So
this is a small blog about the very woman who got my mother and I
started on making clothing for ourselves and for other people Edith
Head, October
28th was her one hundred and sixteenth birthday.
She
was a very important woman in Hollywood in her day, she is the reason
our favorite actors and actresses looked so good in their films
And
she also had a cartoon character based on her…can you guess how?
Can’t guess… well I will give you a hint… “Yes…and I will
also fix the hobo suit.”…still nothing…Edna
Mode!
One
of my favorite creations she made was for Audrey Hepburn’s
European ensembles in “Roman Holiday,” the floral sarong worn by
Dorothy Lamour in “Jungle Princess”, and Elizabeth Taylor’s
sparkling strapless dress in “A Place in the Sun,” among more
than 400 other movie wardrobes.
And
here is a little insight into her life
Date of Birth
Date of Death
Birth Name
Edith Claire Posener
Nickname
The Doctor
Height
5' 1½" (1.56 m)
Spouse
|
Wiard
Ihnen |
(8
September
1940 - 22
June 1979)
(his death) |
|
Charles Head |
(25
July 1923 -
1938) (divorced) |
Trivia
Her 35 Oscar nominations and 8
awards make her both the most honored costume designer and woman in
Academy Award history to date.
Interred at Forest Lawn,
Glendale, California, USA, in the Cathedral Slope section, plot
#1675.
Rarely did her own sketching
because of her time schedule. Almost all sketches of "hers"
one sees today were actually done by a devoted staff of sketch
artists.
During the 1920s, she taught
French and art at the Hollywood School for Girls.
On They
Might Be Giants'
2001 album, "Mink Car", there is a song called "She
Thinks She's Edith Head".
A photograph of Miss Head working
on a dress design appears on one stamp of a sheet of 10 USA 37¢
commemorative postage stamps, issued 25 February 2003, celebrating
American Filmmaking: Behind the Scenes. The stamp honors costume
design.
Received a master's degree in
French from Stanford University in 1920
The Costume Department building
on the Paramount lot is named after her.
Extremely diplomatic, she went
out of her way to get along with co-workers and rarely gossiped. In
later interviews, however, she mentioned that she did not enjoy
working with Mary
Martin,
Claudette
Colbert or Hedy
Lamarr. In
Paulette
Goddard's case,
she thought it was insensitive for the glamorous star to bring her
bulging jewelry boxes to the studio workroom and tell her
seamstresses (who were working for minimum wage) that they could
"look, but not touch.".
Her trademark "sunglasses"
were not "sunglasses" but rather blue lensed glasses.
Looking through a blue glass was a common trick of costumers in the
days of Black and White film to get a sense of how a color would
photograph. Edith had a pair of glasses made out of the proper shade
of blue glass to save herself from looking through a single lens. Her
friends commonly would see her in regular "clear" glasses.
Biography in: "The Scribner
Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages
376-378. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.
Alumnae Initiate of Delta Zeta
sorority, Mu chapter.
She is credited with putting
Dorothy Lamour in her first sarong for "The Jungle Princess".
Her first job was as a teacher of
French, Spanish and Art at the Bishop School for Girls at La Jolla,
California. She got into films by answering a wanted ad as a sketch
artist for Paramount. Edith worked there in that capacity under
Howard Greer from 1924 to 1927. In 1928 she was promoted assistant to
Travis Banton. From 1938 to 1966, she held the top job as Head of
Design at Paramount, contributing in one way or another to over 1,000
motion pictures (supervising costumes for 47 films in 1940 alone).
Raised in the mining town of
Searchlight, Nevada. Studied at the University of California,
Berkeley. Attended the Otis Art Institute and the Chouinard Art
School in Los Angeles.
Personal Quotes
I've designed films I've never
seen.
If it is a Paramount film, I
probably designed it.
What a costume designer does is a
cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of
changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to
believe that every time they see a performer on the screen he's
become a different person.
You can lead a horse to water and
you can even make it drink, but you can't make actresses wear what
they don't want to wear.
[1977 comment on Jacqueline
Bisset] One of
the greatest bodies I've ever worked with. But besides that she is
rather the opposite, because she is so damned intelligent. It's a
strange combination, almost a double personality.
[On Grace
Kelly] I've
dressed thousands of actors, actresses and animals, but whenever I am
asked which star is my personal favorite, I answer, "Grace
Kelly." She is a charming lady, a most gifted actress and, to
me, a valued friend.
[On Kim
Novak] I don't
usually get into battles, but dressing Kim
Novak for her
role in Alfred
Hitchcock's
Vertigo
(1958) put to the test all my training in psychology.
[On viewing what many tanned
actresses wore to the 1966 Academy Awards]
I looked at all those white dresses and I thought we were doing a
reprise of White
Christmas
(1954).
I never thought I did good work
for [Cecil
B. DeMille]. I
always had to do what that conceited old goat wanted, whether it was
correct or not.
[On winning her fifth Oscar,
1954] I'm going to take it home and design a dress for it.
[Her reaction to losing the 1956
Color Costume Award
to Love
Is a Many-Splendored Thing
(1955)] Charles
Le Maire is a
good friend of mind and I would tell him to his face that his designs
were blah compared to my gowns. All the costumes Jennifer
Jones wore were
Chong Sams, the traditional Chinese dress, which could have been
purchased in Chinatown. That loss was the single greatest
disappointment of my costume-design career.
And
now the song of the day
