January 27, 2008

Black-and-white movie sets were full of art deco

By Gene Krider

Recently there have been a spate of black-and-white movies from the 1930s and ‘40s on the Turner Classic Movies TV channel (TCM). Before I took photography in college, my photographic experience was with color 8mm movies.

When I went to the movies before and during World War II, most films were in black and white, even the lavish musicals. I thought they painted the sets black, gray and white, but in college I discovered that a skillful photographer can do many tricks with filters and lighting to make color subjects dramatic and realistic in black and white format.

For these old musical sets, art deco ran riot. The sets are all stark white; accent pieces were black. There was rarely any gray in them. The white grand piano summed up this period: sinuous curves with a jaunty open lid and the black-and-white keyboard completing the composition.

If you are old enough to remember, the Busby Berkley extravaganzas in movies like “Forty Second Street” and “Roberta” staring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers illustrate this concept.

Incidentally, at the grand opening a reporter came up to Ginger and gushed, “It must have been wonderful to dance with the great Astaire!”

Ginger replied, “Well, I did everything he did but backwards and in high heels.”

The only classical architectural elements that got onto these sets were Greek Doric columns like you see on the portico of the Mitchell Community College main building. The concave fluting on these columns were placed on walls and furniture as if you had cut a column facing and unrolled it on a flat or curving surface.

The most extravagant movie sequence with white pianos featured 50 of them being played by 50 elegantly gowned girls on a jet black reflective floor. There was a wall behind them that was all mirror.

They started out in two lines which multiplied them into 100 pianos and they started moving in a willowy line. This was accomplished by a male dancer, all in black, with the bottom of each piano strapped to his back.

As these 50 dancers moved and swiveled, it gave the illusion that the pianos and girls were gliding around the stage in geometric and curved lines. A camera was positioned directly overhead and the result looked like a kaleidoscope view. Cameras at ground level filmed them against the mirror and even followed an individual piano in close-ups.

Another of these spectacles featured white-gowned girls playing white violins with white bows, both outlined in white neon tubes.

Remember, none of this was done with a computer; it took many stops and starts and moving cameras around. The resulting miles of 35mm film were spliced into the correct sequences by an editor who had to keep all the movements synchronized with a musical score.

There were hundreds of dancers kept by the major studios and they were paid $75 a week. A very few, like Betty Grable, Lucille Ball and Marilyn Monroe, went on to feature roles.

These spectacular dancing girl ensembles were preceded by the “Ziegfeld Follies” on Broadway and preceded by the Rockettes of Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Tickets for the Rockettes’ Christmas shows have to be booked at least a year in advance.

The Music Hall’s proscenium of ever-ascending gold half-circles inspired the appellation “Art Deco’s Secular Cathedral.”

Please excuse these rambling words. As in “The Sound of Music,” “These are a few of my favorite things.”