Wilfred Buckland — Artistic Titan (1917) 🇺🇸

A strategic expert who deals with the battles of beauty.

by Arthur Gavin Jr.

Although the name of Wilfred Buckland appears on the screen more frequently than any of the Lasky stars, little is known as to who Art Director Wilfred Buckland is and what he does.

Sometimes he is credited as being responsible for the beautiful photography, sometimes for the splendid lighting, but very rarely is he mentioned for what he really does — namely designing the wonderful interior settings for the Lasky–Paramount pictures.

When you see a scene taken in a room which you are positive is photographed in a private home — that is Wilfred Buckland’s work; when you see a Brittany fishing village and you acclaim loud and long that this company must have gone to Brittany to film the picture — that also is Wilfred Buckland’s work. If you see a street in Algiers, Paris, New York, or Keokuk, and you remember faintly of having seen that street yourself, perhaps walked through it — Wilfred Buckland is responsible for recalling it to your mind.

Mr. Buckland acquired a great deal of his training as an art director acting in that capacity for the famous theatrical manager, David Belasco. Critics were wont to praise the magnificent Belasco productions, and Mr. Buckland was responsible for their creation, but he was enticed away from the theater shortly after the inception of the Lasky Company three years ago, and since that time has been in Hollywood, California, in his little office, designing beautiful homes and artistic settings.

The appellation, “art director,” is exactly suited to Mr. Buckland, for he is artistic to his finger tips and is continually working out new schemes and ideas in connection with the photo drama.

Mr. Buckland is a great admirer of Max Rinehart’s [Max Reinhardt] method of creating atmosphere on the stage, and is working out a method to adopt the plan of Rinehart’s settings to the screen.

Outside of the studio, Mr. Buckland’s hobby is shooting, and on the walls of his home hang guns of every make and description from the time guns were first invented. He has the long gun of the Arab and the short blunderbuss of the Puritans, and recently when a machine gun was needed in a Lasky [Jesse L. Lasky] picture Mr. Buckland produced one from somewhere about his domicile.

In the basement of his home several walls have been removed and a shooting gallery installed. Here, instead of entertaining his guests with cards and the piano, Mr. Buckland leads the belligerently inclined to the basement, and there permits them to blaze away.

The Lasky Company produces on an average of five pictures a month. Each of these has from five to thirty-five interior scenes and as many exteriors. The exteriors, unless a village has to be erected, or they are the exterior of a house, are left to one of Mr. Buckland’s assistants, but all interiors, whether a feudal manor or a tenement kitchen, he designs himself.

For one director he may have to design the interiors of a Spanish castle of the Dark Ages; for another a South American plaza and the interiors of those accompanying homes and stores; and for another the modern Long Island country home; the interior of a California bungalow or the salon of a French diplomat. For any of these there can be no guesswork; each one must be absolutely correct.

As no interior scene is ever used for more than the one production, it can readily be seen that Mr. Buckland’s task is by no means an. easy one. He must design a room in a day which an architect or an interior decorator would take a month to work out. He must keep this up day after day and week after week, and still — he must find time to shoot.

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Mr. Buckland supervising the construction of a set.

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His office is a form of papers and plans, and they are as important as a war agent’s. This shows Mr. Buckland conferring with his assistants.

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Mr. Wilfred Buckland, left, considers with as much care and seriousness the maneuvers of his curtains, furniture, and upholstery as does a military expert the maneuvers of his troops.

Stage Manager Amos Meyer [Amos Myers] is at the right in this photograph.

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Art Director Wilfred Buckland, Director and Actor Lou Tellegen, and General Studio Manager Milton Hoffman [Milton E. Hoffman], deciding a momentous of art.

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, August 1917