| OBITUARY: THE TELEGRAPH
Former Nasa illustrator who created the cool, realistic
designs for Kubrick's classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
To fit in with Kubrick's nocturnal lifestyle, Lange worked
mostly at night, producing the interiors which earned him
an Oscar nomination
Harry Lange, who has died aged 77, worked as art director
on the science-fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968),
for which he created the film's clinical and realistic spaceship
interiors.
A former Nasa employee, Lange left the American space agency
in 1965 and happened to be introduced to the film director
Stanley Kubrick by their mutual friend, Arthur C Clarke,
author of the stories on which 2001 would be based. Kubrick
commissioned Lange to design the spaceships, spacesuits
and sets for a project that, at that stage, was called A
Journey To The Stars, and offered Lange the use of a small
drawing studio at his New York penthouse overlooking Central
Park.
Because Lange had worked for several years at Nasa with
the former Nazi rocket scientist Werner von Braun, his drawings
were judged sufficiently sensitive to warrant their having
to be submitted for security clearance to Nasa headquarters
in Washington DC.
Ultra-realistic and icily cool, Lange's sterile, white
film sets featured super-smooth walls and the kind of awesome-looking
gadgetry that prompted visiting American astronauts to label
Kubrick's studio at Borehamwood "Nasa East".
Hans-Kurt Lange was born on December 7 1930 at Eisenach,
the German town that had been the birthplace of JS Bach,
and where Martin Luther translated the Bible. Lange studied
Latin and Greek and planned to read for a degree in Archaeology;
but when the Second World War ended, Eisenach became part
of the Russian Occupied Zone (East Germany) and political
factors meant that the young Lange was unable to pursue
this ambition.
Instead he left East Germany in 1949 to study Art in Hamburg
and Munich. Following graduation, he went to the United
States and in 1951 took a position in advertising design
in New York City. During the Korean War he spent three years
in the US Air Force, based in Alabama, preparing training
material graphics for nine flying schools and illustrating
the first complete helicopter manual. He then worked with
the Army Ballistic Missile Agency as an illustrator of space
carrier vehicles and planetary missions.
Moving to join Nasa, Lange became section head of the future
projects staff, working with a group of selected illustrators
on interplanetary, intersolar and deep space projects in
close coordination with von Braun's team.
He was commissioned to illustrate several books on space
travel, including von Braun's History of Rocketry and Space
Travel, various textbooks and a volume on extraterrestrial
intelligence. He also worked for American magazines and
for Paris Match.
Faced with cuts in the space budget during the Vietnam
War, Lange decided to leave Nasa and devote his time to
illustrating. After a two-man show of space art in Washington,
with Chesley Bonstell, by chance he met Arthur Clarke, a
friend from his Nasa days, at the Harvard Club in New York
City.
Clarke introduced Lange to Stanley Kubrick who, having
invited Lange to his apartment, perused Lange's technical
illustrations, looked him in the eye and announced that
he could get illustrators to do better work for "peanuts
– they're a dime a dozen".
As Lange scooped up the drawings and made for the door,
Kubrick added: "But they don't have your Nasa background"
– and hired Lange on the spot. By the end of six months
of basic preparation in New York City, Lange had designed
the film's spaceships, working mostly at night to fit in
with Kubrick's nocturnal lifestyle.
The project then moved to the MGM studios at Borehamwood,
and Lange – having settled his family in England –
continued his work on the film for a further two and a half
years.
For his work on 2001 Lange received the British Academy
Award and was nominated for an Oscar.
Deciding to make his home in England, Lange then designed
sets for Kelly's Heroes (1970), made in Yugoslavia, and
many other films and commercials. A challenging task was
designing a stage production in the Casino du Liban in Beirut,
consisting of a full-size Apollo spacecraft landing on a
lunar surface, moon rovers going through the audience and
20ft spaceships coming out of, and disappearing into, the
walls – all combined with special effects.
More films followed, including ZPG: Zero Population Growth,
made in Denmark with Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin in
1972; the first Star Wars film (1977); Moonraker (1979),
a James Bond film shot in Paris and London; The Empire Strikes
Back (another Oscar nomination from 1980); The Muppet Caper
(1981), a Jim Henson production; The Dark Crystal (also
with Henson), released at the end of 1982; the third Star
Wars film, The Return of the Jedi (1983); and the last Monty
Python film, The Meaning of Life (also 1983).
Although Lange never realised his original dream of becoming
a classical archaeologist, in the early 1980s he became,
with his elder son John, a staff member of the University
of Arizona's archaeological expedition to Mirobriga, Portugal.
While his son supervised the excavation of a Celtic wall
for the university's department of Classics, Lange designed
and supervised the construction of the Mirobriga Room in
the Portuguese museum near the excavation site.
Always reluctant to see themes in his work, Lange preferred
modestly to describe himself as a designer and craftsman.
He rarely talked to journalists, and his versatility as
designer, miniaturist, art director, actor and archaeologist
often eluded critical classification.
More than 30 years after the film's release – in
2001, in fact – Lange discovered a cache of nearly
100 detailed technical drawings that he had made for the
film, stashed in cardboard boxes and mouldering in his garage
at Ruislip, west London. With the production designs from
Lange's other films, they are to join the Kubrick archive
at the University of the Arts in London.
He understood the importance of museums and archives, having
worked with his son John, a former curator at the Museum
of Oxford and now director of the lottery-funded Household
Cavalry museum in Whitehall.
Lange also became a successful dressage rider, and trained
his own horses to reach the National Dressage Championships.
Harry Lange died on May 22. He is survived by his wife,
Daisy, whom he met on a blind date while serving in the
US Air Force, and their two sons.
|
