At the beginning of his directorial career, Fitzmaurice was astute at directing stage actresses in their initial films with the first wave of great Broadway stars that migrated to motion pictures during the World War I era, including Mae Murray, Elsie Ferguson, Fannie Ward, Helene Chadwick, Irene Fenwick, Gail Kane, and Edna Goodrich.

He had the ability to get the best out of women, to get along with them.”[1] The Son of the Sheik is his most famous extant silent film, no doubt aided by the sudden death of its star, Rudolph Valentino.

Rumors of other Fitzmaurice films in Gosfilmofond include 1920s Idols of Clay (with Mae Murray) and Three Live Ghosts with Norman Kerry, Anna Q. Nilsson, Cyril Chadwick, and Edmund Goulding.

[3] Fitzmaurice was meticulous in his preparations prior to shooting and “knew beforehand everything he wanted to see on screen.”[4] Like his filmmaking contemporaries F. W. Murnau and John Ford “he never looked through the camera” to frame his compositions, but nonetheless achieved a widely acknowledged “visual grace” in his pictures.

[5] In his 1916 essay entitled “The Art of Directing,” Fitzmaurice emphasized the importance of engaging in a psychological analysis of the film characters to discover their motivations.