A.D. Flowers(1917-2001)

For more than thirty years, A. D. Flowers worked his magic in movies and on TV and ended his career as one of Hollywood's most highly respected and sought-after special effects experts. His craft, however, predated the now-universally employed computerized high-tech FX that the movie and TV industry relies upon today. Explosives, flashbulbs, miniatures, water tanks, unique recipes for blood, and a lot of improvisation (not to mention chance) comprised Flowers' bag of tricks. Affirming that he used his bag of tricks to its best advantage, the Academy Awards presented Flowers with Oscars for his contributions as a "powder man" in the 1970 production of "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and for his skillful creation of disaster in the 1972 "The Poseidon Adventure." He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his work with Steven Spielberg in the 1979 movie "1941" -- one of Flowers last efforts in his field. He was born in Texas and raised in Sayre, Oklahoma. After graduating from high school in 1935, like so many others from Oklahoma in the '30s, he hitchhiked to California, the golden state, where he hoped to find work. Within three years he was married and, with the help of his father-in-law, a painter at MGM studios, had a job as a studio handyman. Starting right at the bottom, literally, Flowers spent his first 19 nights at his new job on his hands and knees polishing a dance floor that Mickey Rooney used. He eventually moved from floors to grounds and was given the "greenman" assignment wherein his responsibility included feeding and nursing and otherwise maintaining plants, flowers, and any turf on movie sets. By the mid-'40s, Flowers had worked his way into the studio property department and from there onto assignments working with special effects. Explosives became his forte, but anything mechanical proved his domain. Whether employing hydraulics, electronics, or pyrotechnics -- skills that he studied at trade schools while practicing them in movies -- Flowers helped create or re-create fires, floods, dog fights (the aerial kind), bombs bursting in air, etc. For many years he enjoyed the role of chief of mechanical special effects at 20th Century-Fox. And his specialties were not limited to movies. He also plied his trade in television on shows such as "Gunsmoke" and Combat!" for example. A. D. Flowers retired to Camarillo, California, in 1979.