William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come

From the acclaimed film historian and biographer of Spencer Tracy, W. C. Fields, and Preston Strurges--the first book to look at the life and work of Hollywood's greatest production designer (a job title David O. Selznick invented for William Cameron Menzies's extraordinary, all-encompassing and Academy Award-winning work on Gone with the Wind, which Menzies in effect co-directed).  

It was Menzies--winner of the first ever Academy Award for Art Direction for two pictures jointly, and who was as well director (fourteen pictures); producer (twelve pictures)--who changed the way movies were (and still are) made in a career as production designer that spanned four decades, from the 1920s through the 1950s, and whose more than 120 films include: The Thief of Bagdad (1924 and 1940), Things to Come (1936), Foreign Correspondent (1940),  Our Town (1940), Meet John Doe (1941), Kings Row (1942), Mr. Lucky (1943), The Pride of the Yankees (1943), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Address Unknown (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Invaders from Mars (1953), and Around the World in 80 Days (1956).
 
He was the consummate designer of film architecture on a grand scale, influenced by German expressionism and the work of the great European directors; he collaborated with producers including Samuel Goldwyn and Selznick; directors, among them: D.W. Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock, Lewis Milestone, Frank Capra, and Raoul Walsh.  He was known for his visual flair and love of adventure and fantasy films--a timeless innovator who meticulously preplanned the color and design of each film through a series of continuity sketches that made clear camera angles, lighting, and the actors' positions for each scene. 

Interviewing colleagues, friends, and family, and drawing on archives, among them the William Cameron Menzies family collection, with access to original artwork, correspondence, scrapbooks, and unpublished writing, and with more than 130 black-and-white and color illustrations, James Curtis has given us a full-scale portrait of an extraordinary artist in his time.