Alexander Golitzen
Alexander Golitzen ( born February 28, 1908 Alexander Alexandrovich Galitzine in Moscow, † July 26, 2005 in San Diego, California ) was an American art director.
Life and work
Golitzens family fled during the October Revolution from Russia to Japan. On October 7, 1923, the family came from Kobe with the boat to Seattle. At the University of Washington, he studied architecture. In 1933 he moved to Los Angeles, where he became assistant to the Russian -Russians also Alexander Toluboff. At first he worked at MGM as a painter at the scenes of Queen Christina (Queen Christina ). In 1935, he started for various studios and independent producers like Samuel Goldwyn and Walter Wanger to work as an art director. Since the film Arabian Nights ( Arabian Nights, 1942), he worked for Universal Pictures. In the meantime, on 28 April 1936 he was naturalized.
While most film architects remain unknown, Alexander Golitzen could develop an almost legendary reputation, the maximum Cedric Gibbons equivalent. He worked on over 300 feature films and many of them could make his mark. Especially Technicolorfilme were his specialty for him a great talent and empathy was said. However, he was also a master of black and white film, which showed his Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird.
Since 1954 was Golitzen Supervising Art Director at Universal, a post he held until his retirement in 1974. He said goodbye to the film industry with a final grand entrance. For the film earthquake he got his last Oscar nomination, but in the rather unusual for him Division Production Designer. Here he had to show only a few works, as well as a producer.
Awards
During his career, which came with ... then the Hurricane ( The Hurricane, 1937) began as an assistant and to earthquake ( Earthquake, 1974) lasted, he was nominated 1941-1975 no less than 14 times for the Oscar. Three times he was able to win the prize. 1944 Phantom of the Opera ( Phantom of the Opera ), 1960 for Spartacus and 1963 for To Kill a Mockingbird ( To Kill a Mockingbird ).