 1 3/16 in x 6 3/32 in x 4 23/32 in
mouse interface cable: 301 cm; 118 1/2 in
place made
China
United States of America
See more items in
Medicine and Science: Computers
Computers & Business Machines
National Museum of American History
Subject
Computers
Record ID
nmah_1824721
Metadata Usage (text)
CC0
GUID (Link to Original Record)
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ng49ca746b3-0829-704b-e053-15f76fa0b4fa
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https://hackaday.com/2024/04/08/the-rise-and-fall-of-silicon-graphics/
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The Rise And Fall Of Silicon Graphics
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Maybe best known as the company which brought a splash of color to corporate and scientific computing with its Indigo range of computer systems, Silicon Graphics Inc. (later SGI) burst onto the market...
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https://hackaday.com/2024/04/08/the-rise-and-fall-of-silicon-graphics/
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https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/silicon-graphics-incorporated
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Silicon Graphics Incorporated
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Silicon Graphics Incorporated
2011 North Shoreline BoulevardMountain View, California 94039U.S.A.(415) 960-1980Fax: (415) 961-0595 Source for information on Silicon Graphics Incorporated: International Directory of Company Histories dictionary.
|
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https://www.encyclopedia.com/books/politics-and-business-magazines/silicon-graphics-incorporated
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2011 North Shoreline Boulevard
Mountain View, California 94039
U.S.A.
(415) 960-1980
Fax: (415) 961-0595
Public Company
Incorporated: 1982
Employees: 2,568
Sales: $866.6 million
Stock Exchanges: New York
SICs: 3577 Computer Peripheral Equipment Nee; 7372 Prepackaged Software
Silicon Graphics Incorporated is one of the leading manufacturers of graphics computer systems. Its history may be described as an exemplary, perhaps even archetypal, Silicon Valley success story. Founded by a high school dropout turned college professor, Silicon Graphics capitalized on pioneering technology in 3-D computer graphics to create products used in a wide variety of professions, including engineering, chemistry, and film production. The company combined technological prowess with shrewd management to produce explosive growth; within a decade of its founding, it had entered the Fortune 500.
The story of Silicon Graphics began in 1979, when James Clark, an electrical engineering professor at Stanford University, assembled a team of six graduate students to study the possibilities of computer graphics. Within two years, Clark’s team developed a powerful semiconductor chip, which they called the Geometry Engine, that would allow small computers to produce sophisticated three-dimensional graphics simulations previously the domain of large mainframes. Clark patented the Geometry Engine, and in 1982 he and his team left Stanford to found Silicon Graphics.
In 1983 the company released its first products: the IRIS 1000 graphics terminal and an accompanying software interface known as the IRIS Graphics Library. The next year Silicon Graphics released its first workstation, the IRIS 1400, and followed it in 1985 with the IRIS 2400, a workstation with a window manager. These early entries in the IRIS series targeted the middle range of the graphics workstations market—those selling for $45,000 to $100,000—and accounted for over 50 percent of all 3-D graphics workstations sold by 1988. Sales increased steeply and consistently, reaching $153 million in 1988. Within its first six years, Silicon Graphics had established a secure and lucrative niche for itself in the computer industry.
Silicon Graphics succeeded so brilliantly in its early years in large part because it had introduced a useful product that had drawn relatively little attention from any of its potential rivals. 3-D graphics simulations were extremely useful to mechanical engineers who wanted to assess their designs without having to build prototypes, as well as chemists who used 3-D modelling to study molecules. Workstations like the IRIS series provided power at a relatively affordable price, and major workstation manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, Apollo Computer, and Sun Microsystems were slow to focus their energies on 3-D graphics, leaving Silicon Graphics without much direct competition.
Observers also credited James Clark’s technical skill and entrepreneurial sense for the company’s success. The path to Silicon Valley glory was a circuitous one for Clark, who dropped out of high school in Plainview, Texas, after he was suspended for setting off a smoke bomb on a school bus. After a hitch in the Navy, he went back to school, enrolling as an undergraduate at Tulane University. He went on to earn an M. S. in physics from University of New Orleans and a Ph.D. in computer science from University of Utah, where he first became interested in computer graphics. Clark then committed himself to an academic career, holding teaching posts at University of California at Santa Cruz, the New York Institute of Technology, and University of California at Berkeley before coming to Stanford. But along the way, he became disenchanted with the ways of academia. “I had always seen myself as a senior professor at a university,” he once told The Business Journal-San Jose, “but I think I learned that my strength is making things that work, rather than writing papers. Universities encourage writing a lot of papers.” Hence his departure from Stanford and the founding of Silicon Graphics in 1982.
Once he founded the company, Clark displayed the good sense to find his proper role within the operating structure and stick to it. While high-tech companies like Silicon Graphics are often founded by technologists who turn day-to-day operations over to businesspeople, in many cases the companies falter because the technologists remain too closely involved in business affairs, making poor decisions or allowing the technological edge to dull. Soon after Silicon Graphics was born, Clark brought in Edward McCracken, a veteran Hewlett-Packard executive, to run the company as president and CEO while he remained chairperson. Clark concentrated on serving as the company’s technology guru, leaving McCracken to take care of the business operations. According to McCracken, this role best suited Clark’s temperament: “Jim’s not a day-to-day person. He works in his own time frame,” he told The Business Journal — San Jose. McCracken continued, “He takes complex things and makes it simple. It might take a month, a day, or a year. He gets in these moods for a while where he’s almost unavailable. He’s most effective when he’s in that mood.” Clark also used this division of labor to devote more time to outside interests that included ballet, classical music, art, and flying a stunt plane.
A useful blend of high technology and business sense enabled Silicon Graphics to move forward from its early successes. In 1987 it became the first computer company to make use of MIPS Computer Systems’ innovative reduced instruction-set chip, or RISC, when it incorporated RISC architecture into its new IRIS 4D/60 workstation. Within several years, most workstations would use RISCs. The company received a boost the next year when IBM agreed to buy Silicon Graphics’ IRIS graphics card for use in its own RS/6000 graphics workstations and to take out a license for the IRIS Graphics Library—a big first step toward making the IRIS Graphics Library the industry standard.
Also in 1988, Silicon Graphics introduced amid much fanfare a new line of entry level graphics workstations, which it called Eclipse. Although it dominated the more expensive end of the graphics workstation market, the company needed to broaden its customer base if it expected to maintain sales growth. The Eclipse was designed to bring 3-D graphics to people who had previously regarded IRIS workstations as unaffordable. Eclipse lacked the speed and processing power of more expensive machines, but initial versions sold for less than $20,000—as little as one-fifth of the cost of higher-end machines. Eclipse scored a major success soon after its release when Chrysler announced that it would buy a large number of the machines to go with the IRIS workstations that it was already using to help design its automobiles.
Although Eclipse put Silicon Graphics into more direct competition with its rival workstation manufacturers, who began to chip in with their own low-end 3-D workstations, it also succeeded in expanding the company’s customer base. In 1990 sales volume topped $420 million. The move into the lower priced, high-volume end of the market worked well enough for Silicon Graphics that in 1991 the company released an even less expensive product line—the IRIS Indigo, a 3-D graphics workstation so compact that the company called it the first personal computer to use RISC architecture. The Indigo offered many features found on more expensive models, as well as digital audio and video processing capability, and the base model sold for less than $10,000.
During this time, Silicon Graphics scored several major coups on the business side. In 1991 the company granted a license to software giant Microsoft for the IRIS Graphics Library. Microsoft intended to use the IRIS Graphics Library in its New Technology operating system for personal computers. Also in 1991, Compaq Computer agreed to acquire a 13 percent stake in Silicon Graphics for $135 million, giving Silicon Graphics a much-desired infusion of capital. Furthermore, Compaq agreed to invest $50 million in a joint workstation development project with Silicon Graphics. Together, these moves provided software developers with greater incentive to write programs for Silicon Graphics machines and also broadened the company’s customer base even further.
In 1992 Silicon Graphics agreed to acquire MIPS Computer Systems, which had run into financial difficulties, in a stock swap valued at $230.8 million. The cost of assimilating MIPS forced Silicon Graphics to post a loss of $118.4 million that year, but it also secured the company’s long-term supply of MIPS’s RISCs, which had become a crucial piece of technology.
In January 1993 Silicon Graphics announced a new computer that would use RISC architecture to achieve supercomputer power at relatively affordable prices. The Power Challenge, as it was called, would link multiple RISCs in a single machine to provide unprecedented processing capability in a computer of that price. Whereas traditional supercomputers like those made by IBM and Cray Research typically sold for millions of dollars, the Power Challenge would sell for between $120,000 and $900,000. The new product was announced over a year in advance of its anticipated shipping date to give targeted customers, such as government agencies and universities previously unable to afford supercomputers, time to include it in their budgets. Observers pegged Power Challenge as a sudden move into the faltering field of supercomputer manufacturing, but in fact the company’s ever more powerful workstations were approaching the level of supercomputers anyway, and the company had already established contacts with customers at whom the Power Challenge would be aimed.
In April 1993 Silicon Graphics and Industrial Light and Magic, the famed special effects division of Lucasfilm, announced that they had joined forces to create a high-tech entertainment special effects laboratory. The joint venture was called Joint Environment for Digital Imaging—the acronym JEDI recalled the Jedi Knights of Lucasfilm chair George Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy—and grew out of the fact that Industrial Light and Magic had been using Silicon Graphics workstations since 1987. The liquid metal cyborg featured in the film Terminator 2, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, special effects in The Hunt for Red October and The Abyss, and animation in Beauty and the Beast were all created on Silicon Graphics computers. For Lucas and Industrial Light and Magic, JEDI was expected to yield both financial and aesthetic benefits: digital manipulation of images cost about one-tenth as much as models and drawings, and, according to Lucas, would “change motion pictures from a photographic process to more of a painterly process,” enabling greater authorial control over a film’s appearance. For its part, Silicon Graphics hoped that alliance with an entertainment industry partner would help push the leading edge of its technological development forward.
The entertainment industry was also a growing interest of James Clark’s at the time. On the heels of the announcement of the JEDI alliance, reports surfaced that Silicon Graphics had entered into talks with communications giant Time Warner to explore the possibilities of interactive home entertainment and other advanced cable television technologies. The company would not comment on the reports, but Clark and some of his executives had made it known publicly that Silicon Graphics was interested in developing a computer that would provide interactive services, including networked 3-D video games, for users through cable television hookups.
Silicon Graphics’ interest in entertainment-related technologies is perhaps particularly apropos since the company was founded by a man whom The Business Journal-San Jose once described as looking like “Hollywood’s idea of a successful entrepreneur”—tall, blond, and clad in “expensive Italian suits with bright Italian knit-silk ties.” While some have suggested that the move into entertainment technology represents the deliberate attempts of Clark and McCracken to lead Silicon Graphics away from academia, others have maintained that the company has simply refused to remain in the small niche in which it developed. Instead, Silicon Graphics has made a lot of money in its short history by delivering the technology that made it distinctive to as many people as need and enjoy it.
Principal Subsidiaries
Silicon Graphics International Inc. (Barbados); Silicon Graphics Ltd. (U.K.); Nihon Silicon Graphics K.K. (Japan); Silicon Graphics Pte Ltd. (Singapore); Silicon Graphics AB (Sweden); Silicon Graphics S.A. (Switzerland); Silicon Graphics Gmbh (Germany); Silicon Graphics Canada Inc.; Silicon Graphics World Trade Corp.; Silicon Graphics Ltd. (Israel); Silicon Graphics Ltd. (Hong Kong); Silicon Graphics S.A.R.L. (France); Silicon Graphics S.p.A. (Italy); Silicon Graphics B.V.(Netherlands); Silicon Graphics Pty Ltd. (Australia); Silicon Graphics Federal Sales Corp.; Silicon Graphics Computer Systems Ltd. (Israel); Silicon Graphics Manufacturing S.A. (Switzerland); Silicon Graphics Applications Systems Ltd. (U.K.); Silicon Graphics A/S (Norway); Silicon Graphics A/S (Denmark); Silicon Graphics N.V./S.A. (Belgium); Silicon Graphics OY (Finland); Silicon Graphics S.A. (Spain); Silicon Graphics Computer Systems Gmbh (Austria).
Further Reading
Hof, Robert, and Jeffrey Rothfeder. “This Machine Just Might Eclipse Apollo and Sun,” Business Week, October 10, 1988.
Hof, Robert D. “Is Silicon Graphics Busting Out of Its Niche?” Business Week, April 22, 1991.
Koland, Cordell, “Graphics Firm Leader Combines Technical, Managerial Skill,” The Business Journal—San Jose, December 14, 1987.
Yamada, Ken. “Silicon Graphics Aims to Be Supercomputer Contrarian,” The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 1993.
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https://news.microsoft.com/1997/12/17/silicon-graphics-and-microsoft-form-strategic-alliance-to-define-the-future-of-graphics/
|
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|
Silicon Graphics and Microsoft Form Strategic Alliance To Define the Future of Graphics
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|
Collaboration Enhances Advanced Visual Computing and Applications on Windows And Brings Unique Value to Silicon Graphics' Future Windows-Based Products
|
en
|
Stories
|
https://news.microsoft.com/1997/12/17/silicon-graphics-and-microsoft-form-strategic-alliance-to-define-the-future-of-graphics/
|
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 17, 1997 — Silicon Graphics Inc. (NYSE: SGI) and Microsoft Corp. today announced a strategic alliance aimed at increasing graphics capabilities for a wide variety of consumer, business and professional customers. Drawing upon each company’s industry-leading expertise, this initiative will significantly advance graphics technology and create a common, extensible architecture that will bring advanced and powerful graphics to the entire computer market. The companies have agreed to jointly define, develop and deliver these new graphics technologies as part of a project code-named “Fahrenheit.”
The Fahrenheit project will create a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) for the Microsoft® DirectX® multimedia architecture on the Windows® operating system and the Silicon Graphics® UNIX-based platform. An API is a common interface with which developers can leverage the full acceleration capabilities of a computer. Fahrenheit will incorporate Microsoft Direct3D® and DirectDraw® APIs with Silicon Graphics complementary technologies such as OpenGL® , OpenGL Scene Graph
™
and OpenGL Optimizer
™
. The Fahrenheit architecture will be the basis for innovative third-party graphics and visualization applications including Internet, games, business, digital content creation, CAD/CAM, medical and scientific applications.
“Silicon Graphics and Microsoft have been working together since 1991 to develop OpenGL for Windows NT® ,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Associates and one of the industry’s leading 3-D graphics analysts. “The Fahrenheit project inaugurates the next phase of that long-standing relationship. Fahrenheit paves the way for a truly scalable computer graphics software framework that will satisfy ISVs all the way from low-level APIs to full-blown scene graphics with large model visualization and heavy-duty ‘visualization simplification’ functions. This is something the industry has wanted and needed for a long time.”
This alliance is part of an expanding relationship between Silicon Graphics and Microsoft that enhances Silicon Graphics’ development of high-value Windows-based visual systems. Through this agreement, Silicon Graphics will apply its core competencies to define the Fahrenheit framework upon which Silicon Graphics will continue to develop differentiated graphics systems.
During the development of the Fahrenheit project, Microsoft and Silicon Graphics have also agreed to work together in support of the development of Windows-based graphics applications for professionals through the OpenGL APIs and the development of Windows-based graphics applications for consumers through the Direct3D API.
“Today, Silicon Graphics and Microsoft are defining a clear path for developers that enables both of us to expand the market for graphics,” said Ed McCracken, chairman and chief executive officer of Silicon Graphics. “This also marks Silicon Graphics’ first step toward implementing its strategy to participate in the larger market for a graphically oriented Windows NT-based systems.” “We’re delighted to be working with Silicon Graphics to enhance and drive innovation on DirectX and Windows as a key platform for 3-D graphics and visualization,” said Paul Maritz, group vice president of the platforms and applications group at Microsoft. “The industry’s graphics leaders are collaborating on a standard that will expand the market for developers for Windows while benefiting the entire market.”
Fahrenheit: Common Architecture for Innovation
The Fahrenheit project will produce the following three components:
Fahrenheit low-level API will become the primary graphics API for both consumer and professional applications on Windows. The Fahrenheit low-level API will evolve from Direct3D, DirectDraw and OpenGL while providing full backward compatibility with applications and hardware device drivers written for Microsoft Direct3D and functional compatibility with Silicon Graphics’ OpenGL technologies.
Fahrenheit Scene Graph API will provide a higher level of programming abstraction for developers creating consumer and professional applications on both Windows and Silicon Graphics IRIX operating systems. This API will evolve from Silicon Graphics’ current Scene Graph API. The Fahrenheit Scene Graph API provides high-level data structures and algorithms that increase overall graphics performance and assist the development of sophisticated graphics-rich applications.
Fahrenheit Large Model Visualization Extensions will be based on the Silicon Graphics OpenGL Optimizer API and complementary DirectModel API from Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft. They will operate in conjunction with the Scene Graph API. The large model visualization extensions add functionality that will allow the interactive manipulation of large 3-D models such as an entire automobile. The Large Model Visualization API adds functionality such as multiresolution simplification to the Scene Graph API so developers can easily write applications that will interact with extremely large visual databases. This technology will also be designed to enhance legacy applications with new large model visualization capabilities.
The agreement to collaborate on the Fahrenheit APIs builds on a growing cooperation between Microsoft and Silicon Graphics. Most recently, the companies agreed to collaborate on a new 3-D Graphics Device Driver Kit (DDK) to support OpenGL on the Windows 9X and Windows NT platforms.
The agreement also builds on the significant graphics expertise of each company. Silicon Graphics will draw on its extensive knowledge and core competency in graphics, visualization and imaging, and the overwhelming market acceptance for OpenGL. Microsoft will draw on the acknowledged graphics expertise of its DirectX development team and on the world-renowned Microsoft Research Group, as well as on the leadership of the DirectX APIs and the rich operating system services afforded by the Windows platform.
The Fahrenheit APIs will be developed in conjunction with software and hardware development partners. Microsoft and Silicon Graphics are committed to an open design preview process during which input on the API designs will be solicited from all interested parties. In particular, Microsoft and Silicon Graphics will work together with other industry leaders – including Intel Corp. – to evolve the Fahrenheit APIs. Specifically, Intel will work with Microsoft and Silicon Graphics on the Fahrenheit low-level API to ensure maximum support of the Intel Pentium II processor.
Availability
Microsoft and Silicon Graphics engineers will begin development on Fahrenheit APIs and extensions immediately. They will deliver new APIs, DDKs and Software Development Kits (SDKs) in phases over the next two and a half years. Phase One will be the delivery of the Fahrenheit Scene Graph and Large Model Visualization in the first half of calendar year 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Silicon Graphics IRIX. Phase Two will be the delivery of the Fahrenheit low-level API in the first half of calendar year 2000 on Microsoft Windows only. For the Windows platform, Microsoft will be the direct source for licensing, certifying and distributing the SDKs and DDKs. For the Silicon Graphics IRIX platform, Silicon Graphics will be the direct source for licensing, certifying and distributing the SDKs and DDKs.
For more information on the Fahrenheit APIs, developers should visit (http://www.sgi.com/fahrenheit/) or http://www.microsoft.com/directx/ .
Company Information
Silicon Graphics Inc. is a leading supplier of high-performance interactive computing systems. The company offers the broadest range of products in the industry, from low-end desktop workstations to servers and high-end Cray® supercomputers. Silicon Graphics also markets MIPS microprocessor designs, Alias|Wavefront
™
entertainment and design software, and other software products. The company’s key markets include manufacturing, government, science and industries, communications and entertainment sectors. Silicon Graphics and its subsidiaries have offices throughout the world and headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
Microsoft, DirectX, Windows, Direct3D, DirectDraw and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Silicon Graphics, the Silicon Graphics logo and OpenGL are registered trademarks and IRIX, OpenGL Optimizer and OpenGL Scene Graph are trademarks of Silicon Graphics Inc. MIPS is a registered trademark of MIPS Technologies Inc.
Cray is a registered trademark of Cray Research Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Graphics Inc.
Alias|Wavefront is a trademark of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited
Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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https://www.oldschoolvalue.com/stock-analysis/silicon-graphics-international/
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en
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Silicon Graphics International (SGI) Analysis
|
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"Jae Jun",
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2010-03-15T23:20:38-04:00
|
Randy of Durig Capital has brought you two ideas, DIVX and LAB, that played out well immediately, so here is his third.
|
en
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Old School Value
|
https://www.oldschoolvalue.com/stock-analysis/silicon-graphics-international/
|
Randy of Durig Capital has brought you two ideas, DIVX and LAB, that played out well immediately, so here is his third.
Is it Silicon Graphics International’s time to shine?
Is Silicon Graphics International [[SGI]] third time a charm? Now that they have rock solid balance sheet, excellent execution and very low enterprise value, is this SGI’s time to shine?
Our goal is to select, purchase and monitor companies in an effort of gaining outstanding performing investments while minimizing risk for our clients. We will cover part of our review and selection process as well as explain why SGI has currently become one of our selections.
First, you should know the following: On April 1, 2009, SGI filed for Chapter 11, again, and announced that it sold all of its assets to Rackable Systems for $25 million. The sale increased to $42.5 million and was finalized on May 11, 2009.
At the same time, Rackable announced their name change, Silicon Graphics International, as their global name and brand.
We first search for companies with pristine balance sheets
After the purchase and name change, the new SGI has roughly $154.8 million in cash, or $5.10 per share, and no long term debt after completion of the December quarter.
SGI has a very strong balance sheet.
We like extremely low enterprise values
When you subtract out the cash from the enterprise while remembering that SGI has no debt, their enterprise value (the value of the ongoing operations of the company) is actually extremely small for a company that just completed a single quarter with over $150 million in pro forma revenues.
If you subtract out all the cash from the remaining value of the company, the ongoing business is only worth about $218 million. This makes the business value smaller than the just completed quarterly revenues, which is remarkably low for a leading computer company with a run rate well above $500 million in revenues.
SGI is achieving size, scale and many competitive advantages while only having a handful of competitors. Additionally, having an impressive ability to leverage new business revenues in both storage and services while attaching more value onto to their established and strong position in server sales, they have a nice business model.
Is the operation or enterprise driving value to their shareholders?
SGI receives another yes.
They had an outstanding quarter with a 18 cent pro forma profit, which is well above the average estimate of a loss of 8 cents while solidly expanding and, better yet, forecasting a continuously expanding margin for the year.
Possibly even more impressive is that SGI grew their cash this quarter by over $31 million, which was a whopping 25% greater over their last quarter.
An impressive metric measurement of their execution was that the new SGI’s international revenues are up about 12 times in one year to 29% of total revenues. With this knowledge and the history of SGI, the new SGI has strong execution and growth.
Now knowing the excellent performance on the international markets, SGI’s current forecast of doubling storage business in three years to 30% of total revenues seems very palatable.
In most companies this would be seen as a Hercules-type of event, especially in this economy. For SGI though, it’s just part of normal execution.
Is this a good business?
We believe this is a very good business with both new and established clients adopting a slow but steady migration to a cloud-computing concept of computing, while at the same time the cost of high performance computers is rapidly falling.
This allows for a high growth, low cost, open-architecture computer company to be in a very enviable position.
SGI is a leading developer of enterprise-class, high performance systems that feature individual configurations that could include thousands of Intel x64 based microprocessors with Linux operating systems. The standard combination of Intel x64 architecture and Linux operating environment combined with their own differentiated Linux extensions gives companies that purchase SGI advantages in improved performance, simplified system management, reduced operating cost and a much more robust development environment.
When Rackable purchased the assets of SGI, they also attained over 700 patents in the high performance computers as well as many large customers.
Is the Train Wreck and then the fog from the Wreck clearing?
When finding companies around cash value, often a “Train Wreck” is needed to drive value close to cash.
With SGI, it was assumed it was a never ending train wreck, but some of the major concerns include:
Questionable success of two uniquely different companies merging, knowing the more established one never gained success in years.
SGI’s history of having great technology, but poor sales or execution.
Questioning if Rackable would be able to provide it’s high growth, while accruing a much larger company.
In 2006 and 2009, SGI went into bankruptcy giving SGI without proper due diligence – the concept that SGI is a perennial looser.
I believe all of these factors and more have been priced into this company’s current price.
First of all, SGI will survive if it’s profitable with a high pile of cash and no debt.
Rackable Systems (the purchasing company) had a completely different story and went public in June, 2005.
According to Gartner’s October 2007 server report, Rackable Systems was the fourth largest x86 server provider in North America. Also, in 2007, it was rated the fastest growing server provider in North America, outgrowing all the majors like Sun Microsystem, Dell, Hewlett Packard and IBM on a unit percentage basis. With Rackable Systems (the little guy) purchasing SGI (a technology leader), this could come out far better than it has been priced for.
The new SGI has now demonstrated over the last two quarters that the execution of Rackable Systems combined with the technological muscle of SGI to date has been a wonderful marriage, with some of the best execution in the business whether we perceive them having a low enterprise value or not.
Valuation
We believe SGI has a value, execution and balance sheet like those past companies that fit our model, e.g., SONS, LAB, DIVX, KHD, HCII and WCG, so we’re hopeful that SGI will have a similar outcome knowing other companies that fit this model have preformed well.
Knowing that SGI has completed two excellent quarters in creating value for their shareholders and now that the new company has completed over 6 months of history, we ran the following two traditional valuations of SGI to put a value on the new company:
1. Price Earning or PE Based:
Durig Capital is currently forecasting that SGI will produce an annual run rate of 72 cents per year pro forma. With SGI’s margins, revenues and profits all expanding, SGI should at least achieve some industry parity in value.
When the Diversified Computer Industry’s average PE of 17.55 is applied to SGI, this would give ongoing business a value of $12.63. Then, when you add the cash of $5.10 per share, we believe that SGI could achieve a stock market value of $17.73.
2. Revenue Based:
If you value SGI at 2.48 times sales (again, the computer diversified sales average) using SGI’s guidance of $500 million in sales for their current year plus the $5.10 in cash currently on the books, it adds up to a $46.50 stock market value.
Either way, today you could easily demonstrate based even on the lowest result (the PE based valuation) that with SGI’s current model, low valuation and especially with their short term superb execution, SGI could and should, in our opinion, be valued significantly higher.
Disclosure
Durig Capital owns SGI in it’s client, related and own accounts. We started buying around $8.89 per share.
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https://www.wigglepixel.nl/en/blog/history-interactive-computer-graphics-part-4
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The History of Interactive Computer Graphics - Part 4
|
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[
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[
"Maarten de Haas",
"Steve Jobs",
"John Lasseter",
"Ollie Johnston"
] |
2020-05-14T00:00:00
|
Part 4 of a journey through time with a focus on computer development, CGI, animations, interactives, games, the internet and a touch of virtual reality.
|
en
|
Wigglepixel | Animations in 2D en 3D
|
https://www.wigglepixel.nl/en/blog/history-interactive-computer-graphics-part-4
|
The History of Interactive Computer Graphics
Computer graphics, animations and interactions with digital equipment are now self-evident. You just have to pick up your smartphone, tablet, desktop computer or what else and you feel intuitively when you have to swipe, click, drag or pinch zoom. You also expect nothing less than nice interfaces with smooth animations.
In this blog series, of which this is the fourth part of six, I like to take you on a journey through time with our focus on the development before and during the creation of computers, digital graphics, animations, graphical interfaces, graphics software, interactivity, 3D, a pinch of the first games, the creation of the internet and a touch of virtual reality. If I could even mention the largest part of influential events, that would be a world achievement. So that's just impossible. Instead, I like to point out a number of events that I think have made an important contribution to getting where we are now. Sometimes with a slight side-road to a development that indirectly made an important contribution or reflects the spirit of the times and relations between events. Although I personally find audio and music are very important and interesting and I have always been involved in producing music, I have made the decision to omit audio developments in this series to keep the series somewhat concise and focused.
I have made more than 110 illustrations for this series and also provide each part with at least one interactive to bring the events alive as good as possible for you.
If you haven't read part one, part two and part three of this series yet, it's worth reading those first.
Part 4
In this fourth part we start at the beginning of the 80s. We will see some important relationships between companies, individuals and events and discover that many things are even directly related to each other. More often than you might think.
Well-known star players in the field of technical innovation, graphics and animations are increasingly seen in the timeline, because they keep coming up with new techniques. During this period, a stable technical foundation has been laid for everything that is related to graphics, animations, interactives and computers today. Because we are increasingly moving towards the present tense, this period will evoke nostalgia for many people. That was at least certainly the case with me while writing this part!
There are some interesting situations ahead this time, so let's get started quickly. And this time we start in Canada, at Simon Fraser University.
1982-83: E.T. and the Video Game Crash of '83
Due to the worldwide success of the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, in 1983, Atari, in collaboration with Universal Pictures, released the game E.T. on the market for the Atari 2600. Because Atari wanted to release this game before Christmas and therefore the time pressure was high, the game wasn't tested for errors and playing fun and was therefore launched too quickly.
Atari had expected skyrocketing sales and had therefore overproduced game cartridges. But even though the sales were initially a hit, the game didn't reach the high sales figures Atari expected. As a result, many game cartridges could be thrown in the trash and many of the games sold also returned from dissatisfied buyers who had complaints about the game itself and serious errors. Atari reportedly lost $100 million.
The E.T. game is still considered one of the worst computer games ever released. But with that, this game also became an important and valuable lesson for the games industry. Atari literally buried this bit of history when they buried ten to twenty truckloads of remaining games in a deep pit in Texas in 1983.
Among other things, due to a saturated market of first-generation game consoles with games that were very similar, but also because the demand for computer games decreased due to the rise of personal computers, among others, there was a recession in the games industry in the United States between 1983 and 1985. Many people think that the dramatic E.T. game was an important impetus causing this Video Game Crash of '83.
1982: ColecoVision and Donkey Kong
Just before that crash, in 1982 the American company Coleco was the first company to use a digital computer processor in a home game console, because chips became cheaper due to the success of the Commodore 64. The ColecoVision was also the first device to offer truly innovative competition to the Atari 2600, which had been successful since 1977.
In the years leading up to 1982 there was a Japanese company that had been making playing cards since 1889 and moved to developing electronic toys now had switched to an emerging market because of the 1973 oil crisis; computer games. This company, Nintendo, in collaboration with Mitsubishi, who supplied the hardware, had, among other things, marketed a clone of Atari's Pong like many other companies. In part three of this blog series, we already read how many different companies tried to capitalize on Pong's success.
In 1981, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto designed the arcade game Donkey Kong. It was the first time that it wasn't a programmer who wrote a computer game, but an industrial designer. That also affected the quality and success of the game. With Donkey Kong, Nintendo had even started a whole new games category: platform games.
In 1982 Nintendo had tried for some time to gain a foothold in the United States, but that didn't work out very well. Despite the fact that a bidding war had erupted in the United States over the US distribution rights for Nintendo's Donkey Kong game. This bid mainly went between Atari and Coleco and was eventually won by Coleco.
Among others because of Nintendo's Donkey Kong game, which now, with the acquisition of the rights, came with the ColecoVision game console, but also because a hardware plug-in for the console made it possible to play Atari 2600 games on the console, the ColecoVision became a great success. Atari sued Coleco, but that wasn't successful due to the lack of legislation in the new computer games market.
The ColecoVision was part of the second generation of game consoles and eventually, together with other new brands, models and techniques, it brought the video games market back to life after the Video Game Crash of '83. But it would still take some years after 1983 to end the crash.
1982: First solid 3D CGI on film
In parts two and three of this blog series, we saw that 3D computer graphics began to emerge in short films. But those were usually just short films to demonstrate something scientific or a new technical computer animation technique. Also we mainly saw wireframes and certainly no long cinema films with 3D graphics.
This changed in 1982. Walt Disney's science fiction feature film Tron was the first feature film to feature solid 3D computer graphics. The film is directed by Steven Lisberger and is based on a story by himself and Bonnie MacBird. The story is about a computer programmer who has been transported into the software world inside a computer. The programmer then tries to communicate with the software programs he is in to escape.
The making of the film had already started six years earlier, in 1976, when Lisberger was intrigued by Atari's game Pong, about which we already read in parts two and three.
1983: Cooperation Atari and Nintendo
Because some of their Arcade games being successful in Japan weren't successful in the United States, Nintendo decided in April 1983 to contact American Atari, which was already a well-known name worldwide.
For Atari, due to the Video Game Crash, Nintendo was interesting and many conversations between Atari and Nintendo later Atari would distribute the 8-bit Nintendo Famicom to all countries outside Japan. All details were worked out and all that was left was to sign a four-year contract that Nintendo had negotiated hard about. But that never happened.
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in June that year, Atari had seen that the American company Coleco had the Nintendo game Donkey Kong, for which Coleco did have the license rights for game consoles, but not for personal computers, because Atari had this, also released their game on their new Adam computer. In addition to a game console, the Adam was also a full-fledged personal computer. So Atari was quite angry and felt stabbed in the back by their negotiating partner Nintendo.
Also Nintendo's boss was angry with Coleco, had an emergency meeting with Coleco the same day and demanded that the game would not be released on the Adam. Coleco said that he wasn't aware of problems because of a deal between Nintendo and Atari and in September that year there was a consultation between Nintendo, Atari and Coleco in which the conflict was finally resolved.
But because Atari had already lost more than $500 million due to the Video Crash, Atari fired many employees, their parent company closed many Atari offices and the deal with Nintendo was canceled. Nintendo therefore decided to do it themselves, but it would have been close to writing in these blogs about the Atari Entertainment System (AES) instead of the NES.
Although there are people who are convinced that Atari had never intended to actually sign the contract with Nintendo, because they think Atari found their own successor, the Atari 7800, superior to the Nintendo Famicom.
1984: Apple Macintosh
As we saw in part three, the Apple Macintosh, the Mac, was certainly not the first computer with a graphical interface and a mouse. Also the Apple Lisa computer, the predecessor of the Mac, already had a GUI and mouse. And the Mac's graphical interface was even adopted from the Xerox Alto.
Nevertheless, the Mac was an important step in history, because it was the first personal computer with a GUI and mouse that also became popular and thus accelerated further technical developments in the graphic field. Besides the Lisa and Lisa 2, it was the first popular personal computer with a Motorola 68000 chip, the instruction set which was much better equipped for graphic work than, for example, IBM PCs.
Development of the Mac started five years earlier, in 1979, but it didn't have a graphical interface back then. It was only after Steve Jobs' visit to Xerox PARC, where Xerox showed their GUI, that Apple took these ideas into their computers and really started creating the Mac and Mac OS. Ultimately, this computer has proved to be very important for the development of the digital graphics industry. Actually, with the Mac, a graphical operating system was widely marketed for the first time.
1984: PostScript
When we talk about graphic software nowadays, many people immediately think of Adobe Photoshop, Flash and After Effects. Unfortunately, not everybody knows that Adobe is not the creator of these programs, but that in fact Adobe has often acquired these and other products through corporate acquisitions. What Adobe did develop itself and put the company on the map was PostScript, the first version of which appeared in 1984.
Talking about PostScript, many designers think of PostScript fonts. And PostScript Type 1 is indeed a font file format introduced by Adobe in 1984 as part of PostScript. Still, PostScript is much more than that. But what exactly is PostScript?
PostScript is a page layout programming language. PostScript became important because several printer types had come on the market that operated differently but were required to produce the same prints. PostScript made it possible to save graphical formatting of pages using mathematical formulas and logic. This allowed the page to be read on different printers and interpreted their own way, and the graphic content also became scalable. Each printer was able to read these PostScript scripts and, after execution and processing could print them in a way that suits the technique of the printer. Adobe co-founder John Warnock thus found a good solution for a growing problem due to an increasing number of different printers.
Where we still see a lot of PostScript today is in simplified form within the PDF file format, which is also developed by Adobe. Part of PostScript is also still used within EPS files. EPS is an abbreviation of Encapsulated PostScript.
The example below is taken from the Wikipedia page on PostScript to give you an impression of a PostScript script:
1984: Alpha Channel and Compositing Algebra
Developments in computer graphics went really fast in the 80's and graphic design with computers finally became easier, better and more accessible and affordable for many more people. In the same year that Postscript was published, Thomas K. Porter and Tom Duff released their paper 'Compositing Digital Images' in July 1984.
Porter and Duff had already worked with Lucasfilm's Computer Division, the club led by Ed Catmul that we see over and over again, as they have brought so many important developments. So they certainly were with the core club of people who helped advance the CGI world.
In their paper, important graphic ideas were introduced, such as an Alpha Channel for storing transparency information per pixel in a graphic file. They also came up with a whole set of image combining operations they called Compositing Algebra. You might recognize this as the blend modes in many graphic editors, such as Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo. But you will also find the techniques if you work with 3D shaders or html <canvas> objects.
How cool is it that you can still find this article on the Pixar website! It is here.
1984: First fully CGI-generated film
In 1984, the Lucasfilm Computer Division was supplemented by an ex-animator from Disney who quickly became very important to the company: John Lasseter.
He had put forward the idea at Disney to combine camera images with computer graphics, but Disney was not impressed by this and saw no future in it. At the Computer Division, an animator like him was more than welcome, because the club consisted mainly of technicians and they noticed that they could use an experienced professional in the field of animation.
When the Computer Division brought in John Lasseter they made the very first fully CGI-generated animated film with 3D graphics that same year: The Adventures of André and Wally B.. The short film was a first for the outside world for many new graphic techniques. Such as the Motion Blur technique developed by the group itself. Due to the animation knowledge of John Lasseter and his Disney background, he was responsible for the animations of the film. This was the first time that the well-known Disney animation principles, which we have just discussed, were applied in computer animations. This greatly benefited the animations and generated many positive reactions.
1984-85: Atari vs Amiga
Atari's parent company Warner Communications thought Atari's 8-bit game consoles were enough to get profit from for a while and therefore didn't want to innovate. When employees indicated that they wanted to grow to 16-bit computers and to work with the new Motorola 68000 chip that was also used in Apple's Macintosh, the company wasn't open to that and the designers didn't feel heard. Therefore computer chip designer Jay Miner and game designer and programmer Larry Kaplan, among others, left Atari.
A while later, Larry contacted Jay, and after finding investors, in 1982 they started a company later called Amiga Corporation. At that time under the name Hi-Toro. The intention was to make games and accessories.
Larry went back to his old employer a year later after he got an offer from Atari and Jay turned out to be his direct competitor. Because Jay Miner could then fulfill his dream and design a chipset and computer, he named Lorraine, which was based on the Motorola 68000 chip. Initially as an extensible game console, but later as a full personal computer, because that was more likely to succeed given the Video Game Crash of '83. Meanwhile, the money ran out and they were looking for new investors. Steve Jobs of Apple has also come by a few times.
In January 1984 Amiga showed an improvised demo of a bouncing ball at the CES fair. There was no OS yet. This attracted investors, including Tramel Technology, but also Atari and Commodore. Amiga was pretty desperate and went for a deal with Atari. Atari gave Amiga a $500,000 loan. In return, Atari would then receive exclusive design rights for one year to use the chips in their own video game consoles. After that year Atari should also be able to add a keyboard and mouse.
At the same time, Warner was negotiating the sale of Atari, because Atari suffered a serious loss of millions. Not even the CEO of Atari knew about the takeover plans. In July 1984, Jack Tramiel and his company Tramel Technology acquired Atari Inc.'s Consumer Division and it became the new company Atari Corporation. Furthermore, I just call this Atari again, otherwise it gets a little complicated.
When the Amiga Corporation heard of these negotiations with Jack Tramiel they started negotiating with Commodore. They also knew Jack Tramiel because he previously had also shown interest in Amiga, but had wanted to change the company too drastically. Many Commodore employees had recently left and gone to Atari, so Commodore was so interested in the Amiga Corporation that they bought off the $500,000 loan for Amiga and didn't go for a licensing deal on techniques and products, but took over the Amiga Corporation as a whole. The Lorraine chipset has therefore never been delivered to Atari.
On August 13, 1984, Jack Tramiel, on behalf of Atari, sued Amiga for breach of contract. At the time, Atari was unaware that Amiga wasn't only working on a chipset, but secretly even on a whole computer around it. Meanwhile, Atari and their ex-Commodore employees started developing their own personal computer...
1985: Atari 520-ST
So this computer was created by the rivalry between Atari and the Amiga Corporation. Due to the delay at Amiga and because Atari employed former Commodore employees, they could come with their computer earlier than Amiga. In the year that the IBM PC compatible's only released Windows 1.0 in November, which tended somewhat towards a graphical interface, in January of the same year Atari announced their much more powerful and graphic computer: the Atari 520-ST.
The ST was set up much more graphically, because unlike the IBM PC, but like the Apple Mac and thus the Amiga boys' upcoming computer, it used a Motorola 68000 chip with a 16 bits external bus and 32 bits internal bus . The ST in the name therefore stands for Sixteen / Thirty-Two, because of these bus sizes.
The Atari ran an operating system from Gary Kildall's Digital Research: GEM (Graphics Environment Manager). As we read in the previous part, Gary was also the original developer of other major operating systems, including CP/M and DOS. With the GEM operating system, the Atari was the very first personal computer on the market to work with a GUI built with bitmap graphics. As a result, the interface looked much more graphical than the interfaces of the competition.
In addition to graphic applications, the Atari 520-ST was extremely popular with music producers for many years after production. This was because Atari had made an important decision; they had put MIDI ports on the motherboard that allowed users to control musical instruments with the computer and thus record music via MIDI data. The MIDI ports only cost a few cents extra in the production process, but they made this computer very popular among music producers.
Sales of the 520-ST started in July 1985 and saved Atari from destruction that seemed inevitable because of the '83 Video Game Crash.
1985: Commodore Amiga
But the expected and formidable competition also came that year. As on July 23, 1985, Commodore unveiled 'The Amiga from Commodore', which was later renamed the Amiga 1000. This was quite a show, complete with orchestra, singer Blondie and a creative demo by Andy Warhol.
Presales started in August and the first copies were delivered in November. Unfortunately they were later than Atari and too late for the Christmas sales. The Amiga 1000 was way ahead of its time and more powerful than the Atari ST, but it offered significant new features so new that many people didn't even understand what they could do with them, as there was no software available yet demonstrating these features. Commodore wasn't happy with the results and hired a new CEO. The plan than became to come up with a hi-end and a low-end model: the Amiga 2000 and the Amiga 500, both of which came on the market in March 1987.
For the sake of overview, I take the story a little wider here and include the Amiga 500, even though it only came on the market in 1987. Because that model showed very well the possibilities that the Amiga 1000 already had, but was much more popular and affordable, better marketed and also had much more impact.
The Amiga 500 was a direct competitor to Atari ST and also ran on the Motorola 68000 chip, but with the Lorraine chipset that Amiga had developed. The Amiga 1000 was a more powerful and high-quality computer than the Atari 520-ST, but also more expensive. Therefore, the 500 had become the entry-level model that could compete directly with the Atari ST.
In contrast to the IBM PC and also the Mac, the Amiga screen could display no less than 4096 colors. In comparison: the PC could at that time display 16 colors and the Mac even less: only two!
Although audio falls outside the scope of this blog series, I think it is important to mention here that the earlier Commodore 64 was the first personal computer to have a sound chip on board; the SID chip (Sound Interface Device). The Amiga went a step further and could even play standard 8-bit audio samples on four separate mono channels without additional hardware. Mod trackers (music trackers), multi-track software for making music on four mono channels with samples, became very popular. Many house tracks were made with module trackers and partly because of this, partly because of the Atari ST having MIDI ports, a new type of music producer was created: the home producer.
The Commodore Amiga was therefore very suitable for playing games, making music and graphic design. With the Lightwave 3D program it was also possible to create 3D video clips. The computer became especially popular among gamers and the 3d demo scene. The Amiga also got an important role in video productions and show control.
But the original employees of the Amiga Corporation, including Jay Miner, weren't satisfied with the device after the company was acquired by Commodore, because the computer was less than they intended. So they left the company.
Years later, Atari was unable to keep up with the market. The Commodore Amiga went well for a while and had released some new models after the 500, but wasn't able to keep up with IBM PCs and their competitive Windows 3.1, VGA graphics and Sound Blasters in the end.
1985: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
We had just met the new player in the game console market, Nintendo. And we already read about their Famicom game console which was a big step forward and that they wanted Atari to distribute their product outside of Japan. However, the following development should not be missing in this article about the history of interactives and computer graphics.
July 1985 was the month on which the well-known Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was launched. The NES, which was an improvement of the Famicom in a new package and belongs to the third generation of game consoles, quickly became very popular and one of the best-selling game consoles worldwide. This also ended the Video Game Crash that had lasted since 1983.
The NES was also special in that it not only put Nintendo on the map worldwide, but Nintendo also introduced with the NES an important new business model for game consoles that changed the industry. They didn't make all the games for their system themselves, but gave licenses to other game producers to be able to make games for the NES. So they actually took an important step in the direction of a more varied and wider range of games and perhaps even avoided unnecessary competition.
Actually, with this they solved important problems that had previously led to the Video Game Crash of '83 and Nintendo had learned from the mistakes Atari had previously made. They also beat the Atari 7800 in terms of sales. Remember? That was the game console that was rumored to be superior by Atari and the future compared to the Nintendo Famicom... With today's knowledge we know that it turned out slightly differently.
With the NES was also perhaps the most famous platform game ever launched: Super Mario Bros.
1985: Inverse Kinematics in Animation
To put, for example, a skeleton in an animation in a certain position, simple Forward Kinematics was used at the time. If you wanted to place an arm in a certain position, you had to rotate all parts in a certain position from the upper arm all the way to the hand. This was time consuming and not a pleasant and intuitive way of animating.
What animators preferred was to directly move of a hand or a foot, whereby the rest of the arm or leg also moves naturally with it. The same challenge also existed in robotics, where robots should be able to grab something with their arms.
A solution to this challenge came with Inverse Kinematics. Although much work had already been done in 1985, Anthony A. Maciejewski and Michael Girard of Ohio State University (OSU) published their paper on Inverse Kinematics in animation. Which made the animation of computer characters considerably simpler and more intuitive and ultimately could lead to more natural postures. So this was a very important development for both robotics and computer animations.
To illustrate the difference between Forward Kinematics and Inverse Kinematics I made an interactive for you. Below in this interactive you can clearly experience the difference between both methods. Follow the instructions in the caption and you will see that Inverse Kinematics is a very convenient way to use in animations.
Conclusion
And with that we have come to the end of this part with quite a bit of information. Some of the situations in this period are so interesting and full of related events that this time I chose to go deeper into some of them. Especially, because they have also proved to be very decisive for further technical developments.
What particularly struck me when writing this part was the prominent role Atari played during this period. Whether it was in negotiations with Nintendo and the Amiga Corporation, a series of hindsight, rather wrong decisions, made by parent company Warner, the loss of key employees due to lack of innovation, and at the same time welcoming Commodore employees. And competition and lawsuits. I don't think anyone can deny that Atari and also Commodore, especially with the exchange of their employees, played important roles in the development of graphically oriented computers. It is also clear that the role played by the Motorola 68000 chip is significant.
We are now getting closer to home and to the present tense. In the next part we will enter the internet age. That was also a time when many interesting new things happened.
Did you find this interesting or do you want to ask something or comment? Let me hear from you below and share the blog on social media. It motivates me to keep writing quality blogs like this one. Also after clicking on like or dislike you have the option to add comments if you'd like to comment on something (optional). Thanks and 'till next time!
Continue reading part 5 >
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Posts about Silicon Graphics written by xsisupport
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GAME DEVELOPER • JUNE/JULY 1995 Microsoft’s Softimage is suddenly challenged by Silicon Graphics’s merger with Alias and Wavefront. What can game developers expect from these two?
3D Graphics Goliaths Square Off
Yesterday, as I was cleaning out a bookshelf in our office, I came upon an issue of Byte magazine from Aug., 1987. Although I was throwing everything away, I had an urge to flip through its pages—there’s something compelling about a computer magazine that’s over seven years old. Volume 12, number 9 of Byte may only have been 49 in dog-years, but it was much older in computer-years. I couldn’t believe it—ads for 386 16Mhz computers selling for $4,400, 9600-baud modems for $1,000, and articles about EGA graphics. It’s amazing we got through those rough times. (Some know-it-all will read this in 2002 and say the same thing about 1995, no doubt.)
One article that caught my eye focused on the technique of transferring cartoon-quality film (a clip from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves) into digitized EGA display. Yeeeesshhh, the final result looked horrible. So, maybe the time wasn’t right back then for creating digital media from live footage. But, like a rolling snowball picking up size and speed, the graphics industry is maturing to the point where there’s not too much anyone can’t do at an affordable price. Microsoft and Silicon Graphics (SGI), thanks to recent acquisitions and mergers, are helping to fuel this momentum.
Competitive Partners
The relationship between Microsoft and Silicon Graphics has changed enormously over the past 12 months. Silicon Graphics is the dominant player in the graphics
workstation market, and Microsoft is the giant in the PC software market.
However, when Microsoft acquired Softimage last summer, Microsoft gained a powerful suite of IRIX-based animation, editing, compositing, and cel animation tools. It instantly became a key partner of SGI. Eight months later—last February—SGI merged with Alias and Wavefront, two companies that compete against Softimage on the SGI platform. How have these developments changed the relationship between Silicon Graphics and Microsoft? More importantly, how does it affect their customers?
I spoke with Andrew Wright, group product manager of advanced authoring tools for Microsoft/Softimage, and Dave Larson, director of marketing for Silicon Studios, a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, about the actions their companies have taken recently in the digital entertainment industry.
The most recent event, Silicon Graphics’ merger with Alias and Wavefront, achieved two objectives for SGI, according to Larson.
“We felt that by merging with Alias and Wavefront,” Larson explained, “we could get two of the most important groups of engineers together with our engineers and accomplish two things. [The first objective] is to drive the development of our 3D software environment… [Second,] we don’t have expertise in entertainment and industrial [software] markets at the customer level like we do with hardware. We’re getting a sales force that knows the customers really well at the application level, a sales force that has a much greater depth of knowledge.”
What was Wright’s reaction to the SGI merger?
“Surprise,” he said. “From [Microsoft’s] perspective, it actually puts us in a stronger position because we feel that for our customers a cross-platform solution is important. Where they want the performance of SGI, we provide it, where they want the price-to-performance ratio and openness of a Windows NT system we’ll provide that to them. We’ll be the only high-end 3D animation vendor that’s effectively able to execute a crossplatform strategy.”
I sensed no edginess from either Wright or Larson about the relationship between Microsoft and SGI, and both played up the positive aspects of their new product lines. Wright stressed the fact that many of SGI’s partners, not just Microsoft, were now competitors, but that it wouldn’t make sense for SGI to consider them as such: “Yes, we are a competitor to [Silicon Graphics], but they’re also a competitor to a number of their other ISVs [independent software vendors]. Companies like Side Effects, Discreet Logic, Avid… One thing I can say absolutely outright is that if SGI loses their third-party applications as a result of this merger, they’re dead in the water. I think they’ve almost got to overcompensate to make sure that their third party ISVs are treated fairly,” Wright commented.
Dave Larson adamantly agreed.
“We’re going to treat [Microsoft] as we do a whole category of partners who will get early access information, and it’s based on business parameters. These guys, as well as other 3D vendors, are still selling SGI software and we’re going to do whatever we can to make sure they continue to do so. That’s our business.”
Softimage off the SGI Platform?
Upon acquiring Softimage last year, Microsoft stated its intention to port the Softimage tools over to Windows NT. I asked Wright whether Microsoft had plans to pull Softimage products off the SGI platform at a later date and focus exclusively on its own operating system implementation.
“No. One of the key reasons Microsoft bought Softimage is that Softimage had a tremendous presence in the community that was producing the world’s best content. ILM [Industrial Light and Magic]. Greenberg. Rocket Science. For those companies, the SGI platform is absolutely critical because they need that level of performance… We think Windows NT and the associated hardware developments are going to provide a very price-attractive alternative. But in no way is that going to put SGI out of business. They are going to continue to do very well and we need to be there.”
Microsoft looks at its partner/competitor relationship with SGI in the same light as its association with Apple.
“We’ll continue to invest in SGI,” Wright stated. “It’s very similar to our situation on the Macintosh. Microsoft makes a lot of money on the Macintosh and it’s a very vital platform for us at the application level, even though we don’t own the operating system. The fact that we’ve got applications on Windows 95 as well does not in any way affect our investment in the Macintosh platform.”
Wright sees Silicon Graphics remaining the superior platform for highend digital video and three-dimensional animation over Windows NT, just as the Macintosh held its position as the superior platform for graphic design when Windows 3.0 was introduced.
“Macintosh had a very strong position in graphic design. Windows came in and everybody thought that it was going to completely take over the market. As a result, companies like Aldus and Adobe developed their applications first on Windows and second on Macintosh. But they realized over time that the Mac wasn’t going to go away… We think a similar thing is going to happen in the SGI world,” Wright said.
Porting Softimage Products to Windows NT
Upon acquiring Softimage, Microsoft announced that it would port the company’s toolset to Windows NT. Wright indicated that Softimage products would be available on Windows NT this year, but he declined to be more specific, fearing that divulging an estimated date could raise false hopes.
I wanted to know what strengths Windows NT could offer over the SGI platform to game developers. After all, SGI has been targeting this market for years and has optimized its hardware for high-end graphics and animation. Wright responded: “We think that the Windows NT platform will offer very attractive price-to-performance ratio in the range of performance that it delivers. We also feel that for people who have PC-based networks, for example developers who are using [Autodesk’s] 3D Studio, it will be important for them to run a high-quality 3D product in the same environment that they’re running their other tools. I think that’s going to be key to the games development area.”
Downward Pressure on Prices
In addition to announcing the porting of Softimage tools over to Windows NT, Microsoft announced in January that it was slashing the price of all Softimage software by up to 50%. What was behind this aggressive move? Wright explained:
“Over the last couple of years, interactive developers [have begun to] require [highend] tools as games have become more sophisticated. We looked at our pricing structure and said, ‘Well, those prices make sense if we continue to maintain our high-end feature set for our traditional market.’ But if [Microsoft] really wants to penetrate the market for game developers as well as other emerging interactive media, it’s important to have more aggressive price points and maintain that leadership position.”
A large number of graphics and animation products have been launched for the Windows, DOS, and Macintosh platforms recently by companies like Caligari and Strata. Although these products aren’t in the same class of function or performance as either the Microsoft or SGI tools on IRIX, they seem to be exerting pressure on software prices for the entire market, regardless of platform. I asked Dave Larson how Silicon Graphics viewed these lower-priced products, and how his company would respond.
“We’re moving down in terms of markets,” declared Larson. “As our price points come down, we’re cutting deeper into various markets… Historically, SGI has been perceived as vastly more expensive and out of reach, a boutique kind of machine. We think we’re rapidly expanding beyond that, and that we’re within reach for a lot of people [developing digital entertainment] for a living. It’s all about how much time you have to get your work done. For instance, a friend of mine just came up who’s been doing a lot of audio work on the Mac, and he just started using a new audio application on our platform. He says it’s dramatically affected his work just after a few days of working with it. What he used to think ahead to do he now does in real time. He can test his decisions as he goes. That’s the metaphor for performance change. Everything happens so much more quickly [on the SGI platform], and your creativity can increase.”
Sega and Nintendo Choose Sides
There’s an interesting sidebar concerning SGI and Microsoft. The two archrivals in the game cartridge market, Nintendo and Sega, have gone to separate corners for their respective development tools, and you can probably guess whom each has enlisted. In 1994, Nintendo selected Alias (whose software was used to create the Super NES blockbuster Donkey Kong Country) as the authorized graphics development system for both current games and next-generation 64-bit games. Last January, Sega chose Softimage 3D as the official three-dimensional development tool for the new SegaSaturn game platform. I’m not saying that this is an instance of “any enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but it is predictable political maneuvering.
As long as the Softimage tools on IRIX don’t take a distant second priority to their Windows NT version, users stand to gain from a price war between two resource-rich companies like Silicon Graphics and Microsoft. Feature sets and performance should evolve more rapidly, and it undoubtedly will spur other SGI platform competitors to keep up.
You’d better get used to seeing more companies merging or acquired as the digital entertainment market expands—it’s a natural consolidation that should continue for the next couple of years.
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Amelco Semiconductor was founded in 1961 in Mountain View, California by Fairchild founders Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, and Sheldon Roberts. With financing from Teledyne Corporation arranged by Arthur Rock, the plan was to build monolithic integrated circuits in support of Teledyneââ¬â¢s military business. As the market took longer to develop than anticipated, product development was expanded to include a broad line of discrete devices and hybrid circuits for military and aerospace applications. Later renamed Teledyne Semiconductor, the company operated as a unit of Teledyne Components before being spun out in 1993 as Telcom Semiconductor, Inc. Telcom was acquired by Microchip in 2000.
Founded in 1885 as American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of American Bell Telephone Company, its nationwide telephone service made it the largest corporation in America at one time. Divesting its local operating companies by court order in 1984, AT&T focused on research (Bell Telephone Laboratories), equipment manufacturing (Western Electric) and long distance telephone services. In 1996, the corporation split into three independent companies; telecommunications (AT&T) manufacturing (Lucent Technologies) and computers (NCR). In 2005, the telecommunications business merged with SBC, itself a merger of some of the original AT&T operating companies. Lucent spun-off the semiconductor operations as Agere in 2002. Agere merged with LSI Logic to form LSI Corporation in 2006.
Atari, Inc. was founded with an investment of $250 by Nolan Busnell and Ted Dabney on June 27th, 1972 in the Santa Clara Valley, CA to develop electronic games inspired by the computer-based Space Wars. Intended as a learning project for design engineer Al Alcorn, the paddle game Pong became blockbuster hit and launched Atari as one of the most successful early video game, console, and personal computer manufacturers. To finance expansion, Atari was sold to Warner Communications in 1976. The company changed hands several times before ceasing operations in 1996. The brand name is currently owned by Atari Interactive.
Established by Dr. Arnold O. Beckman in 1934, Beckman Instruments introduced its first commercial product, a pH Meter, in 1935 and prospered as a supplier of analytical laboratory equipment. Beckman funded William Shockleyââ¬â¢s Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, CA as a division of the company in 1955 and sold the profitless business to Clevite in 1960. As Beckman Coulter, Inc., today the company is a manufacturer of biomedical testing systems and supplies based in Fullerton, CA with fiscal year 2006 revenue of $2.5 billion.
Founded in New York City in 1925 as the research arm of American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), beginning in the 1930ââ¬â¢s Bell Telephone Laboratories expanded into multiple locations in New Jersey. The Bell Labs R&D community has made seminal scientific discoveries, created new technologies, and built communication systems around the world. Developed in 1947, as a replacement for vacuum tubes and mechanical relays, the transistor revolutionized the electronics world. Other semiconductor innovations followed, including the silicon transistor, the solar cell, and the laser. AT&T spun off Bell Labs in 1996, along with most of its equipment-manufacturing business, into a new company named Lucent Technologies. In 2006 Lucent merged with Alcatel.
Bowmar Instrument Corp. was founded in Fort Wayne, IA in 1951 by Edward and Joan White and grew as a supplier of light emitting diode (LED) semiconductor displays. The company expanded into the production of handheld calculators in 1971. Selling under its own brand name ââ¬â the Bomar Brain ââ¬â and private label manufacture for Craig, Sears, and others, in the mid-1970s Bomar was one of the worldââ¬â¢s largest suppliers. A casualty of the calculator price wars, the company exited the business in 1976 to concentrate on government and industrial contracts.
Founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1885 by William Seward Burroughs, inventor of the first workable adding and listing machine, the Burroughs Adding Machine Company moved its headquarters to Detroit in 1905 and became a large supplier of office accounting equipment. Renamed Burroughs Corporation, the company entered the computer business by purchasing Electrodata Corporation of California in 1956 and created many highly regarded computer systems in the 1960s and 1970s. The company merged with Sperry Rand, the maker of Univac computers, to form Unisys in 1986. Based in Blue Bell, PA Unisys is a supplier of IT services with fiscal year 2006 revenue of $ 5.76 billion.
Nippon Calculating Machine Corporation was founded in Osaka, Japan in 1928 and changed the name to Business Computer Corporation, better known as Busicom Corp. in 1967. The company entered the electronic calculator market in 1971 after engaging with Mostek to design a chip for a handheld machine and with Intel for a family of chips for a business model. Although the latter project led to the development of Intelââ¬â¢s first microprocessor family, Busicom became the first major Japanese calculator company to go out of business in 1974.
George Cogar, one of the founders of Mohawk Data Sciences, Utica, NY, formed Cogar Corporation in Wappingerââ¬â¢s Falls, NY in January 1968. He recruited Robert Markle, Ray Pecararo, and Howard Geller, all senior managers from the IBM, East Fishkill semiconductor facility, to develop semiconductor memory devices to be sold as memory cards and complete systems to computer manufacturers who did not have access to advanced semiconductor processes. Although the company hired more than 60 experienced engineers from IBM and held a successful, high-profile IPO in 1969, the business failed and closed in April 1972.
Commodore Business Machines began as a typewriter sales and repair operation in the Bronx in the 1950ââ¬â¢s by Auschwitz survivor Jack Tramiel. He moved to Toronto and in 1969 expanded the business into pocket calculators based on a Bowmar LED displays and Texas Instruments ICs. Commodore purchased microprocessor producer MOS Technology in 1976 and used their products to design the popular PET and Commodore 64 personal computers at a division in Cupertino, CA. Commodore declared bankruptcy in 1994.
Compagnie de Freins et Signaux was established as a subsidiary of the Westinghouse European Brake Company in the 1880s. After WW II, the operation recruited German scientists Herbert Mataré and Heinrich Welker to work in an R&D unit to support the manufacture of germanium rectifiers for telecommunications and military electronics near Paris. Here Mataré and Welker independently invented and patented a point contact device called a transistron in 1948.
Control Data Corporation was founded in Minneapolis, MN in 1957 by engineers, including William Norris and Seymour Cray, from a Univac division (originally Engineering Research Associates) in St. Paul, Minnesota. CDC became famous as a supplier of very large and powerful scientific computing systems, many of which were designed by Cray and his associates, until he left to form his own computer company, Cray Research, in 1972. As the demand for high performance mainframe machines declined, CDC suffered financial problems and was purchased by data mining firm Syntegra in 1999.
Computer architect Seymour Cray left CDC in 1971 to found Cray Research in Chippewa Falls, WI with business headquarters in Minneapolis, MN to design and build the world's highest performance supercomputers in 1972. On its introduction in 1976, the Cray-1 established a new standard in supercomputing, and the Cray-2 system, introduced in 1985, continued the companyââ¬â¢s performance leadership. Cray engineers pioneered the application of the highest speed semiconductor logic and memory devices of the times, including ECL and Gallium Arsenide technologies. Cray Research merged with SGI (Silicon Graphics, Inc.) in February 1996.
The David W. Mann Company manufactured precision measuring instruments and manufacturing equipment in Lincoln, MA. A pioneer in photolithographic technology for the semiconductor industry, the company was sold to GCA Corporation in 1959. Burton H. Wheeler, Jr. was appointed general manager of the Mann Products Division and, later, an executive vice president of GCA. In 1961 the division produced the first commercial photorepeater for mask making and in 1978 introduced DSW (Direct Step on Wafer) technology that is still used to day.
Digital Equipment Corporation was founded in Maynard, MA 1957 by engineers Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson from MITââ¬â¢s Lincoln Laboratory and financed by pioneer venture capitalist Georges Doriotââ¬â¢s American Research and Development Corporation. (AR&D). Digitalââ¬â¢s first products, transistorized logic modules, were used to build the PDP-1 (Programmable Data Processor), the companyââ¬â¢s first computer. Later PDP and VAX products were among the most popular minicomputers for engineering and scientific applications in the 1970s and 1980s when Digital was the second-largest computer manufacturer in the world, with over 100,000 employees. DEC was acquired by Compaq in June 1998, which subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard in May 2002.
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company was founded in July 1802 as a gun powder mill near Wilmington, DE. DuPont is one of the world's largest chemical companies with fiscal 2006 revenue above $27 billion and has been involved in many business segments related to the electronics industry, including bulk materials, masks, sensors, and process chemicals. In the 1950s the company invested in the development of high-purity "semiconductor-grade" silicon and was an important supplier of material to both Bell Labs and Texas Instrumentsââ¬â¢ early transistor operations.
Electrodata Corporation of Pasadena, CA introduced the Datatron vacuum-tube-based digital computer in August 1954. The company was purchased by Burroughs Corporation in 1956. As the Burroughs 205 Central Computer, the machine sold for $135,000 and was used for purposes ranging from research at NASA Ames to record management at General Insurance, although it is most familiar to the public for its role in the 1960s Batman TV Series.
Electroglas was founded in 1960 by Art Lasch of Fairchild Semiconductor as Specialty Products, a producer of glass capillary tubes containing gold wires used for bonding onto transistor chips. Beginning in 1964 under the name Electroglas, the company pioneered the commercial market for probing equipment used for making electrical contact with semiconductor wafers for testing prior to packaging. Headquartered in San Jose, CA fiscal 2006 revenue was $44.4 million.
The Electrotechnical Laboratory (ETL) was founded as a laboratory responsible for conducting test and research on electricity and electrical communications under the Japanese Ministry of Communications in 1891. Affiliated with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) since 1952, the Laboratory developed Japan's first transistorized electronic computer, ETL Mark III, in 1956. Located in Tsukuba Science City near Tokyo, today ETL performs research in life science & technology, information technology, nanotechnology, materials & manufacturing, the environment & energy, geological survey and applied geoscience, and metrology and measurement technology.
Founded in Palo Alto California in 1957 by eight scientists and engineers from Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation was funded by Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation of Syossett, New York. Rapidly establishing itself as a technology innovator based on its invention of the planar manufacturing process in 1959, the company developed the first monolithic integrated circuit, the first CMOS device, and numerous other technical and business innovations. French oil field services company Schlumberger Limited purchased Fairchild in 1979 and sold a much weakened business to National Semiconductor in 1987. In 1997 National divested a group, formed as the present Fairchild Semiconductor, in a leveraged buy-out. The company re-emerged as a public entity based in South Portland, Maine in 1999 under the corporate name Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. Fiscal year 2006 revenue was $1.6 billion.
Ferranti Ltd. was established in Oldham, Lancashire, England in 1905 to manufacture electrical power distribution equipment. Ferranti entered the defense electronics business in World War II and developed a number of early computer systems in association with Manchester University. The computer division merged with International Computers and Tabulators (ICT) in 1963. One of the first European IC manufacturers, Ferranti produced high-volumes of uncommitted logic arrays (ULAs) for home computer vendors and purchased US gate array vendor Interdesign in 1977. The microelectronics business was sold to Plessey in 1988.
Fujitsu, Ltd. was established in 1935 under the name Fuji Tsushinki Seizo as a spin off of the Fuji Electric Company to manufacture telecommunications equipment. The name was contracted to Fujitsu in 1967. Fujitsu manufactured Japan's first computer, the FACOM 100 in 1954 and expanded internationally by acquiring International Computers Ltd (ICL) in the UK in 1981 and Amdahl in the U.S. in 1997. Fujitsu was one of five major Japanese semiconductor suppliers to participate in MITIsââ¬â¢ VLSI Technology Project consortium in 1976.
Garrett AiResearch Corporation was founded in Los Angeles, CA 1946 as a supplier of engines to the general aviation and light military propulsion market. The company merged with Signal Corporation in 1968 and lost its identity in a merger with Allied Corporation in 1985. Garrett developed an early MOS LSI chipset for the Central Air Data Computer (CADC) under contract to Grumman Aircraft for the U.S. Navy F14A fighter jet in 1970.
The General Electric Company (no relation to GEC of the U.K.) was formed by a merger of the Edison General Electric Company with Thomson-Houston Electric Company in Schenectady, New York in 1892. GE was an important supplier of a wide range of discrete semiconductor devices in the 1950s and 1960s and contributed major manufacturing and technology innovations in small signal and power transistors, SCRs, triacs, and tunnel diodes. Harris Corporation purchased the GE Solid State semiconductor business in 1988.
General Instrument (GI) was a diversified electronics manufacturer founded in 1939 in Chicago, IL. The company acquired General Transistor on Long Island, NY in 1960 to produce diodes and transistors and recruited MOS pioneer Frank Wanlass from General Microelectronics in 1965 to expand its portfolio into LSI devices. In addition to being a major supplier of masked-ROM and calculator chips in the 1970s, GI developed an EAROM (Electrically Alterable ROM), 8 and 16-bit microcontrollers, and a family of sound chips. GI spun the Microelectronics division off as Microchip Technology in 1989.
Funded by Pyle National of Chicago, General Microelectronics, Inc. was founded in Santa Clara, CA in 1963 by Phil Ferguson, Howard Bobb and Robert Norman from Fairchild and retired marine colonel Art Lowell to design a low-power version of the Fairchild RTL (Micrologic) family for NSA. After Frank Wanlass joined in 1964 from Fairchild, the company focussed on MOS technology and introduced the industryââ¬â¢s first commercial MOS IC and developed 23 custom chips for the Victor Comptometer 3900, the first MOS-based calculator. GMe became profitable early in 1965 but to access additional capital the company was sold to Philco-Ford Microlectronics in 1966. The division operated under the wing of Walt LaBerge of Western Development Labs until the business was transferred to Philadelphia and the Santa Clara facility closed in 1968.
Radio Development & Research Corporation was a member of the initial group of companies to purchase a license from Western Electric to manufacture transistors 1952. Germanium Products Corporation was established in Jersey City, N. J as a subsidiary of RD&R and introduced one of the first junction transistors to the market with advertisements in the June 1952 issue of Radio & Television News magazine. A GPC TN-10 NPN germanium grown junction device appeared alongside two vacuum tubes in the Sonotone model 1010 hearing aid in late 1952.
Founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1892, Hamilton Watch Company (later renamed HMW) timepieces kept the railroads running on time and accompanied Admiral Byrd on his expeditions to the poles. The first electric model introduced in 1957 was a great success and the first digital watch, the Pulsar, caught the imagination of the world. HMW sold its watch division to Swiss owners in 1974. The Pulsar division, called Time Computer, Inc. continued until 1977. The "Pulsar" name is now owned by Seiko.
Harris Corporation was founded to make automatic printing presses in Niles, OH in 1895. In 1967 the company acquired Radiation Inc. of Melbourne, FL as the foundation for its Government Systems and Semiconductor businesses. Harris Semiconductor was an early vendor of radiation resistant analog and digital devices and PROMs. Harris provided IC technology to Matra-Harris, a 1979 European joint venture with a French state-owned electronics company. In 1988 Harris acquired General Electricââ¬â¢s semiconductor operations, which included GEââ¬â¢s prior acquisition of the RCA solid-state business, and in 1999 spun the unit off under the name Intersil, a Silicon Valley company that had been acquired by GE in 1981.
Intel Corporation was founded by Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce from Fairchild Semiconductor in Mountain View, CA in 1968. Intel applied the recently developed silicon gate MOS process to building semiconductor memory devices that could compete on cost with the dominant magnetic core technology. Intel engineers developed the company's first microprocessor in 1971. By 1984, when memory devices had become low-margin commodity products, Intel had abandoned the mainstream RAM business to focus on microprocessor and supporting products. Headquartered in Santa Clara, Intel was the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductor devices with 2006 revenue of $35.7 billion.
Interdesign Inc. was founded by Hans Camenzind from Signetics in 1972 and operated in Scotts Valley, CA as one of the first semiconductor companies to focus exclusively on the design and manufacture of semi-custom integrated circuits sold under the trade name Monochip. Interdesign was purchased by the Ferranti of the U.K. in 1978 and absorbed in a merger with GEC Plessey in 1988.
IBM was incorporated in Endicott, NY in 1911 by merging several businesses into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company. Renamed International Business Machines, Inc. in 1924, the company grew into the dominant U.S. supplier of business and accounting machines in the first half of the century. The 1964 introduction of System/360 using SLT (Solid Logic Technology) hybrid transistor modules solidified IBMââ¬â¢s position in the industry. The company pioneered the production of n-channel MOS memories. Its advanced R & D and manufacturing capabilities have made it one of the worldââ¬â¢s largest semiconductor producers. IBM reported 2006 revenue of $91.4 billion.
Founded in 1920 as the Puerto Rico Telephone Company by Sosthenes Behn, ITT grew by acquisition in the European market. Purchases included telecommunications and components companies SEL (later Intermetall) in Germany and STC in the UK. Both firms became important early regional semiconductor suppliers. Based in West Palm Beach, FL in the U.S., ITT Semiconductor purchased Clevite in 1965. The businesses were closed or sold piecemeal in the dismantling of the conglomerate beginning in the 1980s.
Intersil was founded in 1967 by planar process inventor Jean Hoerni together with H. Gebhatdt, and S. Wauchope (all most recently with Union Carbide) with funding from the Swiss firm SSIH to develop low-power CMOS technology for electronic watches. Intersil Memories was established as a separate company in 1971 by Marshall Cox, Joe Rizzi, Mel Snyder and Ken Moyle (all at one time with Fairchild) in 1971. The companies merged with Advanced Memory Systems in 1976. Intersil was acquired by GE in 1981 and sold to Harris Corporation in 1988, when the name was retired. It reappeared in 1999 when Harris spun-off the semiconductor business. Headquartered in Milpitas, CA, Intersil recorded 2006 revenue of $741 million.
Linear Technology of Milpitas, CA was founded in 1981 as one of the first companies to focus exclusively on the design and development of high-performance analog ICs. The company was founded by Robert Swanson, Robert Dobkin, Brian Hollins, Brent Welling and Robert Widlar, all formerly with National Semiconductor, and joined early on by PMI founder, George Erdi. Today Linear Technology is one of the largest independent analog IC manufacturers, with annual revenues over $1 billion, and recognized for the companyââ¬â¢s innovative analog designs, product quality and consistent financial performance. Linear Technology is traded on the NASDAQ and joined the S&P 500 Index of companies in the spring of 2000.
LSI Logic Corporation was founded in Santa Clara, CA in 1981 by former Fairchild CEO Wilfred Corrigan together with other ex-Fairchild employees Mick Bohn, Jim Koford, Bill O'Meara, and Rob Walker to apply CAD software tools and fast turnaround prototype capability to deliver complex gate array devices. An early follower of the fabless manufacturing model, LSI initially took advantage of excess capacity at Japanese supplier Toshiba. The company merged with Agere Systems (former AT&T/Lucent) in 2007 to form LSI Corporation. Based in Milpitas, CA 2006 revenue was $ 1.98 million.
Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. was founded in 1983 in Sunnyvale, California by a group of ten coworkers including John F. Gifford, Frederick G. Beck, and Richard C. Hood. Several founders had formerly been employed by Intersil, Inc. at that time a subsidiary of General Electric. Maxim acquired Dallas Semiconductor in 2001 and in 2006 posted revenue of $ 1.9 billion on a broad line of linear and mixed-signal integrated circuits.
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry was created in 1949 to coordinate Japanââ¬â¢s international trade policy. At the height of its influence MITI was one of the most powerful agencies of the Japanese government. A 1976 ministry-backed cooperative VLSI research consortium, the VLSI Technology Research Association, played an important role in Japanââ¬â¢s domination of the world DRAM market by the mid-1980s.
Monolithic Memories, Inc. was founded in Mountain View, CA by Israeli engineer Zeev Drori from Fairchild and IBM in 1968. MMI developed high-performance bipolar ROMs, PROMs, and specialty LSI logic devices. The company is best known for establishing its PAL programmable logic device architecture and development tools as industry standard products second-sourced by AMD, National, TI and others. MMI merged with AMD in 1987. AMD later spun off the combined programmable logic operation as Vantis and that business was acquired by Lattice Semiconductor in 1999.
With majority financing from Sprague Electric, Mostek Corporation was founded in 1969 in Carrollton, TX by Berry Cash, Robert Palmer, Vern McKinney, Bob Proebsting, Vin Prothero, and L.J. Sevin from Texas Instruments. Mostek produced one of the first single-chip calculator circuits for Nippon Calculating Machine in 1970. Development of a small die size 4K device in 1973 established the company as a major DRAM supplier. United Technologies Corporation purchased the company in 1979 and sold the business to SGS-Thomson in 1987.
Started as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago in 1928 the company adopted the name Motorola in 1947 as a trademark derived from the focus on automotive electronics. The Semiconductor Division, created from a research lab established in Pheonix, AZ by Dan Noble in 1949, grew into one of the worldââ¬â¢s major broad-line semiconductor suppliers under the leadership of C. Lester Hogan. Motorola spun off the discrete products business as ON Semiconductor in 2000 and LSI products as Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. in 2003.
In 1959 Bernard Rothlein and seven other engineers left the semiconductor division of Sperry Rand Corporation to found National Semiconductor in Danbury, CT. An investor group bought the financially troubled company after a successful lawsuit brought by Sperry and hired Charles Sporck, general manager of Fairchild and a team of key manufacturing and marketing executives in 1967 to reestablish the business in Santa Clara, CA. Based on a high-volume, low-cost manufacturing strategy National became a leading supplier of analog and TTL logic devices. Fiscal 2006 revenue was $2.2 billion.
Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. was established in Tokyo, Japan in 1899 together with Western Electric Company of the U.S as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital. NEC started transistor development in 1950 and built Japanââ¬â¢s first volume production line in 1958. With a focus on advanced memory and microprocessor devices the company became the worldââ¬â¢s largest merchant semiconductor supplier for the seven years following 1985. The name was changed to NEC Corporation in 1983.
The predecessor to the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company (Philco) was founded in 1892. A pioneer of consumer radio and television sets, the company entered the transistor business in the early 1950s. The company was purchased by Ford Motor Company in 1961 and operated as Philco-Ford Corporation. Philco developed bipolar linear and digital ICs and in 1966 purchased MOS pioneer General Micro-Electronics of Santa Clara. As Ford Microelectronics, the company continued into the late 1980s.
Consumer electrics giant Philips began producing light bulbs in Eindhoven, Holland in 1891. Together with subsidiaries Mullard in the UK and Valvo in Germany, the company entered the semiconductor business in the early 1950s and expanded into the U.S. with the purchase of Signetics (1975) and VLSI Technology (1999). As a broad-based supplier, Philips has ranked in the top 10 world wide semiconductor vendors for many years. The unit was spun-off as NXP Semiconductors in 2006 with revenue of $5.9 billion.
The predecessor to the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company (Philco) was founded in 1892. A pioneer of consumer radio and television sets, the company entered the transistor business in the early 1950s. The company was purchased by Ford Motor Company in 1961 and operated as Philco-Ford Corporation. Philco developed bipolar linear and digital ICs and in 1966 purchased MOS pioneer General Micro-Electronics of Santa Clara. As Ford Microelectronics, the company continued into the late 1980s.
Consumer electrics giant Philips began producing light bulbs in Eindhoven, Holland in 1891. Together with subsidiaries Mullard in the UK and Valvo in Germany, the company entered the semiconductor business in the early 1950s and expanded into the U.S. with the purchase of Signetics (1975) and VLSI Technology (1999). As a broad-based supplier, Philips has ranked in the top 10 world wide semiconductor vendors for many years. The unit was spun-off as NXP Semiconductors in 2006 with revenue of $5.9 billion.
The Radiation Laboratory, or Rad Lab, was established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940 as a division of the National Defense Research Committee to exploit radar and magnetron technology developed in the UK. Lee A. DuBridge was appointed director of the laboratory. After the closing of the lab in 1945, the U. S. government continued to pay key people who had worked at the Radiation Laboratory for six months to enable them to contribute their experiences to the 27 volume MIT Radiation Laboratory Series published by McGraw-Hill, New York between 1947 and 1951.
Vannevar Bush, Laurence K. Marshall, and Charles G. Smith, founded the Raytheon Company in Cambridge, MA. as the American Appliance Company in 1922. Its technology-based businesses have ranged from microwave ovens to missile systems. Under Norman Krim, Raytheon started producing point-contact devices in 1948 and dominated the merchant market for junction transistors in the early 1950s. The company expanded to California by purchasing Rheem in Mountain View in 1959. The division was sold to Fairchild Semiconductor in 1977.
Established in Wisconsin in 1919, diversified industrial manufacturer Rockwell acquired North American Aviation in 1967. The IC operation of the former Autonetics division in Anaheim, CA pioneered the use of MOS LSI circuits for hand-held calculators with Hayakawa (Sharp Electronics of Japan) in the early 1970s under the name North American Rockwell Microelectronics. After acquiring Brooktree Corporation in 1996, Rockwell spun-off the semiconductor business as an independent entity in 1999 under the name Conexant. Fiscal year 2006 revenue was $970.8 million.
Scientific Data Systems was founded in Santa Monica, CA in September 1961 by Max Palevsky from Bendix and Packard Bell, to produce computers for NASA and other high-performance scientific and academic applications. SDSââ¬â¢s first machine, the 24-bit 910 shipped in 1962, was one of the first designs to use silicon transistors. The Sigma series of 1966 used custom ICs supplied by Fairchild and others. The company was sold to Xerox Corporation in 1969 and operated as Xerox Data Systems until it was closed in 1975.
Kintaro Hattori established K. Hattori & Co., Ltd. in Japan in 1881 to manufacture clocks and first used the Sieko brand name in 1924. The company introduced transistorized table clocks in 1959, the world's first quartz watch, the Astron, in 1969, and the first LCD quartz watch with a six-digit digital display in 1973. Formally named Sieko Corporation in 1990, today the company is one of the worldââ¬â¢s premier watch producers.
Frank J. Sprague founded the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company in 1886 to exploit applications for electric motors. By the 1950s Sprague produced capacitors and other electrical components for the consumer electronics market and in 1965 opened a plant in Worcester, MA to build semiconductors. The semiconductor group, producing ICs and sensors for power electronics and motion control, spun out as Allegro Microsystems Inc., and is today owned by Sanken Electric Company, Ltd. of Saitama Japan.
Synopsys Inc. was founded in 1986 by Aart J. de Geus and a team of engineers from General Electricââ¬â¢s Microelectronics Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina under the original name Optimal Solutions. Renamed Synopsys (SYNthesis of OPtimal SYStems), the company pioneered the commercial application of logic synthesis technology for the design of complex microelectronic devices. With headquarters in Mountain View, CA, Synopsys 2006 revenue was $1.096 billion.
Alex d'Arbeloff and Nicholas DeWolf founded Teradyne, Inc. in downtown Boston in 1960 to develop electronic test equipment for reliable high-volume, low-cost production of semiconductor devices. In 1966, Teradyne introduced the first integrated circuit tester to use a minicomputer to control a series of test steps. As one of the industry's largest test equipment companies, Teradyne had sales of $1.38 billion in 2006.
Founded as Geophysical Service Incorporated (GSI), to provide services to the petroleum industry in Dallas, Texas in 1941, the company name changed to Texas Instruments in 1951. A license to transistor technology from Bell labs in 1952, led to development of the first commercial silicon transistor in 1954 and Jack Kilbyââ¬â¢s integrated circuit in 1958. TI popularized TTL digital logic circuits in 1974 and continues to produce the devices today. TI invented the hand-held calculator in 1967 and the single-chip microcomputer in 1971. TI is one of the worldââ¬â¢s largest producers of semiconductors with 2006 revenue of $14.25 billion.
The Timex Group B.V. is an American-based watch manufacturer with headquarters in Middlebury, CT. Known for inexpensive consumer wrist watches, the company entered the digital watch market and, through an arrangement with Sinclair of the UK, the home PC market in the 1980s. Timex remains a popular brand with design, manufacturing and sales operations worldwide. Privately owned by Fred Olsen & Co. of Norway, the company does not publish financial information.
Integrated electric equipment manufacturer, Tokyo Shibaura Denki (Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co., Ltd.) was formed in 1939 from two companies founded in the late 1800s. The company developed Japanââ¬â¢s first transistorized televisions in 1959 and adopted the official name Toshiba in 1978. The semiconductor operations include discrete devices, system LSI, and memory operations and with 2006 sales of $10.2 billion ranks in the top 10 world wide suppliers. Total corporate sales were $52.27 billion.
The Bakalar brothers, David and Leo, founded Transitron Electronic Corporation in a former bakery in Melrose, MA in 1952. Their business boomed when they developed the "gold-bonded" high-volume process for manufacturing diodes. Fortune magazine estimated 1959 sales at $42 million making Transitron the world's second largest merchant semiconductor manufacturer after Texas Instruments. The company hired many European engineers including Wilfred Corrigan, Dave Fullagar, Pierre Lamond, and George Wells who went on to senior positions in the industry. Thomas Longo joined Transitron from GTE Sylvania in 1966 and developed an IC operation by second-sourcing Sylvania SUHL TTL. He left for Fairchild in 1969. Company operations were sold piecemeal in the 1980s.
The Victor Adding Machine Company incorporated in 1918 in Springfield, IL developed a business in low-cost mechaical add-listing machines and merged with the Comptometer Corporation to form the Victor Comptometer Corporation in 1961. Victor developed one of the first MOS LSI-based calculators in 1965 using custom MOS chips from General Microelectronics. As Victor Technologies the company continues as a specialist supplier of calculators to business.
VLSI Technology, Inc was founded in 1979 by Jack Balletto, Dan Floyd, and Gunnar Wetlesen - all from Fairchild by way of Synertek - and Doug Fairbairn from Xerox PARC. Supported by a broad suite of computer aided engineering tools, VLSI was an early vendor of standard cell ASIC devices to the merchant market. Philips Semiconductor acquired VLSI in June 1990.
Incorporated in Chicago, IL in 1872, the Western Electric Manufacturing Company was acquired by the Bell Telephone Company in 1881 and operated as the manufacturing arm of AT&T. The Western Electric facility in Allentown, PA became the production location for transistors and later ICs developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories. The semiconductor operation was renamed AT&T Microelectronics in 1988. AT&T spun-out the systems and technology units, including Bell Labs, as Lucent Technologies in 1996, and Lucent spun-out the semiconductor business as Agere Systems in 2002. Agere and LSI Logic merged in 2007.
Founder of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company George Westinghouse Jr. formed the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company in Pittsburg, PA in 1886. The company became one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the development of the American electricity system. Known to consumers for its home appliances, by the 1960s Westinghouse was broad-based electrical engineering conglomerate. A partnership with Siemens of Germany in silicon power transistors in Youngwood, the Central Research Laboratory at Churchill Borough, and new product development at Wilkinsburg, all in PA, made Westinghouse the third largest semiconductor-related research organization in the US, after Bell Labs and General Electric. Along with Texas Instruments, Westinghouse was one of the first companies to recognize the promise of integrated circuit (IC) technology for serving the Cold War needs of the Department of Defense (DoD). A contract to explore the concept of molecular electronics in the late 1950s led to the establishment of an integrated circuit operation in Elkwood, MD in 1962. By 1967 Elkridge housed about 1,200 employees in a 170,000 square foot facility and had sales of $15 million. The division closed in 1968.
Former AT&T engineer, Greenleaf W. Pickard and two associates founded the Wireless Specialty Apparatus Company to market crystal radio detectors in 1907. The company produced radio receivers for the Navy in 1908. In 1921, at which time it was owned by the United Fruit Company, the company was investigated by the government along with GE, RCA, and others for monopolistic trade practices related to radio apparatus.
Founder of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company George Westinghouse Jr. formed the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company in Pittsburg, PA in 1886. The company became one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the development of the American electricity system. Known to consumers for its home appliances, by the 1960s Westinghouse was broad-based electrical engineering conglomerate. A partnership with Siemens of Germany in silicon power transistors in Youngwood, the Central Research Laboratory at Churchill Borough, and new product development at Wilkinsburg, all in PA, made Westinghouse the third largest semiconductor-related research organization in the US, after Bell Labs and General Electric. Along with Texas Instruments, Westinghouse was one of the first companies to recognize the promise of integrated circuit (IC) technology for serving the Cold War needs of the Department of Defense (DoD). A contract to explore the concept of molecular electronics in the late 1950s led to the establishment of an integrated circuit operation in Elkwood, MD in 1962. By 1967 Elkridge housed about 1,200 employees in a 170,000 square foot facility and had sales of $15 million. The division closed in 1968.
Former AT&T engineer, Greenleaf W. Pickard and two associates founded the Wireless Specialty Apparatus Company to market crystal radio detectors in 1907. The company produced radio receivers for the Navy in 1908. In 1921, at which time it was owned by the United Fruit Company, the company was investigated by the government along with GE, RCA, and others for monopolistic trade practices related to radio apparatus.
Zilog, Inc. was formed by Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann in Cupertino, CA in 1974 to develop an improved version of the Intel 8080 microprocessor. The Z80 introduced in 1976 was used in the Radio Shack TRS-80 and the Sinclair ZX80 home PCs and became one of the most popular 8-bit MPUs in the market and continues to find new designs today as an embedded core. The company became a subsidiary of Exxon in 1980 and was reacquired by Zilog employees in 1989, went public in 1991 and reorganized under Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001.
Founder of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company George Westinghouse Jr. formed the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company in Pittsburg, PA in 1886. The company became one of Thomas Edison's main rivals in the development of the American electricity system. Known to consumers for its home appliances, by the 1960s Westinghouse was broad-based electrical engineering conglomerate. A partnership with Siemens of Germany in silicon power transistors in Youngwood, the Central Research Laboratory at Churchill Borough, and new product development at Wilkinsburg, all in PA, made Westinghouse the third largest semiconductor-related research organization in the US, after Bell Labs and General Electric. Along with Texas Instruments, Westinghouse was one of the first companies to recognize the promise of integrated circuit (IC) technology for serving the Cold War needs of the Department of Defense (DoD). A contract to explore the concept of molecular electronics in the late 1950s led to the establishment of an integrated circuit operation in Elkwood, MD in 1962. By 1967 Elkridge housed about 1,200 employees in a 170,000 square foot facility and had sales of $15 million. The division closed in 1968.
Former AT&T engineer, Greenleaf W. Pickard and two associates founded the Wireless Specialty Apparatus Company to market crystal radio detectors in 1907. The company produced radio receivers for the Navy in 1908. In 1921, at which time it was owned by the United Fruit Company, the company was investigated by the government along with GE, RCA, and others for monopolistic trade practices related to radio apparatus.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/technology/hp-enterprise-cray-supercomputers.html
|
en
|
Hewlett Packard Enterprise to Acquire Supercomputer Pioneer Cray
|
[
"https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/05/17/business/17cray1/17cray1-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Don Clark"
] |
2019-05-17T00:00:00
|
The price was relatively small, but the deal may have a big impact on the race between the United States and China to build more powerful computers.
|
en
|
/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
|
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/technology/hp-enterprise-cray-supercomputers.html
|
SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett Packard Enterprise said Friday that it would buy the supercomputer pioneer Cray, a relatively tiny financial transaction that could loom large in a quickening race between the United States and China at the highest reaches of computing.
The big Silicon Valley company will pay about $1.4 billion to absorb a much smaller rival that has designed some of the most powerful systems in use and on the drawing board at national laboratories in the United States.
Supercomputers have long been a mainstay of military and intelligence agencies, used for chores ranging from cracking codes to designing nuclear weapons. They have many civilian uses as well, like predicting weather, creating new drugs and simulating the effect of crashes on auto designs.
Cray, based in Seattle, traces its lineage to a company founded in 1972 in Minnesota by the computer designer Seymour Cray. That company was bought in 1996 by Silicon Graphics; it was sold in 2000 to Tera Computer, which adopted the Cray name. Mr. Cray died after a car crash in 1996, having left his original company several years earlier.
[Get the Bits newsletter for the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry.]
HPE, one of two companies created in the 2015 breakup of Hewlett-Packard, is a major supercomputer supplier in addition to selling general-purpose server systems. In the latest ranking of supercomputer installations, Cray was fourth with 49 systems and HPE fifth with 46.
What worries some officials in the United States is the rapid rise of suppliers based in China. One of them, Lenovo, which bought former IBM hardware operations, led the rankings with 140 supercomputers installed. Two others, Inspur and Sugon, were second with 84 and third with 54, respectively.
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https://www.eweek.com/innovation/hpe-buys-sgi-for-275-million-how-far-the-mighty-have-fallen/
|
en
|
HPE Buys SGI for $275 Million: How Far the Mighty Have Fallen
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Chris Preimesberger"
] |
2016-08-14T19:24:00+00:00
|
NEWS ANALYSIS: SGI used to be Google. Ironically, Google, which used to be SGI's tenant, now owns SGI's sprawling former campus; now HPE will soon own SGI.
|
en
|
eWEEK
|
https://www.eweek.com/innovation/hpe-buys-sgi-for-275-million-how-far-the-mighty-have-fallen/
|
eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Picture this: The newly elected president and vice president of the United States are visiting Silicon Valley to introduce themselves to key movers and shakers, pledging the full support of Washington in promoting U.S. innovation and name-dropping IT products worldwide.
They fly into Moffett Field Naval Air Station in Mountain View on Air Force One and Two, respectively, select a hot company and stage a media event to make their speeches to fire up the crowd, investors and Wall Street.
Might this be the scene next February with a new U.S. president? It could happen, but this event is exactly what took place on Feb. 22, 1993, when newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore visited Silicon Valley. They thanked everybody for their help in getting elected, pledging their support of the fast-growing industry that was then pre-Internet Silicon Valley.
The location of choice for the media event? Twelve-year-old Silicon Graphics Inc., the hottest and most successful company in the business. I was there that day covering the event, met the POTUS and was impressed at the power and influence of SGI on a world stage.
Much Has Changed in a Mere Generation
My, how things have changed.
In a tech deal Aug. 10 that didn’t cause nearly as much talk as Donald Trump’s daily controversial campaign remarks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced that it is buying SGI for $275 million in a bid to grow its capabilities in data analytics, high-performance computing and the cloud. HPE will add a number of much-needed new customers to its roster of users. It also will bolster its workstation lineup that’s already being used by studios such as DreamWorks for making high-end CGI (computer-generated imaging) movies.
However, those who knew SGI way back when had to be shaking their heads when they heard the news. The sum of $275 million for an IT company—especially for one with a longtime international reputation and a lot of very sophisticated IP—is now basically equal in value to a golden parachute for a departing CEO or board chairman.
That pile of intellectual property includes a lot of the innards of Google Maps, for example. Much of that IP was created by people at SGI who have since migrated to Google. The long-distance cameras designed for use in satellites were astonishing; I personally had a demonstration shown to me several years ago.
Secretive three-letter federal agencies have been buying SGI imaging software and photography equipment for years and using it for some very interesting international government projects that we can’t talk about in public, or else we might get a scary visit by men in black suits.
Sale Price an Embarrassment
The announced sale price of $275 million is embarrassing, even though the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and had many of its assets acquired by Rackable. Acquisition companies now commonly spend a billion and more for startups that have merely one app. Look up WhatsApp, Waze, Instagram and a couple dozen other examples if you don’t believe it.
SGI used to be Google. Ironically, Google, which used to be SGI’s tenant, now owns SGI’s sprawling former campus—and a lot more additional office space—in east Mountain View, Calif., next door to what is now Moffett Field Federal Air Base, where Clinton and Gore once flew in to say hi to SGI CEO Ed McCracken.
SGI was the flagship of the IT industry in the 1980s and ’90s, along with others that included Sun Microsystems, DEC and Compaq. It could seemingly do no wrong—until innovation slid underneath and pulled the rug out from under it.
SGI’s then-super-powerful, $40,000 workstations were used by Hollywood studios such as Universal and Sony Pictures to create 3D-like videographics for blockbuster films such as “Jurassic Park,” “Twister,” “Jerry Maguire,” “Lost in Space,” “Men in Black” and a list of others. NASA, the FBI, the CIA and large research institutions bought specialized software and SGI’s Iris and Crimson workstations to get heavy analytics-type computing jobs completed.
SGI Now Only a Skeleton of Its Former Self
Now SGI’s skeleton is housed in a nondescript, ’80-era corporate building on the fringes of Fremont, Calif., and remaining staff will probably be moved into an obscure corner of HPE’s Palo Alto campus. This build-down from the high-rent district is the direct result of a downturn that began when Intel and Microsoft created Wintel servers and desktop PCs in the early ’90s and never looked back.
Within a decade, the lighter, faster, cheaper Wintel machines and desktop workstations had undercut the big, heavy SGI machines, and the market shifted irrevocably away from the established vendor. SGI was left with good IP but fewer and fewer customers.
SGI’s problem was that it couldn’t look forward and make adjustments, being far too invested in its powerful but pricey and proprietary workstations that only deep-pockets companies could afford. Sun Microsystems, founded one year after SGI in 1982, faced the same conundrum (overly expensive, proprietary workstations and servers) before it floundered and was bought by Oracle in January 2010 for $7.4 billion. That, in looking back, turned out to be a pretty good exit.
Lessons Learned?
What’s the lesson SGI teaches us? There are more than one, certainly, but the main thought has to be this: No matter how healthy you believe your business is, you must continue to operate it as though your top competitor is gaining on you. You also must continue to look for new markets for your IP, and you must always look for innovative ideas—not only from within the house, but outside as well.
And you must never, ever rest on your past accomplishments. Celebrate them, yes, but you must keep moving ahead into new territory.
Question: Can Google, one of the world’s most powerful and successful companies at the moment, be displaced by another company years from now, like its predecessor?
Answer: If it learns the lesson from its former landlord, no. If it doesn’t, history certainly can—and will—repeat itself.
Editor’s Note: This story was corrected 8/15 to replace “Rackspace” with “Rackable.”
|
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3
| 20
|
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1997-08-03/the-sad-saga-of-silicon-graphics
|
en
|
The Sad Saga Of Silicon Graphics
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
"SILICON GRAPHICS INC",
"Software",
"APPLE INC",
"Startups",
"Executives",
"INTL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP",
"Washington",
"Engineering",
"Design",
"TOSHIBA CORP",
"business"
] | null |
[] |
1997-08-03T00:00:00
|
What went wrong at the company that once made everybody say: "Gee whiz"
|
en
|
Bloomberg.com
|
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1997-08-03/the-sad-saga-of-silicon-graphics
|
Back in July, 1995, no computer maker was flying higher than Silicon Graphics Inc. Its dazzling three-dimensional graphics computers had a starring role animating the fearsome dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Nintendo was using the same technology to give the Mario Brothers a face-lift and to design a new generation of arcade-like game machines. And sales were soaring. For the fiscal year ended that June 30, revenue skyrocketed 45%, to $2.2 billion--far outpacing all rivals. To top it off, CEO Edward R. McCracken was a White House regular, hobnobbing with Bill Clinton and Al Gore. SGI's sexy image prompted a Wall Street analyst to label it "the new Apple."
Sadly for SGI, that may prove all too true. Now, like Apple Computer Inc., the Mountain View (Calif.) company is a stark anomaly in booming Silicon Valley. While rivals such as Sun Microsystems Inc. ride the Internet wave and even IBM enjoys a comeback, SGI has been mostly an onlooker at the tech party. After racking up losses of $35 million in the first half of this year, the company managed to carve out a profit for the 1997 fiscal year ended in June, thanks to a strong fourth quarter. Still, the stock, even after bouncing up from its low of 12 7/8 last April to 18 3/4 on July 23, is at less than half of its value 24 months ago. Dubbed "the gee-whiz company" by BUSINESS WEEK three years ago, SGI is scrambling to stay off technology's long list of has-beens. Concedes McCracken: "If we can't produce good quarters, we're not going to have a future."
|
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| 22
|
https://news.microsoft.com/1997/12/17/silicon-graphics-and-microsoft-form-strategic-alliance-to-define-the-future-of-graphics/
|
en
|
Silicon Graphics and Microsoft Form Strategic Alliance To Define the Future of Graphics
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] |
1997-12-17T00:00:00
|
Collaboration Enhances Advanced Visual Computing and Applications on Windows And Brings Unique Value to Silicon Graphics' Future Windows-Based Products
|
en
|
Stories
|
https://news.microsoft.com/1997/12/17/silicon-graphics-and-microsoft-form-strategic-alliance-to-define-the-future-of-graphics/
|
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Dec. 17, 1997 — Silicon Graphics Inc. (NYSE: SGI) and Microsoft Corp. today announced a strategic alliance aimed at increasing graphics capabilities for a wide variety of consumer, business and professional customers. Drawing upon each company’s industry-leading expertise, this initiative will significantly advance graphics technology and create a common, extensible architecture that will bring advanced and powerful graphics to the entire computer market. The companies have agreed to jointly define, develop and deliver these new graphics technologies as part of a project code-named “Fahrenheit.”
The Fahrenheit project will create a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) for the Microsoft® DirectX® multimedia architecture on the Windows® operating system and the Silicon Graphics® UNIX-based platform. An API is a common interface with which developers can leverage the full acceleration capabilities of a computer. Fahrenheit will incorporate Microsoft Direct3D® and DirectDraw® APIs with Silicon Graphics complementary technologies such as OpenGL® , OpenGL Scene Graph
™
and OpenGL Optimizer
™
. The Fahrenheit architecture will be the basis for innovative third-party graphics and visualization applications including Internet, games, business, digital content creation, CAD/CAM, medical and scientific applications.
“Silicon Graphics and Microsoft have been working together since 1991 to develop OpenGL for Windows NT® ,” said Dr. Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Associates and one of the industry’s leading 3-D graphics analysts. “The Fahrenheit project inaugurates the next phase of that long-standing relationship. Fahrenheit paves the way for a truly scalable computer graphics software framework that will satisfy ISVs all the way from low-level APIs to full-blown scene graphics with large model visualization and heavy-duty ‘visualization simplification’ functions. This is something the industry has wanted and needed for a long time.”
This alliance is part of an expanding relationship between Silicon Graphics and Microsoft that enhances Silicon Graphics’ development of high-value Windows-based visual systems. Through this agreement, Silicon Graphics will apply its core competencies to define the Fahrenheit framework upon which Silicon Graphics will continue to develop differentiated graphics systems.
During the development of the Fahrenheit project, Microsoft and Silicon Graphics have also agreed to work together in support of the development of Windows-based graphics applications for professionals through the OpenGL APIs and the development of Windows-based graphics applications for consumers through the Direct3D API.
“Today, Silicon Graphics and Microsoft are defining a clear path for developers that enables both of us to expand the market for graphics,” said Ed McCracken, chairman and chief executive officer of Silicon Graphics. “This also marks Silicon Graphics’ first step toward implementing its strategy to participate in the larger market for a graphically oriented Windows NT-based systems.” “We’re delighted to be working with Silicon Graphics to enhance and drive innovation on DirectX and Windows as a key platform for 3-D graphics and visualization,” said Paul Maritz, group vice president of the platforms and applications group at Microsoft. “The industry’s graphics leaders are collaborating on a standard that will expand the market for developers for Windows while benefiting the entire market.”
Fahrenheit: Common Architecture for Innovation
The Fahrenheit project will produce the following three components:
Fahrenheit low-level API will become the primary graphics API for both consumer and professional applications on Windows. The Fahrenheit low-level API will evolve from Direct3D, DirectDraw and OpenGL while providing full backward compatibility with applications and hardware device drivers written for Microsoft Direct3D and functional compatibility with Silicon Graphics’ OpenGL technologies.
Fahrenheit Scene Graph API will provide a higher level of programming abstraction for developers creating consumer and professional applications on both Windows and Silicon Graphics IRIX operating systems. This API will evolve from Silicon Graphics’ current Scene Graph API. The Fahrenheit Scene Graph API provides high-level data structures and algorithms that increase overall graphics performance and assist the development of sophisticated graphics-rich applications.
Fahrenheit Large Model Visualization Extensions will be based on the Silicon Graphics OpenGL Optimizer API and complementary DirectModel API from Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft. They will operate in conjunction with the Scene Graph API. The large model visualization extensions add functionality that will allow the interactive manipulation of large 3-D models such as an entire automobile. The Large Model Visualization API adds functionality such as multiresolution simplification to the Scene Graph API so developers can easily write applications that will interact with extremely large visual databases. This technology will also be designed to enhance legacy applications with new large model visualization capabilities.
The agreement to collaborate on the Fahrenheit APIs builds on a growing cooperation between Microsoft and Silicon Graphics. Most recently, the companies agreed to collaborate on a new 3-D Graphics Device Driver Kit (DDK) to support OpenGL on the Windows 9X and Windows NT platforms.
The agreement also builds on the significant graphics expertise of each company. Silicon Graphics will draw on its extensive knowledge and core competency in graphics, visualization and imaging, and the overwhelming market acceptance for OpenGL. Microsoft will draw on the acknowledged graphics expertise of its DirectX development team and on the world-renowned Microsoft Research Group, as well as on the leadership of the DirectX APIs and the rich operating system services afforded by the Windows platform.
The Fahrenheit APIs will be developed in conjunction with software and hardware development partners. Microsoft and Silicon Graphics are committed to an open design preview process during which input on the API designs will be solicited from all interested parties. In particular, Microsoft and Silicon Graphics will work together with other industry leaders – including Intel Corp. – to evolve the Fahrenheit APIs. Specifically, Intel will work with Microsoft and Silicon Graphics on the Fahrenheit low-level API to ensure maximum support of the Intel Pentium II processor.
Availability
Microsoft and Silicon Graphics engineers will begin development on Fahrenheit APIs and extensions immediately. They will deliver new APIs, DDKs and Software Development Kits (SDKs) in phases over the next two and a half years. Phase One will be the delivery of the Fahrenheit Scene Graph and Large Model Visualization in the first half of calendar year 1999 for Microsoft Windows and Silicon Graphics IRIX. Phase Two will be the delivery of the Fahrenheit low-level API in the first half of calendar year 2000 on Microsoft Windows only. For the Windows platform, Microsoft will be the direct source for licensing, certifying and distributing the SDKs and DDKs. For the Silicon Graphics IRIX platform, Silicon Graphics will be the direct source for licensing, certifying and distributing the SDKs and DDKs.
For more information on the Fahrenheit APIs, developers should visit (http://www.sgi.com/fahrenheit/) or http://www.microsoft.com/directx/ .
Company Information
Silicon Graphics Inc. is a leading supplier of high-performance interactive computing systems. The company offers the broadest range of products in the industry, from low-end desktop workstations to servers and high-end Cray® supercomputers. Silicon Graphics also markets MIPS microprocessor designs, Alias|Wavefront
™
entertainment and design software, and other software products. The company’s key markets include manufacturing, government, science and industries, communications and entertainment sectors. Silicon Graphics and its subsidiaries have offices throughout the world and headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
Microsoft, DirectX, Windows, Direct3D, DirectDraw and Windows NT are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Silicon Graphics, the Silicon Graphics logo and OpenGL are registered trademarks and IRIX, OpenGL Optimizer and OpenGL Scene Graph are trademarks of Silicon Graphics Inc. MIPS is a registered trademark of MIPS Technologies Inc.
Cray is a registered trademark of Cray Research Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Graphics Inc.
Alias|Wavefront is a trademark of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited
Other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
|
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| 77
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https://www.afr.com/companies/silicon-graphics-redraws-its-profile-19921211-kaq7i
|
en
|
SILICON GRAPHICS REDRAWS ITS PROFILE
|
https://www.afr.com/favicon.ico
|
https://www.afr.com/favicon.ico
|
[
"https://www.afr.com/appstore.png",
"https://www.afr.com/google-play.png"
] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"SANDY PLUNKETT"
] |
1992-12-11T00:00:00+00:00
|
Val Mickan is suffering from a double dose of culture shock. After two years in California's Silicon Valley as a senior international executive for the workstation manufacturer Sun Microsystems, he recently returned to Australia to head the Australian subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, one of Sun's competitors. "Slipping back into the Australian way of life was easy compared to changing work cultures," Mickan says. "Sun's culture was incredibly strong. Silicon Graphics is a very different company." Silicon Graphics has long been a competitor with Sun Microsystems in the world workstation market for scientific and technical applications. In Australia, however, it has a far lower profile -- and that is the first thing Mickan wants to change.
|
en
|
/favicon.ico
|
Australian Financial Review
|
https://www.afr.com/companies/silicon-graphics-redraws-its-profile-19921211-kaq7i
|
Val Mickan is suffering from a double dose of culture shock. After two years in California's Silicon Valley as a senior international executive for the workstation manufacturer Sun Microsystems, he recently returned to Australia to head the Australian subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, one of Sun's competitors. "Slipping back into the Australian way of life was easy compared to changing work cultures," Mickan says. "Sun's culture was incredibly strong. Silicon Graphics is a very different company." Silicon Graphics has long been a competitor with Sun Microsystems in the world workstation market for scientific and technical applications. In Australia, however, it has a far lower profile -- and that is the first thing Mickan wants to change.
Silicon Graphics is the industry leader in the fast-growing niche market of"visual computing". Its expertise in three-dimensional graphics and high-performance hardware is best illustrated by the special effects shown in the Arnold Schwarzenegger films Predator and Terminator II. The success of these and similar films, and the increasing use of multi-media applications in commercial work, is fast making visual computing a strong selling point for computer makers.
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1
| 81
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https://technologizer.com/2023/04/15/the-end-of-computer-magazines-in-america/index.html
|
en
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The End of Computer Magazines in America
|
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2023-04-15T00:00:00
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The April issues of Maximum PC and MacLife are currently on sale at a newsstand near youâassuming there is a newsstand near you. Theyâre the last print issues of these two venerable computer magazines, both of which date to 1996 (and were originally known, respectively, as Boot and MacAddict). Starting with their next editions, both…
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en
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Technologizer by Harry McCracken
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https://technologizer.com/index.html
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The April issues of Maximum PC and MacLife are currently on sale at a newsstand near youâassuming there is a newsstand near you. Theyâre the last print issues of these two venerable computer magazines, both of which date to 1996 (and were originally known, respectively, as Boot and MacAddict). Starting with their next editions, both publications will be available in digital form only.
But Iâm not writing this article because the dead-tree versions of Maximum PC and MacLife are no more. Iâm writing it because they were the last two extant U.S. computer magazines that had managed to cling to life until now. With their abandonment of print, the computer magazine era has officially ended.
It is possible to quibble with this assertion. 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has been around since 1984 and can accurately be described as a computer magazine, but the digest-sized publication has the production values of a fanzine and the content bears little resemblance to the slick, consumery computer mags of the past. Linux Magazine (originally the U.S. edition of a German publication) and its more technical sibling publication Admin also survive. Then again, if you want to quibble, Maximum PC and MacLife may barely have counted as U.S. magazines at the end; their editorial operations migrated from the Bay Area to the UK at some point in recent years when I wasnât paying attention. (Both were owned by Future, a large British publishing firm.)
Still, Iâm declaring the demise of these two dead-tree publications as the end of computer magazines in this country. Back when I was the editor-in-chief of IDGâs PC World, a position I left in 2008, we considered Maximum PC to be a significant competitor, especially on the newsstand. Our sister publication Macworld certainly kept an eye on MacLife. Even after I moved on to other types of tech journalism, I occasionally checked in on our erstwhile rivals, marveling that they somehow still existed after so many other computer magazines had gone away.
I take the loss personally, and not just because computer magazines kept me gainfully employed from 1991-2008. As a junior high student and Radio Shack TRS-80 fanatic, I bought my first computer magazine in late 1978, three years after Byte invented the category. It was an important enough moment in my life that I can tell you what it was (the November-December 1978 issue of Creative Computing) and where I got it (Harvard Squareâs Out of Town News, the same newsstand that had played a critical role in the founding of Microsoft just four years earlier). Even before I purchased that Creative Computing, our mailman had misdelivered a neighborâs copy of Byte to our house, an error I welcomed and did not attempt to correct. From the moment I discovered computer magazines, I loved them almost as much as I loved computers, which is why I ended up working in the field for so long.
I spent most of that time at PC World, which I joined in late 1994 at almost precisely the moment it launched its first web presence. From the start, the web was a terrific way to keep tabs on tech news. Eventually, it would make the whole idea of a publication about computers that came out once a month feel more than a little silly. It also let merchants reach customers directly, a gut-punch to the ad business that had made PC World and its biggest rivals so profitable.
But the web didnât render printed computer magazines obsolete overnight. PCW had some of its fattest, happiest years as a business in the late 1990s. Even in 2008, when I left, the print magazine was a profit center, not an albatross.
Indeed, the entire computer magazine category spent years in Wile E. Coyote mode. Weâd blithely walked off a cliffâitâs just that gravity hadnât kicked in yet. Hereâs a slide from an internal PC World presentation charting our newsstand sales vs. our principal surviving competitors from 1996-2004. By this time, several major magazines had already failed: Byte in 1998 and PC Computing and Windows in 2002.
I should pause to acknowledge that newsstand sales werenât the primary barometer of a computer magazineâs health. For one thing, about 90 percent of PC World issues were sold via subscription. For another, advertising was what kept us rolling in dough. Still, selling single issues at $6.99 a pop was a great little business in itself, so we put a lot of effort into creating a product that people would notice at the newsstand and choose to purchase. And I am ashamed to admit that I occasionally moved the PC Worlds in front of the PC Magazines when I encountered them for sale, though I wouldnât be astounded if there were Ziff-Davis staffers who performed the same ploy in reverse.
Our point with the above chart was that PC World had become the newsstand leader. But it did so not by growing but by bumping along rather than nosediving. As you can see from the chart, Maximum PC was the only title that ticked steadily upward. It clearly cared about the newsstand as much as we did, and we worried that it might someday surpass us. (It never did, at least during my tenure.)
Unless you worked at PC World in 2004, whatâs most striking about this chart is Computer Shopperâs utter collapseâfrom something like 350,000 issues sold at the newsstand a month to fewer than 55,000. As the most catalog-like major computer magazine, it was the most vulnerable to being rendered obsolete by the web. Once a 1,000-page (!!!) monthly behemoth, it withered in more dramatic fashion than PC World or PC Magazine. When it didnât feel like Computer Shopper anymore, readers lost interest.
Even PC Worldâs best newsstand seller of all timeâour Windows 95 issue, seen below in another internal PowerPoint slideâdidnât match Shopperâs mid-1990s heyday. But we sold almost 200,000 copies, for a sell-through rate nearing 60 percentâfigures that slipped out of the realm of possibility within a few years. Counting subscribers, we peaked in 1999 at a circulation of 1.25 million, the largest ever for a computer magazine.
Computer magazines had been such a robust business that they could spend years dwindling and remain viable. PC Mag didnât abandon print until 2008, shortly after I left PC World. Shopper followed the next year. PCW held on until 2013, whereupon I wrote a piece for TIME asserting that the era of the computer magazine had ended. (In retrospect, that was a tad premature.) Macworld made it to 2014.
Maximum PC and MacLife, meanwhile, pretty much ignored the internet. They even dismantled their web presences: MaximumPC.com now redirects to PCGamer.com, a sister brand, while MacLife.com simply spits out a string of garbage characters.
Pretending that the internet didnât exist sounds like a preposterous strategy for keeping a print magazine alive, but it somehow worked. Maximum PC and MacLife survivedâscrawny, but with a pulseâuntil 2023. Their final issues were 98-page weaklings that cost $9.99 apiece and seem to have a grand total of one page of paid advertising between themâplus an article sponsored by a mail-order computer dealer. MacLife has an editorial acknowledging itâs going digital-only; Maximum PC does not.
Should we mourn the end of computer publications printed on paper? Noâand yes. What was great about the computer magazine age wasnât that the information was printed on dead trees and delivered by truck once a month. In most respects that matter, the web is a far superior way to keep people informed about the technology in their lives.
But as timely and efficient a means of communication as online media is, the entire computer publishing industry failed to figure out how to turn it into a business that was remotely as vibrant as print had been. And those vast quantities of full-page ads paid for some amazingly ambitious service journalism.
PC World had a sprawling lab full of technicians benchmarking everything from laptops to TVs, and paid experts well to write how-to columns on products such as word processors and spreadsheets. When we wanted to compare the usability of Windows, OS/2, and Mac OS, we hired normal everyday people through a temp agency and shot video of them performing typical computing tasks. We invested an absurd amount of money on twice-yearly surveys that let our readers rate the reliability and customer service of major computer manufacturers. In 2000, I dropped everything to spend months flying around the country working with Dateline NBC on an investigation into PC repair shops.
PC Worldâs headcount over the last couple of decades tells a story in itself. In mid-2000âwell into the web eraâwe had 80 journalists, product testers, and designers on staff. Seven years later, the figure was slightly over half that. Today, the masthead of the all-digital PCW carries 13 names. Iâm unsure if theyâre all full-time employees, and almost half are pulling double duty on Macworld.
There is still fine work being done at the online incarnations of former print publications and newer outlets that were digital from the start. I havenât even mentioned the fact that todayâs tech media spans the written word, video, audio, and communityâand that itâs possible for an individual journalist to partake in all of the above without being employed by a giant company. Bottom line: If there was a magic switch that would let us ditch present-day computer journalism for what we had in, say, 1995, I wouldnât flip it.
(Of course, I might feel differently if Iâd owned a fabulously profitable computer magazine rather than merely working at one.)
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