We all know Edith Head, Adrian and Orry Kelly, but there were plenty of other talents working in the costume departments of the major Hollywood studios during its Golden Age. Read about 5 below!
Edward Manson Stevenson
Edward Manson Stevenson was born in Idaho in 1906. He moved with his mother to California in 1922. Eddie, as he was known, credited an aunt who ran a millinery store with sparking an early interest in fabrics. Sources disagree regarding how Edward entered the film world. However, through both stories, Edward was referred to designers based on his impressive artistic abilities.
By 1924, he was working as a sketch artist for actress Norma Talmadge’s production company. One of his designs ended up in a silent film, The White Moth (1924).
His mentor André-ani (whom he was introduced to by his neighbour, Gloria Swanson’s cousin) replaced Erté as costume designer at MGM and brought Edward with him as a sketcher. Outside of this, he gained design experience working on high school plays.
He then worked as an artist and occasional designer at Fox. The only example of his work from this period is a gown worn by Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven (1927).
His first official contract as a designer was with First National Pictures in 1928. Warner Brothers then bought the company and opted not to renew Edward’s contract. His name was omitted from the credits on many films he worked on, leading him to sue. He then worked freelance for a year and established his own design salon, Blakely House.
In 1935, he returned to working for a major studio, RKO, as a sketch artist for Bernard Newman. In 1936, he became the house designer when Newman left and his career took off. He remained with RKO until 1949. During his time there, he designed costumes for many of the top stars of the day and forged special relationships with Lucille Ball and Maureen O’Hara. Two of his most significant films while working at RKO were Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and It’s a Wonderful Life.
He was nominated for an Oscar twice in the 1950s, for Mudlark and David and Bathsheba.
Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer in Love Affair (1939)
He did a lot of work with Lucille Ball, including the costumes of I Love Lucy, and exclusively worked with her from 1960 onward. He finally won his Oscar with 1960’s The Facts of Life (starring Lucille), which he shared with Edith Head.
He died of a heart attack while shopping for fabric in 1968.
He has a whopping 203 designer credits on imdb.
Kay Nelson
Kay Nelson was born in 1909. She worked in the 40s and 50s as a costume designer at 20th Century Fox under wardrobe director Charles LeMaire. She met her husband Lyle Wheeler who worked as an art director there. She was nominated for a costume design Academy Award in 1949 for Mother is a Freshman.
Some of her most memorable credits include Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and Leave Her To Heaven (1945).
Her final (44th) film credit came in 1961 with The Mark. She passed away in 2003 aged 93.
Irene Maud Lentz
Irene
Irene was born in Montana in 1901. She was a silent film actress in the 1920s before opening a small dress shop called “Irene of California”. The success of her shop lead her to designing for the Bullocks Wilshire Luxury Department store, which catered to a number of Hollywood stars. She was one of only two designers to have their own salon in the store- the other was Chanel.
Irene as an actress in A Tailor Made Man (1922)
She was eventually approached to design costumes for independent film production companies. Her first credit came in 1933 with the film Goldie Gets Along. However, her big break didn’t come until 1937 when she designed the costumes for Ginger Rogers in Shall We Dance.
Shall we Dance
From there, she went on to work for big name production companies including Columbia and Paramount, dressing stars like Hedy Lamarr, Joan Bennett, Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard and Ingrid Bergman.
Lentz once said that “Hedy is so beautiful she doesn’t need to worry about clothes. You could stand her in a gunnysack, and she’d still be gorgeous”.
Irene is known for her soft tailored ‘dressmaker’ suits.
An Irene suit
After the death of her first husband, she married screenwriter Eliot Gibbons (brother of Cedric Gibbons, designer of the Oscar statuette). Cedric hired Irene to replace Adrian at MGM in 1941. By 1943, she was a leading costume supervisor at the studio. Her near all-white wardrobe for Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) was internationally acclaimed.
The Postman Always Rings Twice
She was nominated for an Oscar for B.F’s Daughter in 1948.
B.F.'s Daughter (1948)
She left MGM in 1950 to relaunch her fashion house with funding from the Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus department stores.
Doris Day asked her to come back to film in 1960 to do her wardrobe for Midnight Lace. Irene agreed and was nominated for a best costume design Academy Award for her work.
Midnight Lace
Actor Gary Cooper died in 1961, after which Irene confessed to Doris that he was the only man she had ever truly loved. Doris recalls that she was upset around this time. Irene later checked into the Knickerbocker hotel in November 1962, where she jumped from her bathroom window to her death. A suicide note read: “I’m sorry. This is the best way. Get someone very good to design and be happy. I love you all, Irene.”
Her fashion line closed a few years later.
In 2005, Irene Lentz was inducted into the Costume Designer’s Guild Anne Cole Hall of Fame.
For 2010’s The Tourist, costume designer Colleen Atwood put Angelina Jolie in a caramel shawl and ivory sheath based on an Irene look. “I have always been enamoured of the refinement of her eye,” says Atwood.
Costume designer Greg LaVoi revived Irene’s fashion line in 2013.
Milo Anderson
Milo was born in Chicago in 1910. His parents moved to LA when he was 8 and he later worked at Western Costume during his Summers off from school. He got into design and produced a costume for Constance Bennet in 1930 for the film Common Clay. Once he had a portfolio together, he took his sketches to Adrian at MGM, looking for work. Adrian directed him to Samuel Goldwyn, who was short a designer at the time. He took over for Coco Chanel to finish the costumes for The Greeks Had a Word for Them.
He picked out a check suit for Joan Crawford to wear in Rain in 1932. When he went back to the store to get multiples, they were sold out and the costume team had to print checks onto a similar fabric and build new ones to match.
He started working at Warner Brothers in 1934. While there, he worked with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland a number of times, including on The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). He used metallic paint on rope to fake chainmail in many the costumes of this film, which reduced noise and weight.
He designed for Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not in 1944 with the director, the previous designer Orry-Kelly and Milo all claiming credit for the idea of the houndstooth suit. Read more about this in the Slim Keith section of our blogpost here!
Another now-classic Film Noir came up in 1944- Mildred Pierce with Joan Crawford. Milo created the perfect costume pieces for her character but she was apparently very difficult to work with. Her look in this movie was an inspiration for the character of Rachel in 1984's Blade Runner.
By the early 1950s, he was fed up with designing for movies and he wasn't even getting credit for his work half the time (he currently has 174 on imdb). He left the industry and began designing for Catalina swimwear. He came back for one more movie in 1956 at the request of actress Jane Wyman- Miracle in the Rain.
After that, he became an interior designer and occasional costume design teacher.
“We ran ourselves ragged trying to keep up with the demands of our jobs, but we had the best materials, the best craftsmen and the most glorious women to wear them. It was an unforgettable era.”- Milo Anderson referring to Hollywood's Golden Age.
He died in 1984.
Howard Greer
Howard Greer was born in 1896. He began working as a sketch artist for the fashion designer Lucile in 1916 in both her New York and Chicago branches before serving in WWI. he remained in Paris after the war and worked for Lucile, Paul Poiret and Edward Molyneux. He also designed for theatre before returning to America in 1921.
He was hired by Famous Players-Lasky Studios which eventually became Paramount Studios! He stayed with the company as a costume designer for 6 years, working on films like The Ten Commandments (1923), Peter Pan (1924) and It (1927) with Clara Bow (this is the film that originated the term 'It-girl'). He was uncredited for the majority of his work.
He opened his own couture house, Greer Inc., in Hollywood in 1927, though he continued to design costumes for movies while operating his business. He went into ready-to-wear in 1947, which sold across America. His dresses were designed to look good on a woman whole she was seated at a dinner table, so they often had stunning necklines.
He designed the wedding gowns of actress Bessie Love when she married film producer William Hawks in 1929, Gloria Vanderbilt when she married film producer and agent Pat DiCicco in 1941 and Shirley Temple when she married Air Force Sgt. John Agar in 1945.
Greer's best known film credits include the Katharine Hepburn movies Christopher Strong (1933) and Bringing up Baby (1938), and My Favourite Wife (1940) with Irene Dunne.
Bringing up Baby
He has 46 design credits on IMDb and 13 under 'gowns' including for Ginger Rogers in Carefree (1938).
Incredible heart and arrow details on a Gingers Rogers sweater in 'Carefree', designed by Greer.
Elsa Schiaparelli introduced a similar design in the 1940s. The house revived this style in 2014 but this time, it was almost an exact copy of the Greer design from Carefree.
He published his autobiography 'Designing Male' in 1951 and created 'The Travel Dress' in 1952, which could be worn in 12 different ways for travel.
Greer designed clothing for all the brightest stars in Hollywood, as well as society ladies and their daughters, until his retirement in 1962. He died in 1974 at 77 years of age.