Elaine Makatura Bass
| Elaine Bass | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Elaine Makatura 1927 (age 89–90) New York City |
| Nationality | American |
| Other names | Elaine Bass |
| Occupation | Graphic designer, title designer, film director |
| Spouse(s) | Saul Bass (1961–1996; his death; 2 children) |
Elaine Bass (née Makatura) is an American film title designer and filmmaker.
Elaine worked for 40 years alongside Saul Bass, a graphic designer, title designer, and filmmaker whom she married in 1961. Together, they developed many projects for directors such as Martin Scorsese and Danny DeVito. She is one of the main designers who helped to elevate the short film and the title sequence to an art form.
Elaine Bass was born in 1927 in New York City, United States, to Hungarian immigrants. The youngest of four daughters, Elaine showed early promise at art, creating stories and drawing them, frame by frame, on the sidewalk. In the early 1940s, the girls began singing professionally as the Belmont Sisters. At the age of twelve, Elaine was admitted to the New York High School of Music and Art but withdrew in order to pursue her professional singing. She was the lead singer and soloist, and recordings made when she was fourteen to eighteen reveal a surprisingly mature voice singing swing with touches of Billie Holiday. During World War II, the group sang in service clubs and on the radio until the oldest sisters left the group to get married.
At age eighteen and after six years of singing with her sisters, Elaine went to work in the New York fashion industry, producing fashion renderings and sketches for several fashion houses. In 1947, she moved to Los Angeles, settling there permanently in 1954. Soon thereafter she found a job in the design department of Capitol Records. She recalled: "After about a year I was looking for something more challenging when someone told me that Saul Bass was looking for an assistant. I had enjoyed the credits for The Seven Year Itch very much but the name 'Saul Bass' didn't mean anything to me."
Elaine joined the office in 1955 and by 1959, Saul was delegating important tasks to her. In 1960, she co-directed and co-produced the opening title sequence to Spartacus. The following year, Saul and Elaine married and after the birth of their children, Jennifer in 1964 and Jeffrey in 1967, Elaine concentrated on motherhood, film directing, and title sequences.
Elaine designed title sequences alongside Saul Bass for more than 40 years, and employed diverse filmmaking techniques from Bunraku-style maneuvers in Spartacus (1960), live action sequences in Walk on the Wild Side (1962), to time-lapse photography in The Age of Innocence (1993), and even chopped liver in Mr. Saturday Night (1992).
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