James Gordon Edwards was born in Montreal in 1867 to parents of Scotch-French ancestry.

Edwards went on directing all of the Fox Film Corporation's mega-budget spectacles, including all of actress Theda Bara's productions between 1916 and 1919.

One of his biggest projects was The Queen of Sheba (1921), a lost silent film which contained a huge chariot race, four years before Ben-Hur (1925).

He was married to actress Angela McCaull, daughter of opera impresario John A.

[4] His widow later commissioned a mausoleum in his honor at Kensico Cemetery, where both of their ashes reside.