Harry Lange

Who was Harry Lange?

Hans Kurt Lange was a German film production designer and art director.

Lange was born in 1930 in Eisenach, Thuringia. After World War II, Thuringia became part of Soviet-controlled East Germany; Lange escaped across the border to West Germany, where he studied art before moving to the United States in 1951. Upon arriving in the United States, Lange worked in advertising. During the Korean War, Lange worked for the U.S. military, illustrating flying manuals.

Subsequently he began working at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and then headed the future projects section at NASA, working on spacecraft designs alongside Wernher von Braun. Whilst at NASA, Lange met the author Arthur C. Clarke, who introduced him to the film director Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick offered Lange a job at his production company, using his astronautical design experience to produce authentic prop and set designs for a project Kubrick and Clarke were working on entitled Journey to the Stars. The project was renamed as 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the film's design team, including Lange, were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction.