Max Rée (7 October 1889 – 7 March 1953) was a Danish architect, costume designer, scene designer, and art director who worked in both theatre and film. He won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction for the film Cimarron. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and died in Los Angeles, California.

Selected filmography

• The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927)
• Love and the Devil (1929)
• The Gay Diplomat (1931)
• White Shoulders (1931)
• Cimarron (1931)
• The Lost Squadron (1932)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
• Stagecoach (1939)

References

External links

• Max Rée at IMDb
• Max Rée at AllMovie

Cimarron is a 1931 pre-Code epic Western film starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, and directed by Wesley Ruggles. Released by RKO, it won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay (written by Howard Estabrook and based on Edna Ferber's 1930 novel Cimarron), and Best Production Design (by Max Rée).

Both Dix and Dunne were nominated for their leading roles, and Edward Cronjager for Best Cinematography, but did not win. Estelle Taylor, Edna May Oliver, and Roscoe Ates appeared in supporting roles. Epic in scope, spanning forty years from 1889 to 1929, Cimarron was RKO's most expensive production up to that date, as well as its first production to win the Best Picture Oscar. It was a critical success, although it did not recoup its production costs during its initial run in 1931.

It is the first of only four Westerns to ever win the top honor at the Academy Awards, being followed almost 60 years later by Dances with Wolves in 1990, then Unforgiven in 1992 and No Country for Old Men in 2007.

Plot

The Oklahoma land rush of 1889 prompts thousands to travel to the Oklahoma Territory to grab free government land; Yancey Cravat and his young bride, Sabra, cross the border from Kansas to join the throngs. In the ensuing race, Yancey is outwitted by a young prostitute, Dixie Lee, who takes the prime piece of real estate, the Bear Creek claim, that Yancey had targeted for himself.

His plans for establishing a ranch thwarted, Yancey moves into the town of Osage, a boomtown, where he confronts and kills Lon Yountis, an outlaw who had killed the prior publisher of the local newspaper. Having a background in publishing himself, Yancey establishes the Oklahoma Wigwam, a weekly newspaper, to help turn the frontier camp into a respectable town. After the birth of their daughter, Donna, a gang of outlaws threatens Osage, led by "The Kid", who happens to be an old acquaintance of Yancey's. To save the town, Yancey faces and kills The Kid.

Beset by guilt over his killing of The Kid, Yancey leaves Sabra and his children to chase another land rush settling the Cherokee Strip. After his departure, Sabra takes over the publication of the Wigwam, and raises her children until Yancey returns five years later. Not to her, but just in time to represent Dixie Lee, who had been charged with being a public nuisance, and win her acquittal.

Osage continues to grow, as does the Territory of Oklahoma, which gains statehood in 1907 and benefits from the early oil boom of the 1900s. Also prospering alongside the settlers are the Native American tribes, which Yancey supports through editorials in his newspaper. Once more he disappears from Osage, for several years. At the time, Sabra is vehemently anti–Native American, despite her son's involvement with an Indian woman.

Years later Sabra becomes the first female member of Congress from the state of Oklahoma, taken to lauding the virtues of her by-then Indian daughter-in-law.

Sabra and Yancey are reunited one final time when she rushes to his side after he has rescued numerous oil drillers from a devastating explosion. He dies in her arms.

Cast

• Richard Dix as Yancey Cravat
• Irene Dunne as Sabra Cravat
• Estelle Taylor as Dixie Lee
• Nance O'Neil as Felice Venable
• William Collier Jr. as The Kid
• Roscoe Ates as Jesse Rickey
• George E. Stone as Sol Levy
• Stanley Fields as Lon Yountis
• Robert McWade as Louis Hefner
• Edna May Oliver as Tracy Wyatt
• Judith Barrett as Donna Cravat
• Eugene Jackson as Isaiah
• Dennis O'Keefe (uncredited)

(Principal cast list as per AFI database, and The RKO Story)

Production

Despite being in the depths of the Great Depression, RKO Radio Pictures invested more than $1.5 million (equivalent to approximately $30.1 million in 2023) into production of Ferber's novel.

Filming began in the summer of 1930 at the Quinn Ranch outside of Los Angeles, California, where the land rush scenes were shot. More than twenty-eight cameramen, and numerous camera assistants and photographers, were used to capture scenes of more than 5,000 costumed extras, covered wagons, buckboards, surreys, and bicyclists as they raced across grassy hills and prairie to stake their claim.

Cinematographer Edward Cronjager planned out every take (that recalled the scenes of Intolerance some fifteen years earlier) in accordance with Ferber's descriptions. In order to film key scenes for this production, RKO purchased 89 acres in Encino where construction of art director Max Ree's Oscar-winning design of a complete western town and a three-block modern main street were built to represent the fictional Oklahoma boomtown of Osage. These award-winning sets eventually formed the nucleus of RKO's expansive movie ranch, in Encino, where other RKO (and non-RKO) films were later shot.

Release

RKO Radio Pictures premiered Cimarron at the RKO Palace Theatre (Broadway) in New York City on January 26, 1931, to much praise, and then on February 6 a Los Angeles Orpheum Theatre premiere followed, that also included personal appearances of Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, a stage show and an augmented orchestra. Three days later, the movie was released to theaters throughout the nation. Despite being a critical success, the extremely high budget and ongoing Depression combined against the film. While it was a commercial success in line with other films of the day, RKO Pictures could not at first recoup their heavy investment in the film, that ended up losing $565,000. However, it recouped some more money on a 1935 re-release that enjoyed another premiere in Oklahoma City at the (John Eberson designed) Midwest Theatre. The movie remained RKO's most expensive film until 1939's Gunga Din (that filmed exteriors in the Alabama Hills at the foot of the Sierra Nevadas, but had one scene shot on RKO's movie ranch in Encino).

Reception

Contemporary reviews

Reviews by film critics were overwhelmingly positive at the time. Variety led off its review with, "An elegant example of super film making and a big money picture. This is a spectacular western away from all others. It holds action, sentiment, sympathy, thrills and comedy – and 100% clean. Radio Pictures has a corker in 'Cimarron'." The review went on to praise the actors, particularly Dix and Oliver, as well as the direction, stating, "Wesley Ruggles apparently gets the full credit for this splendid and heavy production. His direction misses nothing in the elaborate scenes, as well as in the usual film making procedure." The magazine specifically pointed out the quality of the make-up in the aging of the principle players, who have to go through forty years on-screen.

Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times also gave the film a stellar review, calling it, "A graphic and engrossing screen conception of Edna Ferber's widely read novel ...", and also praised the handling of the passage of time in this epic. Hall also singled out the performance of Dunne. Motion Picture Magazine raved, "A great and worthy effort, this transcription of early Oklahoma life will be hailed as one of the high-spots of the year. It has everything. RKO seems to have placed no restrictions upon making it a lavish, bona-fide epic."

John Mosher of The New Yorker praised the "great care" that had been taken with the historical accuracy of the film's visual details, that he thought "as good as anything that has come out of Hollywood, and because of this expertness the film gains especial value". He also wrote that Richard Dix was "certainly at his best in this role". His only criticisms concerned the second half of the film, that he thought had "sagging moments" and an ending that was too abrupt. The Evening Independent called it "a notable addition to the small list of pictures that the years have given to the American theater. For in Cimarron is vested stirring drama, stark beauty, daring and adventure on a plane that is seldom seen on the screen." The West Seattle Herald declared that it was "even more powerful than the great story read by millions in America. Cimarron the picture is all that is gripping in Cimarron the story. Spectacular scenes abound in this production."

Elizabeth Yeaman of the Hollywood Daily Citizen saw the film as a new type of history, writing that, “Like history, the picture has moments of thrilling glory and moments of repetition and daily routine. Cimarron does not follow the rules of story construction... It is, in short, a graphic interpretation of a portion of history, the history of the state of Oklahoma from the time of the first great land rush until the present.”

Retrospective reviews

More recent appraisals of the film have not been as positive. Steve Evans of DVD Verdict wrote in 2006, "Seen with contemporary eyes, the film is badly dated, slow moving, and pocked with racist caricatures....The recreation of the great 1889 Oklahoma Land Rush remains an exciting spectacle....Unfortunately, the film never manages to top this opening shot."

Assessing the film in 2009, James Berardinelli called it "an excellent study of how tastes have changed over the years. Critically lauded at the time of its release, Cimarron was beloved by most who saw it. Eight decades later, it is frequently cited on lists of the most undeserving Academy Award winners and is rightfully impugned for racist overtones and scattershot storytelling."

As of September 2023 Cimarron held a "Rotten" 52% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 33 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.2/10. The site's consensus reads: "Cimarron is supported by a strong performance from Irene Dunne, but uneven in basically every other regard, and riddled with potentially offensive stereotypes."

Awards and honors

At the 1931 Academy Awards ceremony at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, Cimarron was the first film to receive more than six Academy Awards nominations and be nominated for the Big Five awards (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing). Additionally, it is one of only two films (the other being Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) to receive nominations in every eligible category. It won for three of them, including Best Picture. In 1946 it was joined byThe Best Years of Our Lives as the only Best Picture Oscars won by RKO.

Cimarron was the first Western to win the Best Picture award, and remained the only Western genre film with that honor until 1990, when Dances with Wolves won.

1930–1931 Academy Awards

References

External links

• Cimarron at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
• Cimarron at IMDb
• Cimarron at the TCM Movie Database
• Synopsis at AllMovie
• Cimarron at Rotten Tomatoes

Anthony John Walton (24 October 1934 – 2 March 2022) was a British set and costume designer. He won three Tony Awards, an Academy Award, and a Emmy Award. He received three Tony Awards for Pippin (1973), House of Blue Leaves (1986), and Guys and Dolls (1992). For his work in movies, he won an Academy Award for Best Production Design, for All That Jazz (1979), and nominations for Mary Poppins (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and The Wiz (1978). For his work in television, he won an Primetime Emmy Award, for Death of a Salesman (1985).

Early life

Walton was born in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, on 24 October 1934. His father, Lancelot, was an orthopedic surgeon and his mother, Hilda, was a homemaker. He fell in love with the theatre as child when on a family trip to a pantomime. At the age of 12, he met Julie Andrews after he had watched her in a performance of Humpty Dumpty in the West End. She was 11 at the time. He found her number in the telephone book and asked for her address so he could send her some pictures. The two became good friends from this point.

Walton attended Radley College in Oxford where he studied Greek and Latin. Here he put on some ambitious marionette shows, one of which was attended by the English artist John Piper. He came to find Walton at the end of the show, and told him he should go into stage design. Walton followed his advice and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He spent two years of mandatory military training with the Royal Air Force, as a trainee pilot in Ontario, Canada. After completing his National Service, he headed to New York to join Julie Andrews, who was making a name for herself on Broadway.

Career

He began his career in 1957 with the stage design for Noël Coward's off-Broadway production of Conversation Piece. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, he designed for the New York and London stage.

Walton entered the motion pictures business through Walt Disney, after Disney met him back stage after a performance of Camelot. Julie Andrews, who was now his fiancé, was already in line to play the part of Mary Poppins in the classic film. Disney offered to look at his portfolio and later ended up hiring Walton as a costume designer, set designer, and visual consultant for Mary Poppins. He was not allowed to make any reference to the famous illustrations that Mary Shephard had done for the original book in 1934, as the rights to the story did not include this. The Sherman brothers, who were working on the songs for the movie, suggested that he transposed the era of the story from the 1930s to the Edwardian era, to ensure he avoided any accidental replications. He made the set realistic, paying attention to detail, as he was always annoyed by sets that didn't look real. He also alluded to Mary Poppins' "secret life", by making her clothes grey or black on the outside, but with brightly coloured linings and flashes of crimson. For this he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design (Color).

Walton continued to work in the film industry as a costume designer and set designer working on films such as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), The Boy Friend (1971), and Equus (1977). Walton received further Academy Award nominations for his work on Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and The Wiz (1978). He won his only Academy Award for his work as an Art Director on Bob Fosse's musical film All That Jazz (1979).

In 1983, Diana Ross, the star of the film The Wiz, chose Walton to design the stage set for her 1983 Central Park concert, "For One & For All". Broadcast worldwide on the Showtime cable network, the concert special, over the course of two days, featured an on-site audience of over 1,200,000 on the park's Great Lawn.

In 1989, the American Museum of the Moving Image showcased over 30 years of his work for films, television, and theatre in an exhibit entitled: Tony Walton: Designing for Stage and Screen, including drawings, models and photographs from his early plays including the Regency-style Conversation Piece from 1957 and "his evocation of a London street" for the 1964 film Mary Poppins.

In December 2005, for their annual birthday celebration to 'The Master', The Noël Coward Society invited Walton as the guest celebrity to lay flowers in front of Coward's statue at New York's Gershwin Theatre, thereby commemorating the 106th birthday of Sir Noël.

Inspiration for Disney's Winnie the Pooh

Walton gave the Sherman Brothers the insight and inspiration for the Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree songs as is explained in the Sherman Brothers' joint autobiography, Walt's Time:

Walt (Disney) said 'Read the Pooh stories and let me know what you think.' We tried, but the stories just weren't coming through to us. At that time designer Tony Walton was working on Poppins. He was English-born, and he was about our age, so we asked him to give us some insight on the Pooh character. His eyes lit up. 'Winnie the Pooh?', he said. 'I love Winnie the Pooh! Of course I'll help you!' Three hours later, he was still talking about Pooh, inspiring us no end. He explained how he had been a chubby little boy, and had felt very insecure. But Winnie the Pooh was his buddy, because Pooh was pudgy and proud of it. Pooh was probably the only character in the world who exercised to gain weight! Pooh was a wonderful, lovable friend who would never let you down or turn his back on you. Soon, we started to fall in love with Pooh ourselves. Our songs for Winnie the Pooh were truly a love affair, thanks to A.A. Milne and to Tony Walton.

Personal life and death

Walton married his childhood sweetheart Julie Andrews in 1959, and together they had a daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton. Walton said that he fell in love with Andrews when they were children and he saw her playing the egg in a theatre production of Humpty Dumpty. They divorced in 1968 but remained close friends.

Walton married Gen LeRoy in 1991. Walton, Andrews, and their daughter worked together professionally several times. He illustrated several children's books written by Andrews and their daughter. Walton died from complications of a stroke at his apartment in New York City on 2 March 2022, at the age of 87.

Credits

Film

Television

Theatre

Walton later diversified into directing, with productions of:

• Orson Welles' Moby Dick—Rehearsed, 2005
• Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, 1996
• Noël Coward In Two Keys, 1996
• George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara, 1997
• Missing Footage, 1999
• Ooops! The Big Apple Circus Stage Show, 1999
• Where's Charley?, 2004
• After the Ball, 2004
• Busker Alley, 2006

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

Emmy Awards

Tony Awards

References

External links

• Tony Walton at IMDb
• Tony Walton at the Internet Broadway Database
• Tony Walton at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Yahoo! Movies profile of Tony Walton
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Profile for A Tale of Two Cities
• Tony Walton costume design reproductions for The Wiz, 1978., held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Alan Lee (born 20 August 1947) is an English book illustrator and film conceptual designer. He is best known for his artwork inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels, and for his work on the concept design of Peter Jackson's film adaptations of Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film series.

Early life and education

Alan Lee was born in Middlesex, England, and studied at the Ealing School of Art.

Career

Illustration

Tolkien

Lee has illustrated dozens of fantasy books, including some non-fiction, and many more book covers. Among the numerous works by J. R. R. Tolkien that he has illustrated are the 1992 centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings, a 1999 edition of The Hobbit, the 2007 The Children of Húrin, the 2017 Beren and Lúthien, the 2018 The Fall of Gondolin, and the 2022 The Fall of Númenor.

Other illustrations

Non-Tolkien books he has illustrated include Faeries (with Brian Froud), Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock, The Mabinogion (two versions), Castles by David Day, The Mirrorstone by Michael Palin, The Moon's Revenge by Joan Aiken, and Merlin Dreams by Peter Dickinson.

He has illustrated retellings of classics for young people. Two were Rosemary Sutcliff's versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey—namely, Black Ships Before Troy (Oxford, 1993) and The Wanderings of Odysseus (Frances Lincoln, 1995). Another was Adrian Mitchell's version of Ovid's Metamorphoses—namely, Shapeshifters (Frances Lincoln, 2009).

Lee made cover paintings for the 1983 Penguin edition of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. He also did the artwork for Alive!, a 2007 CD by the Dutch band Omnia, released during the Castlefest festival. Watercolour painting and pencil sketches are among the media that Lee commonly uses.

Film

Tolkien

Lee and John Howe were the lead concept artists of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films between 2000 and 2003. They were recruited by director Guillermo del Toro in 2008 for continuity of design in the subsequent The Hobbit films, before joining Jackson when he took over the Hobbit films project. Jackson has explained how he originally recruited the reclusive Lee. By courier to Lee's home in the south of England, he sent two of his previous films, Forgotten Silver and Heavenly Creatures, with a note from himself and Fran Walsh that piqued Lee's interest enough for him to become involved. Lee went on to illustrate and even to help construct many of the scenarios for the movies, including objects and weapons for the actors. For example his illustration of the tower of Orthanc was closely followed by the set designers of The Two Towers to create a "bigature" at 1:35 scale for close-up filming. He made two cameo appearances: in the opening sequence of The Fellowship as one of the nine kings of men who became the Nazgûl; and in The Two Towers as a Rohan soldier in the armoury (over the shoulder of Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn who is talking to Legolas in Elvish).

Two years after completing The Lord of the Rings film series, Lee released a 192-page collection of his concept artwork for the project, The Lord of the Rings Sketchbook (HarperCollins, 2005). Peter Jackson said, "His art captured what I hoped to capture with the films."

Other films

Lee worked as a concept designer on the films Legend, Erik the Viking, King Kong and the television mini-series Merlin. The art book Faeries, produced in collaboration with Brian Froud, was the basis of a 1981 animated feature of the same name.

Books illustrated

• Faeries (1978)
• Castles (1984)
• Brokedown Palace (1986)
• The Return of the Shadow (1988) Cover art only (for American editions)
• The Treason of Isengard (1989) Cover art only (for American editions)
• The War of the Ring (1990) Cover art only (for American editions)
• The Lord of the Rings (1991)
• The Atlas of Middle-earth (1991) Cover art only
• Sauron Defeated (1992) Cover art only (for American editions)
• Black Ships Before Troy (1993, by Rosemary Sutcliff)
• The Wanderings of Odysseus (1995, by Rosemary Sutcliff)
• The Hobbit (1997)
• The Children of Húrin (2007)
• Tales from the Perilous Realm (2008)
• Beren and Lúthien (2017)
• The Wanderer and Other Old-English Poems (2018) (Folio Society)
• The Fall of Gondolin (2018)
• Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (2020)
• The Lord of the Rings (2022) (Folio Society)
• The Fall of Númenor (2022)

Awards

For his 1978 book with Brian Froud, Faeries, Lee was runner-up for the fantasy Locus Award, year's best art or illustrated book.

For illustrating Merlin Dreams by Peter Dickinson (1988), he won the annual Chesley Award for Best Interior Illustration and he was a highly commended runner-up for the Greenaway Medal. He also won the BSFA Award for Best Artwork, for that year's best single new image. Five years later, he won the Kate Greenaway Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book illustration by a British subject. The book was Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff, a version of the Trojan War story. For the 60th anniversary edition of The Hobbit, Tolkien's 1937 classic, Lee won his second Chesley Award for Interior Illustration (he is a finalist eight times through 2011). For that year's work he won the annual World Fantasy Award, Best Artist, at the 1998 World Fantasy Convention. In 2000, he won the competitive, juried Spectrum Award for fantastic art in the grandmaster category. Lee, Grant Major and Dan Hennah earned the 2004 Academy Award for Best Art Direction for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, third in the film trilogy. In 2016 he was awarded the 'Schwäbischen Lindwurm' of the Dragon Days Crossmedia Fantastikfestival Stuttgart.

Notes

References

See also

• Works inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien

External links

• Alan Lee at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Alan Lee at IMDb
• Faeries (1981) at IMDb
• Faeries at AllMovie
• Faeries...Part one of three on YouTube
• Alan Lee at Library of Congress, with 22 library catalogue records

Austin Cedric Gibbons (March 23, 1890 – July 26, 1960) was an American art director for the film industry. He also made a significant contribution to motion picture theater architecture from the 1930s to 1950s. Gibbons designed the Oscar statuette in 1928, but tasked the sculpting to George Stanley, a Los Angeles artist. He was nominated 39 times for the Academy Award for Best Production Design and won the Oscar 11 times, both of which are records.

Early life

Cedric Gibbons was born in New York City in 1890 to Irish architect Austin P. Gibbons and American Veronica Fitzpatrick Simmons. The family moved to Manhattan after the birth of their third child. Cedric studied at the Art Students League of New York in 1911. He began working in his father's office as a junior draftsman, then in the art department at Edison Studios under Hugo Ballin in New Jersey in 1915. He was drafted and served in the US Navy Reserves during World War I at Pelham Bay in New York.

Career

Gibbons joined Goldwyn Studios, and began a long career with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, when the studio was founded.

In 1925, when he was first working in the art department at MGM, he was in competition with Romain De Tirtoff for a more substantial position, while working with Joseph Wright, Merrill Pye and Richard Day on some 20 films. Tirtoff is better known as Erte. When studio executive Irving Thalberg summoned Gibbons to work on Ben Hur (1925), he used knowledge of the up-and-coming art moderne (that was to become known as art deco) to advance in the MGM art department.

Gibbons was one of the original 36 founding members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and designed the Academy Awards statuette in 1928, a trophy for which he himself would be nominated 39 times, winning 11, the last time for Best Art Direction for Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).

He retired from MGM as art director and the head of the art department on April 26, 1956, due to ill health with over 1,500 films credited to him; however, other designers did major work on these films, some credited, some not, during Gibbons' tenure as head of the art department. Even so, his actual hands-on art direction is considerable and his contributions lasting.

Personal life and death

Gibbons married 22 year old, Texas born, Gwendolyn Weller in New York City on January 16 1926 after having known her for one week. (On the marriage certificate he stated that he had been born in Dublin, Ireland.) They divorced shortly thereafter on the grounds of "desertion." Gibbons at first failed to pay the promised $6,000 per year alimony.

In 1930, Gibbons married actress Dolores del Río and co-designed their house with Douglas Honnold in Santa Monica, an intricate Art Deco residence influenced by Rudolf Schindler. The couple divorced in 1941. In October 1944, he married actress Hazel Brooks, with whom he remained until his death.

Gibbons' niece Veronica "Rocky" Balfe was Gary Cooper's wife and briefly an actress known as Sandra Shaw.

Gibbons' second cousin Frederick "Royal" Gibbons—a musician, orchestra conductor, and entertainer who worked with him at MGM—was the father of Billy Gibbons of the rock band ZZ Top.

Despite holding a US birth certificate, Gibbons claimed on census forms that he was born in Ireland and that his family emigrated to the US during his early childhood. His press marriage announcement also stated that he was a native of Ireland. The reasons for this misstatement are unknown.

Gibbons died in Los Angeles on July 26, 1960, after a long illness at age 70 and was buried under a modest marker at the Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles. Dorothy Kilgallen, journalist and gossip columnist, a friend of his second wife, reported his age as 65 at the time of his death.

Legacy

Gibbons' set designs, particularly those in such films as Born to Dance (1936) and Rosalie (1937), heavily inspired motion picture theater architecture in the late 1930s through 1950s.

Among the classic examples are the Loma Theater in San Diego, the Crest theaters in Long Beach, California and Fresno, California, and the Culver Theater in Culver City, California, some of which are still extant. The style sometimes is referred to as Art Deco or as Art Moderne. The style is found in the theaters that were managed by the Skouras brothers, whose designer Carl G. Moeller used the sweeping scroll-like details in his creations.

The iconic Oscar statuettes that Gibbons designed, which were first awarded in 1929, still are being presented to winners at Academy Awards ceremonies each year.

Gibbons was inducted into the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame in February 2005.

Academy Awards

Awards for Art Direction

Nominations for Art Direction

See also

• Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame

Bibliography

• "Cedric Gibbons Architect of Style", LA Modernism catalog, May 2006, pp. 16–17 by Jeffrey Head

Notes

References

External links

• Cedric Gibbons at IMDb

Dean Tavoularis (born May 18, 1932) is an American motion picture production designer whose work appeared in numerous box office hits such as The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Brink's Job, One from the Heart, and Bonnie and Clyde.

Biography

Although born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrant parents, Tavoularis spent his entire childhood and teenage years in Los Angeles, in the shadow of the Hollywood studios. He studied architecture and painting at different art schools and landed a job at the Disney Studios first as an in-betweener in the animation department, and later as a storyboard artist. In 1967, Arthur Penn called him to take charge of the artistic direction of Bonnie and Clyde. Three years later, Penn called him once again to design Little Big Man. But it was working with Francis Ford Coppola in 1972 on The Godfather that set the creative tone of his career. The Godfather Part II and The Conversation, in 1974, consolidated their collaboration, and laid the way for what was to be their joint creative challenge: Apocalypse Now, the film for which Tavoularis created a nightmare jungle kingdom, inspired by Angkor Wat. It was also on the set of Apocalypse Now that he met his future wife, French actress Aurore Clément. (Clément's role was eventually edited out of the final cut of the film, and only restored in the Apocalypse Now Redux version in 2001.

From 1967 until 2001, he worked on over thirty movies and landed five Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction, one of which he won for The Godfather Part II. For the 1982 release One from the Heart he recreated both the Las Vegas 'strip' and McCarran International Airport on the sound stages of Zoetrope Studios. The list of directors with whom he has worked includes: Michelangelo Antonioni (Zabriskie Point, 1970), Wim Wenders (Hammett, 1982), Warren Beatty (Bulworth, 1998) and Roman Polanski (The Ninth Gate, 1999).

External links

• Dean Tavoularis at IMDb
• Dean Tavoularis Book