Friday, November 1, 2013

Happy Birthday Edith



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
24 of October 1981, Los Angeles, California, USA (bone marrow disease)
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".
Was a close friend of actress Anne Baxter. She was godmother to one of Baxter's children.
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.
The character "Edna Mode" in Disney/Pixar's The Incredible (2004) was modeled on 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.
She is tied with composer Alan Menken for third most Academy Awards won. Each of them have eight.
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.
I have yet to see one completely unspoiled star, except for Lassie.
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





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