Miami's Magic City

All the glitz and glamour of Miami Beach circa 1959 is captured in Magic City, the highly stylized period drama and newest entry to the sixties themed genres. (Think Mad Men meets the Mob in Miami).

Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Grey's Anatomy) as Ike Evans

Magic City is the tale of hotel owner Ike Evans (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan who easily could be Javier Bardem's younger brother) who builds one of the largest mid century modern structures in the city. The fictitious Miramar Playa is the place where one can rub shoulders with the likes of mafia kingpin Sam Giancana (or be rubbed out), JFK, the Rat Pack or a well-to-do family of four on vacation. Evans sells his soul to Ben "The Butcher" Diamond (Danny Huston) in order to keep the hotel afloat. Lots of plot twists, family dramas, sumptuous costumes, period soundtrack....and some of the best production design I have seen on television.

The gleaming gold Lapidus inspired lobby

Production designer and architect Carlos Barbosa and set decorator Scott Jacobsen literally channeled Miami Mid Century Modern (known as MiMo) hotels of the period such as the Eden Roc, Deauville (where producer Mitch Glazer worked as a cabana boy) and the famed Fontainebleu. Heavily influenced by the late architect Morris Lapidus who transformed the shoreline of Miami with his work, the production team literally transformed a warehouse into a grand hotel in a mere five months.

The Atlantis Lounge complete with a view of the mermaids

You can read more in my article "The Sets of Magic City"  for Architectural Digest. For more on the costumes, check out the LA Times piece on costume designer Carol Ramsey. Be sure and catch  Magic City on Starz Channel on Friday nights at 9 pm central -- I caught the sneak premiere last week and completely hooked. You will completely be taken back in time. Look out Mad Men.

The Men of Magic City

Photo Credits: Carlos Barbosa, Starz

Before there was Mad Men...

...there was The Best of Everything. And perhaps the poster below says it all.

Novelist Rona Jaffe's 1958 bestseller turned 1959 film was the story of young career women in a pre-women's liberated Manhattan. Hope Lange plays Caroline Bender, an Ivy League graduate who toils away in the dead-end secretarial typing pool at Fabian Publications and fears her aspirations will turn her into the wicked book editor Amanda Farrow (Joan Crawford). Caroline lives with fellow secretaries April (Diane Baker) who is biding her time until Mr. Right comes along and Gregg (Suzy Parker), an aspiring actress. 

Mad Men's Don Draper reading the popular novel

The "yarn" as it was called in the sixties (today it would be a chick flick) has it all - a ruthless single female boss having an empty affair, lecherous lotharios, sexual and office politics, stalking, lots of alcohol and an unwed pregnancy thrown in for good measure. Signs of the times and an obvious precursor to Mad Men.

The parallels of Jaffe and her ambitious heroine Caroline are similar. The Radcliffe grad worked her way up from filing clerk to Associate Editor at Fawcett Publications and later became a contributing writer at Cosmopolitan for one of the female publishing pioneers Helen Gurley Brown (whose book Sex and the Single Girl placed her at the front of the feminist movement). Putting her successful career first, Jaffe never married.

Crawford as book editor Amanda Farrow

While her role was small, Joan Crawford was the biggest star in the film. In the autumn of her career at the age of 55 (hey, it was and is Hollywood) and recently widowed (Chairman Al Steele of Pepsi), the Mildred Pierce star apparently lived up to her "no wire hangers" image on set. As the story goes, she would arrive with a large Pepsi thermos filled with ice and 140 proof Vodka along with a small black alligator bag filled with jewels. Her entourage was always in tow and the set was kept cold to preserve her makeup. Often accompanied by her twelve-year-old twins, no one was allowed to speak to her until she spoke to them first. The film also marked Crawford's first supporting role since her days in early Hollywood and many think she took for financial reasons (hence, the Vodka). 

The film, designed by Jack Martin Smith. Mark-Lee Kirk and Lyle Wheeler, was set in New York's Seagrams Building at 375 Park Avenue. Designed by architect Mies Van Der Rohe, the International Style structure was considered the world's most expensive structure at the time. The interiors were built on the soundstage at Twentieth Century Fox and reportedly influenced by the sparse, utilitarian offices of Pocket Books who published the novel. 

Lange and Crawford

The secretarial pool takes a smoking break under the watchful eye of Mad Men's Joan in a similar set

Suzy Parker and her Royal typewriter

If the term supermodel were around in the early sixties, it would have applied to Suzy Parker who plays the supporting role of Gregg. Best known for her modeling work for Revlon and Coco Chanel, she was a muse to photographer Richard Avedon and one of the first to earn $100,000 a year. She also starred in films Ten North Frederick (1958) with Gary Cooper and had a cameo in Funny Face (1957) with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. 

Parker modeling for Vogue in Paris

No apartment was complete without a bar in the sixties

The film also starred Robert Evans as the unscrupulous playboy Dexter Key who hooks up with April (Diane Baker, shown above). A former Paramount studio chief who successfully produced film classics such as Love Story, Rosemary's Baby, The Godfather and Chinatown, he was also known for his discovery and subsequent marriage to Ali MacGraw.

Parker with Louis Jordan as director and love interest David Savage

Brian Aherne plays the office lech "Fred Shalimar"

Stephen Boyd as editor Mike Rice

The film was shot on location in Central Park, Sheridan Square
 and the exterior of the Seagrams Building and on the Fox soundstage 

You have to wonder when Hollywood will do a remake...or was that Sex and the City?
And for those of you unaware and possibly living on the planet Mars, Mad Men is back this Sunday, March 25th on AMC. Finally the wait is over for season five....and don't even think about calling me after 9:00/8:00 p.m. Central.

Photo Credits: AMC, Twentieth Century Fox

Tyler Perry Style

I have been a huge fan of Tyler Perry (and who doesn't love Medea) for years so I was delighted to recently interview his long time set decorator (12 movies and counting) Lance Totten.

San Francisco via an Atlanta soundstage becomes the setting for Tyler Perry's new romantic drama Good Deeds. Mogul/director/actor/screenwriter/producer/and even songwriter Tyler Perry stars as businessman Wesley Deeds, a wealthy entrepreneur who lives a very controlled and predictable life as the head of the family owned Deeds Corporation. His life changes when he meets a down on her luck single mother (Thandie Newton) which gives him the courage to live the life he has always wanted.

Jamie Kennedy, Gabrielle Union, Tyler Perry, Eddie Cibrian and Rebecca  Romijn

Thandie Newton

"Production designer Ina Mayhew and I agreed that it was important to sell the fact that Wesley Deeds was wealthy, but in an outside-of-the-box way," notes Totten about the design process. "His environment had to be high-end but in a very sophisticated way, not at all flashy or new money." The designers came up with designs of a "sleek organic nature" to denote a Northern California setting.

Totten and his buyers (Mary Stacy and Rachel Goodman) discussed the idea of weaving Deeds' desire to travel as a major character point for the interiors. Since he had to stay home and run the family business, wanderlust would no doubt set in so they incorporated antique globes and framed vintage posters and maps into the design mix. "The original paintings in Deeds' apartment (all by local Georgia painter Bill Turner who they discovered at the Arts Festival in Piedmont Park) had sort of a haunting loneliness to them that reminded me of that wanderlust Deeds was feeling,"says Totten.

For Deeds master bedroom, Mayhew added a double-sided fireplace to divide the rooms while keeping a feeling of openness. A capiz shell light fixture from Z Gallerie and a contemporary bed setting take front and center in this contemporary room. "The bed was one that TP (Tyler Perry) responded to in my initial presentation photos: a leather designer piece from Roche-Bobois. It was actually very simple, and like all Italian contemporary stuff, very low to the floor," details Totten. "Mr. Perry likes the style of Italian furniture, but because he's 6'5", I've learned over the years that he doesn't like being low to the ground, so we had a wooden platform built to raise it up... because that particular bed wasn't really as funky as what we wanted to do, we had the giant headboard made and screwed to the wall behind it. It's just plywood, batting, and the right color of faux suede."

The offices of the Deeds corporation represented a huge challenge for the designers. Atlanta had plenty of empty office space but needed a San Francisco skyline which meant giant trans-light backdrops outside the windows. Perry wanted an open floor plan both aesthetically and for practical purposes (in order to maneuver cameras) so everything was built on a soundstage. The majority of the furniture was rented (which included some cook Knoll accent chairs) and Herman Miller threw in three chairs for product placement. A credenza was rented from Room and Board and Totten loved it so much that he had it reproduced. "As is often the case with Tyler Perry, we could not find a desk that was high-end enough for him that we could also afford, so we custom built one as scenery," says Totten. " If you think about it, decorating a set for a billionaire character who's been created by a real-life billionaire can be rather daunting!"

The majority of films naturally have to be made with a budget in mind. "It's not like we have the time or money to create interiors as if they were actually for Tyler Perry the person, but you've still got to sell the illusion," explains Totten. "Having said that, I still spent over $10,000 at Masterpiece Lighting on the sconces and hanging pendant fixtures throughout the offices. That's not including table or floor lamps which came from all over. We'll mix a $400 lamp from Bungalow with a thrift-store vintage one or a $40 lamp from Home Goods and it all just works somehow."

The work of artist Anthony Liggins was used for the office interiors

Good Deeds is currently playing in theaters and Medea sits this one out.


Photo Credits: Lance Totten, Quantrell Colbert-c 2011 Very Perry Films

Designing Dallas: GCB Style

Botox, backstabbing, big Dallas design and the Bible are just a few of the things television viewers will soon associate with the letters GCB. Move over Southfork Ranch, Dallas is ready for yet another close-up.

Formerly (and controversially) known as Good Christian Bitches and Good Christian Belles, Sex and the City producer Darren Star’s wickedly bitchy comedy/drama GCB stars Leslie Bibb (Iron Man) as high school mean girl Amanda Vaughn who returns home as a recently divorced mother of two and finds her former high school friends have turned the tables of torment.  Based on Kim Gatlin’s best-selling book Good Christian Bitches (Brown Books, 2008), the show co-stars Kristen Chenowith as Amanda’s archrival and Annie Potts as her mother Gigi.

Annie Potts as larger than life mom Gigi

Set against the bigger than life worlds of the one percent elite of “The Big D,” production designer Denny Dugally and set decorator Bryan John Venegas (the pair created the Walker family interiors on ABC’s Brothers and Sisters) designed houses and offices for the five central characters – Amanda (who lives with her mother), a high powered real estate agent, a CEO, a homemaker, and an arch rival across the street. The adage of home as character certainly applies as the design duo used narrative design and set decoration to portray the personalities and motivation of each character.

Can you ever go home again?:
Leslie Bibb as former mean girl returns home to the fold

The production team spent four days scouting historic and modern homes and soaking up local color in the tony Dallas enclaves of Highland Park, Preston Hollow, and University Park. “We visited homes, churches, country clubs, offices, stores, etc. and immersed ourselves in everything Dallas,” says Dugally. “While the pilot was shot entirely on location, Los Angeles doubles for Dallas in the series. “It was not an easy task as Dallas is known for it’s large expanses of property, many without high fences or security and lots of brick architecture. Los Angeles is full of palm trees that don’t do well in Dallas. We were able to find several wonderful and appropriate houses and a great church in the Los Angeles basin that serve as the exteriors for our show,” she says.

For the home of Amanda’s colorful mother, Dugally wanted the “interiors to remain very upscale but traditional.” Front and center is the ornate, winding staircase topped with a gold leafed dome. Asian accents, custom designed wallpapers by Astek in Los Angeles and white wainscoting are just a few of the design elements used for the warm gold, crimson and cream toned décor.

Bigger is Better: Gigi  aka Annie Pott's grand stairway
with its custom made stair rails and gold dome ceiling

Ammo and Antlers: Gun toting Gigi's Trophy Room 

Kristen Chenowith’s Carlene gets a dramatically designed interior complete with a baby grand piano to practice hymns for Sundays in the church choir and a fireplace in almost every room. For the dark green and purple interiors, Dugally theorized Carlene “would have hired an interior designer from New York.  The result is a very highly styled interior with richly colored grass cloth, custom wallpapers, dark wood floors and pops of bright colors accenting against the dark elements in the room,” says Dugally.

Kristen Chenowith as Carlene

Shades of Dorothy Draper meets Dallas: Carlene's living room

Carlene's Bedroom: Walls painted in black and deep purple with black floral comforter
 as Dugally notes because "with her blond hair, Kristen looks gorgeous against it."

For shrewd and decisive Cricket (Miriam Shor) who is CEO of her own company, “we chose to keep her designs modern, cold and calculated just like Cricket,” explains Dugally. The mid-century modern styled bedroom features a custom queen size bed with a classic Texas touch -- a headboard made of cowhide, black leather, and studs. And to further illustrate the narrative design, a framed set of shark’s jaws adorn the walls of her contemporary grey and blue office.

In business, a display of shark jaws on the wall says it all

The heart of housewife Sharon’s (Jennifer Aspen) home is the kitchen and the designers opted for a French Country Style with a softer look to match her personality. In a setting that would make Martha Stewart pea green with envy, Dugally designed a kitchen with 3 double ovens, a huge range, a countertop deep fryer and a walk-in restaurant style refrigerator and pantry along with a white Carerra marble topped island – faux finished of course.

A kitchen Martha Stewart would envy

While Dallas certainly earns its bigger is better notoriety, Dugally steered away from the term “McMansions.” “The houses we saw in Dallas were real mansions, not McMansions, in their sheer scope and scale,” notes Dugally. “They weren’t out of scale for their neighborhood because every house in their neighborhood was huge! It was my task to create the look of a mansion on a smaller budget and reduced scale while maintaining the integrity of the houses in Dallas.”

Cricket's Mid-century modern meets Western interiors complete with faux granite
and flagstone framed fireplace and Corbusier inspired cowhide upholstery above and below. 

One of the more pivotal and challenging sets was the design of the church that had to be big in both scale and demeanor. Dugally and Venegas visited a dozen churches for research and created a believable house of worship with 42 stained glass windows, an altar for the choir, and pew seating for 120. The church was painted and aged to make it look over forty years old. 

Let Us Pray: The design team aged the church set and added 42 stained glass windows

Expect to hear alot of "amens" and "bless her hearts" among the gilt and glamour in this alternate southern universe. GCB airs Sunday, March 4th at 10 pm eastern and 9 pm central. Note: This was a reprint of my article How to Fake 1% Opulence, Dallas Style in this week's Hollywood Reporter. And yes, that is CNN mogul/ex-husband of Jane Fonda/America's cup fame/buffalo raising Ted Turner on the cover. Is he making a comeback?

Photo Credits: ABC, Hollywood Reporter, Denny Dugally

And the Oscar goes to...

On Sunday, February 26th the much deserved statuette will be awarded to a lucky production designer, set decorator and costume designer at the 84th Academy Awards presentation or as I like to call it, Hollywood's Super Bowl Sunday.

In the event you need a recap for the nominations for Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction, be sure to check out my articles Behind the Scenes: Oscar's Best Costume Nominees for Fox News Magazine and Oscar's Preview: The Year's Best Sets for Architectural Digest.

While Hugo appears to be the favorite for Art Direction and W.E. for Costume, I think The Artist may take home the lion's share of awards.

Costume Designer and nominee Mark Bridge's designs and sketches
for Peppy above and below in The Artist

Production Designer Laurence Bennett's homage to
the twenties classic Our Dancing Daughters in The Artist

Los Angeles designer Waldo Fernandez created this year's Architectural Digest Greenroom (where the winners go to relax and not sure if the losers make an appearance). I particularly love the hand-painted book jackets of film images from Rocky and Butterfield 8 created from the Academy of Motion Picture Archives by Juniper Books. For the 99 percent of us who will not be backstage, you can catch a glimpse here.

Best of luck to all the nominees and happy Oscar weekend!!!

P.S. Many thanks to all of you who attended my lecture at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art last night. What a great event and very impressed with your city and loved all the Arthur Elrod houses.

Photo Credits: Architectural Digest, Weinstein Company