Maurice Tourneur
Encyclopedia
Maurice Tourneur was an important international film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

.

Life

Born Maurice Thomas in the Belleville
Belleville, Paris
Belleville is a neighbourhood of Paris, France, parts of which lie in four different arrondissements. The major portion of Belleville straddles the borderline between the 20th arrondissement and the 19th along its main street, the Rue de Belleville...

 district of Paris, France, his father was a jeweler. As a young man, Maurice Thomas first trained as a graphic designer and a magazine illustrator but was soon drawn to the theater. In 1904, he married the actress, Fernande Petit. They had a son, Jacques
Jacques Tourneur
Jacques Tourneur was a French-American film director.-Life:Born in Paris, France, he was the son of film director Maurice Tourneur. At age 10, Jacques moved to the United States with his father. He started a career in cinema while still attending high school as an extra and later as a script clerk...

 (1904-1977) who would follow his father into the film industry.

Using the stage name
Stage name
A stage name, also called a showbiz name or screen name, is a pseudonym used by performers and entertainers such as actors, wrestlers, comedians, and musicians.-Motivation to use a stage name:...

 Maurice Tourneur, he began his show business career performing in secondary roles on stage and eventually toured England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 and South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

 as part of the theater company for the great star Gabrielle Réjane
Gabrielle Réjane
Gabrielle Réjane was the stage name of Gabrielle-Charlotte Reju, , a French actress.Born in Paris, the daughter of an actor, she became a pupil of Régnier at the Conservatoire, and took the second prize for comedy in 1874. Her debut was made the next year, during which she played attractively a...

. Drawn to the new art of filmmaking, in 1911 he began working as an assistant director for the Éclair
Éclair
An éclair is a pastry made with choux dough filled with a cream and topped with icing.The dough, which is the same as that used for profiterole, is piped into an oblong shape with a pastry bag and baked until it is crisp and hollow inside...

 company. A quick learner and an innovator, within a short time he was directing films on his own using major French stars of the day such as Polaire
Polaire
Polaire was the stage name used by French singer and actress Émilie Marie Bouchaud .Born at Agha, Algiers, Algeria, according to her memoirs she was one of eleven children of whom only four - Emilie, her two brothers Edmond and Marcel, and a sister, Lucile - survived infancy...

.

In 1914, with the expansion of the giant French film companies into the United States market, Tourneur moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

  to direct silent films for Éclair's American branch studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 35,345. Located atop the Hudson Palisades, the borough is the western terminus of the George Washington Bridge...

 before moving to William A. Brady
William A. Brady
William Aloysius Brady, Sr. was an American theatre actor, producer, and sports promoter.-Biography:Brady was born to a newspaperman in 1863. His father kidnapped him from San Francisco and brought him to New York City, where his father worked as a writer while William was forced to sell...

's World Film Corporation, where he directed important early American feature-length films such as The Wishing Ring
The Wishing Ring
The Wishing Ring is a 1914 silent film directed by Maurice Tourneur. It's full title is The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England. The film is based on a 1910 play by Owen Davis that starred Marguerite Clark. It was filmed at Fort Lee, New Jersey by the World Film Corporation. -Cast:*Vivian Martin...

, Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915 film), The Cub(Martha Hedman
Martha Hedman
Martha Hedman was a Swedish-American stage actress popular on the Broadway stage.-Biography:She was born to Johan Hedman and Ingrid Kempe in Östersund, in Jämtland County, Sweden. She studied for the stage under the tutelage of Siri von Essen the wife of playwright and novelist, August Strindberg...

's only screen performance) and Trilby, the last starring Clara Kimball Young
Clara Kimball Young
Clara Kimball Young was an American film actress, who was highly regarded and publicly popular in the early silent film era.-Early life:...

 and noted stage actor Wilton Lackaye
Wilton Lackaye
Wilton Lackaye was a stage and film actor. He created the role of Svengali in the play Trilby in 1895 which he played on screen in 1915 opposite Clara Kimball Young. He enjoyed a lengthy and distinguished stage career before entering silent films in middle age...

 as Svengali. Before long, Maurice Tourneur was a major and respected force in American film and a founding member of the East Coast
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...

 chapter of the Motion Picture Directors Association
Motion Picture Directors Association
The Motion Picture Directors Association was an American non-profit fraternal organization formed by twenty-six film directors on June 18, 1915 in Los Angeles, California.Its articles of incorporation stated as that the organization existed to:...

. As the feature film evolved in the mid 1910s, he and his team (comprising screenwriter Charles Maigne
Charles Maigne
Charles Maigne was an American screenwriter and film director of the silent era. He wrote for 32 films between 1916 and 1928...

, art director Ben Carré, and cameramen John van den Broek and Lucien Andriot) coupled exceptional technological skill with unique pictorial and architectural sensibilities in their productions, giving their films a visual distinctiveness that met with critical acclaim.

Tourneur admired D.W. Griffith and considered the skill level of American actors at the time ahead of their counterparts in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. Of the actresses he worked with, he called Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

 the finest screen actress in the world and believed that stage actress Elsie Ferguson
Elsie Ferguson
Elsie Louise Ferguson was an American stage and film actress.-Early life:Born in New York City, Elsie Ferguson was the only child of Mr. and Mrs. Hiram Benson Ferguson, a successful attorney...

 was a brilliant artist. However, Tourneur opposed the evolving star system that Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle , born in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany, was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios - Universal...

 had begun with his advertising campaign for actress Florence Lawrence
Florence Lawrence
Florence Lawrence was a Canadian inventor and silent film actress. She is often referred to as "The First Movie Star." When she was popular, she was known as "The Biograph Girl," "The Imp Girl," and "The Girl of a Thousand Faces." Lawrence appeared in more than 270 films for various motion...

.

After directing several innovative films for Adolph Zukor
Adolph Zukor
Adolph Zukor , born Adolph Cukor, was a film mogul and founder of Paramount Pictures.-Early life:...

's Artcraft Pictures Corporation (which released through Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

) in 1917 and 1918, Tourneur launched his own production company with the film Sporting Life. In 1921 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. By 1922 he believed that the future of the film industry lay in Hollywood and the following year he was hired by Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios.-Biography:...

 to go to the West Coast and make a film version of the Hall Caine
Hall Caine
Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine CH, KBE , usually known as Hall Caine, was a Manx author. He is best known as a novelist and playwright of the late Victorian and the Edwardian eras. In his time he was exceedingly popular, and at the peak of his success his novels outsold those of his...

 novel The Christian
The Christian (1923 film)
The Christian is a silent film drama, released by Goldwyn Pictures, directed by Maurice Tourneur, and starring Richard Dix and Mae Busch.-Production background:...

. However, Tourneur's career in the United States faltered in the 1920s as his pictorialism sometimes hampered the narrative drive of his later films, and he also separated from his wife Fernande in 1923. He was removed from production on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...

's version of Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

's The Mysterious Island
The Mysterious Island (1929 film)
The Mysterious Island is an MGM film directed by Lucien Hubbard, a film adaptation of Jules Verne's novel L'Île mystérieuse , published in 1874...

in 1928, and this marked the end of his American career.

After his trouble with MGM, Tourneur decided to move back to his native France. There, he continued to make films both at home and in Germany, easily making the change to talkies. In 1933 he met his second wife, actress Louise Lagrange (1898-1979), while shooting his film, L'Homme mystérieux. Tourneur went on to direct another two dozen films, several of which were crime thrillers, until a 1949 automobile accident in which he was seriously injured and lost a leg. Health and age prevented him from directing more films, but a voracious reader and a skilled hobby artist, he kept busy painting and translating detective novels from English into French.

On his passing in 1961, Maurice Tourneur was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the city of Paris, France , though there are larger cemeteries in the city's suburbs.Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world's most-visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the...

 in Paris.

Maurice Tourneur was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...

 at 6243 Hollywood Blvd.

His 1917 film, The Poor Little Rich Girl
The Poor Little Rich Girl
The Poor Little Rich Girl is a 1917 American comedy-drama film directed by Maurice Tourneur. Adapted by Frances Marion from the 1913 play by Eleanor Gates. The Broadway play actually starred future screen actress Viola Dana...

and his 1920 film The Last of the Mohicans have since been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

 and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...

. Recently, the American Film Institute's Center for Film and Video Preservation and the National Archives of Canada have been cooperating on the restoration of Tourneur's 1915 film, The Cub.

In 2001, a book Maurice Tourneur: The Life and Films was published by author Harry Waldman.

Partial Filmography

  • Après l'amour (1948)
  • Cécile est morte (1944)
  • La Main du diable (The Hand of the Devil) (1943)
  • Volpone
    Volpone
    Volpone is a comedy by Ben Jonson first produced in 1606, drawing on elements of city comedy, black comedy and beast fable...

    (1941)
  • Katia
    Katia (film)
    Katia is a 1938 French drama film starring Danielle Darrieux. The movie was directed by Maurice Tourneur, based on novel "Princesse Mathe Bibesco" by Marthe Bibesco under the pseudonym Lucile Decaux. It tells the love affair of Russian princess and Czar Alexander II...

    (1938)
  • Le Patriote (1938)
  • Koenigsmark
    Koenigsmark (1935 film)
    Koenigsmark is a British-French film directed by Maurice Tourneur and starring Elissa Landi, John Lodge, Pierre Fresnay, Frank Vosper, and Cecil Humphreys....

    (1935)
  • Le Voleur (1934)
  • Justin de Marseille (1934)
  • L'Homme mystérieux (Obsession) (1933)
  • Les Gaietés de l'escadron (1932)
  • Accusée, levez-vous! (Accused, Stand Up!) (1930)
  • Old Loves and New (1926)
  • Aloma of the South Seas
    Aloma of the South Seas (1926 film)
    Aloma of the South Seas is a 1926 silent film starring Gilda Gray as an erotic dancer. It was filmed in Puerto Rico and Bermuda. It was based on a 1925 play of the same title by John B. Hymer and LeRoy Clemens. Grossing US$3 million in the US alone, it was the most successful film of 1926 and the...

    (1926)
  • Never the Twain Shall Meet
    Never the Twain Shall Meet
    Never the Twain Shall Meet is a 1925 silent south seas drama film based on the book by Peter B. Kyne, produced by MGM and directed by Maurice Tourneur, starring Anita Stewart and featuring Boris Karloff in an uncredited bit-part. Remade with sound in 1931 at MGM by director W. S. Van Dyke...

    (1925)
  • The Sporting Life (1925 film)
    The Sporting Life (1925 film)
    The Sporting Life is a 1925 comedy drama directed by Maurice Tourneur and a remake of Tourneur's 1918 film of the same title based on Seymour Hicks's popular play. Universal Pictures produced and released the film. It is now lost...

    (1925)
  • The White Moth
    The White Moth (film)
    The White Moth ia a 1924 silent film drama produced and directed by Maurice Tourneur and distributed by First National Pictures. Barbara La Marr was the female lead supported by young Ben Lyon...

    (1924)
  • Torment (1924 film)
    Torment (1924 film)
    Torment is a 1924 silent film crime-drama produced and directed by Maurice Tourneur and distributed by Associated First National, later First National Pictures. This film stars Bessie Love, Owen Moore and Jean Hersholt. The film is based on a story by William Pelley with script by Fred Myton and...

    (1924)
  • Jealous Husbands (1923 film) (1923)
  • The Isle of Lost Ships
    The Isle of Lost Ships (1923 film)
    The Isle of Lost Ships is a 1923 silent film adventure/melodrama directed and produced by Maurice Tourneur and distributed by Associated First National Pictures. The film is based on Crittenden Marriott's novel c.1909. The story was re-filmed in 1929 by director Irvin Willat...

    (1923)
  • The Christian
    The Christian (1923 film)
    The Christian is a silent film drama, released by Goldwyn Pictures, directed by Maurice Tourneur, and starring Richard Dix and Mae Busch.-Production background:...

    (1923)
  • The Brass Bottle
    The Brass Bottle (1923 film)
    The Brass Bottle is a 1923 silent fantasy film comedy produced and directed by Maurice Tourneur and distributed by First National Pictures. This story by novelist F. Anstey was produced as a Broadway play in 1910. A 1914 silent followed. Both silent versions are lost...

    (1923)
  • Lorna Doone
    Lorna Doone (1922 film)
    Lorna Doone is a 1922 film version of Richard Doddridge Blackmore's novel of the same name.Directed by French director Maurice Tourneur in the United States, the film starred Madge Bellamy and John Bowers. In 2001, a digital restoration of the film was financed by Georgia cinephile Jesse Sharp,...

    (1922)
  • Foolish Matrons (1921)
  • The Last of the Mohicans (1920)
  • The Bait (1920 film) (1920)
  • Deep Waters (1920)
  • The White Circle (1920)
  • Treasure Island
    Treasure Island (1920 film)
    Treasure Island is a 1920 silent film adaptation of the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, directed by Maurice Tourneur, and released by Paramount Pictures...

    (1920)
  • While Paris Sleeps
    While Paris Sleeps
    While Paris Sleeps is a film based on the novel The Glory of Love by Leslie Beresford . Lon Chaney plays a Parisian sculptor who falls in love with his model . She, however, cares nothing for him. The film is lost....

    (1920/1923 *film made in 1920, but released in 1923)
  • The Great Redeemer (1920)
  • The County Fair
    The County Fair (1920 film)
    The County Fair is a 1920 American film directed by Edmund Mortimer and Maurice Tourneur.- Cast :*Helen Jerome Eddy as Sally Greenway*David Butler as Joel Bartlett*Edythe Chapman as Aunt Abigail Prue*William V. Mong as Solon Hammerhead...

    (1920)(available for free download from archive.org)
  • The Broken Butterfly (1919)
  • Victory
    Victory (1919 film)
    Victory is a 1919 American film directed by Maurice Tourneur, starring Jack Holt, Seena Owen, Lon Chaney and Wallace Beery. The movie is an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Joseph Conrad. The screenplay was written by Jules Furthman.-Cast:...

    (1919)
  • The Life Line (1919)
  • The White Heather (1919)
  • My Lady's Garter (1919)
  • Woman (1918)
  • the Sporting Life
    The Sporting Life (1918 film)
    The Sporting Life is a 1918 silent film drama directed by Maurice Tourneur. It is the first film for sisters Faire Binney and Constance Binney, from the Broadway stage. Tourneur would re-film this story again in 1925...

    (1918)
  • A Doll's House
    A Doll's House (1918 film)
    A Doll's House is a 1918 silent film produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Artcraft Pictures, an affiliate of Paramount Pictures. It is the third American motion picture filming of Henrik Ibsen's novel Et Dukkehjem. Maurice Tourneur directed and Elsie Ferguson starred. This film is...

    (1918)
  • Prunella (1918)
  • The Blue Bird
    The Blue Bird (1918 film)
    The Blue Bird is a 1918 film directed by Maurice Tourneur in the United States, under the auspices of producer Adolph Zukor. The story begins with two children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, whom are sent out by the fairy Bérylune into various lands to search for the bluebird of happiness. Returning home...

    (1918)
  • Rose of the World
    Rose of the World (1918 film)
    Rose of the World is a 1918 silent film drama produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Artcraft Pictures, an affiliate of Paramount Pictures. It is based on the novels of Agnes and Egerton Castle. The film was directed by Maurice Tourneur and stars Elsie Ferguson...

    (1917)
  • The Rise of Jennie Cushing
    The Rise of Jennie Cushing
    The Rise of Jennie Cushing is a 1917 silent film directed by Maurice Tourneur, produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Artcraft Pictures, an affiliate of Paramount Pictures. The story is from a novel, , by Mary Watts and stars Broadway's Elsie Ferguson. The film marked Ferguson's second...

    (1917)
  • Barbary Sheep (1917)
  • The Poor Little Rich Girl
    The Poor Little Rich Girl
    The Poor Little Rich Girl is a 1917 American comedy-drama film directed by Maurice Tourneur. Adapted by Frances Marion from the 1913 play by Eleanor Gates. The Broadway play actually starred future screen actress Viola Dana...

    (1917)
  • The Pride of the Clan
    The Pride of the Clan
    The Poor Pride of the Clan is a 1917 romantic drama film directed by Maurice Tourneur. It stars Mary Pickford and Matt Moore. The film was shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey when many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based there at the beginning of the 20th...

    (1917)
  • The Law of the Land (1917)
  • Exile (1917)
  • The UnDying Flame (1917)
  • The Whip (1917)
  • A Girl's Folly (1916)
  • The Rail Rider (1916)
  • The Velvet Paw (1916)
  • The Closed Road (1916)
  • The Hand of Peril (1916)
  • The Pawn of Fate (1915)
  • Human Driftwood (1915)
  • The Butterfly on the Wheel (1915)
  • The Ivory Snuff Box (1915)
  • The Cub (1915)
  • Trilby (1915)
  • Alias Jimmy Valentine (1915 film) (1915)
  • The Pit (1914
  • The Wishing Ring
    The Wishing Ring
    The Wishing Ring is a 1914 silent film directed by Maurice Tourneur. It's full title is The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England. The film is based on a 1910 play by Owen Davis that starred Marguerite Clark. It was filmed at Fort Lee, New Jersey by the World Film Corporation. -Cast:*Vivian Martin...

    (1914)
  • The Man of the Hour (1914)
  • Mother (1914 film) (1914)
  • Jean la Poudre (1912)

External links

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