3/21/2015

Henry King - Biography - IMDb

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Henry King
Personal Details
Biography

Showing all 18 items

Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (2) | Trivia (10) | Personal Quotes (2)

Overview (3)
Date of Birth

24 January 1886, Christiansburg, Virginia, USA

Date of Death

29 June 1982, Toluca Lake, California, USA (heart attack during sleep)

Height

6' (1.83 m)

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Mini Bio (1)

For more than three decades, Henry King was the most versatile and reliable, as well as
hard-working, contract director on the 20th Century Fox lot. His tenure lasted from 1930
to 1961, spanning most of Hollywood's 'golden' era. King was renowned as a specialist in
literary adaptations (eg A Bell for Adano (1945), The Sun Also Rises (1957)) and for his
nostalgic depictions of rural or small town America (eg Margie (1946)). Much of his work
was characterised by an uncomplicated approach and a vivid visual style, rather than
cinematic tricks or technical individuality. For the most part, it was his meticulous
attention to detail, and his reliance on superior plots and good acting that got the job
done. King was, above all, an astute judge of talent. He introduced Ronald Colman to
American audiences in The White Sister (1923), drawing a moustache on the actor's
clean-shaven face with a retouching pencil -- the real thing later becoming a Colman
trademark. King discovered Gary Cooper and cast him in a leading dramatic role in his
outdoor western The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)

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over the initial objections of producer

Samuel Goldwyn, who thought Coop was just another 'damn cowboy'. Goldwyn quickly
changed his mind after seeing the rushes. Other King discoveries included the lovely Jean
Peters (for Captain from Castile (1947)), and Tyrone Power, whom he actively promoted
to the point of badgering studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck to star him in Lloyd's of London
(1936). Power subsequently became one of Fox's most popular stars.
All in all, not bad for a guy, who had left school at fifteen to work for the Norfolk &
Western Railroad. After enduring the machine shops for a few years, King found more
suitable employment as an apprentice actor with the touring Empire Stock Company,
where he often performed song-and-dance routines in blackface. During his travels, he
befriended the comedy actress Pearl White. While accompanying Pearl on a visit to the
Lubin film studio in Philadelphia, in 1913, he was somehow talked into trying out as a film
actor. Before long, King found himself cast as assorted western villains in scores of onereelers. Moving to California the following year, he graduated to romantic leads in fulllength feature films with the Balboa Amusement Company, often co-starring opposite the
popular child actress Marie Osborne. King's directing career began in 1915 and gathered

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Henry King - Biography - IMDb

momentum, after he joined, first, The American Film Manufacturing Company, and,
subsequently, Thomas H. Ince. His first success was the army comedy 23 1/2 Hours'
Leave (1919). By 1921, King fronted his own production company, Inspiration Pictures,
releasing through First National. The rustic southern drama Tol'able David (1921) was his
next critically acclaimed picture, but not until joining Goldwyn at United Artists (192530), did he manage to turn out a consistent string of hits, including "The White Sister"
and Romola (1924), both shot on location in Italy; and the archetypal tearjerker Stella
Dallas (1925). For King, the transition to sound pictures was a mere formality.
In 1930, King qualified for his pilot's licence and began busily scouting locations from the
air, earning him the sobriquet 'The Flying Director'. When not airborne or on the golf
course (his other passion), he demonstrated his amazing versatility with box office hits
across a wide variety of genres: striking and colourful swashbucklers (The Black Swan
(1942)); romantic or religious melodramas -- their sentimentality well-tempered, so they
never seemed maudlin (The Song of Bernadette (1943), Love Is a Many-Splendored
Thing (1955)); epics (In Old Chicago (1937), with its splendid recreation of the 1871
great fire, the entire enterprise filmed at a staggering cost of $1.8 million); popular
musicals (Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), Carousel (1956)); psychological war drama
(Twelve O'Clock High (1949)); and uncompromisingly tough, off-beat westerns (The
Gunfighter (1950) and the underrated The Bravados (1958)). The latter three all starred
King's preferred leading actor, Gregory Peck. Peck was also on hand for The Snows of
Kilimanjaro (1952), reputedly Ernest Hemingway's favourite among all his filmed
adaptations. Of course, King also had his occasional failures. Topping that list was
Zanuck's pet project, the biopic Wilson (1944). Overly serious to the point of being dour,
it failed also, because its pacifist message was lost to an audience in the middle of a
world war. King's other notable dud, near the end of his career, was Beloved Infidel
(1959). Badly miscast, the film chronicling the affair between F. Scott Fitzgerald and
Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, was played out, inaccurately, as a genteel
and overly glossy romance.
Though nominated for five Academy Awards, King failed to snag the coveted trophy.
However, he did win a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Director's Guild of America in
1956. More importantly, perhaps, he seems to have enjoyed his work, stating in a 1978
interview "I've had more fun directing pictures than most people have playing games"
(New York Times, July 1 1982).
- IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
Spouse (2)
Ida

(1959 - 29 June 1982) (his death)

Gypsy Abbott

(? - 25 July 1952) (her death)

Trivia (10)
One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945."
Pages 535-542. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
Directed 8 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Alice Brady, Jennifer
Jones, Charles Bickford, Gladys Cooper, Anne Revere, Alexander Knox, Dean Jagger and
Gregory Peck. Brady, Jones and Jagger won Oscar for their performances in one of King's
movies.
Co-founder, with Charles H. Duell and Richard Barthelmess, of Inspiration Pictures in
1921.
He was the first owner of a Waco SRE Aristrocrat cabin biplane that was completed on
July 2, 1940. The base price was $17,800, making it among the most expensive private
aircraft of its time; only 29 SRE's and similar ARE's and HRE's were built before World War
II ended production in 1942. An avid pilot, King scouted for shooting locations from the
air and was a founder of the Civil Air Patrol during World War II and he undoubtedly used
the SRE for those tasks. King's SRE was later owned by Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.,
and a May 1954 photograph of it while owned by Fairchild appears on page 102 of the
Summer 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Aviation Historical Society.
King and his brother, director Louis King, both worked at 20th Century-Fox at the same
time in the 1940s. While Henry got large-scale, "important" pictures, Louis was usually
given lower-budget outdoors pictures, mysteries or westerns. Henry's "prestige" picture,
Wilson (1944), was a very expensive flop, though, while Louis' low-budget outdoors
picture Smoky (1946) was one of Fox's biggest moneymakers that year. Shotly after
"Smoky" was released, Henry stopped Louis on the lot one day and said, "I've just come

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0454771/bio

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from the accounting office and seen the figures. 'Smoky' has now earned what we lost
on 'Wilson' ".
Profiled in "American Classic Screen Interviews" (Scarecrow Press).
Was originally set to direct Way of a Gaucho (1952) with Tyrone Power in the leading
role, but in May 1951 he requested a transfer to another picture and was replaced by
Jacques Tourneur.
King's grandfather served under Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War.
Around the time of filming The White Sister (1923), King converted from the Methodist
church to Catholicism.
Personal Quotes (2)
[on Alice Faye] Not only is she my favorite actress, she is a favorite person.
[on Errol Flynn] Errol Flynn was a joy, a lovely man, and most of the talk about him is
nothing but rumor by people who didn't even know him. He loved to talk about how much
he could drink and the women he'd made love to, but most of it was just the
rationalizations of a disappointed moralist. He was the hardest-working, most down-toearth actor I have ever worked with.

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