BU Film Historian Pays Tribute to a “King” of Hollywood—King Vidor
Kevin Stoehr turns a spotlight on the career of the overlooked film director in new book

King Vidor circa 1925. The director’s career spanned more than 60 years. He was nominated for five Academy Awards. Photo via Getty/John Kobal Foundation
BU Film Historian Pays Tribute to a “King” of Hollywood—King Vidor
Kevin Stoehr turns a spotlight on the career of the overlooked film director in new book
When one thinks of the biggest film directors of Hollywood’s golden age (the late 1920s to about 1945), the names Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Ford, George Cukor, and Howard Hawks likely come to mind. Often overlooked is King Vidor (1894–1982). Mention his name today, and you’re likely to draw a blank stare from all but the most serious film aficionados. But Vidor had the longest career of any of his contemporaries. His first feature-length film, The Turn in the Road, appeared in 1919; his final Hollywood film, the biblical epic Solomon and Sheba, in 1959. And he continued to work behind the camera outside Hollywood until 1980.
What distinguishes his career is not merely its length, but the diversity of the films he made: film adaptations of Hollywood hits like Peg o’ My Heart (1922); war romances like the silent classic The Big Parade (1925); the groundbreaking musical drama Hallelujah (1929), one of the first films to feature an all-Black cast; melodramas like The Champ (1931) and Stella Dallas (1937); and westerns like Duel in the Sun (1946). He even directed the black-and-white Kansas scenes for 1939’s The Wizard of Oz (read more on that below). Along the way, Vidor earned five Academy Award nominations and worked with some of the industry’s biggest stars, including John Gilbert, Lillian Gish, Gregory Peck, Barbara Stanwyck, Jennifer Jones, Bette Davis, and Gary Cooper.
In their new book, King Vidor in Focus, BU film historian Kevin Stoehr (GRS’96,’97), chair and associate professor of humanities in the College of General Studies, and his coauthor Cullen Gallagher argue that Vidor should be celebrated alongside his better-known colleagues.


Stoehr (left), College of General Studies chair and associate professor of humanities, says his love of cinema began when he was a young boy. His father had access to a 16-millimeter film projector and Stoehr would watch old Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello movies on it.
BU Today spoke with Stoehr about what drew him to Vidor as a subject, his uncredited work on The Wizard of Oz, and how his Christian Science faith influenced his philosophy of film.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q&A
with Kevin Stoehr
BU Today: You’ve written several books about American cinema. What made you decide to write about King Vidor?
Stoehr: After writing about such filmmakers as John Ford and Stanley Kubrick and Michael Haneke, I wanted to focus on a major “Classical Hollywood” director who had been overlooked or underappreciated in contemporary cinema scholarship. King Vidor was the ideal choice because he had the longest career of any Hollywood director, along with one of the most fascinating and diverse bodies of work—but there had only been one comprehensive book on his entire career (King Vidor, American by Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simmon, first published in 1988). And many parts of that earlier book had been written in a very arcane language and with a confusing, abstruse mixture of different interpretive frameworks. Vidor deserved a new comprehensive study, written in a way that would appeal to both the film scholar and the interested layperson.
As I became more aware of the totality of Vidor’s filmography, from the middle of the silent era to 1980, I realized that the director had fancied himself as something of a philosopher. In his later years, he had discussed his philosophical ideas and interests in interviews and he had made a short documentary in 1964 devoted solely to those ideas and interests (Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics). I earned my doctorate in philosophy at BU and I’ve been teaching and writing about philosophy (along with cinema) ever since, so focusing on a self-described philosopher/filmmaker was a natural fit for me.
BU Today: Given the longevity of his career and the fact that he was nominated for five Academy Awards, why isn’t Vidor better known today?
He certainly should be better known, even by film historians and scholars. I think that part of the reason has to do with the fact that his vast body of work is so wide-ranging and eclectic, so that lovers of old movies don’t automatically associate him with one or two specific genres in the way that fans easily remember John Ford for his westerns and Alfred Hitchcock for his suspense thrillers. Vidor tackled many themes and genres, and more importantly he did so in a way in which he adapted his artistry to the subject matter at hand. Therefore, he didn’t really have an easily recognizable signature style that could be identified.
By the end of the silent film era, he was easily considered to be one of the greatest American film directors. His silent war classic The Big Parade (1925) was really the first great box office blockbuster and made a fortune for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He soon followed that success with The Crowd (1928), now considered to be one of the best of all silent films. Many of Vidor’s subsequent movies in the 1930s, including Street Scene, The Champ, The Stranger’s Return, Stella Dallas, and The Citadel, were truly superb films. And his Northwest Passage and Duel in the Sun are two of the great American westerns.

BU Today: What separated him from other directors of his time?
One thing that distinguished King Vidor is that he took far greater artistic and personal risks than most of his contemporaries, especially when he felt that a certain type of movie should be made. He was an artist of bold conviction and self-confidence. The Crowd was unlike any movie that had come before it. It was a strange fusion of expressionism and naturalism and, in detailing the ordinary life of an average, struggling everyman and by making the film with fairly unknown actors, Vidor took a huge commercial and artistic gamble. For his film Our Daily Bread, a Depression-era experiment in social realism, he sold just about everything he owned to make the film, given that he could gain no studio backing. In a sense, his effort made him a clear precursor of the later independent film movement.
BU Today: You and your coauthor, Cullen Gallagher, decided to focus on Vidor’s lesser-known films. Why?
Many of them were simply well-crafted or bold or interesting enough to deserve more attention. The Big Parade, The Crowd, The Champ, Stella Dallas, Duel in the Sun, and The Fountainhead are probably Vidor’s best-known films, but some of his lesser-known movies, including Show People, Street Scene, The Stranger’s Return, The Citadel, Northwest Passage, Beyond the Forest, and Japanese War Bride, are good enough to warrant more recognition and appreciation.
BU Today: Can you talk about his uncredited work on The Wizard of Oz?
Vidor was called upon by MGM to take over the directing of unfinished scenes in The Wizard of Oz when its director, Victor Fleming, needed to leave the production and begin work on Gone with the Wind. Vidor and Fleming were friends and Fleming trusted Vidor for the job. Interestingly, Vidor had originally been called upon by David O. Selznick to consider directing Gone with the Wind after the original director, George Cukor, left. Vidor had already made his own Southern Civil War romantic drama, So Red the Rose, back in 1935. After spending a few days ruminating upon the long, ponderous, convoluted script for Gone with the Wind, Vidor passed on Selznick’s offer and agreed instead to finish The Wizard of Oz while Fleming took over Gone with the Wind. Vidor filmed most of the black-and-white Kansas scenes, including the tornado sequence and the now iconic scene where Judy Garland sings the classic “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” He also reportedly directed the Technicolor “We’re Off to See the Wizard” scene.
BU Today: What kind of research did you undertake for the book?
Vidor’s filmography is so vast and diverse that Cullen and I consulted hundreds of old periodicals of the silent film era, as well as dozens upon dozens of interviews with Vidor, along with his own writings, including his 1953 memoir, A Tree is a Tree, and his later book about the art of filmmaking. And, of course, we studied his many films in detail. Unlike a director like John Ford, who resisted reflecting on his own films or who refused to philosophize about his artistry in public, King Vidor frequently and enthusiastically engaged with interviewers about his work and his art and philosophy.
BU Today: What surprised you the most in researching his career?
He was simply a director who was not afraid to explore new genres and subjects and to try new styles of filmmaking.

BU Today: You write at length about his Christian Science faith and how that shaped his worldview. How was that reflected in his films?
When he was just a boy, Vidor’s mother became interested in Christian Science and shared that faith with him. This spiritual tradition was reflected in his first feature film, The Turn of the Road. This movie, sadly now lost, was reported to have centered on the importance of spiritual transformation and the identification of God and love. According to Christian Science’s founder Mary Baker Eddy in her 1875 book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, one can overcome (at least to some degree) the suffering of the material world through a better understanding of the nature of the Divine Being. A proper insight into one’s relationship with God can improve one’s morality as well as enhance one’s physical and mental health. Eddy was a monist or anti-dualist: she declared that everything is ultimately mind, and not matter. This is the main theme of Vidor’s later short documentary, Truth and Illusion. For Christian Science, God is love and purely good. And the power of prayer relies on greater knowledge of divine laws. While Vidor did not write the stories of many of his own films, his more personal movies (such as The Crowd and Our Daily Bread and An American Romance) include scenes in which the innate goodness of human nature and the need for love and faith are emphasized. Some of his other films, such as Beyond the Forest, Duel in the Sun, and Ruby Gentry, stress the moral dangers of lacking authentic love and faith.
BU Today: Of the dozens of films he made, do you have a favorite?
If I were forced to pick, I would choose his silent era smash The Big Parade. Its greatness lies in the way in which Vidor seamlessly combines very intimate scenes of romance and personal loss with more spectacular scenes of parades and battles. He intersperses such scenes with an almost perfect tempo or rhythm. The film was one of the longest of the silent era, running almost two and a half hours, and it was so popular that some theaters in big cities kept screening it for nearly two years. It also served as a clear model for most later war classics.
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