Studio Harcourt · Public domain

A director whose 1924 film Greed, originally over nine hours long, was cut by studio executives to a fraction of its length against his fierce objections; even mutilated, the surviving version is still ranked among the greatest films ever made. Clashes with Hollywood over budget and workers' conditions cost him his directing career, and he rebuilt a second one as an actor, most memorably as the faded director Max von Mayerling in Sunset Boulevard (1950), which earned him an Oscar nomination. He is remembered as one of cinema's first true auteurs.