Editing King Vidor (section)

=== Early sound era: 1929–1937 ===
In early 1928, Vidor and his spouse Eleanor Boardman were visiting France in the company of [[F. Scott Fitzgerald|Scott]] and [[Zelda Fitzgerald|Zelda]] Fitzgerald. There Vidor mixed with literary expatriates, among them [[James Joyce]] and [[Ernest Hemingway]]. Vidor was shaken by news that US film studios and theaters were converting to sound technology and he returned quickly to Hollywood, concerned about the impact on silent cinema.<ref>Baxter 1976 p. 43: On influence of Hemingway's literary style on film.<br />Durgnat and Simmons, 1988 p. 61, p. 95: Vidor expressed his view that sound films would "...do away entirely with the art of motion pictures..." (Interview with ''[[Motion Picture News]]'', July 14, 1928)</ref> Adjusting to the advent of sound, Vidor enthusiastically embarked upon his long-desired project of making a picture about rural black American life incorporating a musical soundtrack.  He quickly completed writing the scenario for ''Hallelujah'' and began recruiting an all African-American cast.<ref>Durgnat and Simmons, 1988 p. 97: "Vidor's long-cherished project about southern black life..."</ref>

M-G-M studios had not yet decided which emerging sound technology they would invest in, [[Vitaphone]] or [[Movietone sound system|Movietone]], a decision that would determine what camera system Vidor would use. Vidor circumvented the dilemma by appealing directly to President of [[Loews Cineplex Entertainment|Lowe's Inc.]] [[Nicholas Schenck]], who authorized Vidor to begin shooting outdoor location sequences without sound and with the caveat that Vidor waive his $100,000 salary.<ref>Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 95</ref>

==== ''Hallelujah'' (1929) ====
[[File:Nina McKinney Louise.jpg|thumb|Nina Mae McKinney as Chick in ''Hallelujah'']] 
Vidor's first sound film ''[[Hallelujah (film)|Hallelujah]]'' (1929) combines a dramatic rural tragedy with a documentary-like depiction of black agrarian community of sharecroppers in the South. [[Daniel L. Haynes]] as Zeke, [[Nina Mae McKinney]] as Chick and [[William Fontaine]] as Hot Shot developed a love-triangle that leads to a revenge murder. A quasi-musical, Vidor's innovative integration of sound into the scenes, including jazz and gospel adds immensely to the cinematic effect.<ref>Reinhardt, 2020: Accordingly, music and dance play an outstanding role and add enormously to the work.<br />Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 97: "...both is and isn't a musical..."</ref>

Vidor, a third-generation Texan, encountered black workers employed at his father's sawmills when he was a child, and there he became familiar with their [[Spiritual (music)|spirituals]]. As an adult, he was not immune to the racial prejudices common among whites in the South of the 1920s. His paternalistic claim to know the character of the "real negro" is reflected in his portrayal of some rural black characters as "childishly simple, lecherously promiscuous, fanatically superstitious, and shiftless". Vidor, nonetheless, avoids reducing his characters to [[Uncle Tom]] stereotypes and his treatment bears no resemblance to the overt racism in [[D. W. Griffith]]'s ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' (1915).<ref>Baxter 1972 p. 152: "real negro"<br />Silver, 2010:  "Certainly, Vidor could never be accused of the overt racial venom exhibited by Griffith in ''The Birth of a Nation''."</ref>

The black sharecroppers resemble more the poor white agrarian entrepreneurs Vidor praised in his 1934 ''[[Our Daily Bread (1934 film)|Our Daily Bread]]'', emphasizing the class, rather than race, of his subjects. The film emerges as a human tragedy in which elemental forces of sexual desire and revenge contrast with family affection and community solidarity and redemption.<ref>Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 97–98: "The cotton-picking black folk...don't carry [[Uncle Tom]] overtones, for Vidor celebrates the same life in the enterprising white community of Our Daily Bread." And p. 98-99: The film "unleashes forces...[revealing] a moral polarity between family affection versus apparently passionate sexuality..." And p. "...the film affirms the value...of diligence, frugality, hard work...the puritan ethic- mediated through an Afro-ethnicity." <br />Reinhardt, 2020: "But the limitations and prejudices [in the film] are largely class and social ones, not racial. Vidor was all over the place ideologically and politically, notwithstanding his undoubted general sympathy for the poor and marginalized" and "the film's universal message."(emphasis in original)<br />Vidor, an unabashed Texan, carried much of the baggage of a Southern upbringing..." Also "scenes of great tragedy" including the death Zeke's younger brother.</ref>

''Hallelujah'' enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response in the United States and internationally, praising Vidor's stature as a film artist and as a humane social commentator. Vidor was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards of 1929.<ref>Galleghar, 2007: "''Hallelujah'' in 1929, Vidor was internationally celebrated, even in America, as a titanic film artist who was both socially committed and commercial. Had a poll been taken, Vidor might well have been voted the greatest filmmaker in history, the one who had finally realized cinema's poetic potential."</ref><ref>Reinhardt, 2020</ref>

==== M-G-M 1930–1931: ''Billy the Kid'' and ''The Champ'' ====
Filmed just before passage of the [[Motion Picture Production Code|Production Code]] of 1933, Vidor's ''Billy the Kid'' is free of the fixed moral dualities that came to typify subsequent Good Guy vs. Bad Guy Westerns in Hollywood. Starring former football champion [[Johnny Mack Brown]] as Billy and [[Wallace Beery]] as his nemesis Sheriff [[Pat Garrett]], the protagonists display a gratuitous violence that anticipates Vidor's 1946 masterpiece ''[[Duel in the Sun (film)|Duel in the Sun]]'' (1946). Homicidal behavior resonates with the brutal and deadly desert landscape, [[Ernest Hemingway|Hemingwayesque]] in its brevity and realism. Studio executives were concerned that the excessive violence would alienate audiences, though the [[Prohibition era]] in the United States was saturated with news of the gangster-related killings.
<ref>Baxter, 1972 p. 152-153: "...the integration of character into landscape as never before permitted."And "...a natural complement to Duel in the Sun."<br />Baxter, 1976 p. 44-45<br />Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 180: "...an exploration of social violence...."And p. 184"...a strange synthesis of Western innocence and gangster morality..." and reference to Hemingway.</ref>

Shot partially in the new [[70 mm Grandeur film|70 mm Grandeur system]], the film was conceived by producers to be an epic, but few cinemas were equipped to handle the new wide-screen technology. The film did poorly at the box-office.<ref>Durgnat and Simmons, 1988 p. 180: "...for twenty years thereafter, Westerns were fated to simple moral dichotomies between white Stetsons and black." And p. 11:"...Vidor's Billy the Kid [celebrates] another serial killer...without [[Hays Code]] objections." And p. 181: The Brown/Billy character "shuttles between being a justified and near-psychotic murderer."<br />Baxter, 1972 p, 152–153: "...the integration of character...into an alien [desert] landscape...as bare and stark as the moon." And: "...in Billy the Kid, [Vidor] struck a balance between the commercial necessities of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and his own vision of life." And p. 153: "...Billy the Kid as a fit companion piece to ''[[Scarface (1932 film)|Scarface]]'' and other exercises in the celebration of violence."<br />Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 96: "...one of the experiments [in 1930 with] 70 millimeter wide-screen photography." and "compromised in impending popularity of gangsters films such  ''[[The Public Enemy|Public Enemy]]'' (1931) and ''[[Scarface (1932 film)|Scarface]]'' (1932) and the popularity of mobster [[Al Capone]] among some ethnic groups.<br />Baxter, 1976 p. 45<br />Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 114:"A melting-pot Western...a populist plot... stressing the.diverse [European] heritages of the immigrants to [[New Mexico]]..."</ref><ref>Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 96: "...one of the experiments [in 1930 with] 70 millimeter wide-screen photography."<br />Baxter, 1972 p, 152–153: Baxter reports that only "twelve theaters" in the US were fitted to present 70 millimeter prints, with 35mm used in most movie houses.<br />Baxter, 1976 p. 45<br /> Smith, TMC: "The box office failure of Metro's widescreen Billy the Kid in the autumn of 1930 may have killed the A-list career of John Mack Brown but it in no way deterred subsequent recreations of the myth."</ref>

Upon his return to M-G-M after his sojourn to complete ''[[Street Scene (film)|Street Scene]]'' for Samuel Goldwyn, Vidor embarked on his second picture starring actor Wallace Beery, this time with child actor [[Jackie Cooper]] in ''[[The Champ (1931 film)|The Champ]]''. Based on a story by [[Francis Marion]], Vidor adapts a standard plot about a socially and economically impaired parent who relinquishes a child to insure his/her escape from squalid conditions to achieve an upwardly mobile future. The film is a descendant of director [[Charlie Chaplin]]'s ''[[The Kid (1921 film)|The Kid]]'' (1921), as well as Vidor's own early silent [[short film|shorts]] for [[Judge Willis Brown]]. Vidor owed M-G-M a more conventional and "fool-proof" production after executives allowed him to make the more experimental ''[[Street Scene (film)|Street Scene]]'' in 1931. The Champ would prove to be a successful vehicle for Berry and propel him to top-rank among M-G-M movie stars.<ref>Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 96, p. 124: The film is a "clear model" of Chaplin's The Kid. And p. 126: "inter-ethnic" kid movies for Brown. And: a "conventional" film for the studio to balance his experimental efforts e.g. Street Scene.<br />Miller, TMC</ref>

==== ''Bird of Paradise'' and RKO Pictures : Sojourn in Hawaii, 1932 ====

After finishing the sentimental vehicle starring Wallace Beery, in ''[[The Champ (1931 film)|The Champ]]'', Vidor was loaned to [[RKO Pictures|Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO)]] to make a "South Seas" romance for producer [[David Selznick]] filmed in the [[Hawaii Territory|US territory of Hawaii]]. Starring [[Dolores del Río]] and [[Joel McCrea]], the tropical location and mixed-race love theme in ''[[Bird of Paradise (1932 film)|Bird of Paradise]]'' included nudity and sexual eroticism.<ref>Durgnat and Simmon 1988 p. 136-137: "...nothing prepares us for Selznick's volcano sacrifice." And "...Old World cultures are there for Americans and their lovers to transcend...If the film renounces miscegenation, that's not Vidor's fault... [the movie] yearns the other way. But the strictures against miscegenation were so strong that fatalism was built into [the story's] premise."</ref>

During production Vidor began an affair with script assistant [[Elizabeth Hill (screenwriter)|Elizabeth Hill]] that led to a series of highly productive screenplay collaborations and their marriage in 1937.  Vidor divorced his wife, actress [[Eleanor Boardman]] shortly after ''Bird of Paradise'' was completed.<ref>Durgnat and Simmon 1988 p. 96, 173, 174, 177</ref><ref>Baxter 1976 p. 49</ref>

==== Great Depression: 1933–1934 ====
''[[The Stranger's Return]]'' (1933) and ''[[Our Daily Bread (1934 film)|Our Daily Bread]]'' (1934) are Depression era films that present protagonists who flee the social and economic perils of urban America, plagued by high unemployment and labor unrest to seek a lost rural identity or make a new start in the agrarian countryside. Vidor's expressed enthusiasm for the [[New Deal]] and [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]]'s exhortation in his first inaugural in 1933 for a shift of labor from industry to agriculture.<ref>Durgnat and Simmon, 1988 p. 138: "...an escape to family-owned land away from modern [urban] economic and spiritual problems." And also quotes passage from FDR inaugural And p. 154: Vidor's "admiration for the New Deal spirit..."</ref>

In ''[[The Stranger's Return]]'', a city girl ([[Miriam Hopkins]]) abandons her life in a great metropolis to visit her grandfather ([[Lionel Barrymore]]) in Iowa, the aging patriarch of a working farm. Her arrival upsets the schemes of parasitic relatives to seize the property in anticipation of Grandpa Storr's passing. The scenario presents the farm as "bountiful", even in the midst of the [[Dust Bowl]] where banks seized tens-of-thousands of independent family farms in the [[Midwestern United States|Midwest]] and drove millions into low wage seasonal agricultural labor.<ref>Durgnat and Simmon, 1988 p. 140: M-G-M studio and Vidor "hedge[s]" his depiction of [Depression-era] agriculture..." And: the farm "remains safely bountiful..." And: The Storr enterprise with its "expensive threshers" is not a "collective" but a "company".</ref> The picture is a paean to family "blood" ties and rural generational continuity, manifested in the granddaughter's commitment (though raised in New York City) to inherit the family farm and honor its agrarian heritage.<ref>Durgnat and Simmon, 1988 p. 139: "...her ultimate commitment to the land..." And p. 145: "blood" relations and rural family continuity</ref>

Vidor continued his "back to the land" theme in his 1934 ''Our Daily Bread''. The picture is the second film of a trilogy he referred to as "War, Wheat and Steel". His 1925 film ''[[The Big Parade]]'' was "war" and his 1944 ''[[An American Romance]]'' was "steel". ''Our Daily Bread'' – "wheat" – is a sequel to his silent masterpiece ''The Crowd'' (1928).<ref>Higham, 1972: "...his masterpiece, ''The Crowd'' And "... a trilogy Vidor thought of as "War, Wheat and Steel". It was not until 1944...that Vidor got the chance to make the "Steel" portion. He called it "An American Romance."</ref><ref>Baxter, 1976 p. 51-52</ref>

''Our Daily Bread'' is a deeply personal and politically controversial work that Vidor financed himself when M-G-M executives declined to back the production.  M-G-M was uncomfortable with its characterization of big business, and particularity banking institutions, as corrupt.<ref>Higham, 1972: "Thalberg of MGM said it was out of the question."<br />Durgnat and Simmon, 1988 p. 149: "...directly political" implications. And "...a politically charged subject" on the question of labor and land ownership. And p. 151; The studio viewed the film as "an attack on big business" and refused to finance it. And see p. 151 for Vidor's financing of project.<br />Baxter 1972 p. 158: "Vidor's more personal work...financed by him [with] a controversial theme."<br />Silver, 2010: "It is some measure of the ardor Vidor felt for Our Daily Bread that he managed to make it outside the studio system and in spite of American cinema's traditional aversion to controversial subjects.<br />Higham, 1972: "Vidor mortgaged his house and sold everything he owned to do the picture.</ref>
A struggling Depression-era couple from the city inherit a derelict farm, and in an effort to make it a productive enterprise, they establish a cooperative in alliance with unemployed locals who possess various talents and commitments. The film raises questions as to the legitimacy of the American system of democracy and to government imposed social programs.<ref>Durgnat and Simmon, 1988 p. 149-150: "The film touches on the implications that the whole American democratic system is corrupt and should be left behind by this [rural] community."</ref>

The picture garnered a mixed response among social and film critics, some regarding it as a socialistic condemnation of capitalism and others as tending towards fascism – a measure of Vidor's own ambivalence in organizing his social outlook artistically.<ref>Durgnat and Simmon, 1988 p. 149-150<br />Thomson 2007: " strange but stirring film that finds equal fault with socialism and democracy and sets about creating a system of its own, based on the charisma of one man..."</ref><ref>Silver, 2010: "[Our Daily Bread] is still naive, simplistic, and awkward, but it remains extremely lovely in its innocence."<br />Baxter, 1972 p. 158: "...one cannot accept Our Daily Bread as anything more than a well-mounted political tract from a theorist unwilling or unable see a situation with any real insight."<br />Durgnat and Simmon, 1988 p. 152: See here for Vidor's "political ambiguity."</ref>