Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542039
PROPERTYMASTERSGUILD.ORG 13 DENNIS: In 1953, I went to work at Warners on The Silver Chalice with Paul Newman. I was in the swing gang and the youngest around. I was assigned to place all the heavy statues in the three-story alcoves on the big set and later I worked on the gold food for the feast. I would go home covered in gold. The Jimmy Stewart film, Dear Brigitte, was my first as an assistant at FOX. PROP CULTURE: In 1965, you are only 30 years old, and here you are working with James Stewart, a true Hollywood legend. Allow me to geek out, but how was that? Were you just a bit starstruck? DENNIS: I had worked earlier with Jimmy at Paramount on Vertigo. We shot in Sausalito, California, on the houseboat. Jimmy was great and Glynis Johns was a sweetheart. At the time of Vertigo, he was still a brigadier general in the reserve. He was very quiet and professional and we talked a few times, mostly about his time in the Air Force. In between takes, he would quietly sit in his chair and work on his script. PROP CULTURE: Billy Mumy, who would go on to star in Lost in Space, was also in Dear Brigitte! DENNIS: Yes, Billy Mumy played the son, and I would later work with him on Papillon. Fred Simpson was the 1st AD and took a liking to me and became one of my mentors. I owe him a lot. He was the father of Rick Simpson who became a set decorator. The breaks kept coming and I was on my way. altered the exteriors of the tanks to fit the image of the various armies and painted them in different colors and camo combinations to get the right effect. There was some yelling from the history buffs but in general, the audience never knew the difference. I think we told the story and the seven Academy Awards it garnered, including Art Direction, which told me I did what I had to do, and it worked. PROP CULTURE: Today, so much of that would have been done by CGI. DENNIS: Green screen, CGI, visual effects have taken filmmaking to another level. I am not sure I could do a film today at my age and knowledge level. In my era, if you had 4,000 soldiers, you needed 4,000 or more weapons and equipment to outfit all of these people. Today, it's all different. On Patton, I had more than 8,000 weapons from a myriad of sources worldwide. At the Hello, Dolly! parade, we had thousands of people on the street and in the parade at FOX. No CGI. It was all real. PROP CULTURE: Today's Property Master works in a completely different world. Research that once meant days in libraries or digging through studio archives can now be done in minutes on a laptop. Sourcing an item that used to take weeks of phone calls can show up on your doorstep the next morning with a single click. Between the internet, online auctions, and sites like Amazon, the landscape has changed in ways none of us could have imagined. How do you feel about this evolution? Do you ever find yourself a little envious of how much faster certain parts of the job have become? And as the craft has shifted from the analog world you began in to the digital tools we all rely on today, how has your own creative process grown and adapted? DENNIS: I enjoyed the emersion into the project and the chase to find the items needed. The internet has certainly made it easier to find stuff, but the process of creating the right prop has not. You still have to have a vision in your head as to what it should be before you start the chase. I see many props being created and built by talented Property Masters all over the world and I am still amazed at the talent that is out there. If it's a one-of-a-kind unique prop to a film, it needs the creative juices of the Property Master to pull it off. PROP CULTURE: In the early days of your career, was there a particular film or experience that made you realize that you truly found your calling? DENNIS: The head of the Prop Department, Frank Brown at Fox, sent me to Colorado as an assistant on Stagecoach with Alec Cord. He said when I got back, he had a good job for me but would not give me a hint. When I did get back, he sat me down and said he was sending me to Taiwan and Hong Kong on The Sand Pebbles with Steve McQueen and directed by Robert Wise. PROP CULTURE: That must have been an incredible opportunity for someone who was still just starting out, suddenly being trusted with such a major assignment and working alongside names like Steve McQueen and Robert Wise. It had to feel both thrilling and a little surreal at that stage in your career. DENNIS: It was at that moment that I realized I was probably doing a good job and this was my reward. It was like being shot out of a cannon. I took my family to Taiwan, and the experience was life-changing. PROP CULTURE: There are so many films over the course of your career I would like to discuss but let's get some background first. How would you describe your personal philosophy as a Property Master—the balance between authenticity, storytelling, and practicality? DENNIS: I learned early on that research was key to doing a good job. I believe a Property Master must be the historian on the set and know all the details and history of the story being told. Knowing what is correct for the period and history allows you to advise what is correct and then they can do whatever is best to advance the story and characters. We are in the entertainment business, not doing documentaries. An example is Patton. I needed 65 tanks for the battles. German and American tanks of that period were not that abundant. Mixing the tanks with different eras would have been difficult. Spain had an abundance of US military equipment available, so the decision was made to film in Spain using all American tanks. I used the larger M48 tanks for the German tiger tanks, the medium tanks for the US Army, and the smaller tanks for the British. I PAPILLON