George James Hopkins


George James Hopkins was an American set designer, playwright and production designer.
Hopkins was a native of Pasadena, California; his mother Una Nixson Hopkins was a magazine writer and an art director on at least a dozen silent films. Hopkins got his start designing scenery on stage after studying design in college. He moved to films in 1917, working as an art director for various studios. During his long career, Hopkins was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards and won four.

Connection to the murder of William Desmond Taylor

Hopkins had a professional and intimate relationship with silent film director William Desmond Taylor, whose unsolved murder was one of early Hollywood's biggest scandals.
On the 1922 morning that Taylor's body was found, Charles Eyton instructed Hopkins to remove a basket of documents from the murder scene, and Hopkins obeyed. Hopkins' unpublished 1981 autobiography, Caught in the Act, was used as a major source for Charles Higham's book on the Taylor murder.

Filmography as Art Director

The Day of the Locust 40 Carats Dirty Little Billy 1776 The Love Machine R.P.M. On a Clear Day You Can See Forever The Cheyenne Social Club Hello, Dolly! Wait Until Dark Hotel Not with My Wife, You Don't! Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Inside Daisy Clover The Great Race None But the Brave My Fair Lady Palm Springs Weekend Rampage Island of Love Days of Wine and Roses The Chapman Report The Music Man Portrait of a Mobster A Fever in the Blood Sunrise at Campobello The Dark at the Top of the Stairs Cash McCall Auntie Mame Too Much, Too Soon Sincerely Yours East of Eden A Star Is Born Dial M for Murder So Big I Confess The Iron Mistress The Story of Will Rogers This Woman Is Dangerous I'll See You in My Dreams A Streetcar Named Desire Strangers on a Train Dallas The Breaking Point This Side of the Law Perfect Strangers The Lady Takes a Sailor Task Force Life with Father Deception Of Human Bondage Suspense One More Tomorrow My Reputation Mildred Pierce Roughly Speaking Janie Passage to Marseille Princess O'Rourke This Is the Army Mission to Moscow Casablanca The Hidden Hand The Soul of Youth Salomé

[Academy Awards]

Over the course of his career, Hopkins was nominated 13 times for an Academy Award, all in the category of Art Direction. Today, the award is named Best Production Design, but during the 1940s and 1950s, this award recognized both Art Directors and Set Decorators with the same award. Also, prior to 1967, the Art Direction category was typically separated into different categories, one containing only Color films and the other with only Black-and-White films.
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