Alexander Golitzen

Alexander Golitzen was a legendary art director, a field in which most worker's names remain relatively unknown. His prolific work in hundreds of films, predominantly at Universal, made his name familiar to many film-goers, at least among those who read credits. Possibly only Cedric Gibbons, at MGM, shared a similar fame. Golitzen was nominated for Academy Awards fourteen times, winning on three occasions. Golitzen's family, noble descendants of princes of Lithuania, fled Moscow following the Russian Revolution, so he found himself in America at the age of 16. The family settled in Seattle and Alexander earned a degree in architecture from the University of Washington. He moved to Los Angeles in 1933 and became an assistant to the fellow Russian-born art director, Alexander Toluboff at MGM working as an illustrator for Queen Christina (1933). He became an art director in 1935, and went on to work at various studios for independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn and Walter Wanger.