ADG Film Society Presents GRAND HOTEL Screening Honoring MGM Legendary Art Director Cedric Gibbons

GRAND HOTEL (1932) will launch the Art Directors Guild (ADG) Film Society's 2018 screening series with a spotlight on CEDRIC GIBBONS, MGM'S Legendary Oscar®-winning Supervising Art Director with a record 11 Academy Awards® and 38 nominations, at the Aero Theatre on Sunday, April 22. Gibbons legendary film honors include Singin' In The Rain (1952), An American In Paris(1951), Pride And Prejudice (1940), The Wizard of Oz (1939) and The Great Ziegfeld (1936). He designed the iconic gold Oscar statuette and influenced the architecture of the majestic movie palaces. The annual 2018 Screening Series "Production Design: Designers On Design,"highlighting the work of renowned Production Designers and their creative collaborations, is in association with American Cinematheque and sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter.

Production Designer and Film Society co-chair THOMAS A. WALSH ADG will moderate a discussion following the screening with MARIA COOPER JANIS, Cedric Gibbon's great-niece and daughter of legendary actor Gary Cooper. They will explore the legacy of Gibbons' work and spotlight in the Golden Age of Hollywood socialites.

"Gibbons was clearly the most influential Supervising Art Director of Hollywood's Golden Age," said Walsh. "It was a time where the studio dream factories created a luxurious world of make-believe, a place where people dined on caviar, dressed in tuxedos and danced the night away on luxury liners. Lavish sets were the apertures through which audiences could glimpse for a few hours a life they otherwise only dreamed about."

Regarded by those who knew him best as the "Mercury of Hollywood," Gibbons was the design trendsetter, most responsible for bringing glamour and sophistication with a touch of surrealism to Depression-era audiences. His four-decade tenure as Supervising Art Director at MGM from 1924-1956 saw his stamp of approval on a record 1,500 films. Director Vincente Minnelli described Cedric Gibbons as "the grand cardinal of the art department." Dark and handsome, he was an arbiter of taste and fashion and his career was closely followed in the 1930s by gossip columnists, particularly when he was married to actress and socialite Dolores Del Rio. Capturing the essence of Hollywood glamour, his life was as celestial as the many film stars who frequented his weekend pool parties including Greta Garbo, Clark Gable and Johnny Weissmuller.

GRAND HOTEL, with its many stars, takes place at a luxurious Berlin hotel between the wars where the once-wealthy (John Barrymore) supports himself as a thief and gambler. In this lavish adaptation of the successful Broadway play, the baron romances one of his marks, the aging ballerina (Greta Garbo), and teams with dying accountant (Lionel Barrymore) against his former boss, crooked industrialist (Wallace Beery), and his ambitious stenographer, (Joan Crawford). Cedric Gibbons' stunning Art Deco art direction gives the players an opulent setting for their personal melodramas.

Accompanying Grand Hotel will be a short tribute film narrated by MARIA COOPER JANIS, consisting of archival photographs, footage, home movies, and many iconic film clips. This rags-to-riches story will take the viewer from Gibbons' early days in Brooklyn as a troubled youth, to his early career at Edison Studios, his arrival in Hollywood, his fairy tale charmed existence and his experiences with the end of the studio system in the late fifties. This short will depict the range of Gibbons extraordinary work and his enduring contributions to design and Art Deco in cinema.

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