Anton Grot

(1884 - 1974) Anton Grot was one of the first Art Directors to have been influenced by European modernism and German expressionism. Born in Poland, Grot was a meticulous illustrator and artist whose compositions were carefully executed in terms of their lighting and proportion. Like Carré, Grot was a master of perspective and one of the first art directors to create continuity sketches photographically accurate for the camera lens. Grot emigrated to the United States in 1909 and was hired to design sets for the Lubin Company in Philadelphia. In 1917 he joined Pathé films in Fort Lee. It was for The Naulahka (1918) that Grot was permitted to hire an assistant, a recent Art Students League graduate named William Cameron Menzies. In 1921 Wilfred Buckland invited Grot to Hollywood to assist him on Douglas Fairbanks’ Robin Hood (1922). Grot was a major influence in Art Direction, especially at Warner Brothers, designing everything from gangster pictures to Busby Berkeley musicals, period swashbucklers, and Bette Davis melodramas.