Harry Horner

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Harry Horner (born July 24, 1910 in Holitz , Austria-Hungary ; † December 5, 1994 in Pacific Palisades , Los Angeles ) was an Austrian stage and production designer , but exercised other occupations in the film business in the course of his career. He also worked as an art director , director and producer . As a production designer, he won two Academy Awards .

Harry Horner was married twice. Of his three sons James, Christopher and Antony, James also had a successful Hollywood career as a film composer with two Academy Awards and seven other Oscar nominations.

Live and act

Harry Horner grew up in Vienna , where he took the state examination for architecture at the technical university with the well-known architect and set designer Oskar Strnad . It was also Strnad who introduced Horner to Max Reinhardt and advised him to go to the theater instead of architecture. Horner therefore continued his studies at the Max Reinhardt Seminar , where he took further lessons as a set designer. However, he had to register as a directing student, as stage design was not available as a major. However, Reinhardt also recognized Horner's acting talent, so that he helped him get an engagement at the Theater in der Josefstadt with Otto Preminger in 1934 and at the Salzburg Festival in 1935 . For the 1935/36 season he accompanied Max Reinhardt to New York as a set designer for "The Eternal Road" . Until the annexation of Austria, he commuted between New York and Salzburg, where in the summer of 1937 he worked as a set designer at the last Austrian Salzburg Festival before the Nazi era .

Horner was able to stay in the USA because he found employment with New York theaters and musicals and was engaged by the Metropolitan Opera in 1938 . There he equipped the stages for Lee Strasberg's “All the Living” as well as Sydney Kingsley's and Ben Hecht's “Jeremiah” and “Lily of the Valley” and also designed the costumes for operas at the Metropolitan Opera and the San Francisco Opera Company.

Horner's stage decoration style was a realism reduced to theatrical effects, tailored to the respective stage play. He thus distanced himself from both impressionistic and expressionistic tendencies of his time in Vienna and Salzburg.

In 1940 Horner also got a film engagement for the first time - in Hollywood . There he was only able to implement his style of strongly symbolized realism to a limited extent. Nevertheless, he was able to simplify the realistic set of scenes that dominated Hollywood at the time by arranging the decorations and objects in such a way that attention was drawn to the dramaturgically essential elements in a scene. Horner created a kind of compromise between a naturalistic and a symbolic design, with which he could assert himself in Hollywood. Horner worked almost exclusively with the most important Hollywood directors of the time, who mostly allowed him considerable freedom in setting the scene. As a “Production Designer” and “Art Director” he even convinced Sydney Pollack to work for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Only horses are given the coup de grace) to have most of the exterior shots of a scene playing on Santa Catalina Island filmed in the studio with the appropriate scenery. Granting Horner so much decision-making authority proved to be beneficial for the entire production not only in this film, as he received two Oscar awards in addition to an Oscar nomination for this film.

In the 1940s, Horner was also active in musicals in New York between his film work: for example " Lady in the Dark " with Gertrude Lawrence , "Let's Face It" with Danny Kaye , "Star and Garter" with Gypsy Rose Lee and "Banjo Eyes" with Eddie Cantor . In 1941 he let himself be used by the Air Force for entertainment, made training films and designed the AAF show " Winged Victory " , which was later filmed .

From 1940 Harry Horner was able to realize his wish to direct, initially at the theater. In the following decades he staged on various stages in Canada and the USA. For example "Joan at the Stake", "Salome", "The Flying Dutchman" and "Turandot" at the San Francisco Opera , the musical version of "Tovaritch" at the New York City Center , " The Magic Flute " at the Metropolitan Opera and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Vancouver . In 1952 Horner also directed a film for the first time, but although his films mostly had big stars like Anthony Quinn , Ida Lupino , Anne Bancroft and Lee Marvin , he never achieved such great success as as a set designer or production designer .

From the 1950s onwards, working in the cinema was also joined by television activities. A little more successfully than in film directing, he was able to direct shows for the DuPont Theater and NBC as well as several episodes of the television series and anthologies Curtain Call , Reader's Digest , On Trial , Schlitz Playhouse and Shirley Temple's Storybook . As a producer, he created the series Royal Canadian Mounted Police for Canadian television in 1959 .

In 1980, Horner retired and retired to his Santa Monica home near Will Rogers State Park. He died on 5 December 1994 at a pneumonia .

Filmography (selection)

Films in which Harry Horner worked as production designer, unless otherwise stated:

Cinemamovies:

  • 1940: Our Town (production design with William Cameron Menzies )
  • 1941: The Little Foxes (Direction: William Wyler )
  • 1942: Tarzan and the Nazis (Director: Wilhelm Thiele )
  • 1943: Stage Door Canteen
  • 1944: Winged Victory (Director: George Cukor )
  • 1947: Double Life
  • 1949: The Heiress The Heiress (as art director )
  • 1950: Tarzan and the slave girl (as production designer)
  • 1950: Outrage
  • 1951: He Ran All the Way (Art Director)
  • 1951: Born Yesterday ( Born Yesterday ) (Art Director)
  • 1952: Beware My Lovely (Director)
  • 1952: Red Planet Mars (Director)
  • 1952: Androcles and the Lion
  • 1952: The Marrying Kid (assistant director)
  • 1953: Vicki (director)
  • 1954: New Faces (Director)
  • 1955: Life in the Balance (Director)
  • 1956: The Man from Del Rio (Director)
  • 1956: Wild Party (Director)
  • 1958: Separate from table and bed ( Separate Tables ) (also Associate Producer; not mentioned)
  • 1959: Wonderful Country (Art Director)
  • 1961: The Hustler (set designer and art director)
  • 1964: The Luck of Ginger Coffey
  • 1969: Only horses are given the coup de grace ( They Shoot Horses, Don't They? )
  • 1971: Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?
  • 1972: Up the Sandbox
  • 1975: Black Bird
  • 1976: Harry and Walter Go to New York
  • 1976: Flight on the Dancing Bear (Associate Producer and Set Designer; Director: Ken Annakin ; Film was not completed)
  • 1977: Audrey Rose
  • 1978: The Driver
  • 1978: moment by moment
  • 1980: The Jazz Singer

TV series, as a director of individual episodes:

  • 1953: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Presents (various episodes)
  • 1954: Omnibus (2 episodes)
  • 1954 and 1957: DuPont Theater / Cavalcade of America (2 episodes)
  • 1955: Four Star Playhouse (1 episode)
  • 1955–1956: TV Reader's Digest (6 episodes)
  • 1956: Gun Smoke (1 episode)
  • 1958: Shirley Temple's Storybook (2 episodes)
  • 1959: World of Giants (2 episodes)
  • 1959: Royal Canadian Mounted Police (producer and director)

Awards

literature

  • Rudolf Ulrich: Austrians in Hollywood. First edition, Edition S, Vienna 1993, ISBN 3-901932-29-1 , pp. 110–112

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Horner, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian scene and stage designer
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Holitz , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 5th December 1994
Place of death Pacific Palisades , Los Angeles