Oliver Smith (designer)

Oliver Smith (designer)
Oliver Smith (February 13, 1918 – January 23, 1994) was an American scenic designer and interior designer.
Biography
Born in Waupun, Wisconsin, Smith attended Penn State, after which he moved to New York City and began to form friendships that blossomed into working relationships with such talents as Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Carson McCullers, and Agnes de Mille. In his early 20s, he lived at February House in Brooklyn with a coterie of famous people centered on George Davis and W. H. Auden. He tended the furnace, washed the dishes, and soothed the tempers of both residents and visitors. His career was launched with his designs for Léonide Massine's ballet Saratoga in 1941 and de Mille's Rodeo in 1942.
Smith designed dozens of Broadway musicals, films (Guys and Dolls, The Band Wagon, Oklahoma!, Porgy and Bess), and operas (La Traviata). His association with the American Ballet Theatre began in 1944, when he collaborated with Robbins and Bernstein on Fancy Free, which served as the inspiration for On the Town. The following year, he became co-director of ABT with Lucia Chase, a position he held until 1980. He did the scenic design for the 1949 Broadway revue, Along Fifth Avenue, starring Nancy Walker and Jackie Gleason, which ran for 180 performances. He designed the sets for ABT's complete 1967 production of Swan Lake, the first full-length version mounted by an American company.
Smith also trained young designers for many years, serving on the faculty of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he taught master classes in scenic design.
Throughout his career, Smith was nominated for twenty-five Tony Awards, often multiple times in the same year, and won ten. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction for his work on Guys and Dolls.
Smith was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1981. In 2011, Smith was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame.
Smith redesigned the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (New York City Landmark and Interior Landmark), New York, in the early 1960s.
Smith died of emphysema in Brooklyn, New York.
Notable productions
1944 On the Town
1947 High Button Shoes
1949 Along Fifth Avenue
1949 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
1951 Paint Your Wagon
1953 Carnival in Flanders
1954 On Your Toes (revival)
1955 Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
1956 My Fair Lady
1956 Auntie Mame
1956 Candide
1957 West Side Story
1957 Brigadoon (revival)
1957 Carousel (revival)
1958 Flower Drum Song
1959 The Sound of Music
1959 Take Me Along
1959 Goodbye Charlie
1960 Camelot
1960 The Unsinkable Molly Brown
1960 Becket
1961 The Night of the Iguana
1963 Barefoot in the Park
1964 Hello, Dolly!
1964 Ben Franklin in Paris
1964 Luv
1965 Kelly
1965 Baker Street
1965 The Odd Couple
1965 On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
1965 Cactus Flower
1966 Breakfast at Tiffany's
1966 Show Boat (revival)
1967 I Do! I Do!
1967 Illya Darling
1968 Plaza Suite
1969 Dear World
1969 The Last of the Red Hot Lovers
1970 Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen
1971 The Most Important Man
1973 The Women (revival)
1978 First Monday in October
1979 Carmelina
1982 84 Charing Cross Road
References
External links
W.H. Crain Costume and Scene Design Collection at the Harry Ransom Center
1918 births
1994 deaths
American Ballet Theatre
American scenic designers
Broadway set designers
Ballet designers
Pennsylvania State University alumni
People from Waupun, Wisconsin
Special Tony Award recipients
Tony Award winners
People from Brooklyn Heights