The Big Parade (1925) was a huge hit. When MGM discovered that a clause in Vidor's contract entitled him to 20% of the net profits, studio lawyers called a meeting with him. At the meeting, MGM accountants played up the costs of the picture while downgrading the studio forecast of its potential success. Vidor was persuaded to sell his stake in the film for a small sum. The film ran for 96 weeks at the Astor Theater alone and grossed $5 million (approximately $50 million in 2003 dollars) domestically by 1930, making it the most profitable release in MGM history at that point.
Began at Universal Studios as a clerk for $12 per week.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 823-825. New York: Charles Scribner's.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1130-1136. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
Directed six different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Wallace Beery, Robert Donat, Barbara Stanwyck, Anne Shirley, Jennifer Jones and Lillian Gish. Beery won an Oscar for The Champ (1931/I).
Directed the black and white sequences (the Kansas scenes), including "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," in The Wizard of Oz (1939) when director Victor Fleming was forced to leave the production to move to Gone with the Wind (1939).
Entered into Guinness World Records as having "The Longest Career As A Film Director", spanning 67 years beginning with Hurricane in Galveston (1913) in 1913 and ending with the documentary The Metaphor (1980) in 1980.
Father of Suzanne Vidor Parry by his first marriage to Florence Vidor and Antonia Vidor and Belinda Vidor Holiday by his second marriage to Eleanor Boardman..
He had three daughters. His oldest, Suzanne, was born to his first wife Florence in 1919. With Eleanor Boardman he had daughters Antonia, born in 1927, and Belinda, born in June, 1930.
Head of jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1962
In 1978, he (co-presenter) accepted the Oscar for "Best Director" on behalf of Woody Allen, who wasn't present at the awards ceremony
President of the Screen Directors Guild. [1936-1938]
Survived the most horrific hurricane to ever hit the United States, the 1900 storm that devastated Galveston, Texas on September 8th, 1900. This tropical cyclone killed an estimated 6,000 people, fully one third of the population. Vidor wrote a fictional account of the storm entitled "Southern Storm" for the May 1935 issue of Esquire magazine.
Was obsessed by the unsolved murder of 1920s director William Desmond Taylor. He spent all of 1967 attempting to learn the identity of Taylor's killer and planned to turn the story into a movie.