King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades. In 1979 he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his "incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator." He was nominated five times for a Best Director Oscar, and won eight international film awards during his career. He was born in Galveston, Texas, where he survived the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. His grandfather, Charles Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s. A freelance newsreel... cameraman and cinema projectionist, Vidor made his debut as a director in 1913 with The Grand Military Parade. In Hollywood from 1915, he worked as a screenwriter and as director of a series of six short juvenile-delinquency films for Judge Willis Brown before directing his first feature, The Turn in the Road, in 1919. A successful mounting of Peg o' My Heart in 1922 got him a long term contract with Goldwyn Studios, later to be absorbed into MGM.
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| Birthdate: | February 8, 1894 |
| Birthplace: | Galveston |
| Date of death: | November 1, 1982 |
| Also known as: | King Wallis Vidor, King W. Vidor |