Ransom Center Magazine

Costumes and Personal Effects

75 Days. 75 Years: Costume designer created more than 5,000 separate items of clothing

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For 75 days, the Harry Ransom Center is raising funds for its 2014 exhibition The Making of Gone With The Wind. Opening on September 9, 2014, The Making of Gone With The Wind will reveal stories about the making of this quintessential film from Hollywood’s Golden Age and illustrate why it remains influential and controversial 75 years after it was released. Items from film producer David O. Selznick’s archive provide a behind-the-scenes look into the making of the film. Donations will help support outreach, additional exhibition tours, a published exhibition catalog, and complimentary programming and presentations.

Gone With The Wind (1939) costume designer Walter Plunkett was one of the first designers to work on the film. He began his work long before the parts were cast or the screenplay written, so he relied on descriptions of the characters from the novel for cues for the costume designs.

Plunkett began with detailed sketches. His wardrobe team then created patterns, made the garments, did fittings and alterations, and made changes as necessary after watching filmed tests.

During the production, Plunkett had to contend with producer David O. Selznick, changes in directors, and Technicolor advisors. Plunkett created more than 5,000 separate items of clothing for more than 50 major characters and thousands of extras.

In 1939, there was no costume design category at the Academy Awards. Selznick himself said that if there were, Plunkett would have won it for Gone With The Wind. Plunkett would go on to be nominated for an Academy Award ten times. In 1951, he was recognized by the Academy for An American in Paris. He shared the award with Orry-Kelly and Irene Sharaff.

The Making of Gone With The Wind will include over 300 original items from Selznick’s archive housed at the Ransom Center, including photographs, storyboards, correspondence, production records, audition footage, and fan mail. The exhibition will also feature gowns worn by Vivien Leigh as the beautiful and ambitious Scarlett O’Hara. The newly conserved costumes will be displayed together for the first time in more than 25 years.

Image: Walter Plunkett’s costume design for the character India Wilkes in Gone With The Wind, 1939.

Bloody costumes in De Niro collection present unusual challenge for conservation team

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Blood runs through the archive of renowned actor Robert De Niro. From bloodstained props to grisly costumes, artifacts of some of Hollywood’s most iconic thrillers are preserved at the Harry Ransom Center. Although the fake blood that marks these materials might share a similar chemical makeup, each bloody stain has its own secrets.

 

One such artifact is a shirt De Niro wore in a Cape Fear (1991) fight scene that has several gashes surrounded by fake blood. Twenty years later it is still sticky to the touch, which has posed complicated housing issues. The tackiness of the blood is what made this artifact a preservation challenge because traditional archival materials used to cushion textiles were adhering to—rather than protecting—the shirt. I learned that silicone-coated polyester film proved to be the best storage solution.

 

I learned that fake blood recipes vary depending on the specific effect a director or special effects supervisor aims for in a movie. For instance, in the film 15 Minutes (2001), the blood contained titanium oxide to give it an opacity that would photograph better. In the film Ronin (1998), the fake blood’s consistency enabled it to splatter from an explosive blood bag apparatus in the armpit of De Niro’s jacket.

 

These “bloody” artifacts have proven to be a puzzle to conservators and curators since knowing the makeup of these fake blood recipes poses issues when it comes to storing and exhibiting cinema history.

 

Please click on thumbnails to view larger images.

 

Robert De Niro’s “Silver Linings Playbook” costume ensemble on view

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Robert De Niro received his seventh Academy Award® nomination for his supporting role in Silver Linings Playbook (2012). The Ransom Center holds De Niro’s collection of papers and costumes and props, which includes materials from each of his nominated roles in Cape Fear (1991), Awakenings (1990), Raging Bull (1980), The Deer Hunter (1978), Taxi Driver (1976), and The Godfather Part II (1974). De Niro won Oscars® for his leading role in Raging Bull and his supporting role in The Godfather Part II.

One of the costume ensembles worn by De Niro in Silver Linings Playbook is on display in the Ransom Center’s lobby, alongside his character’s television remote controls and Philadelphia Eagles handkerchief. Below, Assistant Curator of Costumes and Personal Effects Jill Morena writes about the importance of costumes and props to actors.

One of Robert De Niro's costume ensembles worn in 'Silver Linings Playbook.' Photo by Pete Smith.
One of Robert De Niro's costume ensembles worn in 'Silver Linings Playbook.' Photo by Pete Smith.

Costumes and props aid an actor to arrive at the mental and physical place of inhabiting and expressing the character he or she is portraying. They can also help illuminate the physical aspect and embodiment of performance.

In director David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, Robert De Niro plays Pat Solitano, Sr., a passionate Philadelphia Eagles fan who is struggling to reconnect with his troubled son, Pat Jr., and support his family with a bookmaking enterprise after losing his job. Costume designer Mark Bridges chose and modified clothing that would express Pat Sr.’s lifelong love of the Eagles. He imagined and selected clothing pieces that Pat Sr. would have worn and cherished through the years, such as this classic cardigan in the team color, green, to which Bridges added a patch representing a vintage Eagles logo.

The television remote controls are Pat Sr.’s game day talismans, which he deploys with anxious precision. They must be arranged in particular configurations or held by certain “lucky” persons, with the belief that the Eagles will prevail if these actions are followed. The Eagles handkerchief is held firmly by Pat Sr. throughout the game, or placed over the remote controls. Pat Jr. overtly expresses that Pat Sr. suffers from OCD and takes game day superstitions too far. The film implies that Pat Sr.’s obsessions may have been the genesis of Pat Jr.’s own mental health struggles.

R. Colin Tait, a PhD candidate and University Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin, has used the Robert De Niro collection as the basis for his dissertation, Robert De Niro’s Method: Acting, Authorship and Agency in the New Hollywood (1967–1980).

Victoria and Albert Museum’s "Hollywood Costume" exhibition features costumes from the Ransom Center

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Costumes from the Robert De Niro collection are on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. ©V&A images.
Costumes from the Robert De Niro collection are on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. ©V&A images.

The rich history of costume design and its most visionary personalities takes center stage in Hollywood Costume, the latest exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, which opened October 20. Some of Hollywood’s most iconic characters are the focus of the exhibition, which spans a century of film history. Seven costumes featured in the exhibition are on loan from the Harry Ransom Center.

Costumes are significant to a film production because they allow an actor to inhabit the character. In the words of Martin Scorsese, “The costume of the character is the character—the tie a man wears can tell you more about him than his dialogue.” Four of the Center’s costumes on loan to the V&A are from Scorsese films, specifically Raging Bull (1980), Casino (1995), The King of Comedy (1983), and Taxi Driver (1976).

For Robert De Niro, donning the costume was part of the transformation process necessary to fulfilling his role in Taxi Driver. Ruth Morley, costume designer for  the film, said, “When I finally found the plaid shirt Bobby wanted to wear, when I found the army jacket, the pants, well he wanted to wear them.” That army jacket and plaid shirt, part of the Ransom Center’s Paul Schrader collection, is on display at the exhibition. A fifth costume worn by De Niro, from Frankenstein (1995), is also featured.

Hollywood Costume is made up entirely of loaned objects, which made the curators’ job of featuring the “most enduring cinema costumes from 1912 to the present day” especially challenging. Historically, there has been a significant lack of documentation regarding Hollywood costumes, which compounds the difficulty of research in the field of costume design. Following the decline of the Hollywood studio system after its peak in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, many props, costumes, and related ephemera were sold off in public auctions. Not surprisingly, many of the more than 100 costumes displayed are on loan from passionate private collectors.

Two costumes from Gone With The Wind, part of the Ransom Center’s David O. Selznick collection, also feature prominently in the V&A exhibition. The green curtain dress and the burgundy ball gown, both worn by Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), are particularly fragile and required special care, including customized textile boxes that would mitigate any movement or abrasion that might be caused by motion in transit. Jill Morena, the Center’s Assistant Curator for Costumes and Personal Effects, couriered the costumes and oversaw their installation at the V&A. Cara Varnell, an independent costume conservator who performed conservation work on the dresses, also assisted with the installation.

The exhibition offers a chance to explore what V&A Assistant Curator Keith Lodwick calls the “often misunderstood role of the costume designer.” That role, ever adapting to changes in the industry, is powerful enough to influence culture and memory far beyond the scope of a 90-minute film. Ultimately, the costume designer can develop a character into a cinematic icon.

Conservation work completed on "Gone With The Wind" dresses

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In 2010, the Ransom Center raised funds to conserve original costumes from Gone With The Wind, which are part of the Center’s David O. Selznick archive. Donors from around the world graciously contributed more than $30,000 to support the conservation work, which will enable the Ransom Center to display the costumes safely in a fall 2014 exhibition, loan the costumes to other institutions, and display the costumes properly on custom-fitted mannequins.

Prior to the collection’s arrival at the Ransom Center in the 1980s, the costumes had been exhibited extensively for promotional purposes in the years after the film’s production, and as a result were in fragile condition.

The Ransom Center’s detailed and careful conservation work took more than 180 hours and occurred between fall 2010 and spring 2012.

Label in the green curtain dress reading "Sprayed with Sudol." Photo by Anthony Maddaloni.
Label in the green curtain dress reading “Sprayed with Sudol.” Photo by Anthony Maddaloni.

Both the green curtain dress and the burgundy ball gown had vulnerable areas stabilized to prevent further damage. The conservation work allowed the Ransom Center to loan the green curtain dress and burgundy ball gown to the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London for the exhibition Hollywood Costume, which runs from October 20, 2012, through January 27, 2013.

The conservation work will also enable the Ransom Center to display the original burgundy ball gown, green curtain dress, and green velvet dressing gown as part of a 75th-anniversary Gone With The Wind exhibition in 2014.

“The majority of the conservation work performed on these costumes would not be obvious or visible to one viewing the costumes on a mannequin,” said Jill Morena, assistant curator for costumes and personal effects. “It is the interior of the costumes where meticulous work occurred and vulnerable areas were reinforced with archival support material and extra stitching.”

A more detailed description of some of the conservation work conducted on these costumes is available, and the four videos here give a behind-the-scenes look at the work done on the green curtain dress, the burgundy ball gown, the wedding veil, and the green velvet dressing gown.

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