"Iconic Production Designer Robert F Boyle, who collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock and Norman Jewison, and [was] the recipient of an Honorary Oscar in 2008, died Sunday," reports Andre Soares at the Alt Film Guide. "He was 100. The Hitchcock films on which Boyle worked are: as associate art director, Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943); as production designer, The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), and most notably North by Northwest (1959), which features Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint facing nasty spies atop Mount Rushmore.... In addition to Hitchcock and Jewison, Boyle worked with the likes of Richard Brooks, Michael Gordon, Alexander Hall, Penny Marshall, Budd Boetticher, Joe Dante, Sylvester Stallone, Hal Ashby, Arthur Hiller, Don Siegel and Tom Mankiewicz (who died this past Saturday)."
"Boyle is the subject of Daniel Raim's Oscar-nominated documentary The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000), which refers to Hitchcock's North by Northwest," notes the Hollywood Reporter. "He also is a prominent subject in Raim's newest documentary about production designers, Something's Gonna Live, which includes participation by three other deceased production designers, Henry Bumstead, Albert Nozaki and Harold Michelson."
Update, 8/4: More from William Grimes (New York Times), Glenn Kenny and Nathaniel R.
Update, 8/10: "Simply put, the director conceives scenes, the art director creates them and the cinematographer captures them," writes Ronald Bergan in the Guardian. "Boyle, as art director or production designer, defined his job as 'being responsible for the space in which a film takes place.'"
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