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For more than three decades, Henry King was the most versatile and reliable .
One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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 Kings 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 SREs and similar AREs and HREs 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. Kings 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. Henrys "prestige" picture, Wilson , was a very expensive flop, though, while Louis low-budget outdoors picture Smoky was one of Foxs biggest moneymakers that year. Shortly after "Smoky" was released, Henry stopped Louis on the lot one day and said, "Ive just come 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.
Kings grandfather served under Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War.
Around the time of filming The White Sister , King converted from the Methodist church to Catholicism.
Radio personality, actor, composer and recording artist for Fraternity Records.
Died of heart attack in North Hollywood at age 76.
The son of a concert pianist, Henry King led a popular society dance band at posh hotels on both East and West Coasts in the 1930s. He claimed at one time to have made over 5000 remote radio broadcasts. King retired to Houston, Texas, in the late 1950s.
