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Richard Sylbert

Highest Rated: 100% Fat City (1972)

Lowest Rated: 14% Players (1979)

Birthday: Apr 16, 1928

Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, USA

Formally trained as a painter at Temple University's Tyler School of Art, Richard Sylbert gave up his dreams of becoming a great artist to become instead one of the best American art directors, in the same league as his mentor, the legendary William Cameron Menzies. The Brooklyn native began during TV's 'Golden Age', painting scenery at NBC, and did his first significant feature work for Elia Kazan on films such as "Baby Doll" (1956), "A Face in the Crowd" (1957) and "Splendor in the Grass" (1961). By the time he worked with Sidney Lumet on "The Fugitive Kind" (1960), he was borrowing from music and moving beyond character-based design, using patterns and repetition to tie his films together. Sylbert had met John Frankenheimer when both were working in TV, and the director hired him to design the masterful cold war thriller, "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). His ingenious decision to move the set as the camera turned produced the brilliant 360-degree pan of the memorable brainwash scene, and its 1988 re-release demonstrated how well the picture as a whole had withstood the test of time.

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Highest-Rated Movies

100% 84% Fat City
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100% 64% Deadly Pursuit
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98% 93% Chinatown
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97% 87% Rosemary's Baby Watchlist
97% 90% The Manchurian Candidate
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95% 85% Long Day's Journey Into Night
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95% 79% The Connection
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91% 88% Grand Prix
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90% 82% Reds
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89% 94% A Face in the Crowd
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Filmography

Movies TV Shows
Trapped 17% 48% 2002 Production Design Red Corner 27% 48% 1997 Production Design My Best Friend's Wedding 74% 73% 1997 Production Design Mulholland Falls 31% 39% 1996 Coroner Actor, Production Design Blood and Wine 63% 36% 1996 Production Design Ruby Cairo 27% 1993 Production Design Carlito's Way 84% 91% 1993 Production Design The Bonfire of the Vanities 15% 26% 1990 Production Design Deadly Pursuit 100% 64% 1988 Production Design Under the Cherry Moon 38% 66% 1986 Production Design The Cotton Club 75% 57% 1984 Production Design Breathless 63% 49% 1983 Production Design Frances 67% 77% 1982 Production Design Reds 90% 82% 1981 Production Design Players 14% 33% 1979 Production Design The Fortune 40% 35% 1975 Production Design Shampoo 74% 56% 1975 Production Design Chinatown 98% 93% 1974 Production Design Fat City 100% 84% 1972 Production Design Rosemary's Baby 97% 87% 1968 Production Design The Graduate 87% 90% 1967 Production Design Grand Prix 91% 88% 1966 Production Design What's New, Pussycat? 28% 56% 1965 Producer Lilith 86% 63% 1964 Production Design All the Way Home 1963 Production Design
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