Screen Deco

Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers

Hennessy and Ingalls: Santa Monica, CA

1985/ $ 29.95

This book presents us with a great historical perspective of Art Deco films. The Black and white photos are dramatic, and reflect the sets and backgrounds of the movies of the Art Deco period. The best way to review this book is to touch on the main chapters, and highlight the text and major films of the time.

When I first opened Screen Deco one of the 1^st pictures to catch my eye was Paradise for Three (1938) showing Frank Morgan (later to become the wizard in The Wizard of Oz (1939)) tuning a magnificent Scott Radio. In the early ‘50s I had the pleasure of working on one just like it and it too was not in a cabinet.

This Modern Age: Introduction

The first Art Deco Film, from France, was Le Carnival Des Verites (1919). The country was slow to warm to Art Deco, but William Randolf Hearst’s Production Enchantment (1921) starring Marion Davis was the first American movie to utilize modern décor. Americans were slow to accent Deco in their homes, but welcomed it in the movies. 

The Rich are Always With Us: Parlor, Bedroom and Bath  Cedric Gibbons, the supervising Art Director of MGM and married to actress Delores DelRio) attended the 1925 Exposition Des Artes Decoratifs Et Industriels Modernes in Paris, and shaped his Art Deco Style in movies. His landmark film Our Dancing Daughters (1928) depicted a dream world of the well-to-do as did many of the Deco films.

Success and Any Price: Places of Business With the number of Art Deco skyscrapers being built in the ‘20s and ‘30s, quite a few movies used them for backdrops and interiors. Citizen Kane (1941) used the coldness of Deco.

New York Nights: Nightclubs: By the early ‘30s some of the greatest Art Deco clubs appeared but most of the movie sets of clubs were had no real-life equivalent.

Transatlantic Merry-Go-Rounds: Ocean Liners: Many of the French Ocean Liners’ interiors were decorated in Art Deco, but few were used in Deco films. Two notable French films using the Ocean Liner Normandie were Les Perles de la couronne and  Paris-New York (1940). The authors suggest other Art Deco liners would have been ideal for motion pictures, but the closet these ships came to Hollywood was New York. They go on to say, “Hollywood chose to design its own ocean liner interiors within its studios, and exteriors could always be filmed at the harbor in nearby San Pedro.” Ocean liners were perceived by the general public as sleek symbols of the Machine Age, and Hollywood was more than willing to promote this image.

This book traces Deco movies from 1919 to 1941.  Thanks to the movies of the ‘20s, ‘30s Art Deco became more familiar to the public.  Hollywood helped propagate Art Deco. The book is filled with 100s of spectacular black and white pictures and I particularly liked the ‘Set Test Stills, which were pictures of the sets without actors.  It would be interesting to see a follow-up book of the 2 color Technicolor movies made in the late ‘20s and ‘30s.  The two colors used in this process were peach and turquoise, two very Art Deco color.