Mielziner family

Artist Leo Mielziner (1869-1935) and his wife Ella McKenna Friend Mielziner (1873-1968), raised two sons, each of whom became prominent in the arts: Leo Jr. (1899-1962), a stage and screen actor and director who worked under the name Kenneth McKenna, and Jo Mielziner (1901-1976), one of the most influential designers of theatrical scenery and lighting of the twentieth century.

The son of a rabbi, Leo Mielziner was born in New York on December 8, 1869. After the family resettled in Cincinnati, Ohio, Leo studied at the Cincinnati Art Museum Academy, and later in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1896 Leo married Ella McKenna Friend, born March 18, 1873 in Manchester, New Hampshire, of Anglo-Irish descent. Their respective families were progressive for the time, and it appears that no strong objections were raised to the Jewish-Catholic marriage. Leo and Ella raised their two sons first in Europe, then in New York, where Leo supported the family by taking commissions as a portraitist for well-to-do and often prominent clients, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller and Gen. John J. Pershing. In his last years Leo's health declined, and although he continued to draw almost to the end, in retirement he and Ella were primarily supported by their sons. The couple spent their final days together in a cottage in Truro, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, where Leo died of cancer on August 11, 1935. Ella, who resettled in Manhattan, outlived her husband by more than three decades, and was 94 years old when she died on February 2, 1968.

Elder son Leo Mielziner Jr., was born on August 19, 1899 in Canterbury, New Hampshire, and while still in his teens was acting in and directing stage plays. After military service Leo signed a three-year acting contract with producer William Brady, and soon changed his name to Kenneth MacKenna (adapting the name from his mother's family line, with a slight change in spelling). By 1923 Kenneth had appeared in seven Broadway shows, and had toured the country in two of them. His stage credits include Nerves (1924) with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Philips (who were later to marry), and What Every Woman Knows (1926), with Helen Hayes. In 1929 MacKenna was among the many stage actors sought by Hollywood studios to appear in early talking pictures. Having signed a contract with Fox Films to play leading roles, MacKenna moved to California and appeared in a number of movies, including John Ford's Men Without Women (1930), George Cukor's Virtuous Sin (1930) with Walter Huston and Kay Francis, and Those We Love (1932) with Mary Astor, among others. MacKenna also directed several movies, including The Spider (1931) and Walls of Gold (1933). He was married to actress Kay Francis from 1931 to 1934. In the mid-1930s MacKenna returned to New York and resumed his stage career. In 1938 he married onetime co-star Mary Philips, former wife of Humphrey Bogart. Shortly afterward he was hired as story editor for MGM, first in New York and then back in Hollywood, where he eventually became head of the department. In the late 1950s Kenneth McKenna left MGM and resumed his acting career, appearing on Broadway in Dore Schary's drama The Highest Tree (1959) and on screen in Judgement at Nuremburg (1961). He died of cancer in January 1962, at the age of 62.

Joseph "Jo" Mielziner, sometimes called the Dean of Designers, created scenic and lighting elements for dozens of Broadway shows, as well as Off-Broadway, regional, and university productions, from the 1920s to the 1970s. In the course of his long career he became a highly influential figure, not only in stage design but in theater architecture and even in playwriting, which he helped shape with his designs. Jo was born in Paris, France, on March 19, 1901. Although his earliest educational experiences were in various European schools, after 1909 Jo and his brother Leo were raised primarily in New York. After brief military service during the final days of the First World War, Jo studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy, then back in Europe. Through the influence of his brother, now known as actor Kenneth MacKenna, Jo was hired to design sets for Theatre Guild productions, including The Guardsman (1924) featuring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

Beginning in 1925, Jo worked as an assistant to the innovative stage designer Robert Edmond Jones, whom he would always cite as a major influence. In the years that followed Jo designed a substantial number of Broadway productions, usually handling both scenic and lighting design. Among the most successful of the non-musical plays were Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude (1928), Elmer Rice's Street Scene (1929), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1931) with Katharine Cornell, Dodsworth (1934), Maxwell Anderson's Winterset (1935), and Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938). Musicals designed by Jo Mielziner included the Gershwins' Of Thee I Sing (1931), Cole Porter's Gay Divorce (1931) with Fred Astaire, Rodgers & Hart's On Your Toes (1936) and Pal Joey (1940), then, after Richard Rodgers had teamed with Oscar Hammerstein, Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), and The King and I (1951), among many others. The postwar years brought two of Jo's best known designs, each of which was reputed to have helped influence the playwright's text, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949).

Although he continued designing Broadway productions all his life, usually working out of his home studio at the Dakota apartment complex off Central Park West, Jo Mielziner's later years saw changes in the world which had an impact on his career. During the 1950s, the rise of television gave live theater formidable competition. Costs for mounting Broadway productions rose sharply, which led to a gradual decrease in the number of shows staged, while the rise of Off-Broadway theater drew more adventurous playgoers elsewhere. In addition, producers eager to cut costs began hiring younger designers who were struggling to establish themselves, and whose fees were lower than Jo's. Despite these factors, there were still successes in the latter portion of Jo's career, including Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), the stage and film versions of William Inge's Picnic (1953 and 1955), Gypsy (1959) with Ethel Merman, Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water (1966), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1968), and 1776 (1969). During this time Jo also offered his services as an architectural consultant for theaters, and became more involved in the technology of stage lighting. The last Broadway show designed by Jo Mielziner was In Praise of Love (1974), a moderate success on the strength of its stars, Rex Harrison and Julie Harris. In March of 1976, Jo was at work on a musical version of the French film The Baker's Wife (which, ultimately, closed out of town) when he died suddenly of a heart attack in the back seat of a taxi, on his way home to the Dakota. He was four days short of his 75th birthday.

From the guide to the Mielziner family papers, 1890-1935, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)