---
name: "Henry King"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/henry-king"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "24 January 1886"
died: "29 June 1982"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 5
average_fi1m_score: 68
average_as: "director"
average_over: 5
updated: "2026-09-20T02:47:26.128523+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Henry King

Director. Born 24 January 1886 in Christiansburg, Virginia, United States. Died 29 June 1982.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 24 January 1886, Christiansburg, Virginia, United States
- **Died:** 29 June 1982
- **Active:** 1938–1955
- **Also known as:** Harry King, Генри Кинг
- **Frequently works with:** [Darryl F. Zanuck](https://film.one/person/darryl-f-zanuck.md), [Lamar Trotti](https://film.one/person/lamar-trotti.md), [Alice Faye](https://film.one/person/alice-faye.md), [Don Ameche](https://film.one/person/don-ameche.md), [Jennifer Jones](https://film.one/person/jennifer-jones.md), [Tyrone Power](https://film.one/person/tyrone-power.md)
- **Golden Globes:** 1 Golden Globe (1 won)
- **Average Fi1m score:** 68, as director, over 5 titles
- **Fi1m score by decade:** 1930s 67 (2), 1940s 69 (3)
- **Score spread:** 1 at 80+, 4 at 60–79, 0 under 60
- **Genres:** Drama 5, Action 1, History 1, Music 1, Romance 1, War 1
- **Screen time:** 11 hours of reviewed films
- **Box office:** $12m across 4 films with figures
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_King_(director), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q269505, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0454771/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/37362

## Fi1m on Henry King

> Henry King made more than a hundred films the plain way: real places, big crowds, actors left alone to do their work. A studio director who seldom reached for effect, he was as good as his material, and at Fox the material was often only decent.

Near the end of *In Old Chicago* (1938) a lantern goes over in a barn, and Henry King stops directing a melodrama and starts directing a fire. Wooden houses go up one after another, crowds are pushed onto the river bridges, stockyard cattle are driven through burning streets, and Marley shoots much of it in silhouette, figures against a wall of flame. We sat up. We had spent an hour with the O'Learys waiting for the film to matter, and for twenty minutes it did, because the scale was real: whole streets, not a matte painting and a fan.

That is the King worth knowing about. He came into films as an actor in 1912 and was directing by about 1915 or 1916; his silent reputation rests on *Tol'able David* (1921) and *The White Sister* (1923). In 1930 he went to Fox and stayed at the studio until *Tender Is the Night* (1962). Across those years he directed Tyrone Power eleven times and Gregory Peck four, worked repeatedly for Darryl F. Zanuck, and took whatever came down the corridor: literary adaptations, westerns, musicals, small-town pictures, historical spectacle.

What he did well was leave things alone. He liked to shoot on location and tell a story straight, without the flourishes that get a director noticed, and in a busy scene he trusted the set and the crowd to carry it. He was kind to actors. In *In Old Chicago* Alice Brady plays Molly O'Leary as a woman who has decided grief is something other people can afford, and the prologue, Brady kneeling in the grass beside a dead husband and standing up again before she has finished, moved us more than we expected. Nothing in the staging asks for credit. King gives her the frame and waits.

The trouble is that the same modesty served the studio's recipes too well. *In Old Chicago* is Zanuck's answer to MGM's *San Francisco* (1936), big Irish family, crooked city, singer in feathers, disaster at the end, and King follows the recipe faithfully for an hour that only Brady makes tolerable. The charge that his Fox years produced conventional studio product, whatever the subject, has stuck, and it is not unfair. Nor is it the whole story. *The Song of Bernadette* (1943) is remembered for the sympathy he showed his cast, *Twelve O'Clock High* (1949) is a war drama with Peck that spends more time on the mind than the mission, and *The Gunfighter* (1950) is the tough, offbeat western his admirers reach for first. We have not weighed those here. On the evidence of the one we have, King is a director to watch for the twenty minutes when he stops following the recipe, and to forgive for the hour when he does not.

## Biography

Henry King (24 January 1886 – 29 June 1982) was an American film director and actor. Born in Christiansburg, Virginia, he began his career as a stage actor before appearing in small film roles from 1912 and directing his first feature in 1915.

King became one of the most commercially successful Hollywood directors of the 1920s and 1930s. He directed more than 100 films, often working at 20th Century Fox with stars including Tyrone Power and Gregory Peck. Among his notable credits are *In Old Chicago* (1938), *The Song of Bernadette* (1943), *Twelve O'Clock High* (1949), *The Gunfighter* (1950) and *Carousel* (1956).

He was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and received the first Golden Globe Award for Best Director in 1944 for *The Song of Bernadette*. King was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (5)

- *Twelve O'Clock High* (1949), Fi1m 83, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/twelve-oclock-high.md)
- *Wilson* (1944), Fi1m 61, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/wilson.md)
- *The Song of Bernadette* (1943), Fi1m 63, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/the-song-of-bernadette.md)
- *Alexander's Ragtime Band* (1938), Fi1m 70, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/alexanders-ragtime-band.md)
- *In Old Chicago* (1938), Fi1m 64, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/in-old-chicago.md)

## Complete filmography (110)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Tender Is the Night* (1962), Director
- *Beloved Infidel* (1959), Director
- *This Earth Is Mine* (1959), Director
- *The Bravados* (1958), Director
- *The Sun Also Rises* (1957), Director
- *Carousel* (1956), Director
- *Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing* (1955), Director
- *Untamed* (1955), Director
- *King of the Khyber Rifles* (1953), Director
- *O. Henry's Full House* (1952), Director
- *The Snows of Kilimanjaro* (1952), Director
- *Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie* (1952), Director
- *David and Bathsheba* (1951), Director
- *I'd Climb the Highest Mountain* (1951), Director, Screenplay
- *The Gunfighter* (1950), Director
- *Twelve O'Clock High* (1949), Director — Fi1m 83, [page](https://film.one/film/twelve-oclock-high.md)
- *Prince of Foxes* (1949), Director
- *Deep Waters* (1948), Director
- *Captain from Castile* (1947), Director
- *Margie* (1946), Director
- *A Bell for Adano* (1945), Director
- *Wilson* (1944), Director — Fi1m 61, [page](https://film.one/film/wilson.md)
- *The Song of Bernadette* (1943), Director — Fi1m 63, [page](https://film.one/film/the-song-of-bernadette.md)
- *The Black Swan* (1942), Director
- *Remember the Day* (1941), Director
- *A Yank in the R.A.F.* (1941), Director
- *Chad Hanna* (1940), Director
- *Maryland* (1940), Director
- *Little Old New York* (1940), Director
- *Stanley and Livingstone* (1939), Director
- *Jesse James* (1939), Director
- *Alexander's Ragtime Band* (1938), Director — Fi1m 70, [page](https://film.one/film/alexanders-ragtime-band.md)
- *In Old Chicago* (1938), Director — Fi1m 64, [page](https://film.one/film/in-old-chicago.md)
- *Seventh Heaven* (1937), Director
- *Lloyd's of London* (1936), Director
- *Ramona* (1936), Director
- *The Country Doctor* (1936), Director
- *Way Down East* (1935), Director
- *One More Spring* (1935), Director
- *Marie Galante* (1934), Director
- *Carolina* (1934), Director
- *I Loved You Wednesday* (1933), Director
- *State Fair* (1933), Director
- *The Woman in Room 13* (1932), Director
- *Over the Hill* (1931), Director
- *Merely Mary Ann* (1931), Director
- *Lightnin'* (1930), Director, Producer
- *The Eyes of the World* (1930), Director
- *Hell Harbor* (1930), Director
- *She Goes to War* (1929), Director, Executive Producer
- *The Woman Disputed* (1928), Director
- *The Magic Flame* (1927), Director
- *The Winning of Barbara Worth* (1926), Director
- *Partners Again* (1926), Director
- *Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ* (1925), as Chariot Race Spectator (uncredited)
- *Stella Dallas* (1925), Director
- *Any Woman* (1925), Director
- *Sackcloth and Scarlet* (1925), Director, Producer
- *Romola* (1924), Director
- *The White Sister* (1923), Director, Producer
- *The Bond Boy* (1923), Director
- *Fury* (1923), Director
- *Sonny* (1922), Director, Producer, Adaptation, Screenplay
- *The Seventh Day* (1922), Director, Producer
- *Tol'able David* (1921), Director, Writer, Producer
- *The Sting of the Lash* (1921), Director
- *Salvage* (1921), Director
- *The Mistress of Shenstone* (1921), Director
- *When We Were Twenty-One* (1921), Director
- *Dice of Destiny* (1920), Director
- *Help Wanted - Male* (1920), as Tubbs · Director
- *One Hour Before Dawn* (1920), Director
- *Haunting Shadows* (1919), Director
- *A Fugitive from Matrimony* (1919), Director
- *23 1/2 Hours' Leave* (1919), Director
- *Six Feet Four* (1919), Director
- *This Hero Stuff* (1919), Director
- *A Sporting Chance* (1919), Director
- *Some Liar* (1919), Director
- *Brass Buttons* (1919), Director
- *Where the West Begins* (1919), Director
- *When a Man Rides Alone* (1919), Director
- *All the World to Nothing* (1918), Director
- *Hobbs in a Hurry* (1918), Director
- *The Locked Heart* (1918), as Harry Mason · Director
- *The Ghost of Rosy Taylor* (1918), Director
- *Up Romance Road* (1918), Director
- *Social Briars* (1918), Director
- *Hearts or Diamonds?* (1918), Director
- *Powers That Prey* (1918), Director
- *Beauty and the Rogue* (1918), Director
- *The Mate of the Sally Ann* (1917), Director
- *A Game of Wits* (1917), Director
- *The Bride's Silence* (1917), Director
- *Souls in Pawn* (1917), Director
- *Sunshine and Gold* (1917), as The Chauffeur · Director, Writer
- *The Devil's Bait* (1917), as Eric Reese
- *Twin Kiddies* (1916), as Jasper Hunt · Director
- *Little Mary Sunshine* (1916), as Bob Daley · Director
- *Should a Wife Forgive?* (1915), Director
- *The Maid of the Wild* (1915), as David Graham
- *In Humble Guise* (1915), as Ned
- *The Nemesis* (1915), Director
- *Who Pays?* (1915), as Karl Hurd · Director, Writer
- *The Coveted Heritage* (1914), as The Priest
- *The Test of Manhood* (1914), as Harry Wentworth - John's Son
- *Nerve* (1914), as Julius Booth
- *The Unexpected* (1914), as Dave Parks
- *The Tenderfoot Hero* (1913), as Tom Milford
- *The Burden Bearer* (1913), as Bob

## Gallery

- ![Henry King](https://film.one/media/person/1230000/gallery-7ebb2fbed297.jpg) Henry King — Woodbury, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Henry_King%2C_film_director_%28SAYRE_4167%29.jpg/1280px-Henry_King%2C_film_director_%28SAYRE_4167%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Henry King (January 24, 1886 – June 29, 1982) was an American film director. (1915)](https://film.one/media/person/1230000/gallery-09b26593afaa.jpg) Henry King (January 24, 1886 – June 29, 1982) was an American film director. (1915) — Motion Picture Magazine, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Henry_King_%28director%29_001.jpg/1280px-Henry_King_%28director%29_001.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail)
- ![Henry King](https://film.one/media/person/1230000/gallery-68239957a9db.jpg) Henry King — Image via TMDB

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 0 won, 2 nominated

- 1945: Best Director (nominated), for *Wilson*
- 1944: Best Director (nominated), for *The Song of Bernadette*

### Golden Globes — 1 won

- 1944: Best Director (won), for *The Song of Bernadette*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/henry-king