Anton Grot
Birth : 1884-01-18, Kielbasin, West Prussia, Germany [now Kielbasin, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland]
Death : 1974-03-21
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anton Grot (18 January 1884 – 21 March 1974) was a distinguished Polish art director long in Hollywood. He was known for his prolific output with Warner Brothers, contributing, in such films as Little Caesar, and Gold Diggers of 1933 to the distinctive Warners look and style. According to TCM.com, he showed a "flair for harsh realism, Expressionistic horror and ornate romantic moods alike". He was born Antocz Franciszek Groszewski in Kiełbasin, Poland and died in Stanton, California. He studied at the Krakow art academy and at technical school in Koenigsberg, Germany, majoring in interior decoration, illustration, and design. He changed his name and emigrated to the U.S. in 1909.
The Lubin Company hired him to paint and design sets in 1913, in Philadelphia; and he also worked on films for Vitagraph and Pathé. At Pathé he developed his innovative techniques, along with William Cameron Menzies, in the way of using continuity sketches. His method of presenting a series of sketches of all the film’s sets would later become standard practice among Art Directors, particularly with Menzies (his assistant in 1917, on The Naulahka). Cinematographer Arthur Miller remembered Anton Grot:
“a gifted and talented artist who made beautiful charcoal drawings...of the set before it was completed. All his compositions showed a full shot of each set, with all the delicate tones and shadings that suggested ideas for lighting and, in general, were of great help to me as a cameraman.”
Grot came to Hollywood in 1922 to assist Wilfred Buckland with the sets for the Douglas Fairbanks Robin Hood; and stayed on, to work with Cecil B. DeMille and William K. Howard. He was eventually signed by Warner Bros, as “art director, artist, and designer", and designed 80 films before his retirement in 1948. Grot collaborated notably with fellow émigré, director Michael Curtiz, on 15 films. Beginning with the biblical epic Noah’s Ark (1928), these included The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1938), Captain Blood (1935), The Sea Hawk (1940), and Mildred Pierce (1945). Grot is credited with contributing significantly to Curtiz’ personal style.
Art Direction
The third film version of James Hagan's play, this time with songs added, starring Dennis Morgan as a dentist who marries patient and loyal Dorothy Malone despite his constant infatuation with sexy flirt Janis Paige. Filmed previously in 1933 ("One Sunday Afternoon") and 1941 ("The Strawberry Blonde").
Art Direction
A magazine's staff, including bickering ex-lovers Linda and Carey, cover an Indiana wedding, which goes slightly wrong...
Art Direction
Georgia Garrett is sent by jealous wife Elvira Kent on an ocean cruise to masquerade as herself while she secretly stays home to catch her husband cheating. Meanwhile equally suspicious husband Michael Kent has sent a private eye on the same cruise to catch his wife cheating. Love and confusion ensues along with plenty of musical numbers.
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The secretary of an affably suave radio mystery host mysteriously commits suicide after his wealthy young niece disappears.
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After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.
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Struggling artist Geoffrey Carroll meets Sally while on holiday in the country. A romance develops, but he doesn't tell her he's already married. Suffering from mental illness, Geoffrey returns home where he paints an impression of his wife as the angel of death and then promptly poisons her. He marries Sally but after a while he finds a strange urge to paint her as the angel of death too and history seems about to repeat itself.
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Quiet, organised Dr Talbot meets nightclub singer Nora Prentiss when she is slightly hurt in a street accident. Despite her misgivings they become heavily involved and Talbot finds he is faced with the choice of leaving Nora or divorcing his wife. When a patient expires in his office, a third option seems to present itself.
Art Direction
Phil and Ellen Gayley have been divorced for a year, and their 7-year old daughter, Flip, is very unhappy that her parents are not together. Flip starts a correspondence with a Marine, sending a picture of her beautiful mother as the author of Flip's flirtatious letters. When the Marine shows up to meet his pen pal, Ellen takes the opportunity to make her ex-husband jealous.
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After marrying her long lost love, a pianist finds the relationship threatened by a wealthy composer who is besotted with her.
Art Direction
Tongues begin to wag when a lonely widow becomes romantically involved with a military man. Problems arise when the gossip is filtered down to her own children.
Art Direction
A hard-working mother inches towards disaster as she divorces her husband and starts a successful restaurant business to support her spoiled daughter.
Art Direction
Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.
Art Direction
A guerilla leader falls in love with a mysterious woman in World War II Lisbon.
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An Eddie Cantor look-alike organizes an all-star show to help the war effort.
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A married reporter's assignments carry him all over the world, which gives him ample opportunity to put the moves on the local females.
Art Direction
Shipwrecked fugitives try to escape a brutal sea captain who's losing his mind.
Art Direction
Dashing pirate Geoffrey Thorpe plunders Spanish ships for Queen Elizabeth I and falls in love with Dona Maria, a beautiful Spanish royal he captures.
Art Direction
This period drama frames the tumultuous affair between Queen Elizabeth I and the man who would be King of England.
Art Direction
The newly-named emperor Maximilian and his wife Carlota arrive in Mexico to face popular sentiment favoring Benito Juárez and democracy.
Art Direction
A boxer flees, believing he has committed a murder while he was drunk.
Production Design
When spoiled young heiress Maggie Richards tries to charge some gasoline at an auto camp run by Bill Davis, he makes her work out her bill by making beds. Resolving to get even, she pretends to have forgiven him, and sends him to her father to get financing for a plan Bill has. What happens next was not part of her original revenge plan.
Art Direction
Two architects lose their heads over a glamorous actress.
Art Direction
When upper-class Parisian Charles Dupont and his family hire Tina and Michel as their servants, they have no idea that the domestics are in fact Tatiana, the Grand Duchess Petrovna, and her husband, Mikail, Prince Ouratieff. Recent exiles from the Russian Revolution, Tatiana and Mikail befriend the Dupont family, keeping their true identities a secret -- until one night when Soviet official Gorotchenko arrives for dinner.
Art Direction
A British actor insults a French acting group only to fall victim to a prank that might destroy his career.
Art Direction
Biopic of the famous French writer Emile Zola and his involvement in the Dreyfus Affair.
Art Direction
Vera Kowalska is put on trial for murdering concert pianist Michael Michailow. In court it is revealed that some years earlier Michael ruined Vera's life.
Art Direction
A young playboy inherits a financially-troubled New York City department store. To learn the business, he poses as a store clerk, and quickly falls for a pretty employee in the store's music department. Comedy with songs.
Art Direction
Based on the novel by Hervey Allen, this expansive drama follows the many adventures of the eponymous hero, Anthony Adverse. Abandoned at a convent by his heartless nobleman father, Don Luis, Anthony is later mentored by his kind grandfather, John Bonnyfeather, and falls for the beautiful Angela Giuseppe. When circumstances separate Anthony and Angela and he embarks on a long journey, he must find his way back to her, no matter what the cost.
Art Direction
In mid-nineteenth century England the medical establishment does not recognize the value of skilled nurses, cleanliness, nutrition and kindness. Florence Nightingale's heroic measures slowly changes all of this.
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A fake heiress marries a common reporter to thwart the advances of gold-digging playboys.
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Dr. Peter Blood, unjustly convicted of treason and exiled from England, becomes a notorious pirate.
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Dr. Socrates gave up his brilliant career as surgeon in a prominent hospital because his betrothed died under his knife. He is now a struggling doctor in a small town that has a gangster's hideout.
Art Direction
A film adaptation by Max Reinhardt of his popular stage productions of Shakespeare's comedy. Four young people escape Athens to a forest where the king and queen of the fairies are quarreling, while meanwhile a troupe of amateur actors rehearses a play. When the fairy Puck uses a magic flower to make people fall in love, the whole thing becomes a little bit confused...
Art Direction
A taxi driver travels to Venice and poses as a gondolier to land a radio singing job.
Art Direction
Husband-and-wife vaudeville stars separate when success goes to his head.
Art Direction
A Traveler's Aid worker who delights in solving people's problems gets mixed up with gangsters.
Art Direction
A playwright descended from the Borgias family becomes a murder suspect.
Art Direction
A toothpaste magnate's mischievous daughter, tired of her father's traditional ways of conducting business, joins forces with her father's rival and a crazy inventor. Together they create "Cocktail Toothpaste". The new concoction tastes like whiskey in the morning, a martini at suppertime, and champagne at night.
Art Direction
An escaped convict redeems himself by becoming an auto racing champion.
Art Direction
Before Ruth Vincent, daughter of a state governor, and state attorney general Robert Sheldon can announce their marriage, the governor is accused of bribe-taking. To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, they decide to keep their marriage secret. The political intrigue becomes more involved, and no one is quite what they seem. Soon Sheldon and Ruth must decide between saving the governor's career and an innocent person's life.
Art Direction
Prohibited from seeing her actor sweetheart Herman Brandt by her tyrannical parents, sweet young Vienesse lass Mariette defies authority by regularly visiting Brandt's downstairs apartment. The lovers' signal is a song called "The Firebird," which Brandt sings whenever he wants Mariette to visit him. When the actor is murdered, poor Mariette and her parents are prime suspects. But the truth is a bit more complicated than that, involving as it does a haughty aristocrat, a powerful diplomat and a most unusual "candid camera" device.
Art Direction
To get his girl back, that has fallen for a biker, a worker and one of his friends enter a six day race.
Art Direction
An Englishman falls in love with a Russian spy.
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A prominent New York doctor, unable to have a child, discovers her philandering husband has impregnated her best friend.
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A safecracker goes straight after doing a stretch for a bum rap. He agrees to do one last job for his "pals".
Art Direction
A railroad tycoon, disillusioned with his marriage, starts seeing a showgirl. Things go agreeably until the woman's manager decides to blackmail the millionaire.
Art Direction
A businesslike syndicate runs all the gambling joints in town; least profitable is honest Mike Lee's. Under pressure to allow cheating, Mike "walks out," leaving tough-minded daughter Lady Lee to earn a living the only way she knows. She soon becomes a success gambling among the rich, but, falling out with the syndicate, she considers the marriage proposal of blueblood Garry Madison. Can such a match work despite snobbery and old associations?
Art Direction
Abandoned by her lover, a woman becomes the main "hostess" in a decadent nightclub, but tries to put her past behind her on a steamer to Mandalay.
Art Direction
Carol feels, for whatever reason, that her husband, John, has grown indifferent to her, and is on a quest to find out why, suspecting another woman. She sees the family physician, Dr. Swope, first and then hires a private detective. Her own sleuthing is more effective and she devises a plan; having long been pursued by Eric, she apparently accedes and accompanies him to an apartment and, per her plan, enter the wrong one. There, they find Carol's best friend, Charlotte, and John hiding in a closet. The latter, showing more nerve than good sense, goes into a rage and berates Carol for her apparent philandering. The battle continues at home, where their daughter Janet informs them that because of them, she and Paul have given up on the idea of marriage, but are going away together, anyway. Carol and John trail them to a hotel and find them in twin beds, whereupon John, armed with a fire-ax, summons a justice of the peace and demands a fire-ax version of a shotgun wedding.
Art Direction
A lovesick fool bumbles into espionage and finds a stolen plane.
Art Direction
World War I brings tribulations to an American woman married to a German.
Art Direction
A fledgling producer finds himself at odds with his workers, financiers and his greedy ex-wife when he tries to produce live musicals for movie-going audiences.
Art Direction
A young woman uses her body and her sexuality to help her climb the social ladder, but soon begins to wonder if her new status will ever bring her happiness.
Art Direction
Things get tough for Carol and her showgirl pals, Trixie and Polly, when the Great Depression kicks in and all the Broadway shows close down. Wealthy songwriter Brad saves the day by funding a new Depression-themed musical for the girls to star in, but when his stuffy high-society brother finds out and threatens to disown Brad, Carol and her gold-digging friends scheme to keep the show going, hooking a couple of millionaires along the way.
Art Direction
A private eye specializing in divorce cases falls for the woman he's been hired to frame.
Art Direction
The king of an unnamed European country abdicates and tries to recapture the happiness with the wife he had to give up for the throne.
Art Direction
The disappearance of people and corpses leads a reporter to a wax museum and a sinister sculptor.
Art Direction
Unscrupulous Chicago janitor Paul Kroll uses deceit to fund a return trip to his homeland of Sweden. There, via ongoing continuing deceit and manipulation, he gradually attains a monopoly on the matchstick market in several countries and becomes an influential international figure. Based on the true story of Ivar Kreuger.
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Brash hoodlum Tom Connors enters Sing Sing cocksure of himself and disrespectful toward authority, but his tough but compassionate warden changes him.
Art Direction
During the Russian Revolution, a young nobleman and his peasant maid flee from their homeland to Constantinople where they marry and begin a challenging new life.
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A terminally ill woman and a debonair murderer facing execution meet and fall in love on a trans-Pacific crossing, each without knowing the other's secret.
Art Direction
An Indiana boy comes into an inheritance and moves to New York City, living it up with his girlfriend until he gets in over his head and someone gets killed.
Production Design
Henry Wilton is an elderly millionaire saddled with his selfish young second wife Emmy 'Sweetie' Wilton and a pair of spoiled grown children, Peggy and Eddie. To test his family's mettle, Henry pretends to have gone broke. Just as he suspected they would, his children rally to their father's side and change their ways: Peggy forsakes the fortune hunter George Struthers for the nice young man she's really in love with, the polo coach Larry Rivers, while Eddie applies for a demanding job and performs admirably. Only Sweetie seems to desert Henry.
Art Direction
A wisecracking New York reporter intrudes on a research scientist's quest to unmask The Moon Killer.
Art Direction
An architect has an affair with a woman who inspires him. Her brother is in love with the architect's daughter. The complicated entanglement leads to misunderstanding and dissolution, but ultimately love.
Art Direction
A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl (Vivienne Osborne) dupe a high rise riveter (Edward G. Robinson) into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man--and misses no opportunity to rub it in Robinson's face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable for Robinson, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.
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A female editor of a magazine falls in love with her male secretary.
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An ultra-efficient Plain Jane secretary blossoms when she accompanies her boss on a business trip to Paris.
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Gar Evans is a con artist, who pretends to be the owner of a "Golden Gate Artificial Rubber Company", and he is looking for investors. Finding them is relatively easy, but it becomes difficult when those want to see the inventor of the synthetic rubber...
Art Direction
On the eve of WW-I the French Navy ship Lafayette returns to its Toulon base for one night. There is no shore leave, although wives are permitted to come to a party. The strain of command on the older captain and his new, young wife is very great.
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A crippled puppeteer rescues an abused young boy and turns the boy into a great ballet dancer. Complications ensue when, as a young man, the dancer falls in love with a young woman the puppeteer is also in love with.
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A circus side show performer tries to discourage her younger sister from following in her footsteps.
Art Direction
A woman's life falls to pieces when she's caught cheating on her husband.
Art Direction
A music maestro uses hypnotism on a young model he meets in Paris to make her both his muse and wife.
Art Direction
Andress, Watson and Johnson, pilots with a Royal Air Force squadron in France, are tasked with a deadly mission.
Art Direction
A small-time hood shoots his way to the top, but how long can he stay there?
Art Direction
An officer of the French Military is in love with a shop girl, but his aristocratic father wants him to marry in his class and convinces the girl that marriage would be a mistake. The officer goes off to war and she becomes an opera star.
Art Direction
Rollo and Lane just happen to be tossed off the train at White Beach where Robert Story -Air ace and writer- is supposed to stop. It is a case of mistaken identity as no one knows what Story looks like. So they get free room and meals at the Palm Inn and everything is going well until they want Story to fly in the race on Saturday. Rollo has never even be up in a plane, never mind fly one, so he must figure a way out. But the girls have everything bet on his winning the race. Written by Tony Fontana
Art Direction
Having raised four children alone, widow Mary Williams still manages to love her eldest son, vicious and sadistic Danny Williams, who has led a life of crime and now returns to inflict his insane behavior on the family household.
Art Direction
A woman infiltrates a criminal mob to avenge her brother's death.
Art Direction
In this light-hearted musical, an early color film, a successful actress tires of the bustle and hustle of her tawdry life and settles down to what she thinks is the blissful mundaneness of married life. Unfortunately, the actual drudgery of wifedom takes her by surprise and domestic turmoil ensues.
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An order clerk poses as a millionaire.
Art Direction
A young girl falls in love with a member of a gang of crooks. She determines to bring the rest of the gang to justice so she can save the man she loves.
Set Decoration
This was a screen version of the 1925 operetta by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach, Herbert Stohart, and George Gershwin. The story of the movie is about a peasant who is known as "The Flame" who leads a revolution in Russia. This peasant who is in love with a Russian prince saves his life by agreeing to sacrifice her virginity to an evil fellow-conspirator. This was an all Technicolor musical which was had a sequence in Vitascope (a Warner Brother's wide screen process)
Set Designer
A scheming musician seduces a wealthy woman for love and money.
Set Designer
A 1929 film directed by William A. Seiter.
Art Direction
A fiesty, sexy and manipulative gypsy disrupts the lives of a conservative farm family.
Art Direction
Jazz age youngster Smoke Thatcher "borrows" a neighbor's car to take Patsy, his sweetheart, to a dance after his father refuses to lend him his car. A car-fight with a rival results in the borrowed automobile's being so wrecked that Smoke cannot return it. The garage to which he and Patsy take the car for repair turns out to be actually a gang's hideaway and a place where stolen cars are brought and later fenced.
Art Direction
Marguerite, the beauty of an Austrian village, loves the poverty-stricken Baron Erich von Statzen, although her mother is opposed to the affair, having been made suspicious by the hunchback Ludwig, who is smitten by Marguerite's charms and insanely jealous of Statzen. Statzen's uncle would have him marry Helena Boursch, the local brewer's daughter, to save his dwindling estate. Ordered to the front when war is declared, Statzen is forced to leave without saying goodby to Marguerite.
Art Direction
Our heroine, Miss Velez (despite the fact that she seems to be just along for the ride) is much her usual over-eloquent self (how fortunate she has no sound track!), while Warner Oland makes such an impressive and villainously seedy bandit, he needs no sound track at all. We can just imagine his oily, purring accents all too well.
Art Direction
Film which tells the story of immigrants coming to the United States.
Art Direction
A country doctor helps a young couple to elope, and comes near to losing his practice and his happiness through the hostility of the boy's father.
Art Direction
Barbara Fiske, a beautiful girl of social standing, is about to be married to Lloyd Van Courtland. On the eve of their marriage, she foolishly pays a visit to a colorful steamship captain aboard his ship.
Art Direction
When Victoria’s husband Leonard leaves her for Helen , Victoria takes up with artist Antonio. However both couples end up on George La Fuente's dude ranch. Everybody begins arguing with the poor Senor Fuentes.
Art Direction
A sheep farmer brings his new wife to his father's ranch and the old man takes an instant dislike to her.
Art Direction
Young orphan Victoria Sax becomes a grand duchess and is summoned to a remote kingdom.
Art Direction
During the Russian Revolution Princess Vera, though betrothed to Prince Dimitri, is attracted to the peasant Feodor.
Art Direction
Malena's apparent frigidity toward her husband Kenneth is a result of injustice done in an earlier incarnation when he was a knight and she was a gypsy headed for burning at the stake. This becomes evident when their unconscious minds travel back from a train wreck in the American plains to Elizabethan England.
Art Direction
Rozika is a Hungarian girl who can sing quite nice. She goes to the place known as the United States with her brother whose name happens to be Young Carl. Rozika marries a chap named Trevor and a predicament ensued after the Great War comes knocking at the door.
