Jo Mielziner

Mielziner, Jo (1901–76), designer. The leading scenic artist of his era, he was born in Paris but studied in America at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design. His first professional work in the theatre was as both an actor and designer for Jessie Bonstelle in Detroit and as an actor and stage manager for the Theatre Guild before creating the sets for their 1924 production of The Guardsman. Between then and his death, Mielziner designed the scenery, and usually the lighting, for more than four hundred Broadway plays. The word most often employed to describe his best work was “poetic.” He abandoned, especially in his later years, the detailed realism that was still in vogue when he began, as well as the fashionable expressionistic turn of such men as Robert Edmond Jones. Instead, he perfected the art of suggestive, skeletonized settings, evocatively lit. A complete list of even his finest work would include virtually all the best plays and some of the most successful musicals for the fifty years he was active, particularly after 1930. Representative of his work were his settings for Strange Interlude (1928), Street Scene (1929), Of Thee I Sing (1931), Winterset (1935), On Your Toes (1936), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938), Pal Joey (1940), The Glass Menagerie (1945), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Mister Roberts (1948), Death of a Salesman (1949), South Pacific (1949), Guys and Dolls (1950), The King and I (1951), Tea and Sympathy (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Gypsy (1959), and *1776 (1969). Writing of his work for Winterset, John Mason Brown noted, “In his visualization of the bridge, Mr. Mielziner has provided Winterset with one of the finest backgrounds our contemporary theatre has seen. It is a setting of great majesty and beauty, and alive with a poetry of its own. . . simple, direct and impressive.” Biography: Mielziner: Master of Modern Stage Design, Mary C. Henderson, 2001.

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