Biography
William Cameron Menzies was an American production designer and art director who also directed, produced and wrote screenplays. He is credited with pioneering the role of production designer, a title first used for his work on Gone with the Wind (1939). Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he studied at Yale University and the Art Students League of New York, and served in the US Army during the First World War before entering the film industry in the late 1910s.
Menzies received the first Academy Award for art direction, shared for The Dove (1927) and The Tempest (1928). He is best known for his production design on Gone with the Wind (1939), for which he received an honorary Oscar for the use of colour to enhance dramatic mood. Other notable credits include production design on The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), and direction of Things to Come (1936) and Invaders from Mars (1953). He died in Beverly Hills, California, in 1957.
