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Robert F. Boyle is a Actor and Other American born on 10 october 1909 at Los Angeles (USA)

Robert F. Boyle

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Birth name Robert Francis Boyle
Nationality USA
Birth 10 october 1909 at Los Angeles (USA)
Death 1 august 2010 (at 100 years) at Los Angeles (USA)

Robert Francis Boyle (October 10, 1909 – August 1, 2010) was an American film art director and production designer.

Born in Los Angeles, Boyle trained as an architect, graduating from the University of Southern California (USC). When he lost his job in that field during the Great Depression, Boyle found work in films as an extra. In 1933 he was hired as a draftsman in the Paramount Pictures art department, headed by supervising art director Hans Dreier. Beginning with Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman, Boyle went on to work on a variety of pictures as a sketch artist, draftsman and assistant art director before becoming an art director at Universal Studios in the early 1940s.

Boyle collaborated several times with Alfred Hitchcock, first as an associate art director for Saboteur (1942) and later as a full-fledged production designer for North by Northwest (1959), The Birds (1963), and Marnie (1964). Denied permission to shoot footage on Mount Rushmore, Hitchcock turned to Boyle to create realistic replicas of the stone heads. Boyle abseiled down the monument, photographing its contours in detail, before constructing “just enough to put the actors on so we could get down shots, up shots, side shots, whatever we needed.” Almost two decades earlier, Boyle had delivered the Statue of Liberty reproduction that was used in the climactic scene of Saboteur. For The Birds, Boyle was put in charge of the title characters. He later recalled, “We needed to find out which birds we could use best, and finally settled on two types: sea gulls, which were very greedy beasts that would always fly toward the camera if there was a piece of meat, and crows, which had a strange sort of intelligence.” Boyle described his relationship with Hitchcock: “It was a meeting of equals: the director who knew exactly what he wanted, and the art director who knew how to get it done."

When director Norman Jewison failed in his attempts to get the necessary submarine that was at the center of his The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming storyline, Boyle built a working model from styrofoam and fiberglass.

Boyle's other credits include It Came from Outer Space, Cape Fear, In Cold Blood, Fiddler on the Roof, Portnoy's Complaint, Winter Kills, Mame, W.C. Fields and Me, The Shootist, Private Benjamin, Staying Alive, and Troop Beverly Hills.

During the course of his career, Boyle was nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction but never won. In 1997 he received the Art Directors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was voted an Honorary Academy Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, "in recognition of one of cinema's great careers in art direction," which he received during the 80th Academy Awards ceremony on February 24, 2008. At the age of 98, Boyle became the oldest winner ever of an Honorary Award in the history of the Academy Awards. Despite being in ill health and arriving to the ceremony in a wheelchair, Boyle insisted on walking onstage, alongside Nicole Kidman, to receive the honor.

Boyle was the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary short The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000).

Boyle died on August 1, 2010 in Los Angeles from natural causes.

Biography

Né à Los Angeles, Boyle a une formation d'architecte, diplômé de l'Université de la Californie du Sud (USC). Lorsqu'il perd son emploi durant la Grande Dépression, Boyle trouve un emploi de figurant dans l'industrie cinématographique. En 1933, il est embauché comme dessinateur dans le département d'art de Paramount Pictures, supervisé par le directeur artistique Hans Dreier. Il travaille sur une variété d'images en tant que croqueur, dessinateur et assistant de directeur artistique, avant de devenir directeur artistique aux Studios Universal au début des années 1940.

Boyle a collaboré plusieurs fois avec Alfred Hitchcock, tout d'abord comme directeur artistique associé pour Cinquième Colonne (1942), et plus tard comme décorateur à part entière pour La Mort aux trousses (1959), Les Oiseaux (1963) et Pas de printemps pour Marnie (1964).

Les autres contributions de Boyle incluent Le Météore de la nuit, Les Nerfs à vif, De sang-froid, Un violon sur le toit, Portnoy et son complexe, Winter Kills, Mame, Fields et moi, Le Dernier des géants, la Bidasse, Staying Alive, Deux nigauds détectives, Deux nigauds chez Vénus, Deux nigauds en Alaska et Troop Beverly Hills .

Pendant toute sa carrière, Boyle a été nommé quatre fois pour l'Oscar de la meilleure direction artistique, mais il ne l'a jamais remporté. En 1997, il reçoit une récompense de la Guilde de la direction artistique pour l'ensemble de sa carrière. et les membres de l'Académie des arts et des sciences du cinéma lui décernent l'Oscar d'honneur "en reconnaissance d'une des carrières cinématographiques les plus importantes dans le domaine de la direction artistique". Il le reçoit le 24 février 2008, pour la quatre-vingtième cérémonie des Oscars. À l'âge de 98 ans, Boyle est devenu le doyen des lauréats de cette récompense dans l'histoire des Oscars.

Boyle fut le sujet d'un documentaire sur les nommés aux Oscars dans le court-métrageThe Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000.