Robert F. Boyle
Robert F. Boyle | |
---|---|
Born | Robert Francis Boyle October 10, 1909 |
Died | August 1, 2010 Los Angeles, California, U.S. | (aged 100)
Occupation(s) | Art director, production designer |
Years active | 1933–2010 |
Spouse | Bess Taffel |
Robert Francis Boyle (October 10, 1909 – August 1, 2010)
Boyle is also known for his work on
Early life
Born in
Career
In 1933 he was hired as a draftsman in the
Boyle collaborated several times with Alfred Hitchcock, first as an associate art director for Saboteur (1942) and later as a full-fledged production designer for North by Northwest (1959), The Birds (1963), and Marnie (1964). Denied permission to shoot footage on Mount Rushmore, Hitchcock turned to Boyle to create realistic replicas of the stone heads.
Boyle abseiled down the monument, photographing its contours in detail, before constructing "just enough to put the actors on so we could get down shots, up shots, side shots, whatever we needed." Almost two decades earlier, Boyle had delivered the Statue of Liberty reproduction that was used in the climactic scene of Saboteur. For The Birds, Boyle was put in charge of the title characters. He later recalled, "We needed to find out which birds we could use best, and finally settled on two types: sea gulls, which were very greedy beasts that would always fly toward the camera if there was a piece of meat, and crows, which had a strange sort of intelligence." Boyle described his relationship with Hitchcock: "It was a meeting of equals: the director who knew exactly what he wanted, and the art director who knew how to get it done."[2]
When director
Boyle's other credits include .
During the course of his career, Boyle was nominated four times for the
At the age of 98, Boyle became the oldest winner ever of an Honorary Award in the history of the Academy Awards.[citation needed] In ill health and arriving to the ceremony in a wheelchair, Boyle insisted on walking onstage, alongside Nicole Kidman, to receive the honor. He was the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary short The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000).[citation needed]
Personal life and death
Boyle's wife, Bess Taffel, whose career began in the Yiddish theatre, was a Hollywood blacklistee, whose film career ended in 1951 after she was "named" by Leo Townsend, although her husband's career was apparently unharmed. They lived in a house that Bob designed and built in The Hollywood Hills, for their entire marriage.
Unable to have children of their own, they adopted two girls; Emily Rebecca Boyle, in 1956 and Susan Anne Boyle (Licon) in 1959. He also worked at the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Study program in Los Angeles as the Production Design instructor.
A widower since 2000, Boyle died on August 1, 2010, in Los Angeles due to natural causes.[5]
Awards and nominations
Year | Association | Category | Project | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1959 | Academy Awards | Best Production Design | North by Northwest | Nominated | |
1969 | Gaily, Gaily | Nominated | |||
1971 | Fiddler on the Roof | Nominated | |||
1976 | The Shootist | Nominated | |||
2007 | Honorary Academy Award | Honored | |||
1973 | Primetime Emmy Award |
Outstanding Art Direction for a Single-Camera Series | The Red Pony | Nominated |
See also
References
- New York Times. Retrieved August 3, 2010.
- ^ The Economist, "Robert Boyle", 19 August 2010; retrieved August 31, 2010.
- ^ "Robert Boyle obituary". The Daily Telegraph. London, UK. August 25, 2010.
- ^ Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences press release Archived 2007-12-21 at the Wayback Machine, ampas.org, December 12, 2007.
- ^ "Iconic Art Director Robert F. Boyle Dies: Alfred Hitchcock, Norman Jewison Collaborator". Retrieved December 27, 2016.
External links
- Robert F. Boyle at IMDb
- Robert Boyle papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences