Art Director Lawrence Paul Williams

A VISITOR to the Stoll Studios in the silent picture days of 1928 might have found
two young artists fighting a duel with prop swords which were eventually broken in
the conflict and for which they had to pay out of their meagre salaries—one would
have been Edward Carrick, the other, L. P. Williams, the young man who wanted to
streamline motion picture production. He has since gone a long way towards doing
what he wanted and is now Technical Director to the Denham and Pinewood Studios
and doing his best to introduce all the most up-to-date scientific ideas and
machines into his studios, with the idea that the more you perfect the machine the
easier it is to work and so allow for more freedom of expression on the part of
the artists who are expected to use them.
`L. P. W.' studied architecture at the Architectural Association between 1922 and
1927 and then joined the firm of Mark Henri and Loverdet, who, as well as being
the best scenic artists of the time, were also undertaking a number of large
contracts for interior decoration for which they needed architectural assistants.
Not far away in Temple Road, Cricklewood, were the Stoll Studios and Williams soon
found himself there as Assistant to Clifford Pember, who was Art Director for
Herbert Wilcox at the time. Some months after he was given the chance to design
the settings for a film entitled 'On Approval' and he never looked back—carrying
on as Wilcox's designer and artistic adviser on all his successes including 'Nell
Gwynn', 'Victoria the Great', 'Sixty Glorious Years', and 'Nurse Edith Cavell'.
When Wilcox went to America, L. P. W. went too, and established there a reputation
as a No. 1 Art Director. He worked chiefly for R.K.O. and was Art Director
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on Hitchcock's 'Mr and Mrs Smith'. War came and he joined the Royal Engineers and,
on return to England in 1945, was David Lean's Art Director on 'Brief Encounter',
a fine piece of film making. R.K.O. then made a picture entitled 'So Well
Remembered' which L. P. W. was naturally called in to design.
About this time he became the prime mover in a scheme to start a ' Society of
British Film Art Directors and Designers', similar to the Society of Motion
Picture Art Directors in America, of which he is also a member. The English
Society had as one of its main objects the cultivation and improvement of
pictorial design and quality in British motion pictures.
Because L. P. W. was educated to be an architect, he always found figure drawing
difficult, but he has never tried to avoid it, having learnt that a background
without figures is devoid of human interest. Now his figures, which are sometimes
very humorous, are often the most important elements in his designs. He draws with
conte in a style all his own—very direct in approach, very simple in treatment—and
always with a great sense of humour.