Dwight Franklin


Dwight Franklin was an American artist, taxidermist, naturalist, museum curator, and designer of costumes for Hollywood films.

Career

Dwight Franklin began working in 1906 as a taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History. In 1910 he participated in a Museum-sponsored expedition to Mississippi's Moon Lake, part of the habitat of the American paddlefish. Franklin created many figurines and sculptures. He built historical dioramas for the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Children's Museum, the Newark Museum, and the Museum of the City of New York.
With John Treadwell Nichols and Henry Weed Fowler, he was a founder in 1915 of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.
In the early 1930s Franklin moved from New York City to Los Angeles to work as a costume designer for Hollywood films.

Personal life

Franklin married Mary C. McCall Jr., novelist and screenwriter, in January 1928. They divorced in February 1943. He married Eliza Moultrie Franklin in 1947, and they remained married until his death in 1971.

Selected publications

Partial filmography