An Event Planning Career Worthy Of An Oscar
by Elliott May '06
 Worried that your broad liberal arts degree has not prepared
you for a specific career? Don’t be, welcome to the boat shared by many recent
Dartmouth grads. Indeed, Ellen Harrington ’85 was once just like you. Yet now,
as exhibition curator and special events programmer for the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, Harrington’s job actually requires her to
walk down the Oscar’s infamous “Red Carpet,” sharing company with the likes of
Johnny Depp, Kate Hudson and Tom Hanks. Her secret: “embrace the unlimited
scope of opportunities rather than feeling anxious about an uncertain future,
and don’t compromise until you can’t pay the rent.”
Harrington clearly embraced this mantra while still an undergrad at
Dartmouth. Her experiences, both extracurricular and academic, were eclectic
and extensive: radio DJ, IM skier, DOC member, and FSP traveler (on two
occasions!), topped off with a modified Fine Arts and Comparative Literature
major. With such a broad set of skills and passions, Harrington had, at the
same time, nowhere and everywhere to go following her Dartmouth graduation.
After bouncing around jobs and attending NYU Film School, Harrington found her
perfect job.
“It is really two jobs in one,” Harrington confesses, ignoring the third
phone call in minutes to her busy office, which is directly attached to her
latest exhibit: “It’s Alive! Bringing Animatronic Characters to Life on Film.”
Individually, none of Harrington’s areas of expertise led her directly to her
14-year career at the Academy. Yet collectively, it was this exact breadth of
knowledge that qualified Harrington perfectly for her hectic occupation which
is split between curating and designing events ranging from career tributes to
the current Animatronics exhibit, while simultaneously undertaking the role of
film programmer.
“My job is a great combination of all those bits of knowledge that people
said you could never do anything with,” Harrington victoriously contends. To
exemplify her point, Harrington praises the Dartmouth Foreign Study Programs
for helping her become multilingual in French, Italian and Spanish. “I use all
of them constantly, as my job often takes me abroad to do research or attend
exhibition openings.”
Furthermore, Harrington lauds Dartmouth’s sense of being big enough to offer
a wide range of opportunities, but be small enough that one can pursue his or
her own interests. “One day, I just walked into ‘The D’s’ office and told them
I wanted to write reviews for the Arts section. The next day I was in the
office. You couldn’t do that at any other institution.”
In her position at the Academy, Harrington continues to apply all of her
interests to the design of exhibitions and film series. The Academy Foundation,
a non-profit branch of the Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, funds
Harrington’s programs. The Foundation has the rare ability to sustain itself
largely without fundraising, as the broadcasting of the Academy Awards covers
most expenses, providing Harrington with a considerable degree of latitude to
design projects that intrigue her.
“The Academy has the world’s premier archive of film materials,” Harrington
proudly states. The wide collection includes every book on film ever published
in English, photographic stills, movie posters, and even the private
collections of Alfred Hitchcock. Harrington has this immense archive at her
fingertips, and she uses it to develop six public exhibitions a year, which are
displayed in the academy’s two galleries, as well as in museums across the
globe. Additionally, Harrington arranges a film series that is open to the
public and presented in the Academy’s 1,000-seat theater.
Despite her actual job title, Harrington’s role is about as far from that of
traditional “event planning” as you can go. On the evening of our interview,
Harrington had arranged the twentieth anniversary screening for “Labyrinth,”
which was to be followed by a forum with a cast and crew including the likes of
David Bowie and the Jim Henson production team.
Although she admits that the “ ‘Red Carpet’ is like nothing you can ever
imagine, full of flashbulbs and screaming,” and has presented career tribute
awards to many prominent individuals, such as Billy Wilder and Sidney Poitier,
Harrington is humble about her star-studded life. Instead, she focuses on more
personally pressing matters, such as the hilariously cutthroat system of her
children’s primary schools. In the very epicenter of Hollywood madness, where
troops of flashing paparazzi appear mundane, Harrington has found a home and
the job of her dreams.
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