BLACK & WHITE MOVIE COSTUMES IN COLOR -Part 1

It's hard to imagine the classic costumes of black and white movies in color, but unless they were designed to be in black or white, they all began their lives as color designs, and were made with colorful fabrics. Colorizing B&W movies is a technique best left in the past, but seeing the few scarce images of those wonderful costumes in their original color is revelatory. The blogger CaftanWoman gave me the idea to cover the real color of costumes shown in B&W films, so this is the first post in a planned occasional series showing those beautiful costumes in color. Since even color films from the 1950s and 1960s were mostly publicized with black and white stills, finding good quality images of the costumes in color is not easy. The number of posts in this series will therefore depend on the availability and supply of such images.

Norma Shearer as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, 1936. Her costume was designed by Adrian.

It is often assumed that the costumes from early black and white movies were designed to be either black or white or gray. While some costumes were indeed designed to be in black or white, most costumes were designed to be in the rich colors that those costumes would look most appropriate in. And why would this be so since these colors never showed on the screen? Just as a well-designed period costume helps the actor feel natural in a role from a historic period, so does color make a costume seem more real. And color is also used for its psychological properties in conveying mood or character, which all the actors in the scene react to. It would be just as unnatural for a costume designer to avoid all color in their designs and it would be for all the actors to dress all in gray or black. Hence, early costumes were vividly colored. In practice, some colors were used because they actually gave off a better look of black, such as purple in the Masked Ball costume of Kay Johnson in Madame Satan. And brown was used for the red ball gown worn by Bette Davis in Jezebel, as another example.

Katharine Hepburn in the B&W film Mary of Scotland, 1936.

For viewers of the beautifully costumed Mary of Scotland, starring Katharine Hepburn, it can be a shock to see what some of the costumes actually looked like in color. One of the many outstanding costumes from the film is shown above in black and white.But even after 75 years, the bright red velvet gown decorated with gold thistles shown below is a wonder. It had been part of the Debbie Reynolds collection but was auctioned off and is headed for Asia.

Photo by Christian Esquevin

Costume designer Walter Plunkett designed Hepburn's costumes for Mary of Scotland  and many other films for her at RKO. The photo below shows them re-united at MGM for the filming of the B&W Sea of Grass, in 1947. Katharine relaxes on a leaning board between takes. Leaning boards were used so that costumes would not be wrinkled, or sometimes even because they were too tight.

Below is the same coat in burgundy velvet and feather trim and muff. It too was in the Debbie Reynolds auction.

Paradoxically, one of the classic film costume designers best known for his striking black and white  designs, Adrian, became the leading colorist among fashion designers in the 1940s. This is just one of Adrian's paradoxes, which he seemed to thrive on in his design work. One need only think of the early films of Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and Norma Shearer to see his bold use of black and white, often together, in his beautiful gowns. After he left films and opened his own fashion line in 1942, he was virtually the lone designer to feature bold colors like magenta and purples among a sea of gray, hunter green, khaki, and brown fashions during World War II. The photo below shows Rosalind Russell in They Met in Bombay, in which she co-starred with Clark Gable in 1941. Her costumes were designed by Adrian.

Though a bit washed out, the color image below shows the same costume, a beautiful use of color on a cream-colored Adrian suit.

There is a bit of irony in naming a movie The Bride Wore Red, for a film shot in black and white. For this film too, the color of the gown was not only a significant part of the characterization and plot, but the costumes themselves were a crucial element in characterization. The film still worked effectively in black and white, but the stunning red bugle-beaded gown shown below as worn by Joan Crawford and designed by Adrian must have turned heads even on the MGM studio lot.

Joan is shown with her co-stars Franchot Tone and Robert Young. This image was colored rather than photographed in color. It gives an idea of what the gown looked like. Unfortunately, the hand-painted red color covered the rhinestone belt of her cape. Compare it with the B&W photo above. A better view of the gown is shown in this link to the Museum at FIT, where it has fortunately been preserved for many years.

Ginger Rogers' beautiful beaded gown above looks like it could have been made of silver-colored glass beads that many of the classic glamour gowns were made of. In this case her gown designed by Bernard Newman for Follow the Fleet in 1935 was actually a light green. 

There is no doubt that there is drama and beauty in both black and white film and still photography. Seeing some of these costumes in color only adds to our appreciation of the skill and artistry of the designers and artisans that produced them. The documentation of that process was sketchy, and now as the actual costumes fade and are scattered to the winds, our records appear even more fragile. Regardless, I hope you have enjoyed this topsyturvy peek of the real color of black and white.

THEADORA VAN RUNKLE

Hollywood lost another bright light, costume designer and free spirit Theadora Van Runkle, who died November 4, 2011. Theadora was part of the new wave of designers that exploded on the scene in the 1960s, changing the approach to costume design and in the process launching some distinctive fashion trends. She is famous for her designs for Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde, and for several other films that also made Faye Dunaway famous. Part of her distinctive creativity was that she was mostly self-taught, and used her perceptive sense of street fashion along with her own research on period dress to design distinctive film costumes tied to the story characters.




Theadora Van Runkle in 1968

Theadora Van Runkle was born Dorothy Schweppe in 1928, the daughter of Eltsey Adair and Courtney Schweppe, heir to the Scheppes beverage family. The couple did not stay together and Eltsey and her daughter moved to California. She changed her own name to Theadora, and kept her name from her first marriage at age 16 to Robert Van Runkle. Theadora was always artistic, and got a job as the illustrator of fashion ads for the May Company department store, this in the day when illustrated fashion ads were common in newspapers.

She got a job as sketch artist for Dorothy Jeakins in 1966 when that designer was swamped designing the epic film Hawaii at United Artists. But the job didn't last past production of the film. Theadora then took her skills to a job with costume designer Renie at Twentieth Century-Fox, where Renie was designing Sand Pebbles, with Steve McQueen and Candice Bergen. Theadora actually designed the costumes of the  Chinese Red Candle girls in that movie, and boldly signed her own name on the sketches. While sketch artists would sometimes design a costume for which they received no credit, it was still considered cheeky to sign their names to the sketch. Luckily, Dorothy Jeakins called Theadora again and referred her to Warner Brothers, where they were producing a "little western."  Her good fortune continued as the director of that film, Arthur Penn, wanted a fresh "new wave" look and didn't want a lot of Hollywood veterans involved. The film was Bonnie and Clyde, and Theadora was panicked at being given the entire cast to costume. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Photofest

Van Runkle wanted to be fairly accurate as to the what rural folks of modest means wore in the 1930s. But she also wanted to give some flair to Faye Dunaway as Bonnie, and  she turned Clyde Barrow into a bit of a dandy, using Pretty Boy Floyd as a model. Early in her shopping for fabrics she ran into Edith Head, who tossed out the advice to do everything for Bonnie in chiffon. Instead, Theadora used sturdy maxi-skirts and sweaters. Combined with a variety of berets, the look quickly became a fashion trend after the film's release. Theadora was nominated for a Best Costume Oscar for her work on Bonnie and Clyde.




With some bank cash in hand, Bonnie improved her
wardrobe with this stripped suit.

Photos courtesy Photofest

Faye Dunaway's striking and photogenic beauty was a big part of Bonnie and Clyde's success, and she knew that Theadora's fresh fashion designs were right for her. Dunaway continued to ask for Theadora in several of her subsequent films.



Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crowne Affair

Theadora's designs for Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crowne Affair were the perfect looks for the sophisticated but hip screen couple. For Dunaway Theadora managed to combine a 1960s brashness with a professional women's wardrobe. Theadora also worked with Steve McQueen to get him to look perfectly comfortable in rich-looking men's suits. He too wanted to continue having her work with him, and so she designed McQueen's cool-cop outfits for Bullitt in 1968, and for the period movie The Rievers in 1969. 

As the famous veteran costume designers retired, or their contracts were dropped by the increasingly frugal studios, young designers like Van Runkle and Donfeld were given a wide variety of designing assignments. Thus Theadora designed Lucille Ball's costumes for Mame in 1974. She hearkened back to the 1920s flapper look for Lucille Ball in the photo below.

Photofest

Probably Theadora's most ambitious assignment was costuming the epic Godfather II. Here she had to design for the gamut of film characters, from turn of the century Italian immigrants to Mafia mobsters and their families to swinging 1950s Las Vegas hipsters. She did a perfect job of helping build character through costume. She received her second Best Costume Oscar nomination for her work.



Robert De Niro as the young Vito Corleone

Theadora Van Runkle worked on many films during her career, films as diverse I Love You Alice B. Toklas, Myra Breckenridge, Heaven Can Wait, New York New York,The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Peggy Sue Got Married. She arrived at the studios during a pivotal moment in film history - the collapse of the studio system and the launching of a new wave of film-makers and stars. On those films and stars she made a lasting mark from her free-spirited and talented design creativity. She leaves us with that wonderful legacy.

Theadora Van Runkle, 1973

                                       

CLASSIC MOUSTACHES FOR MOVEMBER BLOGATHON

 Bette's Classic Movie Blog is sponsoring the Classic Moustaches for Movember Blogathon


During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in the US and around the world. With their Mo’s, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.

The idea is that men be sponsored to grow a moustache, with the proceeds given to the cause. You can donate directly at the Movember  site.  Since I started growing a moustache the day after I graduated high school in 1967, and have had one ever since, I can't quite grow one myself. It could be suggested that I shave mine off and re-grow one. But after having watched the film, La Moustache, a few years ago, I dare not. La Moustache, while not quite a classic film, is the subject of this post. The movie is very intriguing, but is far different from the clear message and purpose of Movember. Nonetheless, the film not only has (or had) a moustache on the lead character, the moustache is the existential theme of the entire movie.

If you like all your movies with clear plots and logical resolutions - you needn't look for this little gem of an existential film.  Rene Magritte's painting, Cela N'est Pas une Pipe, is an oil on canvas depicting a smoking pipe. The artwork's title translates as, "This is Not a Pipe," and indeed it isn't - it's a painting. And similarly with this film, it is not a story packaged with answers as to its meaning, or what the director's message was. Directed by Emmanuel Carrere and based on his novel, it questions reality and the role other's perception plays in our self-understanding and self-creation.

One day Parisian architect Marc Thiriez, played by Vincent Lindon, decides to shave of his moustache. What if he did, he asks his wife? His wife, played by Emmanuelle Devos, doesn't notice when his moustache is gone.  So finally he asks her what she thinks - only to hear her say that he never had a moustache. Later at a dinner with friends they too deny that he has ever had a moustache. Surly this must be a joke.

But at work even his colleagues now deny that he ever had a moustache. This is no longer a joke. Is it a plot? Did people ever know who he really was? Marc begins to question whether he knows himself.  He becomes disoriented and argumentative. There must be a logical answer, certainly there must be proof. He looks through old photos, he looks through the trash, his wife thinks he's insane.

Marc shows his photo I.D. to a policewoman. Wasn't that a moustache? He has now lost his bearings. He decides to leave before his wife has him committed. He flees to Hong Kong to find himself. Though crowded with people it still represents the philosophy of the Orient. Perhaps the answer is there. But the answer he finds and the end of the film is a somersault of reality.

La Moustache was Emmanuel Carrere's directorial debut. He has been compared to David Lynch. He purposefully avoided providing a message in his movie, and if asked, he would say he didn't know what its meaning was. If Rod Serling were here to provide a final narration, he might say, "Marc Thierez, Parisian architect, 40sh. Marc has a stylish wife and a sleek home. He is considered handsome. On this day he decides to shave his moustache. He looks into his mirror as he's always done. But the face in the mirror is not his own, what he sees is his reflection - in the Twilight Zone."