Randall Duell
Birth : 1903-07-14,
Death : 1992-11-28
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Randall Duell (July 14, 1903 – November 28, 1992) was an American architect and motion picture art director. Duell attended the University of Southern California School of Architecture and graduated in 1925. Joining the Los Angeles architectural firm Webber, Staunton and Spaulding, Duell contributed to designs for notable building projects in metropolitan Los Angeles during the 1920s and 1930s, among them the Avalon Casino on Catalina Island, Frary Dining Hall and adjacent residence halls at Pomona College, and Greenacres, the estate of silent movie actor Harold Lloyd in Beverly Hills. He and architect Sumner Spaulding collaborated in the design of the Atkinson residence in Bel Air, which was modeled after the Petit Trianon at Versailes. As construction declined during the Great Depression, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired Duell in 1936 to design the set of the Capulet home in Irving Thalberg's production of Romeo and Juliet. In 1937, he joined the MGM art department in a full-time capacity. During his career as a motion picture art director, he was nominated for three Academy Awards in the category Best Art Direction. He received screen credit for his work on 38 films, among them Ninotchka (1939), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Intruder in the Dust (1949), and Singin' in the Rain (1952). Additionally he worked on a number of motion pictures without film credit, among them The Wizard of Oz, 1939. He retired from MGM in 1959.
Duell was born on a farm in Russell County, Kansas, moved with his family to Los Angeles, California in 1912, and died in Los Angeles, California. He was inducted into the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions' Hall of Fame in 1993.
Art Direction
Englishwoman Grace Allingham marries Frenchman Charles Edouard de Valhubert, but their marriage quickly becomes unusual. Because Charles cheats on her and lives away from his family out of professional obligation to his government, Grace ends up raising the couple's son, Sigismond, on her own. Grace and Charles are finally reunited after nearly a decade apart, and, while they seem headed for a permanent split, there's still a spark between them.
Art Direction
The Pooles are unable to have a baby after years of trying. They apply to the Rock-A-Bye Adoption Agency, and are assigned Miss Novick as an investigator. Through a farfetched mis-communication she gets a very bad impression of Augie Poole and indicates her report will be unfavorable. Through even more far-fetched circumstances, Augie is able to change Miss Novick's mind, and later comes to believe the baby she is carrying is his. Rock-A-Bye does find the Pooles a baby, and Augie is convinced it is Miss Novick's, and that he is the real father...so much so that his wife comes to believe it, too. She threatens to leave him, but all the misunderstandings are finally cleared up for a happy ending.
Art Direction
Slick lawyer Thomas Farrell has made a career of defending mobsters in trials. It's not until he meets a lovely showgirl at a mob party that he realizes that there's more to life than winning trials. Farrell tries to quit the racket, but mob boss Rico Angelo threatens to hurt the showgirl if Farrell leaves him.
Art Direction
Middle-aged middle-manager Jim Fry, with the same company for fifteen years, is in a comfortable rut. But life becomes less predictable when he doesn't receive an invitation to an important luncheon being held by the new company president. Convinced that he's about to lose his job, Jim begins to mull over his limited prospects when his wife confirms that she's pregnant.
Art Direction
After serving time for manslaughter, young Vince Everett becomes a teenage rock star.
Art Direction
After three bumbling Soviet agents fail in their mission to retrieve a straying Soviet composer from Paris, the beautiful, ultra-serious Ninotchka is sent to complete their mission and to retrieve them. She starts out condemning the decadent West, but gradually falls under its spell—with the help of an American movie producer. A remake of Ninotchka (1939).
Art Direction
In this musical-comedy, Dean Martin plays an American hotel mogul who becomes smitten with a young Italian woman (Anna Maria Alberghetti) when buying a hotel in Rome. To marry this gal, he has to get her three older sisters married off.
Art Direction
Bruce Hallerton becomes coach of the Panthers, a little league baseball team. The fact that an attractive widow has her son in the team causes problems with his wife.
Art Direction
Three completely different stories are told through dance.
Art Direction
A Mexican boy accused of rape and murder becomes a pawn for Communists and red-baiters.
Art Direction
A wealthy young Hebrew traveling in Damascus renounces his faith after he is seduced by an alluring pagan priestess and cheated of his fortune by the High Priest as well.
Art Direction
Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.
Art Direction
Reporter Charles Wills, in Paris to cover the end of World War II, falls for the beautiful Helen Ellswirth following a brief flirtation with her sister, Marion. After he and Helen marry, Charles pursues his novelistic ambition while supporting his new bride with a deadening job at a newspaper wire service. But when an old investment suddenly makes the family wealthy, their marriage begins to unravel — until a sudden tragedy changes everything.
Art Direction
In the South Pacific islands, two brothers, one good and one bad, fight over the same girl and over a bag of pearls.
Art Direction
Attorney's daughter falls for one of his gangster clients.
Art Direction
A husband and wife act are hoping to find success on Broadway.
Art Direction
Burt, a Marine suffering from Battle Fatigue, is deathly afraid of rain and confined to an asylum, but showing improvement. He wants to live with his sister's family, but they have young children.
Art Direction
In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound.
Art Direction
A scrupulously honest lawyer discovers that the client he's gotten off was really guilty.
Art Direction
Recently paroled from prison, legendary burglar "Doc" Riedenschneider, with funding from Alonzo Emmerich, a crooked lawyer, gathers a small group of veteran criminals together in the Midwest for a big jewel heist.
Art Direction
A vain businessman puts strains on his happy marriage to a rich, beautiful socialite by allowing himself to be seduced by a former girlfriend.
Art Direction
Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired. Quickly arrested for murder and jailed, Beauchamp insists he's innocent and asks the town's most prominent lawyer, Gavin Stevens, to defend him, but Stevens refuses. When a local boy whom Beauchamp has helped in the past and who believes him to be innocent hears talk of a mob taking Beauchamp out of jail and lynching him, he pleads with Stevens to defend Beauchamp at trial and prove his innocence.
Art Direction
Two co-workers in a music shop dislike one another during business hours but unwittingly carry on an anonymous romance through the mail.
Art Direction
Set in the rural south of the United States, a bereaved war widow learns to put aside her bitterness and grief as she grows to love a young orphan boy and his dog.
Art Direction
Wallace Beery, in his final film, plays a bandit in this period drama set in Colonial America.
Art Direction
Ricardo, the milquetoast son of a Mexican bandit, would rather lead a quiet life in Boston. But the family would rather that he follow in his father's footsteps and become "The Kissing Bandit".
Art Direction
Self-absorbed Dr. Lee Johnson enlists with the Army medical corps during World War II, more out of a feeling that it's "the thing to do" rather than deep-seated patriotism. On his first day, he's put into place by 'Snapshot', a sassy and attractive nurse. Their initial antagonism blossoms into romance. Lee then finds himself torn with guilt over being unfaithful to his wife, Penny, who's waiting for him back home.
Art Direction
Society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles investigate a murder in a jazz club.
Art Direction
After a rapid engagement, a dowdy daughter of a chemist weds an industrialist, knowing little of his family or past. He transforms her into an elegant society wife, but becomes enraged whenever she asks about Michael, his mysterious long-lost brother.
Art Direction
A married woman and a drifter fall in love, then plot to murder her husband.
Art Direction
Two sailors, Joe and Clarence have four days shore leave in spend their shore leave trying to get a girl for Clarence. Clarence has his eye on a girl with musical aspirations, and before Joe can stop him, promises to get her an audition with José Iturbi. But the trouble really starts when Joe realizes he's falling for his buddy's girl.
Art Direction
In this family saga, Mrs. Parkington recounts the story of her life, beginning as a hotel maid in frontier Nevada where she is swept off her feet by mine owner and financier Augustus Parkington. He moves them to New York, tries to remake her into a society woman, and establishes their home among the wealthiest of New York's high society. Family and social life is not always peaceful, however, and she guides us, in flashbacks, through the rises and falls of the Parkington family fortunes.
Art Direction
American Susan travels with her father to England for a vacation. Invited to a society ball, Susan meets Sir John Ashwood and marries him after a whirlwind romance. However, she never quite adjusts to life as a new member of the British gentry. At the outbreak of World War I, John is sent to the trenches and never returns. When her son goes off to fight in World War II, Susan fears the same tragic fate may befall him too.
Art Direction
Two newlyweds spy on the Nazis for the British Secret Service during their honeymoon in Europe.
Co-Art Director
Van Heflin stars as the head of a city crime lab who tries to solve the murder of the town mayor by scientifically analyzing evidence.
Art Department Assistant
A flighty socialite neglects her family to promote a new religious group.
Assistant Art Director
Intern Kildare heals a millionaire's daughter and tricks Dr. Gillespie into taking a vacation.
Assistant Art Director
A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
Assistant Art Director
Judge Hardy goes to his friend's Arizona ranch to help her in a legal dispute, and he takes his family with him.
Art Direction
A sleazy lawyer gains clients by showing up at terrible accidents. His boss, determined to stop him, hires a pretty girl to cozy up and coerce the truth out of the ambulance-chaser. Unfortunately, the boss doesn't count on the romance factor and sure enough, love blossoms between the girl and the shyster.
Assistant Art Director
A young woman inherits a newspaper whose editor refuses to hire lady reporters.
