Cedric Gibbons - Academy Awards®

Film art director, born in Dublin, Ireland, the husband of Dolores Del Rio. The most celebrated and influential art director in the history of Hollywood, he worked for Edison (1915–17), Goldwyn (1918–23), and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (from 1924). He designed the Academy Award statuette and received it himself 11 times, from The Merry Widow (1934) to Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).

Los Angeles, California, July 26, 1960), American art director

Gibbons is arguably the most important and influential art director in the history of American film.

He studied at the Art Students League in New York and worked for his architect father. In her later years, Brooks was active as a photographer and patron of children's charities.)

Cedric Gibbons was a poseur in that he fostered MGM's incorrect publicity claim that he was born in Dublin, Ireland, since it seemed more respectable than Brooklyn, and provided his birth year as 1893. The self-aggrandising letters further claimed that Gibbons was "the first to bring modern architecture to the screen" (a memo dated 23 March 23, 1935, Special Collections, American Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, MGM Art Department/Publicity, folder 44).

Gibbons was one of the original 36 founding members of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and oversaw the design of the Academy Awards® Oscar® statue in 1929, a trophy for which he himself would be nominated 39 times, winning 11—second only to Walt Disney, who won 26. This number is misleading, however, because his contract with MGM dictated that he receive credit as the art director for every MGM film released in the United States, even though other designers—even those who may have been more talented—did the bulk or all of the work.

Gibbons's set designs, particularly those in such films as Born to Dance (1936) and Rosalie (1937), heavily inspired motion picture theater architecture in the late 1930s through 1950s. The style is sometimes referred to as Art Deco and Art Moderne.

Gibbons's grave is in the Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles.

Academy Awards®

Wins for Art Direction

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929) The Merry Widow (1934) Pride and Prejudice (1940) Blossoms in the Dust (1941) Gaslight (1944) The Yearling (1946) Little Women (1949) An American in Paris (1951) The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) Julius Caesar (1953) Somebody Up There Likes Me (1957)

Nominations for Art Direction (partial)

When Ladies Meet (1933) Romeo and Juliet (1936) The Great Ziegfeld (1936) Conquest (1937) Marie Antoinette (1938) The Wizard of Oz (1939) Bitter Sweet (1940) When Ladies Meet (1941) Random Harvest (1942) Madame Curie (1943) Thousands Cheer (1943) Kismet (1944) National Velvet (1944) The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) Madame Bovary (1949) Annie Get Your Gun (1950) The Red Danube (1950) Too Young to Kiss (1951) Quo Vadis (1951) The Merry Widow (1952) Lili (1953) The Story of Three Loves (1953) Young Bess (1953) Brigadoon (1954) Executive Suite (1954) I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955) Blackboard Jungle (1955) Lust for Life (1956)