Living In a Big Way

There will always be class taste and mass taste. Ligne Roset and IKEA. Where the privileged few are liberated from practical considerations. Why worry about furnishings or household goods when they could be bought time and again? Very rich means never having to be careful. At least that’s what I believed looking at old films. Where the lives of the extremely wealthy came across with an unbridled fancy that made everything possible.

Fast forward to when I was a set decorator, my goal was create film noir, but it was becoming an outcast. Rather than design, I spent the bulk of my time shopping. I hunted for furnishings and visited prop houses mostly for accessories and had to keep in mind themes; and I had to maneuver in mood. Did the script call for romantic dining? Was the couple married or was it a clandestine affair? What meal and what food were being served? Would I need a ceramic egg holder, corn-cob knobs, or a soup tureen? Food was never fake, and would be purchased in quantities replaced every two hours. Although the show centered around a family with a fashion based business, I did not get to reinvent the rich lifestyle, I had to follow existing trends.

I wanted to design in the taste of “old money,” not the traditional distinctive baronial look such as an all wood dark library, but to sink my eye and hands into creating a visual fantasy. To create a look for conventional sophisticates, like Nick and Nora the fictional characters created by writer Dashiell Hammett in his novel The Thin Man, that would blend contemporary with antiques, primitive and ethnic. And I could live vicariously in their opulence and extravagance.

Although the budget was more than adequate and no one ever blinked an eye on the vast amounts that were spent, the focus was on time and soaps began to create another look altogether, a trend in modernism. Both daytime and evening television were creating artificial landscapes on sound-stages, since going on location would require too much time and permits. The new locations took place outdoors– a back alley, a carnival, a rain-soaked street.

But only in Hollywood could there be the opportunity to illustrate both classic and modern styles, where make-believe leaves an imprint of an imagination.