Adding his gleam to a Hollywood golden age

“HANS DREIER and the Paramount ‘Glow’: The Golden Age of the Studio Art Department,” an exhibition adorning the walls of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Fourth Floor Gallery, not only celebrates the legendary art director but is also a plea for film preservation.

Several films highlighted in the exhibition, which runs through Dec. 9, no longer exist. The illustrations and stills from these films, including Dorothy Arzner’s “Manhattan Cocktail” and the silent version of “The Canary Murder Case,” are their only visual record.

Guest curator William Ezelle Jones spent two years amassing the work on display, exploring the production files at the Academy Library to find stills and videos that complement the 150 designs drawn by Dreier and his staff -- which included Mitchell Leisen, Robert Boyle and Henry Bumstead, who at 90 is still working for Clint Eastwood.

They were the creators of the Paramount “Glow” in the exhibition’s title -- the sparkle and sheen of the studio’s movies during Dreier’s time, the mid-’20s through 1951 -- that set them apart visually from other films.

The show is divided into the work Dreier and company did for Paramount directors, including Ernst Lubitsch, for whom he designed the opulent, witty sets of the romantic musicals “The Love Parade” and “Monte Carlo,” and Sweden’s Mauritz Stiller, with his more downbeat dramas.

“From the look of some of the drawings,” says Jones, “Mr. Dreier was instrumental in the early production conferences, taking notes and doing sketches.” Over the years, his set illustrations evolved, Jones notes, becoming more unfinished and expressionistic as his duties expanded.

Born in Germany in 1885, Dreier worked for the famed UFA studio in Berlin as well as EFA, which was Paramount’s European affiliate. He came to America in 1923.

“It was through his association with Lubitsch at UFA that he got referred to the Famous Players-Lasky,” which would become Paramount, says Jones. “The first thing he worked on was ‘Forbidden Paradise’ with Pola Negri. The reviews talk about the sumptuousness of the interiors, but so many of them are very strong, very simple.”

In 1931 Dreier became the supervising art director of Paramount, where he oversaw a staff of artists and researchers.

Among the detailed drawings in the exhibit are his illustrations for the first best picture winner, “Wings,” along with those for the numerous ornate films he made for Josef von Sternberg, including “Morocco,” “Dishonored,” “Shanghai Express” and “The Scarlet Empress.”

“I am fascinated with what Mr. Dreier brought to the lighting scheme,” Jones says. “Each one of the drawings has a very precise lighting design, and the stills show how his [suggestions] were followed.” In several instances, Jones also made a copy of the back of one of Dreier’s illustrations, with notations specifying camera positions and lighting direction.

During his long career, Dreier received 22 Oscar nominations and a consideration for 1928’s “The Patriot” (no official nominees were announced that year). He won three: best art decoration-set direction, black and white, for 1950’s “Sunset Boulevard”; best art decoration-set decoration, color, for 1949’s “Samson and Delilah”; and best art decoration-interior decoration, color, for 1944’s “Frenchman’s Creek.”

He retired in 1951 after working on the George Stevens classic “A Place in the Sun” and died of a heart ailment in 1966.

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Hans Dreier and the Paramount ‘Glow’: The Golden Age of the Studio Art Department

Where: Fourth Floor Gallery, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

When: Tuesdays through Fridays,

10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; weekends noon to

6 p.m.

Ends: Dec. 11

Price: Free

Contact: (310) 247-3600, www.oscars.org