Transcript

 

[00:00:00] Gordon Earle: I want to welcome everyone to this latest episode of A Williams Life. Today we’re talking with Polly Wood-Holland, who’s had a career, I think it’s fair to say, unlike any other member of our class, for who among us has fabricated mechanical wolves that terrorize New Yorkers, or worked in an updated version of the iconic Tin Man costume for the movie The Wiz, or develop colorful, vibrant interiors to bring to life the 1950s and ’60s for a successful television series. Polly did all this and more working as an artist and designer on a wide range of feature films, TV and theater productions. Her many film credits include Wolfen and The Wiz, which I just alluded to, as well as The Verdict, Arthur and The Dictator on Broadway. She worked on mega-productions, such as The Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, Spamalot, The Color Purple, South Pacific, and Billy Elliot, just to name a few. In addition to her professional work, we’ll also talk to Polly about her association with such legendary figures as Paul Newman and Mike Nichols. 

 

So Polly, welcome. Thanks for joining us. It’s been quite a journey, and we’ll get to your work in entertainment in a moment, but we usually start at Williams and that’s where we’ll start now. It wouldn’t seem the logical choice for someone interested in the hustle and bustle of Broadway, TV and film. So how did you end up going to the college?

 

[00:01:25] Polly Wood-Holland: Originally? It wasn’t my idea to work in film and TV and movies. I chose Williams because it was small. I had gone to a very large high school of 3000 students and it [Williams] was a good school and it had a very good reputation for the art history, which I was interested in, and thought, honestly, that’s what I thought I might go into. So I went for that reason. And it was also a little interesting to be the first class of women. So that’s why I chose Williams and was lucky to get in.

 

[00:02:03] Gordon Earle: did you know when you arrived on campus that theater would be such a major part of your college life? Did you know that coming in?

 

[00:02:10] Polly Wood-Holland: No, I didn’t. I always enjoyed performing and growing up, town productions, high school productions; I really enjoyed that. So I did head to the Freshman Review right away, and it was a place where I knew I could make friends and , it just was something, you know, for fun.

 

[00:02:35] Gordon Earle: How the Frosh Review help launch your theater career?

 

[00:02:38] Polly Wood-Holland: So that was actually pretty funny. I had always been interested and involved in art, and I was there; we were sitting at rehearsal and I walked up to the upperclassman who was basically one of the producers of the show, and I said to him, well, you know, do you think you might need some help painting the scenery? And he turned around and he looked at me and he said, you paint scenery?

 

[00:03:08] Gordon Earle: I need that, right?

 

[00:03:09] Polly Wood-Holland: And I said, well, no, but I probably could. And it ended up that I painted a full stage drop and most of the scenery for the show just. Trying it out.

 

[00:03:21] Gordon Earle: Had you done anything like that?

 

[00:03:23] Polly Wood-Holland: No, not to that scale. I’d never used a paint frame. Williams used to have a paint frame for drops. No, no, I never had. And  he just landed it in my lap and I thought, all right. And then from there I spent most of the four years being in shows, which I really enjoyed and thought I might want to be an actress, but also working on shows. Doing behind the scenes painting and anything I could do to help. Then after four years, it really became obvious that maybe I didn’t really want to be an actress because it’s such a subjective life, and I didn’t want people to be judging me that way. And I could paint and I thought  really what is going to be easier for you? And that’s to be judged on my painting, not on my appearance.

 

[00:04:24] Gordon Earle: Were you torn between performing and set design?

 

[00:04:26] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh yes. I did one season of summer stock, and I didn’t tell anybody I could paint, just for fun. But the reality is, I was very young looking, very blonde and would have been cast as brainless blonde females. Mm-hmm. And I thought, no, that’s not gonna work for me.

 

[00:04:50] Gordon Earle: There was no theater major back then, and so you had to learn, as we talked previously about this, by the seat of your pants, and I’m wondering, was that a good way to learn, and was that helpful both at Williams and for the rest of your career?

 

[00:05:04] Polly Wood-Holland: I think that it was good because small schools don’t necessarily have theater programs with a lot of depth, so the training that you get for a professional theatrical life may not be that good. And it was better to take advantage of what Williams had to offer, which was an amazing art history department, which has stood me in good stead. So I actually think it was better to do it the way I did it.

 

[00:05:37] Gordon Earle: Your senior year, Bernie Bucky took over and transformed the theater department of Williams. And I wonder what impact that had for you at the time and later, immediately afterwards. ’cause I know you worked with him afterwards as well.

 

[00:05:49] Polly Wood-Holland: Right. At the time we weren’t all that thrilled because the students had really had free reign and because we had latitude: Cap & Bells could do things like deficit finance a show, reach out and hire professional designers, directors, choreographers to come in, which was really invaluable training. The minute Bernie came in and, fairly, he took over that, and it’s a college, so the sort of standard musical fare once a year went out the window. So there was a little push and pull there and, but then two years later, he reached out and hired me to come design a show, which, thinking about it now, I don’t know whether he was issuing a challenge, or… because I’m surprised that he took that chance.

 

[00:06:55] Gordon Earle: And what were the shows that you worked on?

 

[00:06:57] Polly Wood-Holland: Well, at first I came back and I did Guys and Dolls, which was the only musical Bernie would really do, because it was based on Damon Runyon. So there was some heft to it.

 

[00:07:07] Gordon Earle: Mm-Hmm.

 

[00:07:08] Polly Wood-Holland: And knowing him as I did, I designed the most Brechtian production that I could come up with and he loved it. You know, sort of inspired by Klee and kind of dark blue hues and whatnot. So it was great., but it’s a big show. It has a lot of scenery.

 

[00:07:29] Gordon Earle: And you did that for a couple of years, right? The various shows that you worked on for him?

 

[00:07:33] Polly Wood-Holland: I Did that and then I think there was a two year gap and he had me back. There again; another big challenge, to do Under Milkwood and The Misanthrope in repertory, which, considering they are such different plays, was difficult, because the scenery had to swap out every night.

 

[00:07:54] Gordon Earle: Now you referred earlier to the attraction of Williams as being the first class of women who attended for a full four years. What was that experience like for you?

 

[00:08:05] Polly Wood-Holland: I think I thought it would just be fun, and it was more challenging because the college had to shift from being the all-male school to a co-ed school, and there were some growing pains there. I do think that Williams did it as well as could be done, because they just; four years. Full class of women. I know there were a few before, but basically they [the college] jumped in with both feet, right? They had facilities and they had it so that it really only took about four years for that transition. But it did leave some of us feeling a little, I think, isolated, especially freshman year.

 

[00:08:44] Gordon Earle: Yeah. I wonder if you could build on that, because when I’ve talked to other women as part of these interviews and otherwise,  they’ve referred to it, in their words, as an unsettling experience. Either they felt alone or isolated, or not entirely accepted by their male classmates. Was any of that part of your experience?

 

[00:09:02] Polly Wood-Holland: It was, but I think that’s also why I made the theater my home, because that was not true in the theater. I was welcomed and in fact I got better parts than I would have because there weren’t Upperclass women to take them, or very many. As far as the rest of the school goes; Yeah, because the men used to invite women from other colleges on the weekends, and that was very awkward. To have a whole bunch of women come in from various places and kind of give you the eye.

 

[00:09:39] Gordon Earle: you felt a little bit like a second class 

 

[00:09:42] Polly Wood-Holland: Yeah, a little bit. It was like, Hey, you know…

 

[00:09:45] Gordon Earle: …we’re here.

 

[00:09:46] Polly Wood-Holland: Yeah.

 

[00:09:46] Gordon Earle: Take a look.

 

[00:09:47] Polly Wood-Holland: But it really didn’t last. I think they [Williams] did, I think they did a pretty good job. 

 

[00:09:54] Gordon Earle: So soon after you graduated, and I know you worked for Bernie Bucky for a period of time, but in those early years, you were introduced to Tony Walton, a Tony Award-winning set designer who became an important influence for you, and important mentor. And I wonder if you could talk about the influence he had on you and what you learned from Tony.

 

[00:10:12] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh, it was, There we get into the area of the serendipity. Senior year at Williams we had done our musical, Beggar’s Opera, chosen by Bernie. And there was an outside set designer hired, a woman named Marge Kellogg. And since I was president of Cap & Bells at the time, it was my job to get the contract signed. We went to lunch, I told her I might like to be a set designer, and she said, well  when you come to the city, why don’t you call me? And I had thought, well, she’s a kind of a mid-range designer. That sounds great. So I called her as I was about to come and she said, oh, I really don’t have any work, but I’ll tell you what: You call Ming Cho Lee and Tony Walton. Now, I was so green that I knew who Ming Cho Lee was, who was one of the top designers on Broadway. And I thought, oh, I don’t think so. I have no training. But I did not know that Tony Walton was the other top designer on Broadway. So I called him.

 

[00:11:21] Gordon Earle: You could be fearless ’cause you didn’t know who he was. 

 

[00:11:24] Polly Wood-Holland: I didn’t know who he was. So I go to have the interview and I lay out my sort of pathetic range of drawings, and I admit to him that I am not trained really, that I’ve done things by the seat of my pants. And we had a nice discussion and he said, well, you know, all I really have is a research job. And I said, that would be great.  I  will do anything and I tend to learn quickly. So I went home and he hired me, and it wasn’t until I started working the next week that I realized who I was working for, and I was astounded. I thought, oh my. That’s where I learned {my craft}, at his studio. Oh, I learned so much. Tony was a very, he sort of expected things to be done a certain way and he taught us. He had really lovely assistants. I learned how to draft, I learned how to make models. I mean, I kind of pushed for that. I would say, gee, I think I can do that. and watched him, and it was amazing. And I guess he thought there was potential because he kept me around and gave me projects. 

 

[00:12:42] Gordon Earle: do you think he saw something in you that maybe you didn’t even see it yourself at the time?

 

[00:12:46] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. When I think back, and I think of the things that he trusted me with, even as an assistant, I’m amazed. I think how, how did he think that would work out? And it did. At the time it was just, okay, Tony wants you to do this. I’m gonna do that.

 

[00:13:11] Gordon Earle: Let’s dive into one of the projects you worked on with Tony, the 1978 movie, The Wiz. starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, and a host of other major stars. Quincy Jones was the music producer. So you’re fresh outta Williams. You’re still in your early to mid-twenties. Was this at all intimidating working for these major stars on this major movie?

 

[00:13:34] Polly Wood-Holland: It was, it was. So I had worked for Tony for about two years, and I had decided watching him that the life of a Broadway designer was not for me. The time that he needed to spend to do his projects was overwhelming, and so I took a scene painting class to just learn the techniques, and then you had to take an exam to get into the union as a scenic artist. They gave the exam once a year. {The year I took it}I think 120 people signed up and there were various parts to it, and in the end they passed seven, and luckily I was one of the seven people. Just in time; Tony was gonna go start on The Wiz in the actual studio. I had helped with some models and things to start with, just in time for me to join a crew on The Wiz with Eoin Sprott doing special projects for the movie, including the Tin Man costume. So he sort of handed me off to Eoin, who was an extraordinarily talented craftsman and prop maker from Canada, and that’s where I learned mold-making and casting and all the different things I needed to do.

 

[00:15:02] Gordon Earle: We’re gonna return to Eoin in a second, but first I wanna delve into one of those projects, which is really fascinating, your development of the Tin Man costume. Because as I understand it, this costume, which was designed for Nipsey Russell, contained 165 separate molded pieces. Now I remember the original Tin Man, which seemed to me pretty simple, and this was anything but simple. So how did you go about designing that? 

 

[00:15:29] Polly Wood-Holland: Well, so, you have to remember that Tony is the designer, so the first thing he does is to do a rendering. And then for a movie like that, there’s even what you call a maquette, which is a small model of Nipsey in the costume, so you could really see it. Then that went to Eoin, who thought about the different parts. Then we worked with Eoin, I and maybe one other person to produce all these things, to make all the different items and do the molding and casting to paint. There were “tin cans,” and I put that in quotes around the feet, which were some metal rims with cloth that was hand-painted to match a label. It was very complicated. The original costume, My understanding is it weighed quite a bit. Like maybe 90 pounds. 

 

[00:16:23] Gordon Earle: The original one in the original, wow.

 

[00:16:25] Polly Wood-Holland: The original one. Nipsey’s costume only weighed about 40 pounds, and had full range of motion. I mean, it was really quite a remarkable feat, although he complained bitterly about it the entire time.

 

[00:16:39] Gordon Earle: Well, I remember, I think he at one point after they used the old oil can to loosen the parts, he gets up into the dance routine. So it was that flexible.

 

[00:16:47] Polly Wood-Holland: It was great. But it did have so many pieces that I often went to set with Nipsey because if something fell off, I knew where it went. I was so familiar with it. And no one else, I think, really did. 

 

[00:17:06] Gordon Earle: did you ever have any malfunctions while they were shooting that you had to repair? Because it’s such a complicated costume.

 

[00:17:12] Polly Wood-Holland: no, It was just gluing things back on. Poor Nipsey,  approaching him with a hot glue gun saying, “Just hold still, sir.”

 

[00:17:21] Gordon Earle: Well, no wonder he found it less than uncomfortable at times.

 

[00:17:24] Polly Wood-Holland: Right. No, things were made very well at Eoin’s. I don’t know that I remember anything {malfunctioning}. We made the silver slippers, we made crystals, we made large-scale cameras and video equipment. I don’t remember anything ever breaking. I really don’t.

 

[00:17:43] Gordon Earle: Wow. You told me earlier, what you referred to as an insert shot that occurred during the filming of The Wiz. So tell us about the insert shot and what it was.

 

[00:17:53] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh, that was so much fun. So an insert shot is a shot of a small detail that helps the story along, and most movies have them. Someone might be talking about a fancy watch, and you’ll get a closeup of a fancy watch on a man’s wrist.

 

[00:18:10] Gordon Earle: Mmhmm.

 

[00:18:10] Polly Wood-Holland: So it doesn’t have to involve the actual actor, it can just be filmed later and inserted. Thus the name. So we were doing the part where the witch tries to grab Dorothy’s silver shoes and her hand curls up backwards. We had made a fake hand kind of in the shape of a glove with all the rings and then they said, oh, you made it. Why don’t you come do the shot. And I said, okay, that sounds like fun. 

 

[00:18:42] Gordon Earle: So you’re an actress again?

 

[00:18:44] Polly Wood-Holland: Yeah, I actually got paid for a day of extra work and I had the clapper and Sydney Lumet going “action”. It was great. It was fun. So if you watch that movie, that moment where Evilene’s  hand curls up backwards, that’s actually me, inside the glove.

 

[00:19:02] Gordon Earle: I’ll look at that scene now and remember.

 

[00:19:04] Polly Wood-Holland: Right, right, right.

 

[00:19:05] Gordon Earle: Let me switch to a slightly different subject, but related through Tony. You found yourself working with legendary film and theater director Mike Nichols, whom you’ve described as brilliant and a perfectionist.

 

[00:19:18] Polly Wood-Holland: Mmhmm. 

 

[00:19:19] Gordon Earle: Can you tell me about a project you worked on with Mike Nichols and what he was like to work with? He’s obviously considered a genius in his field.

 

[00:19:29] Polly Wood-Holland: He was such an impressive man. He was a friend of Tony’s and did a lot of projects with Tony, and at one point he was doing a show down at the Public Theater called Drinks Before Dinner, and it was a script by E.L. Doctorow, and Joe Papp had his eye on it. I think they had ideas that it could go somewhere. Christopher Plummer was in it. It was a big deal, but it was at the Public, so it wasn’t union, and I at the time was not. I was never a union assistant. Tony was doing other things; He was busy, so he sent me down to the Public Theater to supervise everything that was going on and to make everybody happy, shop for props, see what the set’s doing, talk to the carpenters, do all of that. I even sat in on rehearsals, which was really an incredible experience because listening to Mike Nichols and Edgar Doctorow discuss a scene was extraordinary. They’re so smart. I think too smart. The show actually wasn’t very good, but there you are. And Mike, yes, he was a perfectionist, but he was fair. I used to sometimes gauge people by how they treated me because I was no one they needed to impress. And Mike was always very respectful and, you know, friendly as he needed to be. But, also doing that project, he used to really hate things half done. So in that time when the set is;  close the door and the set shakes, he would turn around and glare at me and I would say, my 23-year-old self, I would say, it’s gonna be okay, Mike. Don’t look at it now. And he would believe me, and turn around. And  I think about that now and I think good grief.

 

[00:21:33] Gordon Earle: You mentioned Sidney Lumet and all these other people you worked with. We’re only at the beginning of your career, but were there times when you almost pinched yourself? You know, when you said, what am I doing here among these amazing people?

 

[00:21:46] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh yeah. Working at Tony’s was like that because he was so good at what he did and he had so many connections. I can remember coming to work at the studio one morning and wafting into the kitchen to get my coffee, and there’s Julie Christie sitting at the kitchen table and I can’t even speak I’m so impressed. I don’t even know what to say. And that was true working for him.

 

[00:22:12] Gordon Earle: We will talk about another project now. earlier in your career, the 1981 movie, Wolfen, it starred Albert Finney and Gregory Hines. And in the film you create these terrifying lifelike mechanical wolves, which frankly scared the heck outta me. And I’m wondering what were the challenges you faced creating these creatures, and how you overcame those challenges.

 

[00:22:35] Polly Wood-Holland: So that was Wolfen, Tony did not design that. I don’t remember who the production designer was, but that was done at Eoin’s studio. Then, as we did at Eoin’s, there was a deep dive into research. We went to the Museum of Natural History and had a conference and a meeting with the taxidermy guy. And he told us all about how to prepare things and stitch things and different ways to do that. We listened to a record that Robert Redford narrated about wolves, so while we were working we would listen to Robert Redford talk about wolves. 

 

[00:23:18] Gordon Earle: Got it. Inspiration.

 

[00:23:19] Polly Wood-Holland: It was very complicated. There was the fiberglass body, and then Eoin would fabricate all the mechanics. He was very gifted that way. And my job usually with Eoin was the surface treatments. So I handled skins and painted things and sewed on skins. And then also worked on body part painting, realistic skin and blood and guts and all of that. I also did a marionette figure, because somebody gets his head bitten off late in the movie, and it was great fun. It was excellent.

 

[00:23:59] Gordon Earle: Oh, it sounds like it.

 

[00:24:00] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh, it was terrific.

 

[00:24:03] Gordon Earle: Let’s dive into a little bit more of the details of that, practical effects–I’m gonna call ’em practical effects–like the physical objects you designed for the wolf. And by the way, there’ll be a picture on the website of you with one of these wolves so people can look at that. Those practical effects may be sort of a lost art now because so much of special effects is digital. So I’m wondering what was either lost or gained in this move from practical to digital effects.

 

[00:24:31] Polly Wood-Holland: I do see though that there are, you know, a lot of animated creatures that people are still making and essentially that’s what we did. We made animated creatures for the film. I think that the beauty of it is it gives the actors something to react to, which you don’t get if you just plug in CGI later. I think the best part of that is the ambiance and the scenery and the setting just help the entire production. I know CGI; they use it a lot. When I first started on The Wiz There was a matte painter; I don’t know if you know what that is.

 

[00:25:12] Gordon Earle: No, go ahead and explain.

 

[00:25:14] Polly Wood-Holland: So now they do CGI. So if you have a set outside and you need a different background, you can plug that in the computer. It used to be, in old Hollywood days, that they might build a set two stories high and then rather than try and keep building, a fellow would come in. They’d set the camera and get it angled just so and keep that. And a fellow would come in and paint the rest of the set on glass. And then put it in front of, at a certain distance from, the camera. So scenes would be shot through this glass painting, and some people were amazing at it. And that’s how you got Rome, you know, for the things that you needed. And for The Wiz, we had Albert Whitlock, one of the premier matte painters, who was older and still doing that. He painted anything you probably see in the top half of the screen if you’re looking at  long shots

 

[00:26:20] Gordon Earle: When you presented an actor with what you’d actually created in terms of a wolf would any of them sort of react to that or be blown away by that or what was the reaction?

 

[00:26:28] Polly Wood-Holland: I wasn’t there for the wolves. Usually my work was off set. But I do remember, actually, a funny story. We were working on Zelig for Woody Allen, and one of the things I made was fake feet, because there’s a scene where you see him with all these hospital testing devices. The idea was he’s on a stretcher and his feet are upside down because he’s kind of a chameleon. And so, I made these fake feet and there was a little bicycle armature in there and the toes would wiggle. He’s a small man, so I just used casts of my feet and legs and put some curly hair all over them. We brought those in to set; I was there that day and he looked at them, and he said, oh, I don’t know. I don’t know, those are too strange. They did in fact use them. But especially without anybody set in there {it was too odd} because he would be sitting there and his real feet would drop down and there would be a hospital.

 

[00:27:43] Gordon Earle: Well, just so you know, on the website and for our listeners, there’ll be a picture of those feet.

 

[00:27:49] Polly Wood-Holland: So that was one of the reactions I was around for.

 

[00:27:54] Gordon Earle: So I just wanna return very briefly to the role of mentors, ’cause you’ve mentioned three of them so far. It was Tony and Bernie and Eoin and I wondered, did they all teach you similar skills or in terms of their mentorship, did they give you something that was different from somebody else?

 

[00:28:13] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh, I think it was different. And Bernie, honestly, I think Bernie was a good mentor to many people, but I met him too late. So he was more of almost a challenger. You know? He hired me for these challenging projects. As far as mentors go, Tony and Eoin were certainly very important in my life, and they were very different. Tony knew exactly what he wanted always, and it was your job to do it that way. And if you weren’t sure what was needed, you asked a question. Because you try to inhabit his mind and follow his instructions completely. So from him I learned attention to detail and effort and persistence, and also he was an amazing artist. He’s an amazing creative person. Eoin, on the other hand; it took me a while to adjust because Eoin wanted you to go off and figure it out by yourself. When I got to Eoin’s, I would be, well, you know, how do you want this? And he would say, just go do it. 

 

[00:29:26] Gordon Earle: Come back in a week and show me.

 

[00:29:26] Polly Wood-Holland: Just go figure it out, so that was kind of a different take on things.

 

[00:29:33] Gordon Earle: Which approach was better for you?

 

[00:29:35] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh, I think both. I think both, you know,  the value in both. I enjoyed trying to figure things. I do to this day enjoy puzzles of making art work in a certain way. I prefer that to just a two-dimensional, say, canvas or drop. I very much enjoy the marriage between something that needs to work and something that needs to look a certain way.

 

[00:30:07] Gordon Earle: It sounds like the challenges that were presented by these mentors early in your career made you much better. Both, because otherwise if you’d just been cruising through, you wouldn’t have learned as much. 

 

[00:30:18] Polly Wood-Holland: No, no. Yeah, they were,  it was really an extraordinary experience with both of them. 

 

[00:30:27] Gordon Earle: So Polly Wood-Holland, our lives and careers take many interesting twists and turns. In around 1990, yours took you to Vermont from New York, and I’m wondering why you made that change.

 

[00:30:39] Polly Wood-Holland: Just a few years before we had had our first child and he unfortunately died at a month old. And I have to say that threw us into a kind of a tailspin. My ex wanted to run away immediately and leave New York; I insisted on staying a little bit while I had two children safely. I was concerned about that, but then I also didn’t know how to raise children in New York City. I wasn’t a city person. So we had family, I had roots in Vermont and we moved, we just picked up and moved to Shelburne, Vermont. 

 

[00:31:21] Gordon Earle: I know that in that move,  you had many opportunities to continue your practice, leveraging your art history degree, and part of that involves starting your own business and I think it was a mural business. So tell us about that.

 

[00:31:37] Polly Wood-Holland: Yeah. I needed to do something. I can’t just sit around, and never could. So I started  a mural business, but also anything. I did logos, I created logos, I made mascot costumes. I did a giant orange sturgeon for the Lake Champlain Basin Science Center. I had two “recycling” Bread and Puppets; Natrasha, the Gypsy Queen of Recycling and Snidely Wasteful. The woman who was the director of Shelburne Museum caught wind of me and I went {to see her}. I don’t remember what project it was, and we started a really nice relationship because she, as it happened, her father had been a scenic artist in New York in the fifties. A scenic artist and designer. So she knew exactly the kind of skills I had and what I could do for her.

 

[00:32:33] Gordon Earle: So more serendipity. 

 

[00:32:34] Polly Wood-Holland: More serendipity. So I made floats and I created banners and I re-woodgrained the captain’s quarters on the Ticonderoga and I did almost anything their own painters couldn’t do . I recreated stencil rooms. Some of it did entail some research. At one point I was working on a room in the Stencil House, and it occurred to me that in one of these buildings, (that had been brought in in the fifties by a woman named Electra Havemeyer Webb and put up fairly quickly in haste.) when I saw this room, I thought, this is not right. There’s some placement {of the stencils} that’s not right. So I went to the museum and I said, I really don’t think this is right. And they said, well, because they knew I had the degree, they said, okay, if you write a paper that we can file away, you can change it. Which I did.

 

[00:33:43] Gordon Earle: So you’ve created a new life in Vermont and a new kind of work. Were you missing what was going on in New York? Did you still have any connections to that world? 

 

[00:33:53] Polly Wood-Holland: I missed it a little bit, and at one point somebody came in with a movie and they needed extra help. I went to help with a movie called Me, Myself, and Irene. And in doing so, met the gentleman who later was to hire me for [The Marvelous Mrs.] Maisel. So, you know, there really are all these connections that occur. That’s kind of great. But no, I was very happy in Vermont, frankly. 

 

[00:34:21] Gordon Earle: This is slightly separate from Vermont, but when we were preparing for this interview, you sent me a commencement address by a comedian named Tim Minchin. And instead of talking about the importance of big dreams and that kind of stuff, he talks about life in terms of luck, short term goals and a word we’ve used in this interview, serendipity. So I wonder what you took away from that commencement address, which was so important to you, and why does that message ring true? 

 

[00:34:52] Polly Wood-Holland: I think when I first heard that speech, it was after I had come back to New York and it just struck me as the way my life had gone, and that it had worked well, and that I believed what he said. That if you plan on something and devote all your energies to it, and then you get to the end of your working career and find that it wasn’t what you thought. The role of luck and serendipity is important. And it’s certainly how my life has gone. So it just struck me as  how things went for me, and I really thought it was an excellent speech. 

 

[00:35:41] Gordon Earle: And you still live your life accordingly. 

 

[00:35:43] Polly Wood-Holland: I do.

 

[00:35:46] Gordon Earle: Okay, you’ve spent time in Vermont and you’re gonna return to New York next, and there are a whole bunch of projects that you tackle. Before we get to those projects, why did you return to New York?

 

[00:36:02] Polly Wood-Holland: My ex had been an actor, was a sports agent in Vermont, and then decided that he absolutely had to return to New York, that nothing would do, and I reluctantly moved us all. I wasn’t happy about it honestly. But we moved back. And it became apparent that I needed to bring money in again because New York is expensive. So Hudson Scenic Studio was not far and it had good hours, because my children were all in school. 

 

[00:36:44] Gordon Earle: Okay. Well, despite your reluctance, I know you worked on many interesting projects from that period on, and one of them that caught my eye was a project in which you developed a 40 by 60 foot sculpted bas relief for a Kanye West performance at Coachella. So I have to ask you about that.

 

[00:37:02] Polly Wood-Holland: That was marvelous. I was very complimented to be asked to be on that project ’cause it was huge. There was a very short deadline and a woman, that I knew and had worked with called up, who was running the project, and said, will you come be a sculptor, will you come help with this? And I said yes. We had two weeks. It had been started. Styrofoam had been glued up and it was all ready to be carved. There were four main sculptors on it. We each kind of had a figure and it was great. It was so much fun. I don’t know, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was quite a project, beautifully engineered by a shop in Newburgh called PRG. We had to kind of sculpt it in panels and the way they all went together to create this huge bas relief was really quite extraordinary. When we finished carving it, another fellow came in and essentially fiberglassed it because it had to go on tour.

 

[00:38:13] Gordon Earle: Did you have any interaction with Kanye?

 

[00:38:15] Polly Wood-Holland: West? Oh no. Oh, okay. The only thing that was sort of funny is we got the word, we were about halfway through and we got the word that Kanye wanted to know if a big hand could come down and scoop him up. And we had about a week left and the answer was no. No. But that’s about it.

 

[00:38:37] Gordon Earle: Let’s talk about another project during this period and you began working at Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Camp. It’s a summer camp for kids with serious illnesses, and I know that’s very important to you. You’re still involved with the camp today, and I wondered if you could tell us why that project is so important, and what did you do for the camp?

 

[00:38:58] Polly Wood-Holland: When you talk about serendipity, one of the actors that I had known from Drinks Before Dinner, who had become a friend, was directing the gala show. So 

Over the course of one year Paul developed this camp for these children and they have a gala show. There’s a wonderful little theater up there. It’s in Ashford, Connecticut. Jimmy called me and said we need somebody to come design scenery. And you know, “Cardboard, Polly. Just low key.” And first I said no, ’cause I had kids at home, and my ex, to give him credit, said, you should probably do that. So I went up and you’re sort of there for five days and I concocted some things out of cardboard and was completely hooked. Because what they do is, they had celebrities and Paul, but they also had eight children on stage. Singing and dancing and telling their stories. And they were extraordinary; The stories of resilience and challenges. In those days, when the camp started, 70 percent of the children who went to that camp did not see adulthood. Towards the end, I mean, lately, it’s more like 70 percent do. I mean, they’ve made incredible strides. I was completely hooked. I couldn’t imagine not doing that and helping them out again. So I started doing the shows there and after about four or five years, they started asking me to do, they would have an anniversary show in New York. Mmhm. And they would ask me to do that. And then at one point they asked me to do a show out in California on the Dolby stage. And ask me to come to London and put one of the shows on there. So certainly some amazing opportunities for me. But the camp is just extraordinary. They do such good work and I had the good fortune to be about four years when Paul was around. Such an impressive man. 

 

[00:41:26] Gordon Earle: Yeah. Tell me,  what was your interaction like? Tell me more about Paul Newman. 

 

[00:41:31] Polly Wood-Holland: He was pretty quiet. but he was around. I mean, he stayed; Everybody would gather at the camp for five days and put this show on. And it was almost like camp. It was like camp because we would all eat together. 

 

[00:41:45] Gordon Earle: He didn’t just show up. 

 

[00:41:46] Polly Wood-Holland: Nope. We ate together, there were little parties. He was in the shows. He was around in the theater. Sometimes I would have something foolish that I would check, to make sure it was okay using an image of him. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t offended and he didn’t mind anything to raise money. 

 

[00:42:12] Gordon Earle: Married to another icon.

 

[00:42:14] Polly Wood-Holland: And Joanne? Oh, oh, she’s so impressive. The last big show I did, I don’t know if there’ll be another, at Rose Hall for Lincoln Center, we did an homage; a show honoring Joanne. Mmhm. Which I was very happy to be part of. 

 

[00:42:34] Gordon Earle: Is it still as vibrant, given the fact that Paul Newman has passed? Is it still as as energized as ever?

 

[00:42:40] Polly Wood-Holland: It is. I wondered about that. And the shows don’t have as many celebrities because certainly people wanted to come and be on stage with Paul. But they’ve done a very good job of keeping up Interest and excitement and yeah. 

 

[00:43:03] Gordon Earle: Yeah. Great. During this period, you also worked on other Broadway shows. You’re very, very busy. That included Phantom of the Opera, The Lion King, and Spamalot, and we can’t go through all of ’em, which I would like to do, but we don’t have the time. If you think about the shows that you did during that time, what was the most rewarding and why does it stand out? 

 

[00:43:25] Polly Wood-Holland: I was just talking to a friend of mine who I worked with at the time, and one of the shows I really enjoyed was Mary Poppins. Because Mary Poppins had scenery sort of from all over; it needed to be pulled together on stage. So, unusually, I was sent to the theater for a month to paint and tweak and, and that’s not always true not usually the scenic artists, especially for Broadway. We’re not usually there with actors and dance going on and all of that. So that was great fun. I enjoyed that. Lion King was always entertaining. We were sent all over; all the shows need upkeep when they go on tour. So we would often get on a plane and go to Chicago and, you know, fix things and repaint things and so that was always interesting. 

 

[00:44:24] Gordon Earle: In the next phase of your career around 2011, I know your work shifted more to movies and television, which is a very different world from live theater. Do you have a preference of the two worlds in your heart of hearts? 

 

[00:44:38] Polly Wood-Holland: if I had to pick from all the things I’ve done, probably the most fun I had was in Eoin Sprott’s shop. I had my own desk, And the projects were usually smaller. You know, they were sort of tabletop size or not huge, and they were inventive and there were mechanics and there were puzzles to solve. So honestly, if I had to choose one thing to do that’s where I would go. But, I did enjoy running things a little bit. I enjoyed supervising, and pulling out–you know, something would happen and after 40 years someone would say, I’m not really sure how to do this–and I could pull a technique out of my back pocket and say, well, maybe you could try this.

 

[00:45:34] Gordon Earle: It sounds as though you could be successful at all these different worlds because you’ve done so much, you know? And that range of talent has allowed you to succeed in these various areas. 

 

[00:45:48] Polly Wood-Holland: Yes. Yes. In Hollywood days people would paint backdrops and that’s all they did. For 25 years. I dunno that I’d like that. Right. I like hopping around. I like wearing different hats. 

 

[00:46:11] Gordon Earle: A liberal arts education, you do different things.

 

[00:46:14] Polly Wood-Holland: There you go.

 

[00:46:16] Gordon Earle: Now you just mentioned The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and  I know that you enjoyed that work obviously. And it ran for five seasons, I believe, and fairly recently ended in 2022, I believe. It seems as though it brought together all your various experiences that you had during your life, and that’s one of the reasons you enjoyed it. Because you could be in a foreman’s role and look at everything. 

 

[00:46:45] Polly Wood-Holland: Yeah, and  it used a lot of, oh, I, you know, I sculpted, there were things to sculpt. There were… in the fourth season, there was a theater that we built that was a burlesque theater. So there was funny burlesque, scenery and costumes to do. I mean, I went back to doing foolish foolishness, which I love. 

 

[00:47:13] Gordon Earle: Foolishness is fun.

 

[00:47:15] Polly Wood-Holland: It’s fun. And we did some backdrops for that. We did six backdrops on Maisel, which is unheard of really for a TV show. To have backdrops. I don’t know if you watched that nightclub scene.

 

[00:47:27] Gordon Earle: You can describe it for our listeners. It’s amazing. 

 

[00:47:31] Polly Wood-Holland: It’s kind of amazing. We were given six sculptures to do of about eight feet tall,  in a rush, of course. And I and another person; we started in on those and as I was working the sound man happened by, and he said, you know what this is, and I had read the script. I knew it was a nightclub scene. I knew it had bamboo, I knew all of that. He said, yeah; He said there was a film crew that went down to Cuba in 1960, I forget what the exact date is, 1960 and filmed there. And this has just come back to light, this film footage and one of them was an amazing song in a nightclub and Maisel pretty much copied that. Yeah. It’s quite wonderful.

 

[00:48:30] Gordon Earle: Yeah. You, you sent me the link on YouTube so you can see the original footage from the original movie and how it was adapted for Maisel. And it’s very interesting to contrast the two. 

 

[00:48:41] Polly Wood-Holland: That’s what’s nice about working on a TV show where you do have a connection with the other people in the other departments. ’cause somebody can clue you into that.

 

[00:48:54] Gordon Earle: Right. 

 

[00:48:54] Polly Wood-Holland: Right. which was great fun. 

 

[00:48:57] Gordon Earle: But you really enjoyed that experience. And were you, sorry when it ended?

 

[00:49:01] Polly Wood-Holland: No, not really. I was getting to the point where it was time to think about retiring. Because it’s really not clever to be doing 10-hour days and climbing scaffolds and running up and down ladders. At a certain point, people do hurt themselves, And the schedules are getting tougher and tougher. You know, just for our safety sake, honestly, at my, at our age 

 

[00:49:32] Gordon Earle: Yeah. 

 

[00:49:33] Polly Wood-Holland: It’s time to start stepping back and so I was sorry to see it then, but I was not sorry for the schedule. I mean, one of the last locations I did on Maisel was a 17-hour day. That was hard. 

 

[00:49:46] Gordon Earle: Yeah. Yeah. You talked about mentors being incredibly important in your life. And I’m wondering, in your foreman or supervisory role, are you mentoring the next generation of artists and designers, or were you at the time.

 

[00:50:06] Polly Wood-Holland: I’ve done some of that. Unfortunately on projects, you don’t have a lot of time to teach. But at the scene shop, there would be young folk that I would counsel because we might have apprentices that were trying to take the exam to get in. And we could sit down and talk about that or I could look at their samples. I did some of that. Yeah. I did as much as I could. But one of the things I did learn as foreman too, was to step back to not try to control everything.

 

[00:50:42] Gordon Earle: Yeah. I wonder if there’s a little bit of Eoin.

 

[00:50:46] Polly Wood-Holland: Yeah.

 

[00:50:46] Gordon Earle: Tutelage to you, which is go take care of it and I’ll keep an eye on it. Right. But take the ball and run with it. 

 

[00:50:53] Polly Wood-Holland: Because I’m the kind of person that always, maybe more like Tony, tried to make sure everything was right, and control things. And so as time went on, it was a good lesson to just sort of step back and let people do it.

 

[00:51:08] Gordon Earle: So that’s how people who mentored you, you took a little, as you said earlier of each. Yep. And incorporated it into your own mentorship. 

 

[00:51:16] Polly Wood-Holland: Yep. Yeah. No, I like to think that some people thought my advice was useful and I did what I could to help people. A lot of it was helping people get into the union. Because the good projects were union.

 

[00:51:31] Gordon Earle: Did they have to take the same difficult tests that you did?

 

[00:51:34] Polly Wood-Holland: No. No. And some of the people my age sort of, you know, bemoan that, because it was hard. 

 

[00:51:41] Gordon Earle: And the pass fail rate was really, really hard. 

 

[00:51:45] Polly Wood-Holland: But you don’t really have to paint drops as much. I mean, our exam was to prove that anything we were assigned to do we could do, which is paint a complicated backdrop or, you know, do whatever. That’s not really true. Now, very few people paint backdrops. There are people that do it, and it’s still being done, but it’s less that. And even less sign writing. It’s more colors and textures and things like that.

 

[00:52:23] Gordon Earle: Yeah. since we’re looking at the industry,  and it’s changing. Yeah. You just had the writer’s strike, we had COVID, and the impact of AI. So are you concerned for the future of those who perform your kind of work today?

 

[00:52:43] Polly Wood-Holland: I think it’s different. I would say 20 years ago, the scuttlebutt was, we’re not gonna paint drops anymore because they can be printed. But the truth is, it’s not the same. A printed backdrop does not catch the light in the same way. It has taken a little bit over, but people still paint backdrops because they light beautifully. and I think there’s always going to be a place for the artist, even if it’s using a computer. I think an artist’s eye is really important in creating computer graphics. And the machine doesn’t do it and AI is not gonna do it. It’s the sort of creative pathway, so it’s not gonna look the same. The scenic world is not gonna look the same and people are not gonna have that drop painting skill. I mean, there’s a whole process in painting a 30- by 60-foot drop that a lot of people don’t know anymore.

 

[00:53:47] Gordon Earle: Do you feel something’s been lost? And I know you don’t want to say, I’m the old guard and this is the way you should have done it. We gotta have a future. But has something been compromised or lost? 

 

[00:54:00] Polly Wood-Holland: I tell you the truth. I think that for me, the hardest part is when I first started, the pace was slower. You really had the time to do the extra, whether it was painting in the shop or movies, you had the time to make it really good. And I think that’s what’s getting lost is the schedule is getting so tight that a decent job is good enough. That excellence is a little bit, that’s what’s going away, because you’re not being allowed the time to be excellent. I think if I have a regret, that’s probably the biggest one.

 

[00:54:48] Gordon Earle: Right. 

 

[00:54:48] Polly Wood-Holland: Because I think people still have pretty good skills.

 

[00:54:52] Gordon Earle: You’re in retirement or semi-retirement mode and the advice mode perhaps, so I’m wondering: If you had been the commencement speaker, like Tim Minchin, at Williams this past year, I’m wondering what advice you would’ve had for young people, particularly those entering creative fields, because that’s so in flux right now. So what would you tell the next generation, not only in your field, but generally those who are looking for the next phase of their life, like a Williams graduate? What would you tell them to do now, especially if they were, they wanna be creative and be in a creative field.

 

[00:55:29] Polly Wood-Holland: I guess I would say, I think you can still find it. You do need to be flexible and ah, that’s a tough one. That’s a tough one. 

 

[00:55:41] Gordon Earle: Be open, to serendipity. 

 

[00:55:42] Polly Wood-Holland: Be open to the serendipity. For instance, I’m now in Portland and it occurs to me that I may wander over to the shop that created all the puppets and backgrounds for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is In Portland. 

 

[00:56:01] Gordon Earle: Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah. 

 

[00:56:02] Polly Wood-Holland: So I may wander over there.

 

[00:56:04] Gordon Earle: Knock on the door.

 

[00:56:05] Polly Wood-Holland: Because those people are still creating.

 

[00:56:10] Gordon Earle: Mmhm.

 

[00:56:10] Polly Wood-Holland: And painting and there still is artistry, you know, people still do stop motion.

 

[00:56:16] Gordon Earle: So you just alluded to this, a door you’re gonna knock on, but I’m wondering perhaps, what is next for you?

 

[00:56:24] Polly Wood-Holland: I don’t know. I have to figure that out. I did, you know, I did go to Portland and build a small house. 

 

[00:56:32] Gordon Earle: To be next to your daughter.

 

[00:56:33] Polly Wood-Holland: Which was more fun than I thought. That was actually great fun. I enjoyed that thoroughly, with the help of an architect, but he was probably not happy.that I can make drawings. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. 

 

[00:56:49] Gordon Earle: Okay. You had your two cents. 

 

[00:56:51] Polly Wood-Holland: Oh, absolutely. I drafted up things and sent them off and said, this is how I want this to look. Even wood-grained pieces of the exterior of my house to match something else. And they kind of look at me, say, really? I say, yep, that’s what I wanna do. 

 

[00:57:10] Gordon Earle: Other than that, is there anything in your house which would indicate what you did for your whole life? Professionally? Anything that, if I walked into this new house, I would say, ah, yes, there’s something I can see. 

 

[00:57:22] Polly Wood-Holland: Well, I, in my studio I have high shelves with my theater models. So you would see them kind of arrayed around the room because, you know, we still make scale models. I mean, I still do that for the Newman shows. It’s very useful so you would see that. It’s probably mostly what you would see, other things are tucked away.

 

[00:57:47] Gordon Earle: Well, we are about to have our 50th Reunion next year, in a year from now, approximately. What are you looking forward to in terms of that reunion?

 

[00:57:57] Polly Wood-Holland: I think we’re all calmer. I think we have less to prove. We’ve had our lives and done what we needed to do and, you know, enjoyed successes and failures and everybody’s more relaxed. And that makes it more fun. To connect with people that you didn’t see a lot of when you were there. 

 

[00:58:23] Gordon Earle: Yeah.

 

[00:58:24] Polly Wood-Holland:  So I look forward to that.

 

[00:58:25] Gordon Earle: A little bit like this interview. 

 

[00:58:27] Polly Wood-Holland: Yeah. I look forward. Right. We didn’t really know each other, right? I look forward to catching up and as I say, I think we’re all a little calmer.

 

[00:58:37] Gordon Earle: Yeah. Any closing thoughts? 

 

[00:58:40] Polly Wood-Holland: I don’t think so. I’ve been very lucky. I really have. This interview has given me a chance to sort of revisit all sorts of projects and sometimes I’m amazed and I look at them and I think, goodness, I’ve forgotten I did that. Or, you know, remembering the show or remembering the people I worked with

 

[00:59:12] Gordon Earle: Yeah. That’s one of the values that I’ve found in this exercise of A Williams Life. People have taken the time to reflect upon their lives and think it through a little bit. And I think that’s helpful. 

 

[00:59:28] Polly Wood-Holland: Yeah. And to recognize what a privilege it’s been really, to work in the business and to have such opportunities. I have no complaints.

 

[00:59:42] Gordon Earle: That’s a good way to end things. Polly, I can’t thank you enough for joining us today. I really, really enjoyed our conversation. For our listeners, you can view photos of Polly’s work by visiting 75creates.com, where you’ll also find links to earlier episodes of A Williams Life. Thank you all for listening. Until next time, this is Gordon Earle, hoping you’re enjoying your final summer before our 50th reunion in June of next year.