To King Vidor [Letter 359]

King Vidor was the director of The Fountainhead movie. During his long career, he received five Oscar nominations for Best Director and, in 1979, an honorary Oscar for “incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator.”

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Oct. 11, 1948

Dear King:

Thank you most sincerely for your nice letter and your present. It was such a beautiful gesture on your part that I have to offer you my admiration for it in return.

I, too, am very sorry that things happened as they did, but your letter made me feel that all of us are big enough to preserve the wonderful unity we had when we began our work on the picture. I am happy to think that if the picture is the kind

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of success I hope it will be, we will all celebrate it together.

Henry told me that you are out of town, and he has just left for New York. I shall not open the champagne until both of you are back. I would like the three of us to drink it together—to the success of our picture.

Sincerely,

During shooting of the movie, AR had fought Vidor over his desire to change Roark’s courtroom speech. The speech was shot as AR wrote it, but one line was later cut.