In Remembrance: Alexander Golitzen

     Alexander Golitzen, a three-time Academy Award winning art director and production designer, has passed away in San Diego, California on July 26, 2005. He was 97.

     Born on February 28, 1908 in Moscow, Russia, Golitzen’s family fled to America during the Russian Revolution, eventually settling in Seattle, Washington. After earning an architecture degree from the University of Washington, he moved to Los Angeles where he landed a position as an assistant to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer art director Alexander Toluboff.

     Golitzen received his first art direction credit for the 1935 western The Call Of The Wild. In 1939, he went to work for producer Walter Wenger at United Artists and quickly earned his first Academy Award nomination for his work on Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940). He earned a second Oscar nomination for 1942’s Sundown before leaving Wenger and United Artists for Universal Studios.

     Golitzen would stay at Universal for 30 years, first as a unit art director and then as supervising art director for the studio, working on over 300 films. He worked on a variety of films, from war films like Gung Ho! (1943) and Battle Hymn (1956), westerns like The Spoilers (1955) and Shenandoah (1965), comedies such as Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy (1955) and Operation  Petticoat (1960) and dramas like To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) and Red Sky At Morning (1971).

     During his stint at Universal, Golitzen won three Academy Awards- the first with John B. Goodman, Russell A. Gausman and Ira Webb for their work on The Phantom Of The Opera (1943), the second with Gausman, Eric Obrom and Julia Heron for Spartacus (1960) and a third with Henry Bumstead and Oliver Emert for To Kill A Mockingbird (1962). In addition, Golitzen for another – Oscars for the films Arabian Nights (1942), The Climax (1944), Flower Drum Song (1961), That Touch Of Mink (1962), Gambit (1966), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), Sweet Charity (1968), Airport (1970) and Earthquake (1974).