King Vidor & Otto Preminger : 'Metaphor & Simile' | IMDB1 (2024)

King Vidor & Otto Preminger : 'Breaking The Code'

Renée Adorée appears in two films selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" : 'The Big Parade' (1925) and 'Show People' (1928), which were added in 1992 and 2003 respectively. Both films were directed by King Vidor.

"King Vidor loved to acquire real estate.

The director of film classics such as “The Crowd,” “The Big Parade” and “The Fountainhead” moved from Hollywood’s most modest neighborhoods to the hilltops of Beverly Hills, trailing wives and children and business deals as he traded up in addresses.
Suzanne Vidor Parry, of Los Angeles, a daughter from his first marriage to actress Florence Vidor, believes her father had lived in at least a dozen local boardinghouses, apartments and mansions.
From the lean days, when he and his casts took the red streetcar to get to Hollywood locations, to the gravy days when two trains were needed to carry crew and equipment to Idaho for the filming of “Northwest Passage,” Vidor was a Hollywood insider.
His name hadn’t come up much for years, however, until author Sidney D. Kirkpatrick wrote “A Cast of Killers,” based upon records and diaries found in Vidor’s garage.
Vidor had investigated the mystery of silent film director William Desmond Taylor’s murder in hopes of using the evidence and conclusions in a screenplay. Kirkpatrick’s 1986 account of the 1967 investigation of the 1922 murder was a “page turner” that some day may be seen on the screen.
Last July, Vidor’s name appeared in print again, this time in an advertisem*nt placed by Stan Herman & Associates in the Hollywood Reporter. One of Vidor’s homes with a Beverly Hills mailing address is for sale at $7 million. It was the small print, “remodel or tear down” that startled the Vidor family, who have not seen the house for years.
In 1936, soon after he helped to organize the Directors Guild of America, Vidor, who was reared in Texas and was named for an uncle, made plans to build one of his largest estates.
Paying $16,000 for a six-acre knoll on Summitridge Drive, he hired Wallace Neff to design a chalet-lke home, as well as a barn and guest quarters. Neff’s papers indicate that the complex was budgeted to cost $30,000, plus the architect’s customary 10% fee. Vidor moved into a house at 1120 Summit Drive, across the street from Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard’s home as well as from Pickfair, and kept an eye on the construction on the hillside above.
In late 1938, following the filming of “The Citadel” in England, he and his third wife, Elizabeth Hill, moved into “the ranch,” at 1636 Summitridge Drive and remained for a dozen years.
The white clapboard house, made of redwood, was not baronial, especially during the war years, when chickens and horses were penned near the victory garden. Yet it was well cared for, with half a dozen rooms provided for maids and groundskeepers.
After Elizabeth’s son was killed in World War II, they decided to move, and after the war, hired architect Wlliam Stevenson to design a contemporary-style home on La Altura Road, not far from the Doheny Greystone estate.
According to his daughter, Vidor sold the Summitridge house in 1956, the year his film, “War and Peace,” was released, to Col. C.C. Moseley, an aeronautics pioneer, for less than $150,000.
Vidor died in 1982 at his ranch in Paso Robles.
Today, while the outside of the Summitridge estate has changed and the grounds are nearly wild with untended vegetation, the interior appears much as it did when Vidor lived there, including a kitchen and streamlined 1930s bathroom fixtures in black."

- Diane Kanner, Los Angeles Times (article published 8th November, 1987)

Interview Excerpt : Filmmaker Henry King on the importance of location ...

'King Vidor : A Retrospective' [Lincoln Film Center]

Horror filmmakers Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper were fans of painter Andrew Wyeth, something briefly touched upon when both men spoke at the American Cinematheque in tribute to Polish painter, sculptor and photographer Zdzislaw Beksinski.

Wyeth was a fan of King Vidor ...

“It had one of the finest tennis courts in town. Dad sold it to Fay Wray, and later owners included Lewis Milestone and Dick Powell.”

- Suzanne Vidor Parry, Los Angeles Times

'Metaphor : King Vidor Meets With Andrew Wyeth ("A Trip To Pennsylvania To Discuss Process")' (1980)

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'We Kiss In A Shadow' (1961) - Neil Sedaka | 'Somebody Else Is Taking My Place' (1968) - Connie Francis

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In the late spring of 1977, filmmaker Otto Preminger was invited by his friend Irv Kupcinet to join a roundtable discussion he was chairing in Chicago, Illinois with actress Elizabeth Ashley, entertainer Lucille Ball with whom Preminger was already acquainted, and hometown playwright David Mamet. Preminger accepted, dutifully.

"It is often like this when (Otto) Preminger works.
"He's as bad as they say," whispered Alexandra Hay, the young actress who is making her debut in "Skidoo." "But I guess it's justified. He does it to get what he wants out of you. He's an angel one minute, and a dictator the next."
Indeed, when Preminger presided over the luncheon table, he was so charming that it seemed impolite to refer to the eruptions of the morning. "If I grew an Old Testament beard," he mused, "perhaps I could play Moses. John Huston grew a beard, and became Noah. There is precedent."
He talked about a shot he planned for the next day. Jackie Gleason, safely smuggled into Alcatraz, was supposed to contact the mob's inside man about springing someone else. In one unbroken camera movement, employing dozens of extras, Preminger wanted to show a line of convicts filing along a corridor, turning a corner into the prison cafeteria, getting their food, moving into the lunchroom, sitting down, beginning to eat and planning the prison break.
It would be a complex master shot of the type Preminger is known for : All the actors and extras would have to do everything while the camera performed a tight maneuver. Then, after Gleason was seated at a cafeteria table, all the dialog would have to go correctly. One slip and the scene would have to be started from the beginning again."

- Roger Ebert visits Otto Preminger on the set of 'Skidoo', 16th June, 1968 (Chicago Sun-Times)

'Poetry In Motion' : Deconstructing 'Fallen Angel' (1945) ... [Shot, Drawn & Cut : Film Noir Studies]

Otto Preminger Triple-Bill [Criterion]

Otto Preminger joins Elizabeth Ashley, Lucille Ball & David Mamet for a session on Irv Kupcinet's well-worn couch ...

On 8th July, 2024, it was announced that Elizabeth Ashley has been selected to be inducted in to the American Theater Hall Of Fame. Congratulations, Ms. Ashley - a true original.

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'Angel Eyes' (1961) - Neil Sedaka | 'Button Up Your Overcoat' (1968) - Connie Francis