Filmcraft: Production Design

Legacy Cedric Gibbons

Wildly influential in the early, formative years of mass-distribution cinema, Cedric Gibbons oversaw the “look” of MGM’s entire output from its very first film in 1924 to 1956, when he retired, although his golden years were undoubtedly the late 1920s and 1930s, when he swept America with his modernistic designs. Even prior to MGM, when he was at Samuel Goldwyn between 1918 and 1924, Gibbons is credited with insisting on three-dimensional sets instead of the painted backdrops that were favored at that time. He had a passion for the white room, the light, bright designs that typified an MGM creation. He was also a huge influence on theater design between the 1930s and 1950s.

Clearly Gibbons is not what would be termed a production ...