Rex Ingram (born Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock; 15 January 1893 – 21 July 1950) was an Irish film director, producer, writer, and actor.
Early life
Born 15 January 1893 in 58 Grosvenor Square, Rathmines, Dublin, Ireland, (where a plaque commemorates his birth), Ingram was educated at Saint Columba's College, near Rathfarnham, County Dublin. He spent much of his adolescence living in the Old Rectory, Kinnitty, Birr, County Offaly, where his father, Reverend Francis Hitchcock, was the Church of Ireland rector. Ingram emigrated to the United States in 1911.
Career
Ingram studied sculpture at the Yale University School of Art, where he contributed to campus humour magazine The Yale Record. He soon moved into film, first taking acting work in 1913 and then writing, producing and directing. His first work as producer-director was in 1916 on the romantic drama The Great Problem. He worked for Edison Studios, Fox Film Corporation, Vitagraph Studios, and then MGM, directing mainly action or supernatural films.
Among those who worked for Ingram at MGM on the Riviera during this period was the young Michael Powell, who later directed (with Emeric Pressburger) The Red Shoes and other classics, and technician Leonti Planskoy. By Powell's own account, Ingram was a major influence on him, especially in regard to the themes of illusion, dreaming, magic and the surreal. David Lean said he was indebted to Ingram. MGM studio chief Dore Schary listed the top creative people in Hollywood as D. W. Griffith, Ingram, Cecil B. DeMille and Erich von Stroheim (in declining order of importance).
Ingram made only one sound film: Baroud, filmed for Gaumont British Pictures in Morocco. The film was not a commercial success; he then left the movie business, returning to Los Angeles to work as a sculptor and writer.
Ingram converted to Islam in 1933, having held an interested in the religion as early as 1927.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1651 Vine Street.
Death
Ingram died of a cerebral hemorrhage in North Hollywood on 21 July 1950, aged 58. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Legacy
Critic Carlos Clarens wrote of Ingram: "A full-blown Irishman fascinated by the bizarre and the grotesque (he once employed a dwarf as a valet), Ingram was also a writer of some talent. Frequently pedestrian and pretentious, Ingram's films nevertheless contain splendid flashes of macabre fantasy, such as the ride of the Four Horsemen in the Valentino epic, or the 'ghoul visions' that bring about the death of the miser in The Conquering Power. His more or less mystical bent was apparent in Mare Nostrum and The Garden of Allah, which he filmed in the Mediterranean and North Africa, respectively."