Wayne Fitzgerald, Prolific Hollywood Title Designer, Dead at 89
William Fitzgerald, the prolific title designer who worked on such films as “The Godfather: Part II,” “The Godfather: Part II,” “Total Recall,” and “Dick Tracy” has died, according to reports. He was 89.
After graduating from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design in 1951, Fitzgerald was hired by Pacific Art & Title Studio. The Studio was responsible for creating all of the title work for the major studios at the time: 20th Century Fox, MGM, and Warner Bros. It’s artists’ work went uncredited, but during his 17-year-tenure, Fitzgerald designed the titles for such films as “Music Man,” “My Fair Lady,” and “Pillow Talk,” and television shows including “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Mr. Ed.”
Fitzgerald left Pacific Art & Title in 1968 to found his own studio, Wayne Fitzgerald FilmDesign. There, he worked on some of cinema’s greatest films, including both “Godfather” sequels, “The Deer Hunter,” “Chinatown,” “Tootsie,” “Footloose,” “Total Recall,” “Dick Tracy,” and “Scent of a Woman.”
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Over his five-decade career, Fitzgerald earned over 460 listed credits, with many more uncredited. He won the 1987 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Graphic and Title Design for “The Bronx Zoo.” He won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Graphics and Title Design the same year for “The Bold and the Beautiful.” He won the same award in 1992 for “Guiding Light.”
The Tribeca Film Festival paid tribute in a tweet, calling him “illustrious and inventive.” Their tweet included images from some of his best-known work.
Rest in peace, Wayne Fitzgerald, the illustrious and inventive main title designer who set the mood and ambience for movies as dissimilar as PILLOW TALK, ROSEMARY’S BABY, and THE GODFATHER PART II, among 460 listed credits, with his often entertaining, always masterful openings. pic.twitter.com/OPWsZWbEgv
– Tribeca (@Tribeca) September 30, 2019
The Hollywood Reporter was first to report his death.
More to come…
Read original story Wayne Fitzgerald, Prolific Hollywood Title Designer, Dead at 89 At TheWrap
