In the first of his many film books, "Movies" (published in 1965), he referred to
King Vidor dismissively as a hack director who had "ground out pot-boilers" until his death. In fact, the eminent director was still very much alive at the time (he did not die until 1982) and, some ten years later, Schickel interviewed him at length for a TV documentary. In his book "The Men Who Made The Movies", Schickel spoke of Vidor in the most laudatory terms and referred to him as "King", implying they were friends. He did not mention his 1965 dismissal, nor did he apologize for it. (It is possible he had confused King Vidor with
Charles Vidor, a bad mistake for a critic to make in a history of the cinema).