Biography
A key figure in creating the look of some of Hollywood's greatest "New Wave" films, production designer Richard Sylbert collaborated with several of the period's most notable filmmakers, earning a brief, unprecedented tenure as Paramount's head of production in the process. Equally adept at period and contemporary styles, urban and rural milieus, and designs for black-and-white and color cinematography, Sylbert earned six Oscar nominations over the course of his five-decade career, winning for the distinctly different Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and
Dick Tracy (1990).
Born in Brooklyn, Sylbert and his identical twin brother, Paul Sylbert, fought together in the Korean War and attended Temple University's Tyler School of Art together. Returning to New York after school, both Sylberts landed TV jobs, with Richard painting scenery at NBC. After two years as the art director for TV's The Inner Sanctum, Sylbert earned his first feature-film credit with
Patterns (1956). He subsequently helped create the stark, gritty feel of
Elia Kazan's sexually daring drama
Baby Doll (1956) and scathing TV critique
A Face in the Crowd (1957). Continuing to make his name with forward-thinking directors as the studio system waned, Sylbert teamed up with independent filmmaker
Shirley Clarke on her tough, innovative examination of urban junkies,
The Connection (1961). Sylbert's creative range was confirmed that same year when he and Kazan envisioned the sultry Technicolor passions roiling beneath the repressed Midwestern small-town surface (via Staten Island) in
Splendor in the Grass (1961). Though
Splendor was his last film with Kazan, Sylbert eventually forged an equally fertile relationship with
Splendor's neophyte star
Warren Beatty.
Further establishing his talent for environments as steeped in psychology and fantasy as reality, Sylbert was instrumental in crafting the unsettling paranoia driving
John Frankenheimer's political thriller
The Manchurian Candidate (1962), punctuated by the bravura 360-degree shot blending New Jersey prattle with nefarious foreign-bred schemes. Sylbert meshed normality and madness again in
Robert Rossen's
Lilith (1964), while his New York locations in
Sidney Lumet's
The Pawnbroker (1964) spoke volumes about the eponymous Holocaust survivor's inner torment. His reputation in Hollywood was assured when Sylbert was nominated for, and won, his first Oscar for
Mike Nichols' searing black-and-white adaptation of profanity-laden marital drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Collaborating with Nichols again, Sylbert's well-appointed suburban homes, aqua-blue pool, and austerely modern church became an index of upper-middle class anomie in Nichols' seminal youth culture hit
The Graduate (1967).
A fixture of the new Hollywood along with his brother, Sylbert inaugurated two more successful collaborations, with Paul's costume designer wife, Anthea Sylbert, and director
Roman Polanski, on
Rosemary's Baby (1968). Making the most of the New York Gothic apartment house the Dakota, Sylbert turned it into a believable roost for a Satanic coven. Between Nichols and Polanski, Sylbert worked steadily throughout the first half of the 1970s. Moving from the real/surreal accouterments of World War II for Nichols' adaptation of Catch-22 (1970), Sylbert was as comfortable creating the scientists' marine Eden for
Day of the Dolphin (1973) as the more intimate landscapes of the emotionally brutal
Carnal Knowledge (1971). Sylbert also managed to fit in former Nichols partner
Elaine May's marital comedy
The Heartbreak Kid (1972) and
John Huston's rural boxing drama
Fat City (1972). Sylbert finally scored his second Oscar nomination, though, for Polanski's
Chinatown (1974). Filled with white buildings, dusty orange groves, dried river beds, and saline garden ponds, Sylbert's vision of 1930s Los Angeles reflected the physical and moral drought at the heart of the story's sun-drenched darkness. Evoking a different period of Los Angeles decadence, Sylbert earned his third nomination for the overdone mansions, luxe salons, and freewheeling orgies inhabited by
Warren Beatty's randy 1960s hairdresser in
Shampoo (1975). Paul Sylbert would win for Beatty's
Heaven Can Wait (1978).
Sylbert's creative relationships and his grasp of visual storytelling led
Robert Evans to make Sylbert his successor when he stepped down as Paramount's production chief in 1975. Though Sylbert's executive stint produced several hits, including
The Bad News Bears (1976), his preference for such mature, challenging fare as
Nashville (1975) and
Days of Heaven (1978) led Paramount head Barry Diller to replace Sylbert in 1978. Back in his preferred profession, Sylbert's dedication to historical detail brought him a fourth Oscar nod for Beatty's epic John Reed biopic
Reds (1981).
Despite the declining fortunes of the 1970s auteurs, Sylbert still displayed peerless style with his Oscar-nominated period designs for the
Francis Ford Coppola/
Robert Evans folly
The Cotton Club (1984), and the 1980s New York glitz of
Brian De Palma's bomb
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Sylbert then garnered his second Oscar for Beatty's comic strip adaptation
Dick Tracy. Restricted to backlot sets, matte paintings, and the strip's seven-color palette, Sylbert masterfully created a live-action equivalent of animated fantasy. Working less frequently in the 1990s, Sylbert re-teamed with De Palma for the 1970s-set
Carlito's Way (1993) and designed Hollywood New Wave cohort
Bob Rafelson's neo-noir
Blood and Wine (1996);
Mulholland Falls (1996) was
Chinatown redux. After his comically glossy matrimonial confections enhanced the
Julia Roberts hit
My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Sylbert collaborated again with
Wedding's P.J. Hogan on Who Shot Victor Fox? (2002). Sylbert died of cancer, though, before
Fox's release. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide