Hans Dreier

Biography

The extraordinarily prolific and eclectic art director Hans Dreier studied at Munich University where he majored in engineering and architecture. Following military service during the First World War, he spent time working as a supervising architect in the Cameroons and South Africa. Between 1919 and 1923, he was employed by Germany's pre-eminent film company Ufa as an assistant designer. Along with Ernst Lubitsch and other talented compatriots seeking more lucrative opportunities within the emerging film industry, Dreier left Europe in the early 1920s and was recruited by Hollywood. Most of his lengthy tenure at Paramount (1923-50) was spent as supervising art director. In that capacity, he became as influential at determining the overall style of the studio's output as his counterpart Cedric Gibbons at MGM. The Paramount 'look' during the 20's and early 30's epitomised continental elegance and sophistication. Unlike Gibbons, Dreier was far less autocratic and gave the production designers he recruited (among them Albert S. D'Agostino and Roland Anderson) carte blanche to stamp their own distinctive authority on their work. In turn, this laissez-faire approach attracted more and more talented designers to Paramount. Dreier himself took personal charge of all films made by Lubitsch and Josef von Sternberg between 1927 and 1932. His innate perception of space, combined with his expressionist leanings, proved eminently well-suited to the sombre, moody and heavily stylised films of von Sternberg. The Docks of New York (1928), Shanghai Express (1932) and The Scarlet Empress (1934) are among the most visually evocative examples of Dreier's use of light and dark effects, of chiaroscuro and fog. In later years, his most rewarding collaborations were with Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges. Among Dreier's impressive list of credits -- either working on his own or in collaboration -- are many of Paramount's most enduring films, encompassing nearly every genre: from horror to romance, from epic spectacle to period drama, from musical to films noir: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Island of Lost Souls (1932), Trouble in Paradise (1932), Duck Soup (1933), Cleopatra (1934), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935),The Buccaneer (1938), Sullivan's Travels (1941), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), The Fleet's In (1942), This Gun for Hire (1942) and Double Indemnity (1944). Dreier retired in 1950 and was replaced as supervising art director by Hal Pereira. During his career he was nominated for twenty Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, winning on three occasions. He received his first Oscar for the costume drama Frenchman's Creek (1944). In 1950 he scored a double: one for the biblical technicolor epic Samson and Delilah (1949) and a second for his work on Billy Wilder's black & white masterpiece Sunset Boulevard (1950). He was inducted into the Art Director's Hall of Fame in 2005.