Katherine Orrison

Katherine Orrison (born November 18, 1948) is an American set decorator, art director, producer, costumer, author and film historian specializing in the films of Cecil B. DeMille, the life and career of actor Henry Wilcoxon, and the epic film The Ten Commandments.^[1]

Biography

Orrison graduated from the Sacred Heart Convent in Cullman, AL and attended the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theater Arts in Pasadena, CA and the American Film Institute in Beverly Hills, CA.

She worked in the Hollywood film industry for over twenty years as an animation checker, associate producer, production manager, art director, set decorator and costumer on films such as Miracle Mile (1988) and The Doors (1991). She also restored and decorated the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles.

She was a staff writer on Cult Movies magazine for over ten years, penning articles on such subjects as Lawrence of Arabia, Ed Wood, actresses Yvonne De Carlo and Joan Woodbury, actor Bela Lugosi, the re-modeling of Cecil B. De Mille's estate in Los Feliz, and the making of Blade Runner, to name a few. She also contributed regularly to the Cult Movies book review column.

She appeared as a film historian on the Yul Brynner episode of Biography, on the CBC on the subject of Gary Cooper and on the BBC on the subject of epic films. She provided the audio commentary on both the 1923 and 1956 DVD and Blu-ray versions of The Ten Commandments, for Paramount Pictures.

She has collaborated on several screenplays, one of which, Rave-On Macbeth, was produced in Europe in 2002.

From 1968 to 1969 she was married to actor Peter Coe (1918–1992), ending in annulment. In 1992 she married Sherman Labby, production illustrator and storyboard artist on over eighty films. The marriage lasted until his death in 1998 from the effects of muscular dystrophy.^[2]

Bibliography

• Wilcoxon, Henry; Orrison, Katherine (1991). Lionheart in Hollywood: the autobiography of Henry Wilcoxon. Metuchen, NJ and London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN 0-8108-2476-0. 
• Orrison, Katherine (1999). Written in Stone: Making Cecil B. DeMille's Epic The Ten Commandments. Vestal, NY: Vestal Press. ISBN 1-879511-24-X. 

References

External links

• Katherine Orrison webpage
• Katherine Orrison at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with Peter Chattaway of the Filmchat blog