Van Nest Polglase was an American art director

Art director

The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....

. He was nominated for six Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction

Academy Award for Best Art Direction

The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...

. Best remembered as head of the design department at RKO Pictures

RKO Pictures

RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. As RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chains and Joseph P...

, he worked on 333 films between 1925 and 1957.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York and died in Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

. His death notice noted that he was "survived by his son Dr. Van Nest Polglase and 2 grandchildren", his wife, Helen, having predeceased him six months earlier.

Education and early career

Polglase studied Beaux Arts architecture and interior design in New York City where he entered practice with the architectural firm of Berg and Orchard, before moving to Havana in 1917 where was an associate designer on the Presidential Palace. On his return to New York in 1919, he signed with Famous Players—Lasky (Paramount) whose art director Wiard Ihnen had recommended him as a draftsman, but Polglase turned his hand to design and soon relocated to Hollywood where he designed one of the first American Art Déco sets for The Magnificent Flirt (1928) and worked for MGM until 1932 when Polglase was recruited to RKO by David O. Selznick.

Selected filmography

Polglase was nominated for six Academy Awards for Best Art Direction:

• The Gay Divorcee
  The Gay Divorcee
  The Gay Divorcee is a 1934 American film based on the musical play Gay Divorce written by Dwight Taylor, Kenneth S. Webb, Samuel Hoffenstein, with screenplay by George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost and Edward Kaufman, from an unproduced play by J. Hartley Manners...
  
  (1934)
• Top Hat
  Top Hat
  Top Hat is a 1935 screwball comedy musical film in which Fred Astaire plays an American dancer named Jerry Travers, who comes to London to star in a show produced by Horace Hardwick . He meets and attempts to impress Dale Tremont to win her affection...
  
  (1935)
• Carefree
  Carefree (film)
  Carefree is a 1938 musical film starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. With a plot similar to screwball comedies of the period, Carefree is the shortest of the Astaire-Rogers films, featuring only four musical numbers...
  
  (1938)
• Love Affair (1939)
• My Favorite Wife
  My Favorite Wife
  My Favorite Wife is a 1940 screwball comedy produced and co-written by Leo McCarey and directed by Garson Kanin. The movie stars Irene Dunne as a woman who returns to her husband and children after being shipwrecked on a tropical island for several years, and Cary Grant as her husband...
  
  (1940)
• Citizen Kane
  Citizen Kane
  Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
  
  (1941)

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