Theatre Design & Technology - Winter 2018 - 12

How Now Dow Jones (1967) (show curtain). The original is a collage, painted on newsprint with stock quotes from
the Wall Street Journal.

work may have already been appraised
by those managing his or her estate, with
some of the most interesting material
having already been distributed to others
or sold at auction. For example, several
of Oliver Smith's renderings for Camelot,
the 1976 production of My Fair Lady,
and The Sleeping Beauty were auctioned into private hands by Sotheby's as
part of the Jackie Onassis sale on April
25, 1996. The Opening Scene backdrop
for Camelot (Lot 648) commanded the
highest bid among them at $43,125,
which was 40 times the pre-auction estimate (Thursday's Winning Bids). He
gave the renderings as gifts to Onassis,
a notable patroness of American Ballet
Theatre, which Smith co-produced for
decades. Much of the remaining material for these productions may be found
in the Oliver Smith Collection, and the
pieces that were auctioned were recorded in high resolution for the copyright
holder's archives prior to their sale.
A few years ago, I assigned my
students a project to find copies of renderings by Oliver Smith. The students
worked relentlessly, burning up search
engines in a frenzy of activity in their
quest for a hidden treasure of the designs for Smith's musicals and ballets. It
was a vexing problem. They knew what
they were looking for, but seemed to be
walled off from access to the renderings.
A few popped up on ArtStor, thumbnails
of renderings that belonged to Robbins
or De Mille. The objective was to let stu-

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THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY

WINTER 2018

dents gain experience by going through
the "finding" process to see if they could
discover Smith's renderings on their
own. It was a virtual game of hide-andseek, and yet the process for the student
researchers replicated what any professional researcher would do to uncover
important primary sources.
Their struggles are not surprising,
for there is a distinct lack of written material about him; these works include only
one interview, two books with essays he
wrote, and a bio-bibliography written by
a former student. Patricia MacKay conducted a lengthy interview in 1982 published in Theatre Crafts in which Smith
described his approach and methods
while he was teaching at Tisch. This article also included black-and-white images
of many design renderings.
Orville K. Larson's Scene Design for
Stage and Screen: Readings on the Aesthetics and Methodology of Scene Design for Drama, Opera, Musical Comedy,
Ballet, Motion Pictures, Television and
Arena Theatre contains an informative
essay written by Smith titled "Musical
Comedy Design for Stage and Screen" in
which he expressed the belief that "the
American musical is the most complex
of all theatre art forms, combining in a
fluid yet compressed manner, vaudeville,
opera, drama, and ballet. Design for the
musical stage demands a sympathetic
understanding and passion for these
forms" (Larson 1961, 189). He was impressed with the profound influence of

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