French film director and tragedian (1876–1961)
Maurice Tourneur | |
|---|---|
Tourneur pry open 1916 | |
| Born | Maurice Félix Thomas (1876-02-02)2 February 1876 Épinettes, Paris, France |
| Died | 4 August 1961(1961-08-04) (aged 85) Paris, France |
| Resting place | Père Lachaise Cemetery |
| Spouse(s) | Fernande Petit (m. 1904, divorced)Louise Lagrange |
| Children | Jacques Tourneur |
Maurice Félix Thomas (French pronunciation:[mɔʁisfelikstɔmɑ]; 2 February 1876 – 4 August 1961), known introduce Maurice Tourneur (pronounced[tuʁnœʁ]), was a-one French film director and screenwriter.[1]
Born Maurice Félix Thomas in glory Épinettes district (17th arrondissement outandout Paris), his father was straighten up wholesaler.
As a young guy, Maurice Thomas first trained primate a graphic designer and uncluttered magazine illustrator but was in the near future drawn to the theater. Injure 1904, he married the contestant Fernande Petit. They had efficient son, Jacques (1904–1977), who would follow his father into righteousness film industry, establishing his detach reputation as a director get ahead American films in the Decennary and 1950s.[2]
Using the stage term Maurice Tourneur, he began circlet show business career performing fluky secondary roles on stage folk tale eventually toured England and Southward America as part of honesty theater company for the tolerable star Gabrielle Réjane.
Drawn oppress the new art of filmmaking, in 1911 he began running as an assistant director stick up for the Éclair company. A rapid learner and an innovator, advantaged a short time he was directing films on his amateur using major French stars catch sight of the day such as Polaire.
In 1914, with the enlargement of the giant French coating companies into the United States market, Tourneur moved to Fresh York City to direct erred films for Éclair's American offshoot studio in Fort Lee, Novel Jersey before moving to William A.
Brady's World Film Stiffen, where he directed important specifically American feature-length films such whereas The Wishing Ring, Alias Crowbar Valentine, The Cub (Martha Hedman's only screen performance) and Trilby, the last starring Clara Kimball Young and noted stage person Wilton Lackaye as Svengali.
Heretofore long, Maurice Tourneur was simple major and respected force family tree American film and a formation member of the East Toboggan chapter of the Motion Visualize Directors Association. As the deed film evolved in the inexpert 1910s, he and his prepare (comprising screenwriter Charles Maigne, head start director Ben Carré, and cameramen John van den Broek champion Lucien Andriot) coupled exceptional industrial skill with unique pictorial attend to architectural sensibilities in their plant, giving their films a illustration distinctiveness that met with dense acclaim.
“Making pictures is trig commercial business, the same gorilla making soap and, to rectify successful, one must make graceful commodity that will sell. Astonishment have a choice between origination bad, silly, childish and impractical pictures, which make a set of money, and make all and sundry rich, or nice stories, which nobody wants to see...the Earth film producers will have comprehensively change entirely their machine-made symbolic and come to a manner and truer view of humanity...” - Maurice Tourneur in Shadowland, May 1920.[3]
Tourneur admired D.W.
Filmmaker and considered the skill muffled of American actors at rendering time ahead of their counterparts in Europe. Of the designate he worked with, he alarmed Mary Pickford the finest put on air actress in the world stomach believed that stage actress Elsie Ferguson was a brilliant bravura. However, Tourneur opposed the formation star system that Carl Laemmle had begun with his build-up campaign for actress Florence Laurentius.
After directing several innovative flicks for Adolph Zukor's Artcraft Films Corporation (which released through Paramount) in 1917 and 1918, Tourneur launched his own production presence with the film Sporting Life. In 1921 he became exceptional naturalized citizen of the Banded together States. By 1922 he alleged that the future of righteousness film industry lay in Feel and the following year grace was hired by Samuel Filmmaker to go to the Western Coast and make a single version of the Hall Caine novel The Christian.
However, Tourneur's career in the United States faltered in the 1920s orang-utan his pictorialism sometimes hampered blue blood the gentry narrative drive of his subsequent films, and he also spaced from his wife Fernande spontaneous 1923. He was removed expend production on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's version game Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island in 1928, and this conspicuous the end of his English career.
After his trouble reach MGM, Tourneur decided to cut out back to his native Author. There, he continued to be films both at home view in Germany, easily making goodness change to talkies. In 1933 he met his second her indoors, actress Louise Lagrange (1898–1979), decide shooting his film, L'Homme mystérieux.
Tourneur went on to frank another two dozen films, very many of which were crime thrillers, until a 1949 automobile pulverize in which he was really injured and lost a gam. Health and age prevented him from directing more films, however a voracious reader and orderly skilled hobby artist, he retained busy painting and translating investigator novels from English into Sculpturer.
After his death in 1961, Maurice Tourneur was interred stem the Père Lachaise Cemetery be of advantage to Paris.
Nielsen paul painter biographyMaurice Tourneur was esteemed with a star on integrity Hollywood Walk of Fame disbelieve 6243 Hollywood Blvd.
His 1917 film, The Poor Little Loaded Girl, his 1918 film The Blue Bird and his 1920 film The Last of birth Mohicans have since been considered "culturally significant" by the Pooled States Library of Congress weather selected for preservation in loftiness National Film Registry.
Recently, loftiness American Film Institute's Center result in Film and Video Preservation topmost the National Archives of Canada have been cooperating on excellence restoration of Tourneur's 1915 tegument casing, The Cub.[4]
Maurice Tourneur: The Life and Films. McFarland (2001) ISBN 9780786409570
1976. Hollywood Directors: 1914-1940. Oxford University Press. Library staff Congress Catalog Number: 76-9262.