One century ago this week, this notice appeared in the July 12, 1924 edition of “Exhibitors Herald”:
This was a startling announcement. By way of comparison, imagine the reaction if Martin Scorsese had decided to give up filmmaking after releasing RAGING BULL. Rex Ingram was one of the most revered and successful directors the Hollywood industry had produced, and was seemingly at the peak of his creative energies.
Irish by birth, Ingram had drifted into the movie business more or less by accident. His original artistic calling had been sculpture, a discipline he studied from 1912 to 1913 under the tutelage of Lee Lawrie at the Yale School of Fine Arts. He also contributed to the campus humor magazine, the “Yale Record.” But in his off hours from these pursuits, he and his friends enjoyed seeing moving picture shows at local nickelodeons.
Through a mutual friend, Ingram met Charles Edison, whose father, Thomas, owned the company that was the source of much of the product being screened at the nickelodeons. By way of this connection, Ingram was emboldened to visit the Edison offices and offer a few script ideas. One thing led to another, and soon he had abandoned his studies at Yale to go to work for the Edison company. As he gradually moved up in the business over the next few years, Ingram left Edison to move on to Vitagraph, and then to Fox, World, Paralta, Universal, and ultimately, after a stint in the military, to Metro, where he would fully come into his own as a director.
The December 25, 1920 edition of “Exhibitors Herald” featured Ingram in a flattering profile:
And the ads for THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE prominently highlighted Ingram’s name:
Moreover, in the film itself, Ingram was given a possessive credit with his name above the title:
The February 18, 1921 edition of “Variety” included a rave review of the picture, favorably comparing Ingram to the industry’s preeminent directorial figurehead, D.W. Griffith:
Arthur James, in the March 12, 1921 edition of “Moving Picture World,” was only slightly less fulsome in his praise, and, significantly, also invoked the comparison with Griffith, together with the word “genius”:
Clearly, Ingram’s place in the top rank of Hollywood directors was assured by this point. The April 23, 1921 edition of “Moving Picture World” reported that he had been given his own production unit:
Significantly, he was also working with June Mathis, who was in her own right a formidable creative force in those early days before Hollywood became almost entirely a boys’ club.
Another important collaborator was cinematographer John Seitz, whose name appears prominently in the FOUR HORSEMEN ad shown above. Seitz was in the forefront of elevating the art of cinema lighting to new heights during the silent era. The February 1, 1922 edition of “American Cinematographer” included this profile of Seitz and his work:
And as if Ingram needed any further accolades to burnish his resume and enhance his standing in the industry, the July 16, 1921 edition of “Moving Picture World” reported that he had been granted a degree by Yale:
Nor was FOUR HORSEMEN a flash in the pan. Ingram raised the bar still higher with his production of THE PRISONER OF ZENDA in 1922 and yet again with his extraordinary production of SCARAMOUCHE in 1923. He was a high-value asset to Metro, capable of turning out films that garnered both critical praise and box office profits.
Why, then, would he decide, in 1924, to give it all up?
Probably the most important reason was that the industry that had elevated him to the top of its pyramid was changing. Up to this point, Ingram had been one of a small group of elite directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Marshall Neilan, Erich von Stroheim, and, of course, Griffith, who were more or less left alone to make their films as they saw fit. They were the mastodons of the primordial Hollywood landscape, dominant and seemingly untouchable. But since late 1919, Wall Street cash had been making steady inroads into Hollywood finance. The January, 1921 issue of “Picture Play Magazine” assessed the situation this way:
The article was illustrated with this rather vivid graphic:
One of the realities of the financial world is that Wall Street financing always comes with strings attached. If Hollywood studios were going to accept an influx of capital from investment banks, it was a given that a new level of fiscal discipline was going to have to be imposed – and no one, not even the previously ungovernable elite directors, would be exempt.
A new kind of studio executive was called for; a rigorous taskmaster who would curb with a firm hand the excesses of the more indulgent directors. The personification of this management style was Louis B. Mayer’s no-nonsense head of production, Irving Thalberg. The July 8, 1921 edition of “Variety” singled him out as a promising executive while he was still working at Universal for Carl Laemmle, before making the move to become Mayer’s lieutenant:
Indeed, while still at Universal Thalberg had clashed with the intimidating Erich von Stroheim, forcefully reining in Stroheim’s considerable extravagances during the production of FOOLISH WIVES. Later on, when Stroheim had moved to Goldwyn, and Mayer’s company became part of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer merger, Thalberg and Stroheim butted heads again, this time over a massive Stroheim production called GREED. When the initial director’s cut of GREED came in at an astonishing 10-hour length, Thalberg insisted, not unreasonably, that it be drastically shortened.
There was only one person Stroheim trusted enough to ask for help with tightening the editing of his film. He turned to Rex Ingram for assistance. Working with editor Grant Whytock, Ingram was able to bring the length down to 7 hours, with the intention that it be screened in two parts on successive evenings. He submitted this version to Mayer and Thalberg, saying to Mayer “if you cut one more foot I’ll never speak to you again.” Without a second thought, Mayer and Thalberg consigned the film to the coarser hands of a more compliant editor who chopped it down to 2.5 hours for theatrical release.
Ingram, undoubtedly, could see the writing on the wall. If the work of his colleague and friend could be subjected to such draconian treatment, so could his own. The infusion of Wall Street capital had imposed a new regime of austerity, and mere prestige was not going to be sufficient to spare him from its strictures. Worst of all, his previously happy professional home at Metro was now part of the newly-formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, making Mayer, whom he loathed, one of his direct supervisors. Seen in this light, Ingram’s announcement that he was giving up the movie business is not so incomprehensible.
Nor was his break with Hollywood to be as absolute and permanent as he had made it sound. Rather than making good his threat to renounce filmmaking altogether, he initially settled for abandoning Hollywood to move to Europe and continue making films for Metro there. He might still be subject to supervision by studio bean-counters, but at least the despised Mayer would not be right there breathing down his neck.
Ingram made three more films for MGM, MARE NOSTRUM (1926), THE MAGICIAN (1926), and THE GARDEN OF ALLAH (1927) before relations with the studio, and in particular with Mayer, became completely untenable, leading to a final termination of their relationship. He would make two more pictures outside of the Hollywood industry before giving up on filmmaking once and for all. In 1933 he converted to Islam and turned exclusively to writing and sculpting.
Ingram had entered the movie industry at a time when the business was still in its emergent stages and its business model was yet to be finalized. It was a time when a young sculptor and writer, fresh from Yale, full of ideas and full of moxie, could carve out a niche for himself. The Hollywood industry from which he ultimately fled had no place for such an independent spirit. We can only speculate on how many latter-day Rex Ingrams and Erich von Stroheims never had a chance even to get a foot in the door of that industry once the Mayers and Thalbergs laid down the law on behalf of the Wall Street money changers.
Independent-minded directors like Ingram were, to be sure, a very real thorn in the side of the bean-counters. Their unreasonable excesses are the stuff of Hollywood legend. But they also turned out transcendent masterpieces of cinema art. How many works for the ages never got made because unreasonable artists who could not fit the Hollywood mold from the mid-1920s on were never allowed entrance to the studio gates? We will never know.