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QztfiCjt James ^d^cim
SET DECORATOR ACADEMY AWARD WINNER
^ 1951
GEORGE JAMES HOPKINS has had a long and successful career in both theatrical ( and motion picture fields.
Originally a Scenic Designer for Florenz Ziegfield and the Shuberts in N.Y. City, his local efforts began with the Oliver Morosco Productions at the Old Mason Opera House. Morosco, being a partner in the Realart Film Studio, initiated Hopkins as an Art Director in the silent films where he made a reputation for himself with directors Wm. Desmond Taylor and George Fitzmaurice at the Famous Players Lasky Studios, at Sunset and Vine, in 1920-'21 .
Hopkins has been associated with A. C. "Whitey" Wilson, Head of the Property Department at Warner Brothers Studio since 1936.
Ed.
From that day in 1917, when I first entered a motion picture studio on the old Realart lot, to the night when Academy Awards were given to Richard Day and myself for Art Direction in “A Streetcar Named Desire," over a quarter of a century has passed; a period of 35 years during which an amazing change in American architecture and decoration has occurred. This change has been influenced in no small measure by what the people of America have seen on the motion picture screens of the nation.
At the time of my first studio experience, most sets were being con
structed out of painted canvas in simulation of legitimate theatre stage sets. No one had ever heard of a set decorator; prop men scraped together what furniture they could lay their hands on, and stuck it in front of the painted walls.
Strangely, a designer of legitimate stage settings, Wilfred Buckland, was the first to build architectural settings in Hollywood. Buckland, who had been David Belasco's scenic designer, had been brought to the coast as the first "Art Director" for Famous Players Lasky, then functioning in an old barn on Vine Street. Realart was a subsidiary of
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