Day was born on 9 May 1896 in
Victoria, British Columbia to Patience Day and Robert Scott. His father was an architect who began his career in South Africa. As a child, Day developed a spinal curvature that prevented him from attending school and was instead home-schooled. He never graduated high school or pursued higher education.
Day was a captain in the
Canadian Expeditionary Force during
World War I. While stationed in London, he met his future wife, who was a nurse's aide. The couple married in London in 1918.[1]
Career
After the war, Day returned to Canada and attempted to begin a career as a commercial artist. In 1920, his father financed a trip to Hollywood in hopes that Day would find a job in the film industry. He was unsuccessful until a chance encounter with director
Erich von Stroheim in a hotel lobby led von Stroheim to offer Day work on the film Foolish Wives (1922). Day served as art director on all of von Stroheim's films thereafter, apart from von Stroheim's only sound film, Walking Down Broadway (eventually released as Hello, Sister! in 1933).
Day followed von Stroheim to
MGM, working there through most of the 1920s.[2] In 1929, he left MGM to join
Samuel Goldwyn. He served as Golywyn's principal art director throughout most of the 1930s. During that time, he won Academy Awards for his production design for The Dark Angel (1935) and Dodsworth (1936). Other films during this period include Dead End (1937) and John Ford's The Hurricane (1937). He then moved to
20th Century Fox, where he was Supervising Art Director. He personally worked on selected films such as How Green Was My Valley (1941), for which he won his third Academy Award.
During
World War II, Day independently developed camouflage designs and
relief mapping techniques. He was eventually inducted into the
Marine Corps as a
Major. Day became a U.S. citizen in 1942 as a prerequisite to joining the Marines.[1] Once in the service, he devised a technique to make relief models of assault landing sites out of mud and other available materials.
Academy Awards
Won
Day won seven Academy Awards for Best Art Direction:[3][4]