Biography

Rex Ingram

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Renowned director Rex Ingram started his film career as a set designer and painter. His directorial debut was The Great Problem (1916). A true master of the medium, Ingram despised the business haggling required in the Hollywood system. He was also unhappy with the level of writing he found in American writers. This led him to work with such foreign writers as Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, which resulted in the first major role for the young Rudolph Valentino. Ingram was a great friend of Erich von Stroheim who, like Ingram, was a great filmmaker but often went way over budget. In 1924 Ingram moved to Nice, France, where, in his own studios, he directed films of his own choosing, often with his then-wife Alice Terry. In his later career he acted as a mentor to the young Michael Powell.
- IMDb mini biography by: Steve Crook <steve@brainstorm.co.uk>

In 1921 Yale conferred the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree on him for his motion picture work. This was the first academic recognition of film as one of the fine arts.
Quarrelled with MGM chief Louis B. Mayer soon after joining the studio. Subsequently he just put "Metro-Goldwyn presents" . . . : on his pictures with no mention of Mayer.
He and Alice Terry were married in Adobe Flores in South Pasadena, CA, on Nov. 5, 1921--a Saturday--sneaking off the set of The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) without telling anyone. The next day they saw three movies and went back to work on Monday. When the film was completed, they went to San Francisco for their honeymoon.
Long fascinated with Islam, Ingram converted to the faith in 1933. His father, a Church of Ireland rector, was not pleased.
In his last years he planned a biography on the life of Haitian leader Toussaint, but it was never filmed. Ironically, Sergei Eisenstein, who was planning a biopic on Toussaint, also didn't make his film.

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