| To honor contributions of legendary Production Designers
and Art Directors of the past, the Art Directors Guild has established
a Hall of Fame that inducts new members into its ranks at the Annual
Awards Banquet.
WILFRED BUCKLAND (1866-1946) is famed
for developing a revolutionary use of lighting, circa 1914-1920. He
began his career as a theatrical designer and producer, working his way
into Hollywood in 1914 as one of industry's first recognized Art Directors.
'Klieg lighting' was developed from Buckland's continuous experimentations
with lighting and copied by Production Designers and Art Directors throughout
the industry. Such Klieg lighting, which became known as 'Lasky lighting,'
uses spotlighting for both indoors and outdoors, creating great dramatic
effects. Previously sets had been flat-lighted with natural daylight settings.
Buckland is also well known for his work alongside legendary director
Cecil B. DeMille, contributing to his early success by creating contemporary
themes and authentic set designs. Buckland's renowned lighting techniques
are admired in such films as Joan the Woman (1916), Carmen
(1915), The Cheat (1915), For Better, For Worse
(1919 with Michell Leisen), A Perfect Crime (1921), Robin
Hood (1922 with Irvin J. Martin) and Almost Human (1927).
RICHARD DAY (1896-1972) had a nontraditional
career compared with other Art Directors of his time. He was the first,
and possibly the greatest, of the early independent Art Directors in Hollywood.
He began his trend-setting work in the silent era as Erich Von Stroheim's
designer in 1919 and 1920. In the 1930's Day worked as an Art Director
for Samuel Goldwyn where he designed a majority of Goldwyn Studios feature
films for eight years. He also worked for United Artist, MGM, and Warner
Bros. and at Twentieth Century Fox, where he served as supervising Art
Director for many years. Day's career lasted for 40 years, during which
time he was nominated for 20 Academy Awards',
winning seven. His portfolio of designed films includes Whoopee!
(1930), The Dark Angel (1936), Dodsworth (1936), The
Goldwyn Follies (1938), Lillian Russell (1940), How
Green Was My Valley (1941), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951),
On the Waterfront (1954), and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).
Today he is more remembered for his modern realism than for the musicals
or period spectacles at which he was equally adapt.
JOHN DECUIR, SR. (1918-1991) is best known for elaborate
set designs that were illustrated with amazing watercolor paintings. He
began his career in 1938 at 20 when he joined Universal, where he remained
until 1949. He then moved to 20th Century Fox where he specialized in
large-scale productions. He was one of the first Art Directors to work
with Cinemascope. He won Academy Awards' for
Art Direction for the films The King and I (1956), Cleopatra
(1963) and Hello, Dolly! (1969). Other films for which he received
nominations were The House On Telegraph Hill (1951), The
Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), My Cousin Rachel (1952), Daddy
Long Legs (1955), A Certain Smile (1958), The Big Fisherman
(1959), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) and The Taming of
the Shrew (1967). He also received a BAFTA nomination for Hello
Dolly. He won an Emmy for his sole television film, Ziegfield:
The Man and His Woman (1978). DeCuir also designed theme parks and
museums, stage plays and operas, both in the U.S. and Europe. He was the
pre-eminent designer of his generation.
ANTON GROT (1884-1974) began his career in 1913 working as
an Art Director for the Lubin Film Company in Philadelphia, at the same
time doing work for Vitagraph and for Path'. After working on a number
of memorable Hollywood films, he joined Warner Bros. in 1927 where he
stayed for 20 years, designing 80 films, mostly solo. He dominated Art
Direction at the studio until his retirement at the end of the forties.
He did as much to set the style of Warner's musicals as did its more famous
choreographer, Busby Berkeley. Grot is known for his outstanding designs
in realism during the 1930's and '40's and also for creating special effects
with water. His creative contributions with water effects--by creating
water ripple and wave illusion machines--lead to his receiving an honorary
Academy Award' in 1941. Grot was additionally
nominated for five Academy Awards' for Svengali
(1937), Anthony Adverse (1936), Life of Emile Zola (1937),
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and The Sea
Hawk (1940). Grot was the first Art Director to present a sequence
of sketches showing all of a film's sets.
BORIS LEVEN (1908-1986) began career
as an Art Director in 1933 as a sketch artist for Paramount, where he
learned the craft from the legendary Hans Dreier. He stayed there for
three years, believing this was just temporary work until he could start
a career in architecture. But moving to 20th Century Fox, he finally found
his calling as an Art Director. His first film for the studio, Alexander's
Ragtime Band (1938) earned him his first of nine Oscar' nominations.
Other nominations included The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Giant
(1956), The Sound of Music (1965), The Sand Pebbles
(1966), Star! (1968), The Andromeda Strain (1971) and
The Color of Money (1986). He frequently worked with Martin Scorsese
and Robert Wise. His assignments ranged widely from westerns to science
fiction to musicals. He won an Academy Award'
for his Production Design work on West Side Story (1961).
He was a master colorist and achieved his finest work on Technicolor
dramas and musicals. He became a freelancer in the early fifties and in
1956 worked on George Stevens' Giant, one of the first Hollywood
epics to shoot primarily on location.
WILLIAM CAMERON MENZIES (1896-1957), the first Art Director
to gain the title of Production Designer as a result of his Academy-Award-winning
work on Gone With the Wind (1939), was an independent Art Director
working under non-exclusive short-term contracts. This allowed him to
move from studio to studio. As an independent he was able to experiment
with his artistic visions, making him one of the best Art Directors of
his time. Menzies befriended famed Art Director Anton Grot, who taught
Menzies his techniques of forced perspective and continuity sketching,
which were very useful throughout both their careers. They eventually
worked together on The Thief of Baghdad (1924), where, in a change
of roles, Grot was an assistant to Menzies, a dominant force among Art
Directors from silent films until the 1950's. He was given an honorary
Academy Award' for his work on Gone with
the Wind, won Oscars' for The Dove
(1927) and The Tempest (1928) and received nominations for his
work on The Awakening (1928) [the very first Academy Award for
Art Direction], Alibi (1929), and Bulldog Drummond (1929).
VAN NEST POLGLASE (1898-1968) began
his career as an architect and at 20 worked on the presidential palace
in Havana. Polglase moved to Hollywood in 1919, beginning his Art Direction
career at Famous Players-Lasky {later to become Paramount), where he rose
to the position of department head. Here he evolved the flamboyant Deco-inspired
style to be copied by other designers throughout the 1930s. After 10 years
he moved to MGM. When David O. Selznick raided other studios to bring
talent to RKO, Polglase was hired as Supervising Art Director and designed
the RK O 'Beeping Tower.' His personal style came to define RKO's most
successful film series, the Astaire and Rogers musicals. Polglase went
to Columbia for a short period, eventually returning to RKO in the 1950's
for a series of Technicolor programs. Polglase was nominated for six Academy
Awards' for The Gay Divorcee (1934
shared with Caroll Clark), Top Hat (1935 shared with Caroll Clark),
Carefree (1938), Love Affair (1938), My Favorite
Wife (1940 shared with Mark-Lee Kirk), and Citizen Kane
(1941 shared with Perry Ferguson).
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