Jo Mielziner

Joseph Mielziner was born on March 19, 1901, in Paris, France, and went on to become one of the most influential theatrical scenic and lighting designers in American theatre history. He died on March 15, 1976, four days before his 75th birthday, in a New York taxicab while traveling between meetings for The Baker's Wife, a musical he was in the process of designing.

Mielziner came from an artistically and intellectually distinguished family. His father, Leo Mielziner, was a painter, and his mother, Ella Lane McKenna Friend, was a writer. His paternal grandfather, Moses Mielziner, was a rabbi. His brother, actor-director Kenneth MacKenna, played a direct role in shaping his career by bringing him on as a stage manager for summer stock productions, an experience through which Mielziner discovered his affinity for scenic design. He pursued formal training in painting at the Art Students League and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Academy enabled him to study set design in Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. He also served as an apprentice to Robert Edmond Jones, the designer of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms.

After spending thirteen months in Europe studying developments in stage design, Mielziner joined the Theatre Guild in New York in 1923 as an assistant stage manager and bit actor, appearing in productions including Saint Joan and The Failures. His debut as a Broadway designer came in 1927 with The Guardsman, for which he designed both the scenery and lighting. Over the course of his career he designed the scenery, and frequently the lighting, for more than 200 productions. He is credited with pioneering what became known as selective realism in scenic design, and his backdrop depicting people beneath the Brooklyn Bridge for Maxwell Anderson's Winterset drew particular critical attention. His work on the 1929 production of Elmer Rice's Street Scene is also noted for its broader cultural influence: the American painter Edward Hopper, who was acquainted with Mielziner, is said to have modeled his painting Early Sunday Morning (1930) on that set.

Mielziner's Broadway credits span many of the defining works of the American theatrical canon. They include the original productions of Strange Interlude, Sweet and Low, Of Thee I Sing, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Winterset, Dodsworth, Oh, Captain!, Another Part of the Forest, Carousel, South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, The King and I, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Gypsy, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. His scenic designs for the original production of Death of a Salesman were reconstructed for the 2012 Broadway revival starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Andrew Garfield, and Linda Emond, at the insistence of director Mike Nichols. Beyond the stage, Mielziner worked on the film Picnic, for which he won the Academy Award for best color art direction, and on the ballet Who Cares?

His design work extended into architecture and public exhibition. He designed the theater at Wake Forest University and co-designed the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center alongside architect Eero Saarinen. He also designed the setting for the Vatican Pavilion's display of Michelangelo's Pietà at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

During World War II, Mielziner served as a camouflage specialist with the United States Air Force before being transferred to the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA, where he worked under General William J. Donovan. In the later years of his life he resided at The Dakota in New York City, and can be seen in his studio in an exterior shot used in the film Rosemary's Baby.

Over the course of his career Mielziner received seven Tony Awards and five additional nominations. Among his Tony wins were the award for Best Lighting Design in 1970, the award for Best Scenic Design in 1970, and the award for Best Scenic Design in 1952. He also received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design.

Mielziner was of both Jewish and Christian ancestry and converted to Roman Catholicism under the influence of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. He married three times. His first wife, literary critic Marya Mannes, whom he married in 1926, was unfaithful to him. His second marriage, in 1932, was to actress Annie Laurie Jacques, who struggled with substance abuse. In 1938 he married actress Jean MacIntyre; as a Roman Catholic he did not divorce her, though the two had long been separated at the time of his death in 1976.