Cedric Gibbons

Born: 23 March 1893, Dublin, Ireland
Died: 26 July 1960, Los Angeles, Calafornia, USA

Austin Cedric Gibbons is yet another Irishman who had a huge impact on the development of early film and although his name is not easily recognisable to most, his place in the annals of film history is secured. Born in Dublin in 1893, Gibbons emigrated to America with his family at the turn of the century. He trained as an architect but soon found that his passion lay in set design.
He joined Edison Studios in 1915 before leaving to join Samuel Goldwyn three years later. He was heavily influenced by art deco, a style he had encountered when he travelled to Paris for the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes and this would be reflected in a lot of his set designs. He stayed with Goldwyn when the company was amalgamated with Metro and Mayer to become M.G.M. When the new company were looking for a logo it was decided to base it on the old Goldwyn logo of a lion. Gibbons suggest that they use a lion, Cairbre, which was born in Dublin zoo. The lion, renamed Slats, was used on M.G.M films from 1924-1928 - a case of one Dub looking after another!
Gibbons continued in his role as art director - his style was to replace false backdrops (popular in the preceding decades) with real, well lit, substantial sets. His designs are credited in influencing the way film theatres were built at that time. He reached an agreement with M.G.M. that he be named head art director on all of its films during his tenure. By the time he retired in 1956 he had been credited with over 1000 films, although it is thought that he actually worked on approximately 150 of them.
When the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences was set up there were 36 founding members, including Louis B Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Cecil B de Mille, Harold Lloyd and Cedric Gibbons. Gibbons was asked to design an award that the Academy could bestow and he designed what is now known as the Oscar - an art deco style knight, with a large sword, standing on a film reel. Gibbons would become quite familiar with the statuette and over his career he was nominated 39 times and won the award 11 times, a personal tally that has only ever been surpassed by one individual - Walt Disney!
His movie credits include The Wizard of Oz (1939), National Velvet (1944), An American in Paris (1951), Quo Vadis (1951) and Singin' in the Rain (1952). Gibbons even tried his hand at directing, when in 1934, he directed Johnny Weissmuller and Roscommon born Maureen O'Sullivan in "Tarzan and his Mate".
Outside of the film industry, Gibbons put his architectural training to good use when he designed a 2 story villa in Santa Monica for himself and his wife, film star Dolores del Rio. Gibbons died in 1960 and was inducted into the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame in 2006.