Mark-Lee Kirk
Charles Mark -Lee Kirk ( born May 16, 1895 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, † December 10, 1969 in Los Angeles ) was an American art director.
Life and work
Kirk spent his childhood in Allegheny, now a suburb of Pittsburgh, before he (still in the 1910s ) was a young adult to New York, where he trained. Already at the 1920 census he gave as a profession "Designer" on. The following year he is first detectable as art director. In this role he was responsible for the scenes in DW Griffith's large landscaped revolutionary drama Orphans of the storm of time, especially " has become legendary because of the realistic quality of outdoor structures. " Kirk worked until 1926 regularly for Griffiths productions, then began to be temporarily career descent.
Until the early 1930s, when he worked for Paramount Pictures in the New York Astoria Studios, Kirk received no orders from the film. After that he often had to share jobs for film architectures with colleagues. At this time he was permanently employed at the production company RKO Pictures. For unknown reasons, Kirk finished his work in 1935 under the sign of Charles M. Kirk and was henceforth act only as Mark -Lee Kirk. Along with the name change was also his transfer to a new employer, the 20th Century Fox. This company he remained until his retirement in 1959 loyal and designed for them a wealth of buildings to ambitious and expensive manufactured A- productions, including Young Mr. Lincoln, The Grapes of Wrath, Call Northside 777, Gentleman's Agreement, Prince Valiant, Bus Stop between Madrid and Paris and the Western Bravados. After his work on the melodrama all my dreams, Charles Mark -Lee Kirk withdrew into private life.
Kirk died two weeks before Christmas Eve 1969. Five days after his death, he was buried in his hometown of Pittsburgh on the Union Dale Cemetery.