Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1526889
6 4 P E R S P E C T I V E | S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 2 4 RESHOOTS B Y B A R B A R A H A L L , A D G A R C H I V I S T S E L E C T I O N S F R O M T H E A D G A R C H I V E S A. ILLUSTRATION BY UNKNOWN ARTIST FOR THE BLUE ANGEL. WATERCOLOR ON ILLUSTRATION BOARD. 19 X 26 INCHES. This illustration was created for the 1959 remake of The Blue Angel, directed by Edward Dmytryk. Set in Germany in 1956, the film tells the story of a straitlaced professor who becomes obsessed with Lola-Lola, a seductive cabaret singer, and ends up losing everything. The original 1930 film starred Marlene Dietrich as Lola, while in this version, the character was played by May Britt. The Art Director on the film was Maurice Ransford, a longtime member of the Twentieth Century-Fox Art Department. A trained architect with a degree from the University of Illinois, Ransford spent a number of years working in that field before moving into the film industry in 1935. Ransford joined the Fox staff in 1940 as an Assistant Art Director, was soon promoted to Art Director, and stayed there the rest of his career. Ransford's notable films at the studio included Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944), the Technicolor film noir G I F T O F T H E H O L LY W O O D S T U D I O G A L L E R Y. C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T D I R E C T O R S G U I L D A R C H I V E S . Leave Her to Heaven (1945), the period adventure The Foxes of Harrow (1947), the classic war film Twelve O'Clock High (1949), and the historical epic Titanic (1953). Ransford retired in 1961, after designing more than fifty films for the studio. He died in 1968. For The Blue Angel, Ransford was tasked with creating two distinct worlds—the orderly high school and apartment where the pompous professor controls his own surroundings and the sleazy nightclubs that are the domain of Lola and her manager. This drawing of Lola's dressing room at the Hanover Club captures the oppressiveness of her world, and the trap that the professor is caught in. Exterior filming was done on location in Bavaria, but the interiors were all shot on stages at Twentieth Century-Fox. Lyle R. Wheeler, then the head of the Art Department at Fox, is also credited on the film. A