Best Art Direction, 1944

Awards presented March 15, 1945
The nominees were ...
(Black-and-White) 
(Color) 
... when they should have been ... 
(Color) 
And the Oscar went to ... 
(Black-and-White) 
Gaslight. Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, William Ferrari; Interior Decoration: Edwin B. Willis, Paul Huldschinsky. 

Ingrid Bergman, being gaslighted in Gaslight
A suave psychopath (Charles Boyer) tries to persuade his young wife (Ingrid Bergman) that she's going mad in this remake of a superior British film, released in 1940, which MGM tried to suppress when it released this version. The gloomy Victorian sets add much to the atmosphere of menace. Gibbons and Willis, as heads  of their respective departments, were routinely and frequently nominated, and much of the credit for the look of the film probably belongs to Ferrari and Huldschinsky. This was the sole Oscar for Ferrari, who would later be nominated for How the West Was Won. It was also the only Oscar for Huldschinsky, whose career at MGM was brief -- he died in 1947. It's interesting to compare his work on Gaslight to his work on Meet Me in St. Louis, released the same year. Both have Victorian/Edwardian settings, but where the ones in Gaslight are sinister and creepy, the ones in Meet Me in St. Louis radiate coziness and warmth.  

(Color)
Wilson. Art Direction: Wiard Ihnen; Interior Decoration: Thomas Little. 

This was the first of two consecutive Oscars for Ihnen, who had begun his career as an art director in 1919 at Famous Players-Lasky, the forerunner of Paramount. He was married to costume designer Edith Head. It was the fifth Oscar win for Little, who had won in four consecutive years. He would skip a year, and then win one more time. 

... when it should have gone to ... 
(Color) 

The art direction Oscar was still very much under the control of the studios for the 1944 awards, which meant that each studio could and did supply the nominees. Sometimes this got a bit absurd: Universal's nomination for color art direction was The Climax, which was not only something of a rip-off of the story line of The Phantom of the Opera -- a madman has a young soprano (played in both films by Susanna Foster) under his spell -- but also used the same sets that were used for that film, and which had won the 1943 art direction Oscar. But how to explain MGM's choice of nominee: Kismet, a kitschy treatment of an old warhorse of a play that seems more suitable for Universal's Jon Hall-Maria Montez series than for a glossy MGM treatment with Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich? The answer may be that the Kismet sets look an awful lot like a previous art direction winner, The Thief of Bagdad. But were they really better than the sumptuous sets for the Smith family home in Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis? No. It may also be that MGM (meaning art department head Cedric Gibbons) thought that nominating one movie with Victorian sets, Gaslight, was enough. As far as set decorator Paul Huldschinsky was concerned, it was: He won an Oscar -- his only one, and his only nomination -- for Gaslight. This was one of the first films on which designer Jack Martin Smith worked at MGM. He would go on to design sets for other musicals produced by the Freed unit, and would win three Oscars. 

The Smith home, winter
The Smith home, summer. The "St. Louis" house stood on the MGM lot until the late 1960s, when the studio's property, sets, costumes, everything, was sold. 
Above, Minnelli shows Judy Garland how to snuff the gaslight chandelier. Below, Tom Drake does the task in the film.

Mary Astor and Margaret O'Brien in Tootie's bedroom
Garland descends the stairs

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