FARM RELIEF

July 30, 1939

The glamour girls are finding out that they can get through a picture without 26 changes of costume. 

Very seldom these days do you find a star going into tantrums about the news that she’ll have to worry along with shop girls clothes in shop girl parts. 

Ending a Nuisance 

Bette Davis is largely responsible for the new trend – she’ll wear gunny sack trimmed in cheesecloth if the role called for it!  (1)

An example of the trend is Lucille Ball. Lucille came to Hollywood from a career as mannequin and artist’s model and immediately got a series of clothes-horse parts. 

In RKO’s “Five Came Back,” Lucille wears one make-shift costume almost exclusively. (2)

Did she pout over this rebellion against fashion? 

Here’s what she said: 

“It was a nuisance when I was changing my costume for nearly every scene. I never could really put my mind on the business of acting. 

"Now I don’t have to worry before every shot about the fit of my stockings or dress. I can think about my role and put all I’ve got into acting." 

Between the Eyes 

The swing away from stagey clothes began, gradually, with the advent of sound. 

Designer Eddie Stevenson of RKO points out: (3)

"Silent pictures could glorify the clothes-horse and the excess decoration helped to fill the audience eye.

"Dialog made it essential that we watch the speaker and anything that hit the audience between the eyes was distracting. Today any costume that is so different it is noticeable is not a ‘good’ dress for a picture." 

Girls, are there any questions? 

Let’s leave Dor– La– r’s distracting sarong out of this! (4)

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FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) Bette Davis considered herself a character actress who played strong female characters, whether it be in period pictures, or modern dramas like “Dark Victory” (1939, above).  Looking glamorous was not important to Davis, who would rather seduce an audience through the power of her performance than the way she looked. 

(2) “Five Came Back” (1939) was a film about survivors of a plane crash stranded in the jungle, so Ball (and the rest of the cast) spent the majority of the film in the costume they wore when the plane went down. 

(3) Edward Stevenson (1906-68) was named head designer for RKO Studios in 1936. His work on The Facts of Life (1960) with Edith Head and Lucille Ball earned him an Oscar. 

He spent 18 years designing for Lucille Ball.

(4) In this parting line, “Dor— L—r” refers to Dorothy Lamour. Lamour was known around Hollywood as the ‘Sarong Girl’. In 1936 she donned her soon-to-be-famous sarong for her debut at Paramount, The Jungle Princess, and continued to play females in sarongs through the war years and beyond. The most famous of these was in the popular Bob Hope / Bing Crosby "Road” pictures.