Our Modern Maidens (left, 1929), best known as an early flapper vehicle for Joan Crawford, airs on TCM this Wednesday at 9:45am. In addition to its role in Crawford’s burgeoning stardom, the film was renowned for its Art Deco set design by Cedric Gibbons, who had launched his signature Deco style a year earlier with Our Dancing Daughters (1928).
Art Deco and Hollywood fit together like hand in glove. Originally known as Modernism, Deco emerged in the 1920s, depicting and capturing the fast pace and modern lifestyle associated with the Jazz Age. This unique linear style began in the mid-1920s with ornate zig-zags and geometric shapes then quickly evolved into the stripped-down curvilinear forms of Streamline Moderne in the 1930s. Other styles of the time included Bauhaus and the International Style. The catch-all phrase Art Deco was not coined until the 1960s to refer to most of the styles of this era.
UNIVERSAL’S 1930s DECO-INSPIRED LOGO
Art director Cedric Gibbons is credited with popularizing Art Deco in the movies, though his work was not the first Deco-inspired designs to show up in Hollywood. Gibbons attended the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, inspiring him to embrace Modernism as his signature style. According to Screen Deco by Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers, Our Dancing Daughters was the first Hollywood film to completely exploit Modernist designs. Gibbons had entered the film industry in 1914, working as a set dresser for Hugo Ballin. When Ballin left art direction to become a producer-director, Gibbons replaced him as supervising art director, a title not used in the industry before. He joined the newly formed MGM just before attending the Paris Exposition. When he returned, he began incorporating the styles he had seen at the Exposition into a string of films, helping to establish MGM’s trademark opulent, glossy look. His streamlined, geometric Hollywood Deco favored plain white walls and decorative plaster. He loathed wallpaper and ornate patterns. MGM adopted a high-key lighting style in part to flatter Gibbons’s shimmery white sets.
RAMON NOVARRO’S HOME AS DECORATED BY CEDRIC GIBBONS
At the time, American movies enjoyed a love-hate relationship with the rich and the pursuit of wealth. During the 1920s, some genres reflected an opulence that many Americans felt it was possible to achieve because of the era’s prosperity. After the Depression, audiences were still drawn to stories of great wealth and luxury, though the rich were often depicted as heartless, selfish, insincere, clueless, or just plain immoral. Gibbons and other art directors such as Van Nest Polglase and Hans Dreier perfected a Deco dream world that suited stories of big-city adventures or romantic escapades.
GINGER ROGERS AMIDST PURE HOLLYWOOD DECO
The style became popular not only in Hollywood movies but also among the stars and industry insiders who made up the Hollywood Colony. The house that Ginger Rogers’s purchased in the 1930s was decorated by Van Nest Polglase and his RKO art department. Silent star Ramon Navarro bought a house designed by Lloyd Wright (son of the famous architect) and decorated by Cedric Gibbons in black and silver, with black fur accents. Legend has it that Navarro demanded visiting dinner guests wear black, white, and silver to match his décor. The studios adopted graphics and logos in the Deco style and staged publicity photos for their stars with Deco-inspired props.
I hope you enjoy this selection of Hollywood Deco, which captured the glamour and fantasy of the Dream Factory and shaped America’s attitudes toward class and style.
A CEDRIC GIBBONS DESIGN FOR MGM’S ‘THE SINGLE STANDARD’ (1929), STARRING GRETA GARBO
IN WIFE vs. SECRETARY, CLARK GABLE’S OFFICE BUILDING WAS INSPIRED BY THE SIMPLICITY OF THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE. (THE FILM AIRS WEDS. AT 6:30pm.)
MOVIE NIGHT CLUBS HAD TERRIFIC DECO DESIGNS. CLUB RAYMOND IN ‘SWING TIME’ BY NEW YORK DESIGNER JOHN HARKRIDER WAS INSPIRED BY ONE OF THE FEW REAL-LIFE DECO CLUBS, THE RAINBOW ROOM IN ROCKEFELLER CENTER.
SOMETIMES DECO INTERIORS WERE USED TO DEFINE CHARACTERS. IN ‘WONDER OF WOMEN,’ LEWIS STONE’S MISTRESS’S MODERN APARTMENT IS CONTRASTED WITH THE OLD-FASHIONED HOUSE BY THE SEA HE SHARES WITH HIS WIFE.
PARAMOUNT’S HANS DREIER HAD WORKED IN GERMANY’S UFA STUDIOS, AND BROUGHT A TOUCH OF BAUHAUS TO HIS DECO DESIGNS.
IN ‘A WOMAN OF AFFAIRS,’ GRETA GARBO AND BROTHER DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, JR. LIVE IN A DECO APARTMENT, WHICH SIGNALS THEIR MODERN VIEW OF LIFE.
IN ‘THE BLACK CAT,’ BORIS KARLOFF PLAYS POLZEIG, AN ARCHITECT OBVIOUSLY OF THE BAUHAUS SCHOOL.
MORE OF GIBBONS’S WORK IN ‘DYNAMITE’ (1929), STARRING CHARLES BICKFORD. THE MURAL IS WHAT INSPIRED ME TO INCLUDE THIS STILL , BUT THE REST OF THE FILM LOOKS TERRIFIC, TOO.
ANTON GROT, SUPERVISING ART DIRECTOR FOR WARNERS, DESIGNED THE SETS FOR THE “MECHANICAL BALLET” NUMBER IN ‘LILIES OF THE FIELD’ (1930). THAT’S CORINNE GRIFFITH ATOP THE ROBOTS.
IN ‘TOP HAT,’ VAN NEST POLGLASE DESIGNED A MODERNE-STYLE VENICE, A SET THAT WAS 2 STORIES HIGH AND OCCUPIED 2 ADJOINING SOUND STAGES.
FINALLY, DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, SR. WAKES UP IN HIS DECO BEDROOM IN ‘REACHING FOR THE MOON’ (1931). IN MY FANTASY LIFE, I WAKE UP IN THIS ROOM, WORK IN CLARK GABLE’S OFFICE BUILDING, THEN GO FOR A DRINK AT THE CLUB RAYMOND.