Hillsides, houses, airports and cathedrals; cityscapes, landscapes and the ocean rocking toward the horizon; courtrooms and bedrooms, bungalows and castles; gas stations, skyscrapers, apartment buildings; the roofs of Paris and New York, corridors, tapestries, train depots and a mineshaft burrowing into an icy mountain.
These are the 90 painted backdrops that remain of more than 200 saved through the Art Directors Guild Backdrop Recovery Project
— The Los Angeles Times
The Los Angele Times takes a look at the Art Directors Guild Backdrop Recovery Project, a two-year-long effort aimed at saving some of the industry’s remaining iconic scene paintings.
Lynne Coakley, president of JC Backings, a Hollywood legacy scene painting company that produced iconic backdrops for movies that include Ben Hur, North By Northwest, and others, tells Mary McNamara of The Los Angeles Times, “It’s only in the last 10 years that we’ve started thinking of them as having historic value. For years, we thought of backings as a commodity; that’s our business.”
That perspective has changed in recent years as the value of these paintings has become better appreciated. Several of the works are heading to the new Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
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