Giving credit to film set artists

Museum exhibition in Irvine explores images of California from early Hollywood.

- By JUNIUS MILLER

WORKS by Arthur Grover Rider, left, and Emil J. Kosa Jr. are in the exhibition.

A dull yellow light peeks through a brooding sky looming over rolling Southern California hills.

The oil painting “Approaching Storm” captures the kind of picturesque scene that would get fine artist Paul Grimm work in early Hollywood. Known for his plein air landscapes and masterful depictions of clouds, he turned to studio work to make money during the Great Depression.

He is one of many artists on display at a new UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art exhibition about set painters whose work would go uncredited or overlooked.

“They weren't making their living selling their paintings, but they were making their living working for the studios,” said museum director Kathryn Kanjo. “The artist would lose their individual credit and recognition, to be at the service of what was needed by the studio.”

Elsewhere in the “Staging California in Early Hollywood” exhibition, hangs an 18-by-25-foot painted backing for “The Sound of Music” (1965), a project led by the then-art director of 20th Century Pictures’ special effects department, Emil J. Kosa Jr.

He’d be the only one to get credit at the time, not the five other contributing artists, including celebrated plein air artist Arthur Grover Rider, who are also noted in the museum description.