"[3] The first full-length motion picture he directed for MGM was Last of the Pagans (1935) starring Ray Mala.

"[6] Williams says Thorpe constantly bullied and berated her during filming although she says he stopped it after she left the set crying.

This was a huge commercial success (earning a DGA nomination for Thorpe) and led to a series of experensive epics produced by Berman, including The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), Knights of the Round Table (1953), All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953) and The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955).

Pandro Berman later called Thorpe "the most efficient director I ever knew in terms of things technical.

"[10] Joan Fontaine, who starred in Ivanhoe later wrote "I found that director Thorpe cared more about the performance of the horses than the actors.

In my experience I have found that if you print the first take which has a reasonable tempo and in which all the actors say their lines in a way that’s completely intelligible then there is no point in retaking it.

He didn’t believe in ten or fifteen takes in order to catch some subtle difference only appreciated by the director.

Young described Thorpe's "special method for working fast": On Ivanhoe he'd start with a long shot and keep filming until one of the actors fluffed.

In other words, the close-ups in the finished film were quite arbitrary, depending on the pure chance of the interruptions in shooting on that particular day.

Thorpe also directed The Girl Who Had Everything (1951) with Elizabeth Taylor, and two musicals with Edmund Purdom, The Student Prince (1954) and Athena (1954).

In 1957 Thorpe made two unsuccessful films, Tip on a Dead Jockey and Ten Thousand Bedrooms.

Thorpe followed these with the movie Jailhouse Rock, produced by Berman and starring Elvis Presley, which became a huge hit.

Thorpe directed the epic The Tartars (1961) in Yugoslavia with Orson Welles, then filmed a popular romantic comedy The Honeymoon Machine (1961) with the team of Jim Hutton and Paula Prentiss, who were later featured in The Horizontal Lieutenant (1962).

Thorpe made some films in Europe including The Truth About Spring (1965) with John and Hayley Mills.

[2] According to Scott Eyman Thorpe "was hardly ever anything but a by-the-numbers director, albeit a busy one: sixty-six films for MGM in thirty years.

Metro tended to use Thorpe for maintenance work on ongoing series — four Tarzan films, two Lassies, a late Thin Man, a dozen musicals for Joe Pasternak, but never one for Arthur Freed.

A sad, dour man, his life was dedicated to producing, without innovation, a verbatim representation on film of the approved script, which he felt duty-bound to complete on time and, if possible, under budget.