Creative Person; 13; King Vidor

Filmmakers program number two, topic King Beador, recorded 1-4-64. The following program is from N-E-T, the National Educational Television Network. The creative person has a special gift, is private vision of the world. The artist through words, images, music, ideas touches our view of the 20th century. The important thing that happens to the average man, he is born, goes to school, comes

of age, gets a job, meets a girl, falls in love, marries, has a baby, needs money, has another baby, and more expenses, perhaps hard luck, tragedy, perhaps good luck, and happiness finally dies. Inevitably, the way a filmmaker, director, feels about life, is short and usually creeps into the scenes of the films that he selects, pictures that he makes. This excerpt is from Our Daily Bread, a film I made in 1934. These men are all part of a cooperative venture.

This was doing depression years, and jobs were difficult to find, they just weren't available. These men, one of the men had permission to live and use a farm, and he recruited men who knew all different sort of trades to live there, and live together, and work cooperatively. This particular sequence is the climax of the film. They have tried to raise the big stand of corn, and there's been a drought, so it's necessary for them to get water from a lake, stream up in the hills, down to this dying field of corn, so they are just at the last moment when they're about to give up the whole venture. They all decide that they could build a ditch and bring the water, irrigation water down

to this dying corn, this parched corn, so that's what this sequence is, and it's done. In order to give, at the time, I've always thought that a film should the climax should be very much like a symphony, symphonic structure, with the temporal crescendo increasing toward the finish. I think I learned this from D.W. Griffith, but I certainly believe it, and I believe it's the proper way to make a film. This particular action of digging this ditch is done, whether it was done, was shot with a metronome and a bass drum to keep the men in a rhythm, and then the rhythm, which is four or four times rhythm.

The picks come down on a certain beat, and shovels and the men step on a beat on a count, and this rhythm is increased right through the whole construction of the ditch, and into the moment when the water comes rushing down in the ditch, these men, none of the men employed, none of the men, it's all a self-help idea, and where money doesn't enter into the picture at all, it's just their own labour. I believe that men put on their own, we see the machine that we fight so much, and these men are showing their own spirit of subsistence to overcome the well-ified against getting

on welfare roles, and they're working out their own salvation as it were, and the spirit of that, I believe, comes through in this film, and this film, my daily bread was part of a trilogy in my mind, which started with the big parade and then the crowd, and then this was the third film, using the same viewpoint of a man watching life in the first instance that was going to war, and the second was the business of the high points watching you observing and experiencing the high points of ordinary life, and this one is the same man experiencing and living life under the depression times.

Good evening, I'm Arthur Knight, curator of the Hollywood Museum. What we've just seen is an excerpt from one of the many outstanding films directed by

our guest this evening, King Vidor. Mr. Vidor's long career spans both silence and sound, and includes such all-time successes as the big parade, the crowd, hallelujah, duel in the sun, war and peace. Tonight, with Mr. Vidor, we're going to take a trip through Hollywood, back to some of the studios in which he worked since he arrived here in 1915 from Texas. At that time, the great D.W. Griffith was filming intolerance, one of the most lavish sets ever built for any picture, and here's King Vidor to tell us all about it. This is where it all began, my entrance in the Hollywood, with standing now on the exact spot where the Griffith studio was at the time, the D.W. Griffith studio. The studio was on this side of sunset and occupied all this area where the supermarket,

the safe way, seemed supermarket to take it over, doesn't it? Across Sunset Boulevard was the intolerant set all over there, up to that street, up to that corner. It was actually about a quarter of a mile, as I recall. Yes, it had a canvas fence around it to keep the visitors out, and it was a huge set and shot some of the seeds from the balloon, and this was, to me, this was the centre of all most picture activity right where we are today. Well, let's move on to one of the other favourite spots, huh? The first year I did everything, I did anything, any sort of a job, and any sort of really

to get the experience and to watch and see what was going on. And then, well, it must have been three years in, I made short films, and then I made full-length film called The Breath Wood Company, made four of those. This was at a time when all you needed for a studio was a bungalow and backyard, a room enough to build a stage, open our stage, and actually sunlight was terribly important because the even the interiors were lighted by sunlight, and if it rained, you couldn't work. You couldn't work on the interiors because the canvas above filled up with water and the rain came out in the sets, so it didn't have the rules that would take the rainaways.

Also, this is where we built, when I was in my 20s, this studio called Vito on Village. My father came out Texas Lumberman and built this place, and it was done in the architecture at the time that I was doing middle-western American films, you know, and all your sets in that style. Yes, so they could be used, and at the, in my beginning days, I thought we had to build a studio, you had to have a studio. It was the going studio there, and it was a square block, and it was this, our own place after a couple of years we abandoned it, that was the time, though, when they were all building their own studios.

Fairbanks was over there, and Chaplain, a few lots of times. Yes, exactly. The consolidation came later. Yes. We bought a year too late, they tore it down a year ago, and now it's a supermarket across the street from Goldman. Well, let's go and look at some of the others, aren't they? Yes. We see, in the beginning, Hollywood was rightfully a symbol, and it was a practical one, because one felt they couldn't make pictures any other place. It was all the byproducts of making films, all the studios, all equipment, and the craftsmen, and the actors and the stars were only in Hollywood, that is it grew that way, the byproducts of filmmaking, and it developed that way, and there was a feeling that one could not make

a film almost in the world, but certainly not in America, away from Hollywood. After this is the General Service Studio, well, we made the Jacknife Man, the locations were made at Stockton on the Sacramento River, 2020, yes, 1920, Jacknife Man. Yes, this film, the Jacknife Man, was quite revolutionary, even in the day that it was made, because Hollywood was thinking about Blama then too, just the same, and they didn't have the art theaters for a realistic picture of this thought, and it was, I suppose, the bad boy for making such a film, because they were all interested in filling, when

I said they, the distributors and exhibitors, in filling large theaters, well, I had a strong feeling about the American scene, doing it properly, and that's probably what was motivating me at that time, he said in a sense to try to get truth onto the screen, and I didn't see why pictures should be limited to just a feeling of unreality all the time. When we had the first stages, we simply had black and white, they called the fuses, to diffuse the direct sunlight, yes, we pulled on wires up above, and when I said we couldn't work on the rainy days, because the water came out into the sets, then when the overheads

began to go up a little bit, and they said let's build glass stages, which will let the sunlight in too, let the light in daylight, but still we'll be able to work in rainy weather, and we were in all the sets and the furniture and so forth, and that's why the glass stage developed, and that was the best stage up until the sound came along, and that's when they weren't soundproof anymore, and they had to build the soundproof stages. Yes, well actually, I think there's a few of those glass stages left that natural grow in man. I think that they probably lined them and made them soundproof. I don't think they tore all of them down, but that was a development. There we are, you know, when you wanted to go on a location years ago, you say you want

to go some distance, and the man named Stenper, he said no, he says a rock is a rock, and the tree is a tree, shoot it in Griffith Park. Here's the rock? Yeah, I suppose there's a tree. Now this goes back, this is as far as we ever went on location from Hollywood, and therefore at the time of the big parade, which was laid at France, instead of going to France, where we can be Griffith Park, and we shot most of the picture here in Griffith Park, going away scene, and then we, another park nearby Leisure Park, we took a lot of it there, but this was, well there was so many companies shooting through Griffith Park that you had to be careful, one of them didn't get in your aperture most of the time.

We started the idea that you could lift us with grow any place, the France, England, or anything. Well let's go move on to the next location, right? Everything was then faked, and sets were built on back lots, but Cinorama came along and sort of opened the whole screen, and then we went to the period of forget the faking, and go all over the world, you had to go all over the world, and then by then equipment was more flexible, sound and camera equipment, and the studio, small studios, and all over the world began to get this equipment, lights and so forth, and that's why it is again going the other direction, now the films are made every country, every city in contrast to the fact that they had to be made in Hollywood. Back to the old nest, MGM, this must

be the place you know best of all in town, isn't it King? Yes, you know my wife used to see whenever I started out, the automobile automatically drove to MGM because they didn't know how to go any place, like the old horse and the people, right? And I started from MGM, this was the old nest, you know that was the feeling of Louis Mayor, Louis B. Mayor, and Charles Berg, they wanted everybody to be like a big family, and they made a lot of stars here, you know, Tracy and Gable, there were some very good things about it, some bad, who I made the big parade here and the crowd and Halloween. Right, right, Northwest Passage, American romance, a temple, a mess square, what do my favourite? Yes, very many pictures. About 20 years altogether wasn't it King? At least, at least, I didn't go on pension because I was, I never signed two contracts on a row, I always was rebellious, so I was trying to leave the old nest, go some other

place, but ended up in back to the old nest. Thank you King for that marvelous tour. King, we've seen now how the studios have changed, how about the films themselves, have they changed as drastically? You mean from supermarkets to super-duper films, you mean? Some of that's right. Well, I think, yes, they have. There used to be many middle ground films and cheaper films. Well, people won't go out to see those today. They demand something more important, more spectacular. More star-studded. I suppose so, yes. I think the basis for much of the change, the economics of the industry, films cost very much more than they used to. And with each dollar that someone has to risk, they demand more insurance. And this means bigger star names and perhaps bigger stories that will fill theaters. And

this was not so big for, not quite so much. You had more films to work with every year. Yes, more films were made. Directors seem to me to be more free today. They have to find the story. If they want freedom, they have to find the story and find the star and put the whole thing together as a package and create that much to, and then the economics, the speed, what's the film is done, has to be done faster. Somehow rather to keep from, every film today is a very expensive risk. Would you say the director has more control or less control than he did back in the 20s and 30s? I think the answer probably is economics again. I think that he has less control. There's a few perhaps making films that have been doing it a long time. But I believe as a general rule, the director has less control because, again, the economics make good

speed and insurance again. We've spoken a great deal about the individuality of the director. How does that come through under this kind of setup then? Well, with the silent film, I believe that with silent films, which had the deficiency of a soundtrack and a dialogue, I believe the director had to establish his own individuality. I believe, gropingly, he had to do something dynamically with silent films, photographically or some style, to be able to make up for it. In other words, they were more artistic. Because they spoke in Panama and in gestures they had to. And so that he had to develop to be noticed, or to get his ideas over, he had to develop an individual style. Today, the film with the soundtrack, with the dialogue, and with the more plays being photographed, he doesn't have to do that.

He has to be more of a craftsman, get the thing done, get it done smoothly, get it done properly. And tell the actors where to move. Yes, tell the actors when to stand up, when to sit down. I believe, actually, you know, in Europe, the director is called the author of a film, authors, and really directing a film starts in selecting a story, working on the script, writing the script. It doesn't even writing the story. Writing the story is true. And today, some of the directors manage to get their feeling, their individuality, write straight through from start to finish. But the ones who started and had to do this with the hands tied of silent film, seemed to develop more individuality to me. I was thinking, as we took this tour, that the studios are here, but the last few films that you've made, War and Peace and Solomon and Shiba were made abroad. Well, the minute that you say a thousand extras today of 3,000 or 5,000 extras, I only know

of one instance, and it's George Stevens, a great story of a tour that's been made here. But the minute you say 5,000 extras and big, huge sets, why the costs are too high, so that you think immediately of Europe. In fact, you don't even try to get it budgeted, they're estimated here. So off you go to Europe, where you can use the Italian army and the Spanish army. And recently, most of my activities have been in Europe. I've made three films there. Well, let's take a look at some of those thousands of extras as they turned up in your film, Solomon and Shiba. Very good. Go to charge us, Majesty. Wait for my signal. Attack. Strike them down.

Oh shit. Fire. Thank you! I'd like to say thank you. Thank you.

I guess this evening has been one of Hollywood's most distinguished filmmakers, the director

King Vidor. King it's been very good of you to have been with us and to have given us this insight into Hollywood past and present, thank you so much. The film's courtesy of King Vidor, the Hollywood Museum, and United Artises, produced for National Educational Television by KCET Los Angeles, in cooperation with the Los Angeles County Film Museum.

This is N-E-T, the National Educational Television Network.