Edith Head

Legendary designer, Edna Mode’s character in the Pixar film The Incredibles is a heartfelt tribute to her unrivaled talent, present in more than a thousand films, many of which, she admitted, she had never seen. One of her star friends claimed that “If Cinderella had had Edith Head, she wouldn’t have needed a fairy godmother.” I could not agree more.

Edith Head published an autobiographical book in 1959, “The Dress Doctor”, in addition to “How to Dress for Success”, from 1967, a very practical book for its readers, which suggested how to dress for different occasions and according to the image that was he wanted to transmit in social life. She herself carefully cultivated the image of her with her characteristic short hair updo, and her dark glasses which she, she claimed, helped him get an idea of ​​how her costume creations would look on black-and-white film. black.

Edith Clare Posener, better known as Edith Head, was born in San Bernardino, California, in 1897, into a Jewish family. Her father, Max Posener, was an immigrant of Prussian origin, who separated from Anna Levy at the age of five. Shortly after Anna she married the mining engineer Frank Spare, an occupation that involved a few changes of address, among other places Mexico, which made it difficult to attend school consistently, but made it possible for her to learn Spanish. The removals did not help little Edith, somewhat withdrawn, who had a somewhat lonely childhood, in which she amused herself by dressing up animals and dolls. She pointed out in her girl’s games her future dedication as a costume designer, and she came to say later that “if you can dress a toad, you can dress anyone.”

But at that time her few friends were the little animals for which she made little dresses. Instead her schoolmates teased her about her prominent teeth, cruelly nicknamed her “beaver”, which got her used to not smiling to hide them. It was in Los Angeles where Edith was finally able to focus a little more on her studies, in addition to participating as an actress in the theater activities of the institute. She then attended the University of Berkeley, where she graduated in Fine Arts with a degree in French in 1919. The following year she would obtain another degree in Romance languages ​​at Stanford. She and she began to teach French at a Catholic school. She liked teaching, but it would be a new position as a French teacher, at the School for Girls in Hollywood, which brought her closer to the world of cinema, to whom he would dedicate the best energies of his professional career. Indeed, ideas such as giving classes in the open air dazzled the studio workers, who took their girls to study there, and some boys even slipped in, future actors such asJoel McCrea . Cecil B. DeMille sent his daughters to school, and in agreement with him, visits to his sets were arranged at The Famous Players-Lasky, a few years later at Paramount, with the students and their teachers.

To earn a bonus, Edith increased her classes by explaining art, while she was trained in this subject. Through a fellow student, she met her future husband, Charles Head, whom she married in 1923. Although they were very much in love, his alcohol problems soon made it difficult to live together, and the marriage broke up in 1938. Meanwhile, at the height of the jazz age, Edith dressed fashionably, her taste in wardrobe was evident, and she arranged her hairstyle in the style of the “flappers” that was all the rage at the time.

When the summer of 1924 rolled around, there were no classes to generate the income Edith and Charles needed, which coincided with an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times for a sketch artist to work under the supervision of Howard Greer, chief designer. of The Famous Players-Lasky and signed by DeMille to work on the first version of The Ten Commandments. She applied for the position with a “book” of sketches of hers and other colleagues, all presented as her own, and to her surprise, she was accepted with a salary of $40 a week. She blamed her youth for this “lack of morality”, which she immediately acknowledged to Greer, who in the end valued her above all for the talent that she began to exhibit right away. Behind her appearance of “kitten crossed with a Fujita painting”, in reference to the Japanese painter, Greer soon recognized a valuable and hard-working artist.

She could not imagine that she had just entered the runway of a successful professional career, to the point of surely becoming the best-known film costume designer in history, and undoubtedly the best of the studio era. Sandy Powell, who worked in the guild many years later, credited her colleague, who “was hired to do all the designs the studio asked her to do, whether she wanted to do it or not,” while she had the choice to get involved. in the movies of your choice.

Head quickly embraced the studio’s industrial way of working, which used a two-story building to house a men’s and women’s wardrobe, with more than 50,000 outfits, often exaggerated from what would be normal in the studio. real life, to make them stand out on screen. She would have to read scripts and, in a quick learning process, plan the costumes required by the characters in the different scenes, and prepare sketches with dresses, shoes, jewelry, wigs, etc. The time that each film required for these preparations could vary according to the size of the production, ranging from two to eight weeks, and even more in the case of large blockbusters, in which the dedication was measured in months. And the human team involved could be dozens of people in these last cases.

Edith’s first real uncredited contribution to film was in DeMille ‘s The Golden Bed (1925). Greer and newcomer Travis Banton gradually gave him more responsibility. Although sometimes elaborate designs of hers could disappear… gobbled up by an elephant, which occurred with a bouquet of flowers prepared by her for Raoul Walsh ‘s The Prodigal Son (1925) . His first serious opportunity to design for a star was in Wings (1927), the first film to win an Oscar in the top category. Banton ordered the clothes worn by Clara Bow from Head, and although being a war band of aviators it was a military uniform, it was a start, in addition to making friends with the actress, a “flapper” girl like her. When Banton was appointed chief designer at Paramount, Edith Head became his main assistant.

Soon she found herself wearing, in addition to Bow, Fay Wray , Jean Harlow -she discovered that silk looked divine on her-, Lupe Velez , Dorothy Lamour … And she saw that glamorous clothes were just as important as the streetwear she could wear. bring an actress as a secretary, like Carole Lombard, and that could inspire ordinary people when it comes to dressing. She interested him more than the clothes that he had to prepare for westerns, which were not credible at all, in her opinion. When it came to dressing the stars, he knew he had to strike a delicate balance: doing what he felt was required by a character, and what suited the star’s type, but at the same time accommodating her, even asking for ideas beforehand, to avoid then objected. Thus, when dressing Mae West in Lady Lou (1933) she followed her advice to “Make the clothes loose enough to prove that I am a lady, but tight enough to show them that I am a woman”. Of course it was very different to dress a girl, like the child star Shirley Temple inLeft in pledge (1934).

In 1933 Edith Head coincided with the artistic director Wiard Ihnen in the filming of Cancion de lulla , which adapted the work of the Spaniard Gregorio Martínez Sierra . They would end up getting married in 1940, and this second marriage lasted until his death, although like the previous one, there were no children either.

The approval of the Hays code in July 1934 presented a new challenge for studios in general, and for costume designers in particular, who had to adjust to the new demands for decency in movies, which you never knew exactly how far they would go. , but they did not admit mistakes: if a censor forced a scene to be cut, that could mean many thousands of dollars lost. And when the Second World War arrived and the genre for the dresses was scarce, he knew how to make a virtue of necessity, for example to dress Ginger Rogers in A woman in the shadows .

Edith Head dressed practically all the great legends of Hollywood. It is almost easier to cite those with whom he did not do that job than the opposite, but it is obligatory to cite Elizabeth Taylor ( A Place in the Sun ), Gloria Swanson ( Twilight of the Gods ), Rhonda Fleming ( Clash of the Titans ), Grace Kelly ( To Catch a Thief , Rear Window ), Olivia de Havilland ( The Heiress ), Audrey Hepburn ( Roman Holiday , Sabrina ), Marlene Dietrich( West Berlin ), Barbara Stanwyck ( The Strange Love of Martha Ivers , Doom ), Ingrid Bergman ( The Bells of St. Mary’s , the challenge of dressing a nun properly), Bette Davis ( Naked Eve )… Head was especially Delighted to dress Hepburn, with an ideal type, she went so far as to say of her waist that “it is the thinnest seen since the civil war, I could put a dog collar around it”.

As can be seen, the list of stars with whom he worked is endless, and it meant working with the best film directors, Alfred Hitchcock , Billy Wilder , William Wyler , Joseph L. Mankiewicz , Fritz Lang , Leo McCarey , George Stevens , Cecil B. DeMille , John Ford … A dazzling career, where the actresses were so happy that if they worked for a studio other than Paramount, they required their services, which the studio provided to the competition in exchange for other advantages.

The 1950s heiress was a perfect example of how she considered costumes to help tell a story and develop a character. The adaptation of the novel “Washington Square” by Henry Jamesit was a true character study, that of a woman tied to and undervalued by her father, who might discover love in a suitor, even if he might be an ambitious but attractive gold digger. The costumes that Head designed for De Havilland followed the evolution of the character, reflecting her social position but also her status as a spinster with a complex about paternal pressure, who changes her appearance when she is a woman in love, and who later dresses soberly and severe when disappointment arises, until the moment when he takes the reins of his life. Not surprisingly, this work earned her the first Oscar of the eight she won.

The Oscar category for best costumes was first established in 1949, and was partly sponsored by Edith Head herself, at that time very well positioned in the industry. Two prizes were awarded, depending on whether the film was in black and white or in color, and already that year she achieved her first nomination for The Emperor’s Waltz , although she would be defeated by Joan of Arc . The Academy preferred a wardrobe that served to tell a story, rather than a set of remarkable designs, but without that differentiating nuance, something that Head took good note of. To the point that in 1951 she achieved the feat of winning two Oscars, in the categories of black and white ( Eva the nude ) and color ( Samson and Delilah). The 50s were her prodigious decade, since they followed, in addition to a lot of nominations, the statuettes for A Place in the Sun , Roman Holidays and Sabrina . In the latter there was some injustice, since Parisian designs by Hubert de Givenchy were used, whom he did not even mention in his thanks when collecting the Oscar. And it is that as head of costumes for Paramount, she was contractually given credit in films in which she supervised the work of others. Already in the 60s she made many titles with Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis, in addition to her works with Ford The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance and The Irishman’s Tavern .

Edith Head earned the respect of everyone she worked with, and claimed that actors were ten times easier to work with than actresses, since they didn’t pay as much attention to their attire, although on the other hand, dressing them was much less of a chore. creative. She was attentive to the director’s guidelines, and she knew how to work with the actors to give them clothes that they felt comfortable in and that helped them compose their characters, rather than being a hindrance. Many common-sense advice is attributed to her, such as that “when a woman reaches 40 or is well behind her, she should never show what she should hide”, a healthy realism that some divas, and not so divas, could not be too clear The first actress to achieve credit as a costume designer was Arlene Dahl .with Slightly Scarlet , and learned a lot from being costumed by Head in titles like Sangaree Manor . Head followed Hichcock’s requests to dress Grace Kelly in Rear Window (“she must be like a piece of china, almost untouchable”) and To Catch a Thief (in the ball scene the dress must be “like the of a princess in a fairy tale”). And she assured that Kelly, with whom she became very close to her, was her favorite actress among those she worked with, and To Catch a Thief the film she was most satisfied with.

This great professional was not afraid of challenges. Perhaps 70 years is not the age that someone would choose to change companies, rather they would be ready for a quiet retirement. However, it was the time when Edith Head left Paramount to start working at Universal, where she would remain until her death. It is possible that Hitchcock was one of those who supported the change, because of the directors who benefited from his good work when it was borrowed, in titles like The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo , in the new stage he made Topaz and The Plot for him . There was time for another Oscar, that of El coup , coincided again with Paul Newman and Robert Redfordafter Two men and a destiny ; although she was barely a supervisor on this occasion, and a kind of ingratitude was repeated when it came to acknowledging the contribution of those who worked under her orders. She also took care of the wardrobe of the different installments of the Airport saga , which meant dressing passengers of different fur, in addition to the air personnel; She even signed her to give ideas on the equipment of the Pan Am flight crew. And she had collaborations with John Huston in The Hanging Judge and The Man Who Would Be King .

Curiously, his last work was released posthumously, and it was for a unique black and white film: Carl Reiner ‘s Dead Customer Doesn’t Pay , from comedian Steve Martin , which parodied film noir using archival footage of classic actors. The actress died of myelofibrosis, a bone marrow cancer diagnosed in the early 1970s and carried quietly by her, on the eve of her 84th birthday, two years before her second husband, artistic director Wiard Ihnen.