THE COSTUME SKETCHES OF MARY WILLS

The late Oscar-winning costume designer Mary Wills created not only wonderful movie costumes, but exuberant and beautiful costume sketches in the process. That her work is largely forgotten today is unfitting for such a great artist and costume designer, and for someone who made so many  contributions to movie history. Posted here are some of the costume design sketches that show her amazing talent.

                                                                

In 1944, Mary Wills began her long Hollywood career designing Belle of the Yukon. She had been the first woman admitted to the Yale Art and Drama School, where she earned a Master's Degree. She began working for Samuel Goldwyn in 1948, where she designed costumes for the movie Enchantment, starring Teresa Wright and David Niven. Soon she was being referred to as The Fabulous Miss Wills at the Goldwyn Studio. The above sketch is for another film, and shows a smart linen travelling suit .

                                            

Mary Wills won her costume design Oscar for the 1961 film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. This was a Cinerama production starring Yvette Mimieux, Russ Tamblyn, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom and many others. The costume sketch shown above was created for Yvette Mimieux in the Dancing Princess sequence. Miss Wills had a flair for designing dance and folk costumes, a talent she used later in her career designing for the Shipstad & Johnston Ice Follies. She also designed the costumes for the musical, Carousel, starring Shirley Jones.

                                                                     
          Here is another sketch for a costume worn by Yvette Mimieux in the Brothers Grimm, an Empire style dress from the time period of the film.

                                                             

One of Miss Will's most memorable films was Hans Christian Andersen.  For this film  she designed the costumes for Danny Kaye and the rest of the cast, excepting the ballet costumes. Shown above is a costume design sketch for Danny Kaye in the leading role. Using her artistic talent, Mary Wills was able to add subtle background scenery to many of her sketches, presenting a vignette for the context of the costume.

Since filming took place on a Hollywood sound stage, her colorful and realistic costumes for the market scene in Copenhagen helps bring to life the sights and sounds of the old city. Shown here is a costume design sketch for a flower seller and her daughter. Miss Wills' sketches give the appearance of living characters, as if she had actually painted them seated at an easel in the market square. The film was nominated for a Best Costume Oscar in 1953.

Mary Wills was also a skilled designer of historical costumes for film. The sketch above is for a costume worn by Joan Collins in the role of Beth Throgmorton in the 1955 film The Virgin Queen, starring Bette Davis. The fabric swatches selected for the costume are still attached to the sketch. Mary Wills received a Best Costume design nomination for this film, as did Charles Le Maire who headed costume design at 20th Century-Fox.

                                                                         
And Mary Wills could also design costumes for films that had a darker side, such as the first Cape Fear, and The Diary of Anne Frank. The costume sketch above is for Polly Bergin in
Cape Fear, co-starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Mary Wills worked on two major films that she didn't get film credit for; Funny Girl and Camelot. In Funny Girl, she designed the spectacular Ziegfeld show-girl Brides costumes and the costumes for Omar Shariff . Her last film work was in The Passover Plot in 1976, for which she also received an Academy Award nomination.

Mary Wills

                                                                    

Before her final retirement to Sedona, Arizona in the mid-1980s, she designed costumes for special productions such as the The New Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and The Nutcracker on Ice. Mary Wills died in 1997. Her work lives on in film, but her name should live on too. She brought a high level of artistic talent and integrity to her creations, breathing life into the costumes she designed. More of her costume sketches can be seen in the slide show  below: