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Henry King (director)

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Henry King
Born(1886-01-24)January 24, 1886
Christiansburg, Virginia, U.S.[1]
DiedJune 29, 1982(1982-06-29) (aged 96)
Toluca Lake, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Actor, film director
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1915; died 1952)​
Ida
​
(m. 1959)​
(died 2001)
Children3
RelativesLouis King (brother)

Henry King (January 24, 1886 – June 29, 1982) was an American actor and film director. Widely considered one of the finest and most successful filmmakers of his era, King was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Director and directed seven films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Before coming to film, King worked as an actor in various repertoire theatres and first started to take small film roles in 1912.[2] Between 1913 and 1925, he appeared as an actor in approximately sixty films. He directed for the first time in 1915 and grew to become one of the most commercially successful Hollywood directors of the 1920s and '30s. He was twice nominated for the Best Director Oscar. In 1944, he was awarded the first Golden Globe Award for Best Director for his film The Song of Bernadette. He worked most often with Tyrone Power and Gregory Peck and for 20th Century Fox.

Henry King was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards excellence of cinematic achievements every year, and was the last surviving founder. He directed more than 100 films in his career. In 1955, King was awarded The George Eastman Award,[3] given by the George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.

Biography

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King was born on his family's farm near Christianburg, Virginia. When he was young they moved to Lafayette. King started studying engineering but he had become interested in theatre at school and decided to become an actor. He joined a stock company in Roanoke, the Empire Stock Company, and began to tour the country doing plays.King later joined the Osmond Star Company, the Commonwealth Company, and the Jolly American Tramp Show. He also began directing theatre.[4]

King began appearing in films in 1912, initially for the Lubin Manufacturing Company on the West Coast on $35 a week.[5] He was with them for three months. King began writing screenplays and directing the occasional pick up shot for Lubin.[6]

Balboa

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King accepted an offer to work for the Balboa Amusement Producing Company (later the Balboa Feature Film Company) in Long Beach as an actor $75 a week. While there he also wrote and direct.[5] He sold an original story The Brand of Man. King's directing of a fight sequence for another film impressed Balboa so they gave him the chance to direc it, as his debut.[7]

King directed the first episode of a series Who Plays?; he did not direct the rest but appeared in it as an actor. He said he was paid $75 a week as an actor and was offered an additional $25 a week to direct. He directed Should a Wife Forgive? (1916) with Lillian Lorraine and his was followed by When Might Is Right (1916), The Oath of Hate (1916), Pay Dirt (1916), and Faith's Reward (1916). King recalled:

The Balboa Company made pictures to be sold by the foot... [they] would shoot a great quantity of footage with some semblance of story in it and then tie it together with subtitles. They had no money; they would sell the negative at a dollar a foot and come back with a hundred thousand dollars, pay off their debts and start all over again...Every time they came back from New York they'd have a new girl, who would be my leading lady. I got a little tired of being presented with a new leading lady for every picture.[8]

King discovered Baby Marie Osborne at the studio lunchroom and helped construct a vehicle for her, Little Mary Sunshine (1916). This made her a star. Other films King directed with Baby Marie (most of which were written by Dan Whitcomb) included Shadows and Sunshine (1916) with Baby Marie, Joy and the Dragon (1916), Twin Kiddies (1917), Told at Twilight (1917), Vengeance of the Dead (1917), and Sunshine and Gold (1917). He also starred and directed The Climber (1917) and The Locked Heart (1918).

American Film Company

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King moved over to the American Film company who had offered him $350 a week. His first film for the company was a war movie Souls in Pawn (1917), written by Jules Furthman.

King followed it with The Bride's Silence (1917), Southern Pride (1917), A Game of Wits (1917), The Mate of the Sally Ann (1917). King directed some films with Mary Miles Minter: Powers That Prey (1918), Social Briars (1918), and Beauty and the Rogue (1918).

He made a series of films starring William Russell written by Jules Furthman: Hearts or Diamonds? (1918), Up Romance Road (1918), Hobbs in a Hurry (1918), All the World to Nothing (1918), When a Man Rides Alone (1919), Where the West Begins (1919), Brass Buttons (1919), Some Liar (1919), A Sporting Chance (1919), This Hero Stuff (1919), and Six Feet Four (1919).

Other Studios

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King directed 23 1/2 Hours' Leave (1919) for Thomas Ince starring Douglas MacLean.[5] After this King left for the Robertson-Cole Company. He did some films with HB Warner: A Fugitive from Matrimony (1919), Haunting Shadows (1919), The White Dove (1920), Uncharted Channels (1920), One Hour Before Dawn (1920), Dice of Destiny (1920), and When We Were 21 (1921). He starred in and directed Help Wanted - Male (1920) with Blanche Sweet - this was the last film King ever acted in.

King directed Pauline Frederick in The Mistress of Shenstone (1921), Salvage (1921), and The Sting of the Lash (1921). King joined his own company, Inspiration Pictures with Charlie Duell.

Tol'able David

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King had a huge critical and commercial success with Tol'able David (1921), financed by First National. It starred Richard Barthemless who reunited with King in The Seventh Day (1922), Sonny (1922), The Bond Boy (1922), and Fury (1923). T

King made The White Sister (1923) with Lilian Gish and Ronald Colman. It was shot in Italy and was very successful, launching Colman as a movie star. He, Gish and King were reunited with Romola (1923). [5]

He made some films with Alice Terry for Paramount, Sackcloth and Scarlet (1925) and Any Woman (1925).

Working for Sam Goldwyn, King had a huge success with Stella Dallas (1925) with Coleman, Partners Again (1926), and some films with Colman and Vilma Bánky: The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) and The Magic Flame (1927). He did The Woman Disputed (1927) for Norman Schenck and She Goes to War (1929) for Inspiration. These were part-sound movies.

King made Hell Harbor (1930) and The Eyes of the World (1930) for Inspiration.

Fox

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King joined Fox Studios. He made Lightnin' (1930) with Will Rogers, Merely Mary Ann (1931) with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, Over the Hill (1931), and The Woman in Room 13 (1932). King had a huge hit with State Fair (1933) starring Rogers and Gaynor.

He was one of several directors on I Loved You Wednesday (1933) and My Lips Betray (1933) and made Carolina (1934) with Gaynor and Marie Galante (193) with Spencer Tracy. King directed One More Spring (1935) with Gaynor.

20th Century Fox

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King stayed with Fox when it marged with 20th Century. His films included Way Down East (1935) (which he said "fell far short" of the original[5]) and The Country Doctor (1936). Ramona (1936), shot in Technicolor, starred Loretta Young and was an early lead role for Don Ameche, while Lloyd's of London (1936) made a star of Tyrone Power.

A remake of Seventh Heaven (1937) was not that successful but In Old Chicago (1938), with Power, Don Ameche and Alice Faye was a big hit. Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), which reunited King with Power, Ameche and Fate, became the biggest hit in the studio's history. Jesse James (1939) with Power and Henry Fonda was one of the most popular movies of the year.[9]

King directed Stanley and Livingstone (1939) with Tracy, Little Old New York (1940) with Faye, Maryland (1940) with Walter Brennan and Chad Hanna (1940) with Dorothy Lamour and Fonda. None of these films were particularly popular but A Yank in the RAF (1941) with Power and Betty Grable was a huge hit.

King directed Remember the Day (1942), a drama with Claudette Colbert and John Payne, and The Black Swan (1942), a massively popular swashbuckler wih Power.[10] Another big hit was The Song of Bernadette (1943) which made a star of Jennifer Jones and earned King a Best Director Oscar nomination.

King was entrusted Wilson (1944), a dream project of Daryl F. Zanuck, which was the most expensive film produced by Fox to date, but which was a box office disappointment. King directed A Bell for Adano (1945) with Gene Tierney, then Margie (1946) with Jeanne Crain, which was a "sleeper" box office success.

King made two epic historical films with Power, Captain from Castile (1947) and Prince of Foxes (1949). In between he did Deep Waters (1948) with Dana Andrews and Jean Peters.

King made two acclaimed films with Gregory Peck, Twelve O'Clock High (1949) and The Gunfighter (1950). The former was very popular but not the latter, which Zanuck attribted to Peck wearing a moustache.[11][12]

This was followed by I'd Climb the Highest Mountain (1951) with Susan Hayward and the popular David and Bathsheba (1951), a Biblical epic with Hayward and Peck.

King directed Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie (1952) with Jean Peters, an episode of O. Henry's Full House (1952) with Crain, then The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway, with Peck, Hayward and Ava Garner, which was one of the most popular movies of the decade.

King made two historical films with Power, King of the Khyber Rifles (1954) and Untamed (1955), the latter co-starring Hayward. Then he made the popular Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955) with Jones and William Holden.

After the musical Carousel (1956), King directed another Hemingway adaptation, The Sun Also Rises (1957) with Power and Gardner. Despite being personally produced by Zanuck, the film was a commercial and critical disappointment.[13]

More acclaimed was the Greg Peck Western The Bravados (1958). King went to Universal to direct This Earth Is Mine (1959) with Rock Hudson and Jean Simmons.[14] He returned to Fox for his last two films Beloved Infidel (1959) with Peck and Deborah Kerr and Tender Is the Night (1962) with Jones.

Personal life

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During World War II, King served as the deputy commander of the Civil Air Patrol coastal patrol base in Brownsville, Texas, holding the rank of captain. (In his final years, he was the oldest licensed private pilot in the United States, having obtained his license in 1918.)

Henry King was married twice, first to Gyspy Abbott, who was an actor at Balboa Company. They married in 1915 and had three children, Frank, John and Martha.

His second wife was Ida Davis, to whom he remained married until his death in on June 29, 1982. He died at home in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of 96.[15] He was interred with his second wife Ida Davis in the Davis King family plot at Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Tampa, Florida.

Partial filmography

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Director

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Actor

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Academy Awards

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Year Award Film Result
1943 Best Director The Song of Bernadette Nominated
1944 Best Director Wilson Nominated

References

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  1. ^ West, Richard (July 1, 1982). "Henry King - Hollywood Star Walk -". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 28, 2017.
  2. ^ Schneider, Steven Jay, ed. (2007). 501 Movie Directors. London: Cassell Illustrated. p. 36. ISBN 9781844035731. OCLC 1347156402.
  3. ^ "Awards Granted by George Eastman House International Museum of Photography & Film". GeorgeEastmanHouse. Archived from the original on April 15, 2012. Retrieved October 24, 2017.
  4. ^ King p 7-14
  5. ^ a b c d e "Silver Voices: Henry King Interview". George Eastman Museum. 1958.
  6. ^ King p 15-17
  7. ^ King p 17-18
  8. ^ King p 21
  9. ^ "All-time Film Rental Champs". Variety. October 15, 1990.
  10. ^ Mank, Gregory William (2018). Laird Cregar: A Hollywood Tragedy. McFarland.
  11. ^ Eyman, Scott (September 21, 2021). 20th Century-Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio. Running Press. ISBN 978-0-7624-7092-1.
  12. ^ Haney, Lynn (April 27, 2009). Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life. Hachette Books. p. 195. ISBN 978-0-7867-3781-9.
  13. ^ Buchwald, Art. (November 29, 1957). "The Great Feud of Mr. Hemingway and Mr. Zanuck". Los Angeles Times. p. B5.
  14. ^ "'Earth,' 'Bullet' U's Multi-Million Pair". Variety. September 3, 1958. p. 3. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  15. ^ Maslin, Janet (July 1, 1982). "Henry King, Movie Director Known for Book Adaptations". The New York Times. Retrieved October 24, 2017.
  16. ^ Workman, Christopher; Howarth, Troy (2016). "Tome of Terror: Horror Films of the Silent Era". Midnight Marquee Press. p. 222.ISBN 978-1936168-68-2.

Notes

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  • King, Henry (1995). Henry King, director : from silents to ʼscope. Directors Guild of America.
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