JOHN MOLLO

(18 March 1931 - 25 October 2017)

The British costume designer John Mollo has died at the age of 86. He began his career in films as an adviser on historical costumes, and worked on such pictures as Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade, Douglas Hickox’s Zulu Dawn, Franklin J. Schaffner’s Nicholas and Alexandra and Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. He came from a family of artists, his father inspiring John’s interest in military uniforms. His brother Andrew worked with Kevin Brownlow on the controversial 1964 film It Happened Here, about what Britain might have been like under Nazi rule. This involved creating authentic uniforms of the time and John’s interest developed from there. He became a prolific author of books on military uniforms and costumes, as well as designing for feature films. Among his first assignments were the first two Star Wars pictures for which he interpreted George Lucas’s vision of how the costumes should look. He also designed Ridley Scott’s Alien and Peter Hyams’s Outland, as well as Gandhi, Cry Freedom and Chaplin for Richard Attenborough. Other credits include The Lords of Discipline,Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan…, Revolution, King David, White Hunter, Black Heart, Hanna’s War and Air America. For television Mollo did designs for the Sharpe series and the Hornblower TV movies. Among his last cinema films were Stephen Herek's The Three Musketeers, Stephen Sommers' The Jungle Book and Event Horizon. John Mollo won two Academy Awards, for Star Wars (1977) and Gandhi (1982). He was married first to Ann Mollo and then to Louise Pongracz, with whom he had a son, Thomas.

MICHAEL DARVELL