Production Designer Albert Brenner

In Tinseltown, no two paths are exactly alike. Some guys are born to the manor, while others, like four-time Oscar-nominated production designer Albert Brenner, obtain their crown of success the hard way: they earn it.
Brenner’s journey to Hollywood began like many; with a dream and the G.I. Bill following service in World War II. After studies at the prestigious Yale School of Drama and the University of Missouri at Kansas City (where he earned a degree in theater and set design), the Brooklyn-born Brenner began working off-Broadway under the watchful eye of designer Sam Levi. Brenner applied the lessons of school in the real world, and excelled in everything from architecture, color, drafting, construction and furniture to textiles and lighting design.
Ultimately Al Brenner gained entrance into Local 829 (the scenic artists and art directors union), and cut his teeth on such original classics as The Phil Silvers Show, Car 54, Captain Kangaroo, and Playhouse 90. There Brenner learned that motion pictures and television are mediums of visual storytelling and a good designer places his actors amid sets that allow the life of the script to flow. Working for production designer Dick Sylbert (Levi returned to theater), the 30-something art director found himself where he wanted to be from the start: making motion pictures and learning the business end as well.
His early assistant gigs included Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass, The Fugitive Kind, and the Jack Lemmon comedic master stroke How to Murder Your Wife. However, it was The Hustler (which he worked on with production designer Harry Horner in 1961) that had the greatest impact on his early ideas of picture making. “I was in awe. In contrast to Jackie Gleason kidding around as he shot pool, loose and friendly with the crew, there was the director (Robert Rossen) who was very intense and perfectly focused… I was hooked!”
More Sylbert pics followed for Brenner, with his boss grooming him to stand alone. Sylbert literally handed his protégé the heroin-cult flick The Connection, accepting the picture knowing that he was going to give it to Brenner as a test.
Taking whatever jobs he could get on his home-turf, Albert Brenner remained a New York freelancer into the ’60s, and worked for Hollywood-based Sylbert whenever he shot in town. One of those films influential in shaping Brenner’s meticulous design style was Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, in 1964.
Still freelance, following the success of the doomsday thriller Fail-Safe (which raised the eyebrows of the Defense Department with his uncannily accurate depiction of NORAD’s “secret” war room), Brenner was constantly employed, yet ready for more. Heading next to Florida via fellow Yale alumnus, director Elliot Silverstein, Brenner was hired to art helm the Tony Quinn mob-caper The Happening in 1967 (working with production designer Richard Day). The producer of the picture, Judd Kinberg, recommended Brenner to his pal, director Clive Donner, for his next film (LUV). Shot in L.A. in late ’67, LUV enabled Brenner to obtain his Local 827 card through the reciprocal trade agreement allowing him to work the west coast. After the film wrapped, the “new kid” (at 41 years of age) set his sights on making a permanent move westward.
Brenner came one step closer to that reality when next hired by Donner’s pal, director John Boreman, who was seeking an authentic look for his film Point Blank. With Brenner’s palate of a grey tonal range supported by a clean, sharp-focus reality (not to mention a white-hot Lee Marvin), the picture was an understated masterpiece of the ’60s “crime is cool” genre.
Brenner moved to Los Angeles full-time after the success of Point Blank, and ensured his place in the history of cool with his art direction on Bullitt in 1968. With no small amount of pride in his voice, Brenner confides, “On Bullitt, Yates was after a realism not often seen in ‘cop’ movies of that day. So to help control the picture’s overall ‘as you see it look,’ we did things like mute down the red colors of Coke machines and stop signs. But when it came to the blood (of the hit in the hotel room), we did the opposite, so it would stand out more.”
Post Bullitt, Albert Brenner’s career went into high gear. His vision as a production designer served the bequest of many directors. From Peter Hyams, Herbert Ross, and Neil Simon to Sidney Lumet, Peter Yates, and Gary Marshall, Brenner worked multiple times for a group of masters, who loved what he did for their films.
The ’70s saw Brenner’s touch on a wide variety of Hollywood offerings including I Walk the Line, Summer of ’42, Scarecrow, and the Tom Laughlin comedy The Master Gunfighter (one of his favorites). However it was Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys in 1975 that garnered Brenner his first Oscar nomination for best art and set decoration. “I couldn’t believe it,” Brenner responds when asked about the nom.
From Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks in 1976 to the Oscar-rated The Goodbye Girl the following year to Coma and Capricorn One in 1978, it was now Albert Brenner whose artistic hand and vision manifested what America saw on the big screen; especially so with his space and med-science work. His designs on the Hyams films, in particular Capricorn One and 2010, lent an eerily close vision of space travel and exploration that we know today to be reality. Yet even within that pre-imagined cleanliness of space, Brenner’s designs always placed the human element of imperfection and clutter in the environs he drew.
At the beginning of the 1980s, Hollywood saw a new era of saleable flicks—standalone soldiers and heroic first-responders depicted on the silver screen. For Albert Brenner, that meant films like The Presidio. Into the ’90s, moving with the times, Brenner handled everything from romantic comedy (Pretty Woman) to effects-laden action flicks (Ron Howard’s Backdraft) with equal dexterity, imagination and vision. On Backdraft, for example, he had a scene that required an elevator shaft to fill with water. Brenner solved the problem with the clever use of a submerged pool to “sink” the set while keeping the actors safe.
With so many incredible films to his credit, Albert Brenner truly worked through the golden age of motion picture in Hollywood. Reflecting on his chosen craft as it is today, Brenner sees hope among current below-the-liners, but not necessarily the depth of skill required when he came into the business. His advice to those entering the world of production design is to “learn your craft.” It might just be the difference between doing an average job and a great one, he says.