He’s the Production Hand Who Designed Lincoln’s Nose

During his 57-year career, production designer Robert Boyle worked on 75 feature films--everything from the atmospheric 1941 horror classic “The Wolf Man” to the evocative 1967 thriller “In Cold Blood” to the forgettable 1987 Whoopi Goldberg comedy “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

A favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, Boyle designed five of the Master of Suspense’s best films: “North by Northwest,” “Saboteur,” “Shadow of a Doubt,” “The Birds” and “Marnie.”

And his realistic designs added immeasurably to the success of such Norman Jewison films as “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Gaily, Gaily” and the original “The Thomas Crown Affair.”

From his illustrations to his uncanny ability to scout locations to creating sets on sound stages, Boyle has created some of the more memorable scenes ever put on film, like the spine-tingling conclusion on the arm of the Statue of Liberty in “Saboteur” or the crop-dusting scene in “North by Northwest.”

A recipient of four Oscar nominations (“Fiddler on the Roof,” “Gaily, Gaily,” “North by Northwest” and “The Shootist”), the spry 91-year-old is chairman of the production design department at the American Film Institute Conservatory. And he’s also the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary short, “The Man on Lincoln’s Nose: The Cinema of Robert Boyle.” The title refers to Boyle’s breathtaking re-creations of the presidential faces on Mt. Rushmore for the climactic chase sequence in “North by Northwest.” “The Man on Lincoln’s Nose” was directed, produced and co-written by Daniel Raim, a former pupil of Boyle’s at the American Film Institute.

“I was inspired by Bob’s ability to articulate both philosophically and visually not only what production design is about, but what filmmaking and storytelling is about,” Raim says.

A graduate of USC with a degree in architecture, Boyle began his career in the art department at Paramount Pictures in 1933.

“I’ll never forget the first set I saw when I walked onto the lot,” says Boyle, during a recent interview at the rustic Hollywood Hills house he designed.

“I had just gotten a job in the art department and a friend of mine, Boris Leven, had just worked on the film ‘The Scarlet Empress’ with Marlene Dietrich. I remember this tremendous set.” Boyle breaks out into a bright smile. “I remember Dietrich loved to cook. She baked these cookies which she would work on all night and bring into the studio. She would come in with a big basket of cookies she had worked on all night and they were [available] for anybody.”

While at Paramount, Boyle worked as the second unit art director for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1936 Western, “The Plainsman” with Gary Cooper,” and was the assistant to art director Ernst Fegte on Fritz Lang’s first American film, 1938’s “You and Me.”

“Ernie didn’t have much inclination to live by the rules,” recalls Boyle. “He did this marvelous store set. Lang worked by finite timing. Two seconds [for the actors to go] from the bottom of the escalator to the counter meant a great deal to this German director, but it didn’t mean too much to Ernie.

“We had this beautiful set but the distance between the escalator and the counter was not according to what Lang wanted, so he blasted Ernie. I felt so sorry for Ernie because Lang did it in front of everyone.”

Working with Hitchcock over a 20-year period, Boyle got to know all about the director’s phobias. “He had all of them,” says Boyle. “One time I was taking him home--in those days I had a Volkswagen Bug. We were going down the street, and as we stopped at the stop sign, a motor cop came by on his motorcycle. Hitchcock was rigid. His palms were sweating. The fact that there was a policeman who had driven by frightened him. So he was very very aware of his own fear of authority.”

Jewison, who appears in the documentary, was one of Boyle’s favorites. “He was marvelous,” Boyle says warmly. “Hitchcock wasn’t fun always, but Norman was always fun. He enjoyed life. He was also very interested in ideas.”

‘We Never Got Along Too Well’

There was no love lost between Boyle and director Richard Brooks, for whom he worked on “In Cold Blood” and “Bite the Bullet.”

“We never got along too well,” Boyle says matter-of-factly. “Brooks was a very honest person, and with all honest people he was the hardest person to be with. He was not a Norman Jewison. He had no place for other people’s opinions. When he got his teeth into something, you couldn’t move him. He was a tyrant.”

Boyle wishes he had had the opportunity to do more films with director Don Siegel. The two collaborated on John Wayne’s last film, 1976’s “The Shootist.”

“We became close,” Boyle says of Siegel. “After ‘The Shootist,’ he began to fail in health. I worked with him a little bit on books he was writing [before he died]. He was a no-nonsense person. He didn’t go in for any of the junk.”

The majority of the films Boyle worked on were produced by the major studios. He still has high praise for the old studio system--”the reason for that is the communication between the various disciplines that are involved in filmmaking. Now the disciplines have kind of disappeared. They become part of a special effects company or some other type of company. But in the studio system, we were all together.

“Even when I was at Paramount, I was called a set designer. It was really low on the totem pole, but my access to actors and directors was as great as anybody’s. We all talked together and we all ate together in the studio commissary. So in those days, it was more a collaborative system than it is today.”

Boyle says he really didn’t officially retire from the movies--the movies retired him. Hollywood, he says, wasn’t interested in an 80-year-old production designer. “After awhile, experience is not as important as what is perceived as a creative thing,” he explains. “We outlive our usefulness.”