Voting Station

John Barry (Designer)

Please vote to return to collections.

Filmmaker

The Resume

    (1935-June 1, 1979)
    Born in London, United Kingdom
    Production designer
    Famous for his work on 'Star Wars' and the 'Superman' films
    Received an Academy Award for Best Art Direction (1977)
    Worked on films 'Kelly's Heroes (1970)' and 'A Clockwork Orange (1971)'

Why he might be annoying:

    He didn't work on a commercial hit until late in his career.
    His first project as art director was on 'The Decline and Fall... of a Birdwatcher.'
    He is sometimes confused with the movie composer John Barry.
    He worked on the film adaptation of 'The Little Prince' which flopped so badly that it turned Hollywood off from tackling the children's book for forty years (a CGI version was made in 2015).
    He had a chance to direct his own project - 1980's 'Saturn 3' - but was replaced by Stanley Donen after a fall-out with Kirk Douglas.

Why he might not be annoying:

    His began his career in the art department of 'Cleopatra' with Elizabeth Taylor.
    He was Stanley Kubrick's first choice to work on his 'Napoleon' epic, which would never be completed.
    He was believed to have been snubbed by the Academy for his work on 'Superman' - which many attribute to bias against 'superhero movies.'
    He did receive a Saturn Award for Production Design on 'Superman' from the Academy of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror.
    He's among the first to win an Oscar for a 'Star Wars' movie, putting him in a rarefied class (the franchise has been in an Oscar drought since 'Return of the Jedi').
    His Oscar was memorably presented by the odd coupling of Henry Winkler and Greer Garson (who wailed the title 'Star Wars' like Oprah giving away cars).
    He collapsed on-set two weeks into filming 'Empire Strikes Back' and was hospitalized with a 104-degree temperature (May 31, 1979). He died the next day.
    His and Geoffrey Unsworth's untimely deaths are believed to have doomed the 'Superman' movie franchise before it began (that and the Salkinds getting too greedy and firing Richard Donner).

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 6 Votes: 83.33% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying