James Basevi

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James Basevi (born June 21, 1890 in Plymouth , England , † March 27, 1962 in Bellflower , California ) was an American production designer and film technician of British origin.

Life

James Basevi was born in 1890 to Ethel Wina (née Gill) and William Henry Basevi in Plymouth, England . After studying architecture and completing his military service in World War I , he emigrated to Canada in 1919 . Five years later he moved to the United States and began his cinematic career as a production designer in Hollywood . At first he worked as an assistant to the film architect Cedric Gibbons , including for King Vidor's silent film The Great Parade (1925), but quickly rose to become art director himself at MGM . In the 1930s he was mainly responsible for special effects, for example in the disaster films San Francisco (1936) and ... then came the hurricane (1937), which revolutionized the genre with innovative trick effects.

In William Wyler's literary adaptation Sturmhöhe (1939) he was again employed as a production designer and received his first Oscar nomination in the category of best production design . In 1941 he moved to 20th Century Fox , where he won the Oscar for The Song of Bernadette in 1944 together with Thomas Little and William S. Darling . In the course of his career he has worked with a number of well-known directors, including Fred Niblo , William Wyler, Henry King , Alfred Hitchcock , Ernst Lubitsch , Elia Kazan and, above all, John Ford . For Hitchcock's Ich kkampf um dich (1945) he designed the dream sequences from Salvador Dalí's designs .

In 1956 Basevi retired from the film business. He died in Bellflower , California in 1962 at the age of 71 .

Filmography (selection)

Production design

Special effects

Awards

Oscar

Best production design

Nominated:

Won:

  • 1944: The Song of Bernadette (with Thomas Little, William S. Darling)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marquis of Ruvigny, Raineval Staff: The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal. Mortimer-Percy Volume . Heritage Books, 2001, ISBN 0-7884-1872-6 , p. 257.
  2. ^ Leonard J. Leff: Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood . University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0-520-21781-0 , p. 141.
personal data
SURNAME Basevi, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American production designer and film technician
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Plymouth , England , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1962
Place of death Bellflower , California , United States