You know the one. It kept getting re-decorated for each new chapter of the film. It was a "standing set" at Warner Brothers back in the 1950s used in almost a dozen films. I've collected some of them and put them on YouTube. It's interesting to see how different paint, lighting and bannisters can change it. Check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61xwm0QDrqQ
Ah, what a little balsa wood, plaster of paris and paint or wallpaper can do . . . Roz Russell didn't really like the set, thought it was much too big and cavernous.
You'll notice the same sets in several of Bette Davis's 1940s Warners films - the staircase and front door in NOW VOYAGER (1942) can be recognized in several othes made before and after.
"Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke."
Was that one also in Mr Skeffington?
shareRe: MR SKEFFINGTON, yes, almost certainly the "Davis Staircase." Those art directors/set decorators displayed a lot of ingenuity during the World War Two years, when limitations were placed on how many new sets could be built for movies and how much could be spent on them.
The idea of using the staircase, front door and chandelier to indicate the passage of time via Mame's changes of decor (which she apparently changed as often as the color of her hair) was inspired. And don't ask me why, but it was years before the real meaning of Gloria Upson's line about books being 'decorative' really hit me!
"Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke."
i dunno about the staircase but when auntie mame is degraded by patrick then calls him down, is the saddest thing, it makes tears drop off my face everytime, how did Rosalind not get an Oscar for this, this movie is priceless, i watch it over and over and over and over ...
sharehow did Rosalind not get an Oscar for this,It was her fourth nomination, but the fifth each for Susan Hayward and Deborah Kerr, so one was due for a win. Hayward's role in I Want To Live! was easily the most daring and dramatic playing a real-life condemned murderer (though this fictionalized drama made her character Barbara Graham out to be innocent).
Bumping a half decade old comment but--good comment.
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