Ken Adam
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sir Kenneth Hugo Adam, (born Klaus Hugo Adam; 5 February 1921 – 10 March 2016) was a British movie production designer, best known for his set designs for the James Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for Dr. Strangelove. He won two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction. Born in Berlin, he relocated to England with his Jewish family at the age of 13 soon after the Nazis came to power, and was one of only three German-born pilots in the British Royal Air Force during the Second World War.
Films
Adam entered the film industry as a draughtsman for This Was a Woman (1948). He met his Italian wife Maria Letizia while filming in Ischia, and they married on 16 August 1952. His first major screen credit was as production designer on the British thriller Soho Incident (1956). In the mid-1950s he worked (uncredited) on the epics Around the World in 80 Days (also 1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), directed by William Wyler. His first major credit was for the horror film Night of the Demon (1957) directed by Jacques Tourneur , and he was the production designer on several films directed by Robert Aldrich. He was hired for the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962). For Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), described by the British Film Institute (BFI) as "gleaming and sinister." He turned down the opportunity to work on Kubrick's next project 2001: A Space Odyssey after he found out that Kubrick had been working with NASA for a year on space exploration, and that would put him at a disadvantage in developing his art.
This enabled Adam to make his name with his innovative, semi-futuristic sets for further James Bond films such as Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971). The supertanker set for The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) was constructed in the largest sound stage in the world at the time. It was lit by Stanley Kubrick in secret. His last Bond film was Moonraker (1979). Writing for The Guardian in 2005, journalist Johnny Dee claimed: "His sets for the seven Bond films he worked on [...] are as iconic as the movies themselves and set the benchmark for every blockbuster".
Adam's other film credits include The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), the Michael Caine espionage thriller The Ipcress File (1965) and its sequel Funeral in Berlin (1966), the Peter O'Toole version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Sleuth (1972), Salon Kitty (1976), Agnes of God (1985), Addams Family Values (1993) and The Madness of King George (1994). He was also a visual consultant on the film version of Pennies from Heaven (1981) adapted from Dennis Potter's television serial.
Adam returned to work with Kubrick on Barry Lyndon (1975), for which he won his first Oscar. The BFI noted the film's "contrastingly mellow Technicolor beauties" in its depiction of the 18th century. During the late 1970s he worked on storyboards and concept art for Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, then in pre-production. The film was eventually shelved by Paramount Pictures.
Adam was a jury member at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival and the 49th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1999, during the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition "Ken Adam – Designing the Cold War", Adam spoke on his role in the design of film sets associated with the 1960s through the 1980s.
