In this day and age of VFX and CGI that transport film audiences anywhere; it is unique to get the opportunity to look back on the original creators of movie magic—the scenic artists that painted the massive, realistic backdrops used in film for most of its 100+ years of history. These master artists—many of them uncredited—created Hollywood’s painted backdrops, the grandest illusions ever created for the movies. They are now getting a major exhibition of their stunning work at The Boca Raton Museum of Art in Southern Florida. This world premiere installation is the first museum show dedicated to Hollywood’s painted backdrops.
Art of the Hollywood Backdrop: Cinema’s Creative Legacy, which runs through January 22, 2023, honors the unsung heroes who created the monumental canvases now on display. These artists were the backbone of the film industry and it is no surpsise that this incredible show has been co-curated by two modern day scenic artists, Thomas A. Walsh and Karen L. Maness. Maness, Assistant Professor of Practice at The University of Texas at Austin, is an artist and scenic artist. Walsh, a leading Production Designer, was President of the Art Director’s Guild when this recovery project started. Both played pivotal roles among a group of passionate Hollywood insiders and artists to salvage and preserve these American treasures. The result in the Museum’s galleries is a magical portal that takes the terms ‘large-scale,’ ‘immersive,’ and ‘virtual reality’ to a whole new level.
Worldwide Vistas
Among the 22 scenic backdrops, made for the movies between 1938 and 1968, are scenes of Mount Rushmore, Ben Hur’s Rome, the Von Trapp Family’s Austrian Alps, and Gene Kelly’s Paris street. The show’s immersive components include interactive video reels created in Hollywood specifically for the exhibition, telling the stories behind each backdrop. Soundscapes related to the original movies have been engineered to surround visitors as they view the scenic vistas. There are also film clips of scenes with the backdrops putting them back in the context of their films.
Explains Irvin Lippman, the executive director of the Boca Raton Museum of Art: “It is miraculous that these historic monumental paintings were not lost forever, as so many Hollywood treasures have disappeared. The concept for this show had its genesis with a CBS Sunday Morning segment that called attention to the campaign to preserve scenic backdrops that had laid rolled up in the basement of MGM’s studios. Lynne Coakley, who leads J.C. Backings Corporation that acquired over 2,000 backdrops from MGM storage in the 1970s, along with Maness and Walsh have played a significant role in preserving this inventory from Hollywood’s golden age. Their vision and partnership with the Boca Raton Museum of Art made this exhibition possible.”
Preserving History
In 2012, The Art Directors Guild Archives, then under the direction of Walsh, launched the Backdrop Recovery Project, a partnership with J.C. Backings. Their goal was to preserve the backings and make them available for study. One of the recipients of this cache of gigantic paintings was Maness at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is an Associate Professor of Practice. She saw the opportunity to use the artifacts as part of a learning laboratory where students could use them for visualization and inspiration to succeed in high-realism scenic painting.
With Walsh and Maness agreeing to be the co-curators of the Art of the Hollywood Backdrop, the Museum project began to take shape. They accepted an invitation to visit the Boca Raton Museum of Art in the fall of 2021, by Lippman. Twenty backdrops, including the famous Mount Rushmore scene from North by Northwest, “…the grandaddy, the Babe Ruth of all Hollywood backdrops,” said Maness. “Especially because it was such a key player in the telling of this story,”—are being loaned by the Texas Performing Arts Hollywood Backdrop Collection at the University of Texas, the most extensive educational collection of Hollywood motion picture backdrops in the world.
In addition, a 1952 backdrop for Singin’ in the Rain and the tapestry backdrop for Marie Antoinette (1938) are on loan from the Motion Picture Academy in Los Angeles. Donald O’Connor danced his brilliant comic performance of “Make’ Em Laugh” in front of the backdrop from Singin’ in the Rain. Interestingly, the Singin’ in the Rain hallway backdrop was originally painted as a hallway in the Pentagon for the 1947 MGM film, The Beginning of the End, starring Brian Donlevy and Robert Walker. The 1938 tapestry backdrop from Marie Antoinette was reused in the North by Northwest auction house scene. Both instances were a relatively common practice in the film and television industry of the time.
Preserving the Artists Stories
Some of these artists came from a family tradition of the craft, with lineages spanning three generations of painters. The craft stayed within the family. Most were trained as professional artists, yet they remained uncredited, sometimes because of union agreements, and mainly because the studios wanted to keep a firm grip on the secret techniques that were handed down from master to apprentice on the backlots. The physicality of painting across these giant canvases was often overwhelmingly difficult.
“This has become my passion project, to tell their stories. I will be their champion in this lifetime,” said Maness. “Historically, as a woman I would have never been allowed to work alongside them in that era. As a teacher, they have now become my masters. When you choose your mentors as ghosts, they can’t say no.” As a part of her work, she also conducted extensive oral history interviews with the last surviving artists, their family members, and their acolytes, to record and preserve their previously unacknowledged histories. “It was essential to capture these artist’s stories before they disappeared,” adds Maness.
These creations were painted for the camera lens itself, not for the human eye. It is a very impressionistic style of painting—not really photo-realism, but it snaps together as photo-realistic when viewed from a distance. Up close they look totally different. When visitors to the Museum take selfies with their phone cameras, the resulting image will look very different from what they see in person in the gallery. This unique concept of “photo-realism for the camera” was spearheaded by George Gibson, he took scenic art to an entirely new level of artistry. In the hey-day of MGM, they had three shifts of scenic artists working day and night, non-stop.
“This show is about the joy of re-living something you grew up with, that you always thought was real,” said Walsh. “It’s about getting as close to that magical moment in time as you can. Being in the same space with that giant, familiar scene. It is difficult for people to get their minds around the awesome size of these magical spaces, until they see them in person. People are often shocked and surprised by the scale and visual impact of these massive creations. These are literally some of the largest paintings ever created in the world, similar to cyclorama paintings. Aside from the technicians working in the soundstages, no one else has set eyes upon this collection. This is the first time the public can see this collection in person,” adds Walsh.
“Credit went to everyone in these classic films except the scenic artists who made these cinematic moments possible by creating the backdrops,” notes Lippman. “The heroic efforts by these preservationists to recover the singular artistic knowledge of these masters is the heartbeat that underlies this exhibition at our museum. Hollywood’s most closely guarded creative secrets can finally be revealed through this never-before-seen exhibition that we are proud to debut here in South Florida.”
Learning from the Masters
The show also features an Education Gallery created especially for this exhibition, showcasing historic tools of the trade used by these artists in Hollywood. One of the most memorable experiences for visitors will be the opportunity to see up close the actual brushstrokes and dynamic hand-painted techniques that were used by these artists, to create the necessary effects they developed for the camera lens.
“In this form of painting, the deadlines and physicality required speed and confidence. The canvas was attacked with wild abandon, not courted,” said Walsh. “Their unique industrial techniques permitted them to be Norman Rockwell at one moment, and then Turner, Rembrandt, or Vermeer at another. As artists, they made motion picture artworks—whether with brush, roller and sponge, spray guns and Hudson tanks, brooms, or just sheer tactile-aggression—on a massive Ford [Motor]‘s River Rouge type of industrial scale and output schedule.”
“Bold, efficient brushstrokes pull forms into a loose realism that breathes with the energy of the artists who laid the marks on the canvas,” comments Maness. “These monumental witnesses to cinematic history vibrate with impressionistic optical blending techniques, applied with pneumatic guns, to deliver fine points of color that pull together and hold up as realism for the camera’s eye,” adds Maness.
Perhaps Leonard Maltin, the renowned film critic, historian, and author puts it best, “This exhibition of movie backdrops is not to be missed. These monumental paintings were essential to moviemaking for almost a century and were never meant to be seen by the public with the naked eye. Having this rare opportunity to experience these American masterpieces up close is long overdue.”
Further information about Art of the Hollywood Backdrop: Cinema’s Creative Legacy showing at the Boca Raton Museum of Art is available at https://bocamuseum.org
