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36 P E R S P E C T I V E | S E P T E M B E R / O C TO B E R 2 0 1 7 Luckily, I happened to have an enlightened boss, Chuck Comisky, who paid my way into a series of evenings at the Academy with Production Designers like Gene Allen, Eugene Lourie, Preston Ames, Terry Marsh, Ted Haworth, Dick Sylbert, Harold Michelson, Bob Boyle, John DeCuir, Fred Harpman, Hilyard Brown, Phil Jeffries and Dale Hennesy. Anyone reading this far who doesn't know those names should drop everything and immediately Google them all. Anyone who already knows those names will appreciate how profoundly those evenings would change my life. Jumping ahead ten years, to the late nineties, I was now well into the career that those amazing artists had inspired, but I began to wonder why the Art Directors Guild (then the SMPTAD—don't ask) didn't have a clubhouse where I could play ping-pong with Dick Sylbert while he reminisced about Brando and The Fugitive Kind (1960), or a fireside where I could have a drink and chat with Gene Allen about how he both wrote and designed The Chapman Report (1962) or even a game of chemin de fer with Eugène Lourié while he traced his career path from La Grande Illusion (1937) to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). In those days, Harold Michelson was just about the only designer kind enough to make himself available for the occasional seminar in which he explained arcana like how to project a set in three-point perspective. Harold's Academy lectures were like an audience with the Olympian gods of Art Direction. I couldn't understand why no one had put together another series with those geniuses...and why not a screening series? As I pondered how my elders could have possibly overlooked my need to meet those Golden Age guys; it suddenly hit me: Why couldn't I put together such a series? I could pick the designers I liked. I could pick the films. I could even be the big shot interviewing my heroes onstage. If I worked it right, I might even get a free lunch and some mentoring out of the deal. What a brilliant, self-serving idea! And the beauty of it was that, while it fulfilled my selfish desires, everybody else would be getting something out of it, too. The Guild's Executive Board also seemed to see it that way. If there was any conflict, I don't remember it. I immediately started working on a title. My first idea was obscure but witty: "The Frank 'Huck' Wortman Memorial Screening Society." This would immortalize Huck Wortman, the forgotten guy who (maybe) designed the sets for D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) but never got his proper credit. Just then, however, the name Walter L. Hall turned up. Turns out he may have been the guy who was actually cheated out of the design credit. (Sound familiar?) Every designer, myself included, has at least one show in which he or she did his or her best work, that for some Above: Illustrator and Production Designer, and member of the Guild's Hall of Fame, Harold Michelson spoke about his contributions at a screening of JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (1971), blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo's powerful anti-war film. The picture is remarkable for distinguishing between quadriplegic protagonist Joe's reality and fantasy with black-and-white for the hospital, and color for his dreams and memories.