- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJoseph Charles Wright
- Joseph C. Wright was born on August 19, 1892 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an art director, known for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), My Gal Sal (1942) and Guys and Dolls (1955). He died on February 24, 1985 in Oceanside, California, USA.
- Under contract at MGM (1925-1926, 1934-1939); Universal (1927); Columbia (1928); Spent the bulk of his career at 20th Century Fox (1929-1933,1939-1953), primarily as art director for the studio's most prestigious colour musicals.
- When art director Wright found that Universal planned a lot of location shooting on San Francisco's Grant Street for "Flower Drum Song," he noticed that local weather records showed that the area had numerous rainy and foggy days at that time of year. He convinced the studio to recreate the street on a sound stage at the cost of almost a half million dollars. A record was kept of the Bay City's weather over the course of the four week shoot, and Wright's shrewd decision ultimately saved the studio over $200,000 in lost shooting time.
- When Wright used photographs he had taken in Britain to recreate the entire Soho district of London on the Universal lot for "Strange Bedfellows," it became the largest permanent set built by any Hollywood studio since before World War II.
- Wright took postgraduate courses at the Sorbonne in Paris.
- Wright redesigned the Santa Monica Civil Auditirium in order to properly showcase the annual Oscar presentation.
- While living in Kyoto] When I feel I have learned what I can about the Japanese culture and people, I will move on. In the society of our time, movie-goers are world travelers and can readily spot discrepancies in the sets we create - and in widescreen processes every minute detail is magnified many times over. An art director must never stop expanding his knowledge.
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