Background
William Menzies was born on 29 July 1896 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
director screenwriter film production designer
William Menzies was born on 29 July 1896 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States.
Educated at Yale and the University of Edinburgh, and after serving in the United States Army during World War I he studied the Art Students League of New York.
Menzies’s most famous film. Things to Come, is known for the futuristic splendor of its sets. In the 1920s he built up a reputation for lavish art direction: Serenade (21, Raoul Walsh); Kindred of the Dust (22, Walsh); Rosita (23, Ernst Lubitsch); The Thief of Bagdad (24, Walsh); Cobra (25, (oseph Henabery); The Eagle (25, Clarence Brown); Her Sister from Paris (25, Sidney Franklin); The Bat (26, Roland West); The Son of the Sheik (26, George Fitzmaurice); The Beloved Rogue (27, Alan Crosland); The Dove (27, West); Two Arabian Knights (27, Lewis Milestone); The Awakening (28, Victor Fleming); Drums of Love (28, D. W. Griffith); The Garden of Eden (28, Milestone); Sadie Thompson (28, Walsh); Tempest (28, Sam Taylor); Alibi (29, West); Condemned (29, Wesley Ruggles); Lady of the Pavements (29, Griffith); the Taming of the Shrew (29, Taylor); Abraham Lincoln (30, Griffith); Du Barn), Woman of Passion (30, Tavlor); and The Lottery Bride (30, Paul L. Stein).
In the 1930s he diversified. Cliandu the Magician was a Bela Lugosi film. In 1933, he helped to write the script for Alice in Wonderland (Norman Z. McLeod), and in 1936 he was invited to England by Alexander Korda to design and direct Things to Come. With an II. G. Wells script, music written in advance by Arthur Bliss and photography by Perinal, the film was top-heavy with Korda’s lusting after prestige. It is underdirected but the sets are very beautiful. As well as directing, Menzies was involved in the production of The Thief of Bagdad (40, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, and Ludwig Berger); Ivy (47, Sam Wood); Raw Deal (48, Anthony Mann); Reign of Terror (49, Mann); and Around the World in 80 Days (56, Michael Anderson).
But he was most successful as an art director: Gone With the Wind (39, Victor Fleming), on which Selznick admitted that Menzies “spent perhaps a year of his life in laying out camera angles, lighting effects and other important directorial contributions”; Our Town (40, Wood); Foreign Correspondent (40, Alfred Hitchcock)—remember that Dutch windmill?; So Ends Our Night (41, John Cromwell); For Whom the Bell Tolls (43, Wood); and Arch of Triumph (48, Milestone).