Una Nixson Hopkins
American art director
Una Nixson Hopkins (November 17, 1869 – September 8, 1956) was an American writer and designer, and an art director who worked in silent films.
Early life
Una B. Nixson was born in Denison, Iowa, the daughter of William H. Nixson (or Nixon) and Mariam Hoxsie Nixson (later Amsden).
Career
Hopkins was widowed in her twenties, and lived in a Pasadena bungalow built by Joseph Blick in 1899. She wrote, and did interior design, and worked as an art director in Hollywood, sometimes described as "the first woman art director in motion pictures". "No trouble is too great for her to take," a 1908 profile explained of her interior decorating work, "and she often spends weeks hunting the shops for some shade or texture to give the needed bit of sheen or color to a room."
In 1915 Hopkins was hired as art director for the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Company. Hopkins had credits on twelve silent films: The Spirit of Romance (1917), More Deadly than the Male (1919), Judy of Rogue's Harbor (1920), Nurse Marjorie (1920), Jenny Be Good (1920), Food for Scandal (1920), A Full House (1920), Burglar Proof (1920), Oh, Lady, Lady (1920), Her First Elopement (1920), Ducks and Drakes (1921), and The Wise Virgin (1924). Several of the films she worked on are now considered lost; two were directed by William Desmond Taylor. After her film career ended, she continued supporting her son, George James Hopkins, in his film work.
Selected publications
The Los Angeles Herald described Hopkins in 1910 as "one of the successful women writers of the West," adding that she was helping to promote Southern California to Eastern audiences. She published a novel, A Winter Romance in Poppy Land (1911).
“Una Nixson Hopkins” enters the record as american art director. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nixson, Hopkins and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q111268580. VIAF identifies the subject as 2811168740908679530009. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1869, 1956, 1899 and 1908.
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This entry incorporates text from “Una Nixson Hopkins” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.