As per our current Database, William Cameron Menzies has been died on 5 March, 1957 at Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
When William Cameron Menzies die, William Cameron Menzies was 61 years old.
| Popular As | William Cameron Menzies |
| Occupation | Art Director |
| Age | 61 years old |
| Zodiac Sign | Leo |
| Born | July 29, 1896 (New Haven, Connecticut, USA) |
| Birthday | July 29 |
| Town/City | New Haven, Connecticut, USA |
| Nationality | USA |
William Cameron Menzies’s zodiac sign is Leo. According to astrologers, people born under the sign of Leo are natural born leaders. They are dramatic, creative, self-confident, dominant and extremely difficult to resist, able to achieve anything they want to in any area of life they commit to. There is a specific strength to a Leo and their "king of the jungle" status. Leo often has many friends for they are generous and loyal. Self-confident and attractive, this is a Sun sign capable of uniting different groups of people and leading them as one towards a shared cause, and their healthy sense of humor makes collaboration with other people even easier.
William Cameron Menzies was born in the Year of the Monkey. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Monkey thrive on having fun. They’re energetic, upbeat, and good at listening but lack self-control. They like being active and stimulated and enjoy pleasing self before pleasing others. They’re heart-breakers, not good at long-term relationships, morals are weak. Compatible with Rat or Dragon.
William Cameron Menzies was educated at Yale University, the University of Edinburgh and at the Art Students League in New York. He entered the film industry in 1919, after serving with the U.S. Expeditionary Forces in World War I.
His initial assignments were in film design and special effects, as assistant to Anton Grot at Famous Players-Lasky. Menzies drew inspiration from German Expressionism and from the work of D.W. Griffith.
His sense of visual style was quickly recognised and he was promoted to full art director after only three years. At United Artists (1923-30, 1935-40) and Fox (1931-33), he eventually designed for stars like Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.
He worked for all three of the major independent producers: Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick and Walter Wanger. Menzies also had the singular distinction of receiving the first-ever Oscar for art direction (for The Dove (1927)).
His flamboyant and exotic fairy-tale sets for The Thief of Bagdad (1924) are regarded to this day as a work of pure genius. From the beginning of the sound era, Menzies also got involved in directing and producing.
During the 1940's, he worked frequently with the director Sam Wood, whose films he improved dramatically through his designs. Over time, Menzies acquired a well-earned reputation for his larger-then-life personality, his visual flair and love of adventure and fantasy in films.
He defined and solidified the role of the art director as having overall control over the look of the finished motion picture. He was a tireless innovator, who meticulously pre-planned the color and design of each film through a series of continuity sketches that outlined camera angles, lighting and the position of actors in each scene.
For Gone with the Wind (1939), he and J. McMillan Johnson drew some 2000 detailed watercolor sketches. An historian, Wilbur G. Kurtz, was employed on the project to provide additional accuracy of period detail.
Menzies himself directed the famous burning of Atlanta sequence and hospital sequence, including the famous long shot of wounded and dying Confederate soldiers, taken from a 90-foot crane.A consummate designer of film architecture on a grand scale, Menzies was rather less effective as a director, consistently displaying an inability to draw strong performances from his cast.
As a result, others were often brought in as co-directors, forcing Menzies to share the credit. In the 1950's, he helmed several low-budget films, which stand out purely for their characteristically good visuals, as, for example, Invaders from Mars (1953).
Menzies was inducted into the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame in 2005.
