Word: vidor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That is only the first mystery in this Chinese box of a thriller. The second, nearly a half-century later, stars King Vidor, veteran director of such epics as Duel in the Sun and War and Peace. Vidor had worked in Hollywood ever since 1915 and had known both Taylor and Minter, but as he entered his 70s, he could no longer find assignments. Teaming up with another oldtime star (and onetime lover) named Colleen Moore, he decided late in 1966 to make a film about the Taylor murder...
DIED. King Vidor, 88, bold but adaptable Hollywood director who made his first full-length movie (The Turn in the Road) in 1919 and acted in his last one (Love and Money), released earlier this year; of congestive heart failure; in Paso Robles, Calif. Born in Galveston, Texas, Vidor favored epic spectacles and epochal statements in such movies as War and Peace (1956) and his 1925 antiwar triumph, The Big Parade. "My heroes," said Vidor, "don't bellyache; they wake up and they work for changes...
...quite stupid enough to be truly funny. Interestingly, there are several nice, quirky moments of domestic comedy involving the protagonist, his grandfather and his live-in lady in an innocent but funny menage a trois. The old gent is played by the great director King Vidor, who may have given a tip or two, since these scenes indicate that were Toback to rein in .his ambitions, he might have a gift for conscious, rather than unconscious, comedy of an interestingly eccentric kind...
There is also new information about the era's most famous flameouts (D.W. Griffith, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim) and the best-documented veterans (Gloria Swanson, King Vidor, Lillian Gish). Even the trivia somehow does not seem trivial. It is touching to hear Frank Capra recall Mack Sennett's sad mansion full of unread books and overdressed servants. Director Henry Hathaway, who remained active past True Grit (1969), wittily brings back the days when his job was to follow DeMille around with a chair on location. A writer remembers the shock of seeing her credits on a silent...