Jones, Robert Edmond, 1887–1954, American scene designer, b. Milton, N.H. With his design in 1915 for The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, a new era of scene design began in the United States. His use of color and dramatic lighting enhanced his imaginative sets. Some of Jones's most notable designs were for Macbeth, Richard III, Hamlet (for John Barrymore), and The Green Pastures. After work with the Washington Square Players, he joined Kenneth Macgowan at the Greenwich Village Theatre; working in conjunction with the Provincetown Players, he created sets for the plays of Eugene O'Neill. Jones did the designing for the early three-color-process film La Cucaracha (1933). He wrote Drawings for the Theatre (1925), The Dramatic Imagination (1941), and, with Kenneth Macgowan, Continental Stagecraft (1922).
See The Theatre of Robert Edmond Jones (ed. by R. Pendleton, 1958).
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