Ken Adam: Divine by Design

It was thanks to Ken Adam that I got to hold an Oscar in my hands, and exclaim (as everyone does), “It’s so heavy!” Adam, who passed away on March 10 at the age of 95, is best known as the production designer for many of the early James Bond films, as well as for the bravura sets of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. He loved dreaming up fantastic lairs for bad guys (like Goldfinger’s creepy hideout in Fort Knox), explaining to an interviewer that “to me, designing the villains’ bases was a combination of tongue-in-cheek and showing the power of these megalomaniacs.” None other than Steven Spielberg once told him that his sleek and sinister War Room for Dr. Strangelove was “the best set that's ever been designed.” 

Slightly later in his career, Adam turned down the chance to work with Kubrick again on 2001. But they were to reunite for Barry Lyndon. For that film, Adam’s re-creation of the eighteenth-century English countryside, full of manor houses with elegant drawing-rooms, won him his first Oscar in 1975. (That’s the one that sat on his mantelpiece when I visited his home in Santa Monica Canyon.) He ultimately won a second golden statuette for 1994’s The Madness of King George.  

The reason I got to meet Adam was because I had been assigned to write a magazine piece on a bold cinematic experiment called Pennies from Heaven. This 1981 film, directed by Herbert Ross and starring Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, and Christopher Walken, was based on a British television series. It tells the bittersweet story of a dreamy sheet music salesman in Depression-era Chicago whose fantasies of love and fortune turn into full-blown musical numbers. This blending of realism and make-believe, combined with the opportunity to make the first film musical  in twenty-five years on the fabled MGM lot, drew in such talents as cinematographer Gordon Willis (The Godfather) and costume designer Bob Mackie, making his move away from television. Adam himself was billed as the film’s “visual consultant,” and had much to say about the way it should look.

In the original BBC series the shift from reality to fantasy had an amateurish look that was part of its charm. But Adam insisted that this would never be acceptable in an MGM musical. That’s why the design team worked toward total authenticity in the realistic scenes and a lavish sense of completeness in the let’s-pretend sequences. Major sets included a working diner (modeled after Edward Hopper’s famous painting, “Nighthawks”), a bar room, a flop house, a country schoolroom—in which all desks suddenly convert into miniature grand pianos—and the replica of a swank dance floor (costing $40,000) from an Astaire-Rogers duet. One of MGM’s largest soundstages because a white marble bank lobby 50 feet high, while another was transformed into a nearly full-scale reincarnation of the Chicago Loop.

When I met Adam, I did not at first realize that by birth he was not British but German. Much like director Mike Nichols he’d been born in Berlin, but was forced to flee the Nazis at an early age, relocating in London with his family. During World War II, he courageously joined the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot. After some years in California, he returned to England to live, ultimately being knighted for his service to queen and country, the first production designer so honored. Having made his peace with post-war Germany, he in 2012 handed over his entire archive to the Deutsche Kinemathek, a gracious gesture from a most gracious man.. 

Curtain Going Down on Hollywood’s Stages

It’s curtains for some historic Hollywood soundstages. L.A. has been abuzz with the news that a West Hollywood movie lot dating back to 1919 is about to undergo extensive renovations. Slated for immediate demolition at the former Warner Hollywood Studio are some venerable wooden office buildings and sound-dubbing stages erected in the time of Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. In their place will rise glass and steel structures that are far more efficient, though far less picturesque. Such is life in the movie capital of the world.

I’ve spent some time at this particular Hollywood outpost. Known first as Pickford-Fairbanks Studio, it went through a variety of names (United Artists Studio, Samuel Goldwyn Studio) before being unimaginatively rechristened “The Lot.” I was there strictly for meetings, and caught no glimpse of the excesses of the old days, when Errol Flynn would legendarily sneak through a secret tunnel to have a drink at the intriguingly tawdry and only vaguely Chinese Formosa Café across the street.

Of course I came on the scene too late to truly experience the years when a movie lot was a small city populated by actors walking around in outlandish get-ups. When I was growing up, 20th Century-Fox’s huge New York Street (erected for Hello, Dolly) could be easily glimpsed from busy Pico Blvd., less than a mile from my home. And I got a whiff of the old studio era while writing a magazine piece about the making of a rather bold experiment, 1982’s Pennies from Heaven. This musical about a Depression-era Chicago sheet-music salesman who retreats into the fantasy world of pop tunes was staged in the old style, on richly detailed sets constructed inside several of MGM’s fabled soundstages. As I wandered across the lot, passing peroxided chorines on their way to lunch in the commissary, I felt I had traveled back in time. Too bad Pennies from Heaven cost (and lost) a small fortune.

Roger Corman once had a studio too. The overwhelming success of Star Wars (1977) convinced Roger that he should try an outer space epic, Battle Beyond the Stars. Prior to 1980, Corman movies had always been shot on practical locations, rather than on sound stages. It was with science fiction in mind that he set about buying the old lumber yard that became his Venice, California studio facility, sending attorney Paul Almond to negotiate with the ageing hippies of the California Coastal Commission who would need to give their approval of the sale. Paul’s hilarious description of the outcome is a highlight of my Corman biography. (See Excerpt #2)

Roger’s ramshackle studio proved unforgettable to those of us who spent time there. The stages were never properly soundproofed, and because the studio was directly in the flight path for L.A. International Airport, it was a challenge, when shooting a period piece, to avoid the sounds of jets and motorcycles. Ambulances too, because in this slightly unsavory neighborhoods there was sometimes real shooting going on. When it rained, the roof leaked. And Venice derelicts were apt to wander in, along with baffled customers who –- seeing the still-existing Hammond Lumber sign –- came by to purchase some 2x4s.

The late writer-director Howard R. Cohen told me that he and Roger once happened to be standing amid piles of scrap material when one of those lumber-seeking do-it-yourselfers drove onto the lot. Explaining that the lumber yard was now a movie studio, Roger sent him on his way. But then he had second thoughts, quipping to Howard, “You know, I could have made a few bucks off that guy.”

Steve Martin, who starred in Pennies from Heaven, is of course a comedian, actor, author, playwright, and master banjo-player. He's paying tribute today to the late Earl Scruggs, and I join him in mourning the loss of a great bluegrass legend.