Legendary production designer Robert Boyle has been voted an Honorary Academy Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The award, an Oscar® statuette, will be given to Boyle at the 80th Academy Awards® presentation on February 24, 2008, “in recognition of one of cinema’s great careers in art direction.”
Boyle has earned four Academy Award nominations in the art direction category for his work on North by Northwest (1959), Gaily, Gaily (1969), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and The Shootist (1976).
“Robert Boyle’s career is truly worthy of this honor,” said Academy President Sid Ganis. “From his multiple collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock to his top-quality work on so many other films, this is a master film artist and I couldn’t be happier that an Oscar statuette will be presented to him.”
Boyle’s nearly 100 credits begin with Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942) and include Shadow of a Doubt (1943), It Came From Outer Space (1953), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), In Cold Blood (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Portnoy’s Complaint (1972), Private Benjamin (1980), Rhinestone (1984) and Dragnet (1987).
He also was the subject of the Academy Award-nominated documentary short The Man on Lincoln’s Nose (2000).
Born in Los Angeles in 1909, Boyle trained as an architect. When the Depression cost him his job in that field, Boyle found work in films as an extra. In 1933 he was hired as a draftsman in the Paramount Studios art department, headed by supervising art director Hans Dreier. He went on to work on a variety of pictures as a sketch artist, draftsman and assistant art director before becoming an art director at Universal in the early 1940s.
The 80th Academy Awards nominations will be announced on Tuesday, January 22, 2008, at 5:30 a.m. PT in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2007 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2008, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 5 p.m. PT. The Oscar presentation also will be televised live in more than 200 countries worldwide.
