AdrianFilmography

Lovely to Look At

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Red Skelton, Marge Champion, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Gower Champion

Synopsis: The reason the 1935 Astaire/Rogers film version of Roberta was unavailable for years was that, in 1952, MGM bought the property and refilmed it under the title Lovely to Look At. Inheriting one-half of a Parisian dress salon from his late aunt, Red Skelton travels to France with his showbiz Read More

Rope

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier

Synopsis: Rope, Alfred Hitchcock's first color film, was adapted from Patrick Hamilton's stage play Rope's End by no less than Hume Cronyn. Loosely inspired by the Leopold-Loeb case, the plot concerns two implicitly homosexual college chums, played by Farley Granger and John Dall. Their heads filled with Read More

Smart Woman

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Iris Adrian, Brian Aherne, Constance Bennett, Willie Best, Lee Bonnell

Synopsis: In this courtroom drama, two opposing lawyers lead a double life. In the courtroom they are ruthless toward each other, but once the day is over they become passionate lovers. Unfortunately their newest case may well threaten their relationship as the defense attorney is defending a corrupt Read More

Possessed

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Griff Barnett, Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Monte Blue, Raymond Massey, Geraldine Brooks, Nana Bryant, Stanley Ridges

Synopsis: We first meet Joan Crawford, star of the moody flashbackfest Possessed, wandering aimlessly through the city streets, moaning "David....David." She goes to pieces in public and is rushed to the mental ward, where a team of psychiatrists try to find out who she is and where she's been. Who she is Read More

Humoresque

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, John Abbott, John Garfield, Oscar Levant, Paul Cavanagh, J. Carrol Naish, Joan Chandler, Tommy Cook

Synopsis: Fannie Hurst's novel Humoresque is the lachrymose tale of a famed Jewish-American violinist who forgets all about his friends and family in his rise to fame. Screenwriters Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold refashioned this timeworn material into a first-class, big-budget soap opera, completely Read More

Shadow of a Doubt

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joseph Cotten, Teresa Wright, MacDonald Carey, Henry Travers, Patricia Collinge

Synopsis: Teresa Wright plays Charlie, a small-town high-schooler who enjoys a symbiotic relationship with her favorite uncle, also named Charlie (Joseph Cotten). When young Charlie "wills" that old Charlie pay a visit to her family, her wish comes true. Uncle Charlie is his usual charming self, but he Read More

Flight for Freedom

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Fred MacMurray, Herbert Marshall, Walter Kingsford

Synopsis: Flight for Freedom was an "a clef" version of the Amelia Earhart story. Rosalind Russell plays the Earhart-like aviatrix Tonie Carter, who spends the early part of the film fighting against the aviation industry's prejudice against woman pilots. Tonie establishes a reputation as "the Lady Read More

His Butler's Sister

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Deanna Durbin, Pat O'Brien, Franchot Tone, Akim Tamiroff, Evelyn Ankers

Synopsis: In this frothy musical comedy, Ann Carter (Deanna Durbin) is an aspiring singer from the Midwest who decides to move to New York in hopes of advancing her career. Her half brother, Martin Murphy (Pat O'Brien), is already living in the Big Apple, and has told her that he's doing well as a Read More

Hi Diddle Diddle

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Dennis O'Keefe, Martha Scott, Adolphe Menjou, Billie Burke, Pola Negri

Synopsis: In the tradition of Hellzapoppin', Hi Diddle Diddle is an all-stops-out "screwball comedy" populated by certifiable zanies. Billie Burke plays Mrs. Prescott, the featherbrained mother of bride-to-be Janie Prescott (Martha Scott). When Mrs. P is swindled out of her life savings, Colonel Phyffe (Adolphe Menjou Read More

We Were Dancing

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Melvyn Douglas, Gail Patrick, Lee Bowman, Marjorie Main

Synopsis: Strange but true: Norma Shearer turned down the title role in Mrs. Miniver to star instead in the insignificant trifle We Were Dancing. Loosely based on two Noel Coward playlets originally presented as part of the omnibus production Tonight at 8:30, the story concerns the romance between socialite Read More

Keeper of the Flame

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Richard Whorf, Margaret Wycherly, Forrest Tucker

Synopsis: If you're wondering what Citizen Kane might have looked like had it been produced by MGM, we submit for your approval Keeper of the Flame. War correspondent Spencer Tracy is assigned to write the life story of a recently deceased super-patriot. One would suppose that the much-beloved decedent's Read More

Woman of the Year

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Fay Bainter, Reginald Owen, William Bendix

Synopsis: Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn costarred for the first time in the delectable romantic comedy Woman of the Year. Tracy plays New York sportswriter Sam Craig, who becomes incensed at comments about the uselessness of sports made by foreign correspondent Tess Harding (Hepburn). Sam and Tess Read More

They Got Me Covered

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Lenore Aubert, Otto Preminger, Eduardo Ciannelli

Synopsis: Bob Hope's first starring vehicle for producer Sam Goldwyn borrows the title of Bob's 1942 autobiography They Got Me Covered and very little else. Co-scripted by Leonard Q. Ross (aka Leo Rosten), Leonard Spigelgass and Harry Kurnitz (among many others!), the film casts Hope as Robert Kittredge Read More

Smilin' Through

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Brian Aherne, Gene Raymond, Ian Hunter, Frances Robinson

Synopsis: Adapted from the warhorse stage tearjerker by Jane Cowl and Jane Murfin, this 1941 film version of Smilin' Through is even hokier than two earlier movie adaptations, but it works beautifully thanks to the sensitive direction of Frank Borzage. Brian Aherne dominates the proceedings as the aged Sir Read More

Two-Faced Woman

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Constance Bennett, Ruth Gordon, Robert Sterling, Roland Young

Synopsis: Attempting to Americanize Greta Garbo to appeal to American audiences (since most of the foreign markets for Hollywood product had been cut off due to World War II), M.G.M.'s Two-Faced Woman succeeded in making Garbo angry enough to announce her retirement from the screen. Two-Faced Woman was Read More

When Ladies Meet

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, Herbert Marshall, Spring Byington

Synopsis: Strange Skirts is the TV title of the 1941 MGM film When Ladies Meet. The film was a remake of a 1933 production of the same name, which starred Ann Harding, Myrna Loy and Spring Byington; their roles were taken over in the remake by Greer Garson, Joan Crawford and Spring Byington. Both films are Read More

The Feminine Touch

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Rosalind Russell, Don Ameche, Kay Francis, Van Heflin, Donald Meek

Synopsis: An expert cast of farceurs goes through its customary paces in MGM's The Feminine Touch. Don Ameche plays college professor-turned-author John Hathaway, who hits upon a potential best-seller with his book on marital jealousy. He heads to New York with his lovely wife Julie (Rosalind Russell) Read More

Ziegfeld Girl

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: James Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, Lana Turner, Tony Martin

Synopsis: All that MGM's Ziegfeld Girl lacks is Technicolor; otherwise, the film has talent and "sock" entertainment value in abundance. The story focuses on three showbiz hopefuls-Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner-and the efforts to attain the lofty status of "Ziegfeld Girl." Garland is compelled Read More

Lady Be Good

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Robert Young, Lionel Barrymore, John Carroll

Synopsis: The 1924 George Gershwin stage hit Lady Be Good was brought to the screen by MGM; any resemblance (beyond the Gershwin score) to the original play is purely accidental. The MGM scriveners came up with a new story concerning married songwriters Ann Sothern and Robert Young, who can't live with each Read More

Come Live with Me

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: James Stewart, Hedy Lamarr, Ian Hunter, Veree Teasdale, Donald Meek

Synopsis: James Stewart's last Hollywood film before entering military service, Come Live with Me teams Stewart with the hauntingly beautiful Hedy Lamarr. Lamarr plays a wealthy Austrian emigree, in love with a married American publisher. The girl must quickly find an American husband or she'll be deported. Read More

A Woman's Face

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Conrad Veidt, Osa Massen, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: A remake of the Swedish film of the same name (see entry 55092), MGM's A Woman's Face was reshaped into one of Joan Crawford's best vehicles. Told in flashback from the vantage point of a murder trial, the story concerns a female criminal whose face is disfigured by a hideous scar. The Read More

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Ian Hunter, Barton MacLane, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the second sound version of the Robert Louis Stevenson "doppelganger" tale. This time Spencer Tracy plays the benevolent Dr. Jekyll, whose experiments in releasing the evil impulses within himself transform him into the bestial Mr. Hyde. The problem here is that Read More

Blossoms in the Dust

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Felix Bressart, Marsha Hunt, Fay Holden

Synopsis: Greer Garson is dignity and integrity personified in the role of the real-life Edna Gladney. After several life experiences which rival daytime drama for unrelenting misery and melodrama, Edna marries flour-mill owner Sam Gladney (Walter Pidgeon). They have a baby, who dies shortly after Edna Read More

The Chocolate Soldier

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Rise Stevens, Nigel Bruce, Florence Bates, Dorothy Gilmore

Synopsis: This remake of Ferenc Molnar's play The Guardsmen focuses on an opera star (Nelson Eddy) who tests the fidelity of his wife (Rise Stephens) by wooing her in disguise. The film was nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Sound and Best Score. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Rage in Heaven

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders, Lucile Watson, Oscar Homolka

Synopsis: A Rage in Heaven was based on a novel by James Hilton, who thanks to Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr. Chips was a "hot property" in 1941. Going through many of the same paces he'd trod in Night Must Fall, Robert Montgomery stars as British steel mill owner Philip Monrell, whose outward charm and Read More

Boom Town

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Morgan

Synopsis: Clark Gable is "Big John" and Spencer Tracy is "Square John"; both "Johns" seek their fortunes in the Texas oil fields. They simultaneously fall in love with Claudette Colbert, but it's "Big John" who wins out. When both Johns grow rich on oil, "Big John" lets money go to his head, and he begins Read More

Pride and Prejudice

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland, Edna May Oliver, Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O'Sullivan

Synopsis: Long before 19th-century novelist Jane Austen became a hot property in Hollywood, MGM produced this opulent and entertaining adaptation of one of Austen's best-known novels. The elegant and slyly satirical comedy of manners gets under way when socially conscious Mrs. Bennet (Mary Boland), with the Read More

Broadway Melody of 1940

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Frank Morgan, Ian Hunter

Synopsis: MGM's third follow-up to its landmark Broadway Melody is short on story, but that's okay, since the plot is merely a clothesline upon which to hang sleek and opulent musical production numbers by Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell -- particularly a breathless and eye-popping gloriously Read More

Susan and God

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Ruth Hussey, John Carroll, Rita Hayworth

Synopsis: Rachel Crothers' thoughtful stage play Susan and God was tastefully adapted for the screen by Anita Loos. Joan Crawford stars as Susan, whose unquestioning devotion to various religious organizations causes a great deal of strain between herself and her family. When Susan embraces a "New Thought" Read More

The Mortal Storm

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young, Frank Morgan, Robert Stack

Synopsis: The Nazi Party's rise to power has disastrous consequences for a German family in this drama. Victor Roth (Frank Morgan) is a college professor teaching in Germany in 1933 who leads a peaceful and contented life with his wife Emelie (Irene Rich), son Rudi (Gene Reynolds), daughter Freya (Margaret Sullavan Read More

New Moon

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Mary Boland, George Zucco, H.B. Warner

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1930 with Lawrence Tibbett and Grace Moore, the robust Sigmund Romberg operetta New Moon was given another airing in 1940 as Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald vehicle. Set in 18th century Louisiana, the story concerns the relationship between haughty plantation owner Marianne de Read More

Bitter Sweet

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, George Sanders, Ian Hunter, Felix Bressart

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1933, Noel Coward's sentimental operetta Bitter Sweet was transformed by MGM seven years later into a Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy vehicle, complete with Technicolor. Set in late 19th century Vienna, the story focuses on the romance between music teacher Carl Linden (Eddy) Read More

Escape

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, Conrad Veidt, Alla Nazimova, Felix Bressart

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Ethel Vance, Escape stars Robert Taylor as a young American, the son of a widowed European woman (Alla Nazimova). The mother has been imprisoned in a German concentration camp, compelling her son to ignore America's neutrality and attempt a rescue. Sneaking into German-occupied Read More

Comrade X

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Clark Gable, Hedy Lamarr, Oscar Homolka, Felix Bressart, Eve Arden

Synopsis: A half-hearted derivation of Ninotchka, Comrade X stars Clark Gable as an American news reporter stationed in Russia. Gable is actually the mysterious Comrade X, who has been smuggling provocative stories about the crumbling Soviet government out of the country. Threatened with exposure by a hotel Read More

The Philadelphia Story

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, John Howard

Synopsis: We open on Philadelphia socialite C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) as he's being tossed out of his palatial home by his wife, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). Adding insult to injury, Tracy breaks one of C.K.'s precious golf clubs. He gallantly responds by knocking her down on her million-dollar Read More

I Take This Woman

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, Veree Teasdale, Kent Taylor, Laraine Day

Synopsis: This soapy drama stars Hedy Lamarr as a would be model who meets a research doctor en route to the US from Europe. They meet when Dr. Spencer Tracy prevents her from taking a suicidal plunge from the upper decks of the ocean liner. It seems that Lamarr had been involved with married man Kent Read More

Waterloo Bridge

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, Lucile Watson, Virginia Field, Maria Ouspenskaya

Synopsis: Given the omnipresence of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1940, the second film version of Robert E. Sherwood's Waterloo Bridge would have to be laundered and softened to pass muster. In the original, made in 1931, the heroine is nothing more or less than a streetwalker, patrolling London's Read More

Lady of the Tropics

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Robert Taylor, Hedy Lamarr, Joseph Schildkraut, Gloria Franklin, Ernest Cossart

Synopsis: It's "Never the Twain Shall Meet" time again in the MGM romantic melodrama Lady of the Tropics. The lady in question is half-caste Manon De Vargnes (Hedy Lamarr), a resident of prewar Saigon. American playboy Bill Carey (Robert Taylor) falls madly in love with Manon, but both have their crosses to Read More

The Women

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Mary Boland, Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard

Synopsis: Based on the Clare Booth Luce play of the same name, this MGM comedy is justly famous for its all-female cast and deft direction by George Cukor. The plot centers on a group of gossipy high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily wedded Read More

It's a Wonderful World

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Claudette Colbert, James Stewart, Guy Kibbee, Frances Drake, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: In this frothy screwball comedy, Guy Johnson (James Stewart) is a private detective who is dedicated to his job but still quite green and a bit of a bumbler. Guy is hired to keep a close watch on Willie Heyward (Ernest Truex), a footloose millionaire with a habit of getting into trouble. One Read More

Balalaika

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Ilona Massey, Charlie Ruggles, Frank Morgan, Lionel Atwill

Synopsis: In this romantic musical, a Russian prince sees a lovely singer in a town cafe and falls head-over-heels. Realizing that he cannot be seen with her in royal garb, he masquerades as a worker. Later he secretly arranges for her to sing at the Imperial Opera. Unfortunately, his father the emperor is Read More

Ninotchka

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Bela Lugosi, Sig Rumann, Felix Bressart, Ina Claire

Synopsis: "Garbo Laughs!" declared the ads for Ninotchka. In the face of dwindling foreign revenues, MGM decided to put Greta Garbo, a bigger draw in Europe than the US, in a box-office-savvy comedy, engaging the services of master farceur Ernst Lubitsch to direct. The film opens in Paris during the Read More

The Ice Follies of 1939

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, James Stewart, Lew Ayres, Lewis Stone, Bess Ehrhardt

Synopsis: Comedy, romance, and song hit the ice in this musical. Larry Hall (James Stewart) is a professional ice skater whose act with his friend Eddie Burgess (Lew Ayres) breaks up when Larry weds Mary McKay (Joan Crawford). Mary is also a skater, and she teams up with Larry to perform, but their on-stage Read More

Broadway Serenade

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Lew Ayres, Ian Hunter, Frank Morgan, Wally Vernon

Synopsis: Jeanette MacDonald and Lew Ayres make strange bedfellows in the overproduced MGM musical Broadway Serenade. She plays aspiring singer Mary Hale, and he plays her husband, struggling songwriter James Geoffrey Seymour. The couple's vaudeville act breaks up when Mary is hired for a big-time Broadway Read More

Idiot's Delight

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Edward Arnold, Charles Coburn, Joseph Schildkraut, Burgess Meredith

Synopsis: Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Idiot's Delight starred Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne on Broadway. Set in a lavish alpine hotel bordering an Italian air base, the story throws together several disparate people, each in his or her own way affected by the World War that threatens to Read More

Three Loves Has Nancy

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Robert Montgomery, Franchot Tone, Guy Kibbee, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: Nancy, a jilted bride-to-be, is played by Janet Gaynor in one of her last starring films. The three loves are novelist Robert Montgomery, publisher Franchot Tone, and gormless nebbish Grady Sutton (Sonny TUFTS??). In New York to find her runaway groom Sutton, Janet runs across Montgomery and Tone. Read More

Dramatic School

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Luise Rainer, Paulette Goddard, Alan Marshal, Lana Turner, Genevieve Tobin

Synopsis: Viennese-born Luise Rainer plays a young Parisian girl who attends an exclusive drama school, working nights at a factory to pay the tuition. Despite the jealousies of her fellow students, Luise allows nothing to discourage her from her goal to become as great an actress as her idol (Gale Sondergaard Read More

The Shopworn Angel

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Walter Pidgeon, Hattie McDaniel, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: The second motion picture version of a Saturday Evening Post story by Dana Burnet, this romantic melodrama was also the second pairing of actors James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. Stewart plays Private Bill Pettigrew, a naïve young Texan in New York for basic training prior to being shipped Read More

The Shining Hour

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Young, Melvyn Douglas, Fay Bainter

Synopsis: Frank Borzage directed this doomed romance starring Joan Crawford as Olivia Riley, the young bride of Henry Linden (Melvyn Douglas), an upper-crust conservative. Olivia is a show girl in a New York nightclub and when Henry brings her home to his family -- his brother David (Robert Young) and Read More

Sweethearts

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Florence Rice

Synopsis: Contrary to popular belief, the Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald Technicolor confection Sweethearts is not based on the 1913 Victor Herbert operetta of the same name (though most of Herbert's songs remain intact), but a Dorothy Parker-Alan Campbell brainstorm about a popular Broadway singing duo Read More

Marie Antoinette

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Tyrone Power, John Barrymore, Robert Morley, Anita Louise, Joseph Schildkraut

Synopsis: M.G.M.'s opulent costume drama Marie Antoinette marked a return to the screen after a two-year absence for reigning Queen of M.G.M. Norma Shearer. Shearer plays the title role of an Austrian princess who is married off to Louis Auguste (Robert Morley), the Dauphin of France. Marie, by becoming the Read More

The Girl of the Golden West

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Walter Pidgeon, Leo Carrillo, Buddy Ebsen

Synopsis: MGM's leading musical team of the 30's, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy are paired once again in this fourth film version of David Belasco's creaky melodrama, featuring music by Sigmund Romberg and Gus Kahn. Jeanette MacDonald is Mary Robbins, the owner of a bawdy, rough-house saloon in a Read More

Parnell

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Edna May Oliver, Edmund Gwenn, Alan Marshal

Synopsis: The true story of one of Ireland's leading political figures of the late 19th Century inspired this biographical drama. Charles Stewart Parnell (Clark Gable) is a politician and activist whose tireless work towards the cause of Irish independence has earned him the nickname "the Uncrowned King of Read More

Double Wedding

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Florence Rice, John Beal, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Richard Thorpe's comedy Double Wedding (1937) marked the seventh screen pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy, known for their popular appearances together in the Thin Man series. Powell is Charlie Lodge, a bohemian artist who lives in a trailer, camped in an auto parking space in a busy city. Read More

Broadway Melody of 1938

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Binnie Barnes, Judy Garland, Buddy Ebsen

Synopsis: This third entry in MGM's "Broadway Melody" series may not have been the biggest or best, but thanks to a masterpiece of casting it is one of the most memorable of the batch. Signed by MGM in 1935, 15-year-old Judy Garland made her first feature-film appearance under the aegis of Leo the Lion Read More

The Last Gangster

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart, Rosa Stradner, Lionel Stander, Douglas Scott

Synopsis: Edward G. Robinson offers an excellent turn as a crime lord obsessed with the welfare of his son in this melodramatic crime story. The lad is born while the notorious Robinson serves 10 years. Unfortunately, the press hound the babies mother and constantly derider her until a kinder reporter takes Read More

The Bride Wore Red

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Robert Young, Billie Burke, Reginald Owen

Synopsis: Based on The Bride from Trieste by Ferenc Molnar, The Bride Wore Red stars Joan Crawford as the eponymous heroine. A singer in a seedy Budapest dive, Anni (Crawford) is mistaken for a socialite thanks to a practical joke perpetrated by the cynical Count Armalia (George Zucco). Though a bit Read More

The Firefly

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Allan Jones, Warren William, Billy Gilbert, Henry Daniell

Synopsis: In this adaptation of the operetta by Rudolf Friml, secret agent Nina Maria Azara (Jeannette MacDonald) is working undercover for the King of Spain as a singer known as the "Mosca del Fuego" or "Firefly." Her mission is to uncover Napoleon's plot to invade Spain before it is too late. This film Read More

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, William Powell, Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Based on a popular drawing-room drama by Frederick Lonsdale, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney stars Joan Crawford as a jewel thief who poses as an aristocrat. It is Crawford's intention to pilfer a valuable pearl necklace while attending a society party in the company of partner-in-crime William Powell. Read More

Mannequin

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Alan Curtis, Ralph Morgan, Mary Philips

Synopsis: Mannequin stars Joan Crawford as Jessie Cassidy, a girl of the tenements (though this being an MGM film, her slum dwellings are cleaner and more lavish than most middle-class bungalows!) Hoping to escape her grimy surroundings, Jessie marries Eddie Miller (Alan Curtis), a childhood acquaintance Read More

Maytime

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, John Barrymore, Herman Bing, Tom Brown

Synopsis: The third of MGM's profitable Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy songfests, Maytime opens in the early 20th century, with a young girl arguing with her boyfriend over her wishes to become an opera singer. The girl's neighbor, a lonely old woman whom we gradually recognize as a convincingly "aged" Read More

Between Two Women

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Franchot Tone, Maureen O'Sullivan, Virginia Bruce, Leonard Penn, Cliff Edwards

Synopsis: The tempestuous love affair between a young surgeon and a pretty but married nurse provides the basis for this melodrama. The nurse would much rather be with the good doctor as she is married to a wretched alcoholic but she cannot bear to leave her husband in his hour of need. Later the surgeon Read More

San Francisco

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: The MGM historical "spectacular" San Francisco was allegedly based on a three-sentence synopsis, submitted verbally to producer B.F. Zeidman by studio troubleshooter Bob Hopkins. The story begins on the Barbary Coast on New Year's Eve, 1906, as rakish but likeable political boss Blackie Norton (Clark Gable Read More

Rose Marie

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, James Stewart, Reginald Owen, Allan Jones

Synopsis: It was standard operating procedure at MGM to cast their favorite singing team of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in new versions of old operettas, then retain only the music, drastically altering the plotlines to conform to popular tastes. This was the treatment afforded the Rudolf Friml-Herbert Stothart Read More

Romeo and Juliet

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, John Barrymore, Edna May Oliver, Basil Rathbone

Synopsis: Director George Cukor and producer Irving G. Thalberg's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, a lavish production of Shakespeare's tale about two star-crossed lovers, is extremely well-produced and acted. In fact, it is so well-done, that it is easy to forget that Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer are too Read More

The Gorgeous Hussy

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Franchot Tone, Melvyn Douglas

Synopsis: The Gorgeous Hussy purports to be based on the life of Margaret "Peggy" O'Neill, the controversial wife of early 19th-century politician John Eaton, who served as cabinet minister during the Andrew Jackson presidency. Snubbed by the Washington elite because of her questionable background as a Read More

Camille

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allan, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Greta Garbo enjoyed one of her greatest triumphs in this glossy adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' oft-filmed romantic tragedy. Here, Garbo stars as Marguerite Gauthier, who is born into humble circumstances but in time becomes Dame aux Camille, one of the most glamorous courtesans in Paris. Camille Read More

Born to Dance

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Eleanor Powell, James Stewart, Virginia Bruce, Una Merkel, Sid Silvers

Synopsis: A never-completed stage musical was the source for the MGM superproduction Born to Dance. The plot is another three-sailors-on-leave affair, with Ted (James Stewart), Mush (Buddy Ebsen) and Gunny (Sid Silvers, who also co-wrote the script) romancing the eminently romanceable Nora (Eleanor Powell) Read More

Love on the Run

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Reginald Owen, Mona Barrie

Synopsis: Having turned down the opportunity to produce Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), MGM's Louis B. Mayer had second thoughts when the Capra film swept the 1935 Oscars ceremony. Mayer hastily commissioned an It Happened One Night wannabe titled Love on the Run, tailored for the talents of Joan Crawford Read More

Wife vs. Secretary

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, May Robson, Hobart Cavanaugh

Synopsis: Magazine publisher Clark Gable is happily married to Myrna Loy. Clark's devoted, super-efficient secretary Jean Harlow may have once harbored a secret desire for her boss, but she's perfectly content with boyfriend James Stewart. Accompanying Gable on a crucial business trip, Jean answers the Read More

The Great Ziegfeld

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer, Frank Morgan, Fanny Brice

Synopsis: In MGM's three-hour-plus The Great Ziegfeld, William Powell stars as the titular theatrical impresario, whose show business empire begins when he stage-manages a tour for legendary strongman Sandow (Nat Pendleton). With nary a penny in the bank, he charms European stage star Anna Held (Luise Rainer Read More

No More Ladies

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Charlie Ruggles, Franchot Tone, Edna May Oliver

Synopsis: MGM regularly churned out films in the 1930s that were all "star power" and very little plot. No More Ladies is a good example of this. Joan Crawford marries bon vivant Robert Montgomery, hoping to mend his wastrel ways. Montgomery refuses to assumes the proper responsibilities of a husband, so Read More

Forsaking All Others

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, Charles Butterworth, Billie Burke

Synopsis: For 20 years, Jeff Williams (Clark Gable) has been in love with his childhood playmate Mary Clay (Joan Crawford). Alas, Jeff has never said as much, thus Mary becomes engaged to another childhood friend, Dill Todd (Robert Montgomery). Returning from a trip to Spain for the purpose of proposing to Read More

I Live My Life

Crew: Art Director, Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Brian Aherne, Frank Morgan, Aline MacMahon, Eric Blore

Synopsis: Feeling stifled by her wealthy existence, flighty heiress Kay (Joan Crawford) falls in love with poor archaeologist Terry (Brian Aherne). The couple seems happiest when they're yelling at one another, indicating perhaps that screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz was none too fond of either character. Read More

China Seas

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Rosalind Russell, Lewis Stone

Synopsis: China Seas proved that the recently imposed Hollywood production code had little if any effect on the popularity of MGM sex symbols Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. Gable plays the captain of a tramp steamer chugging between Singapore and Hong Kong. Harlow is Gable's ex-main squeeze, a "woman of the Read More

Mark of the Vampire

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Elizabeth Allan, Lionel Atwill, Carroll Borland, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: Mark of the Vampire is Tod Browning's remake of his own 1927 thriller London After Midnight, which unfortunately no longer exists. The sudden appearance of ghostly vampires in a remote mittel-European community is seemingly tied in with an old, unsolved murder case. Police inspector Neumann (Lionel Atwill Read More

Naughty Marietta

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester, Douglas Dumbrille

Synopsis: The first of MGM's phenomenally profitable Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy musicals, Naughty Marietta takes several beneficial liberties with the libretto of the original Victor Herbert operetta. MacDonald plays an 18th-century French princess who escapes an arranged marriage by posing as a "cake Read More

Reckless

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Franchot Tone, May Robson, Rosalind Russell, Ted Healy, Mickey Rooney

Synopsis: Reckless is a delightfully breezy screwball comedy from the same director (Victor Fleming) and star (Jean Harlow) responsible for the celebratedBombshell (itself a film à clef loosely based on Clara Bow) -- with the added appeal of William Powell. One can readily see the chemistry between the two Read More

Hollywood Party

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Charles Butterworth, Lupe Velez, Polly Moran

Synopsis: Hollywood Party was planned as a lavish, star-studded MGM musical titled Hollywood Revue of 1933. Under the less-than-sterling guidance of "kicked upstairs" MGM producer Harry Rapf, production dragged on interminably, using up the talents of five directors (none of whom were credited) and Read More

The Painted Veil

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Herbert Marshall, George Brent, Warner Oland, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: A W. Somerset Maugham novel was the source for the fair-to-middling Greta Garbo vehicle The Painted Veil. In a situation comparable to the plotlines of most of her silent films, Garbo is lovelessly married to Herbert Marshall, but carries a flaming torch for George Brent. (Also harking back to Garbo Read More

The Merry Widow

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel, George Barbier

Synopsis: Ernst Lubitsch directs the 1934 musical comedy The Merry Widow, based on the 1905 operetta by Franz Lehar. In 1885, King Achmed (George Barbier) strives to protect the financial interests of his small, poor kingdom of Marshovia in Central Europe. When the kingdom's wealthiest widow, Sonia (Jeanette MacDonald Read More

The Girl from Missouri

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Franchot Tone, Patsy Kelly

Synopsis: Originally titled Eadie was a Lady, this Jean Harlow vehicle was slated for release under the title Born to be Kissed, but the new Production Code vetoed this "suggestive" cognomen. After a brief and uncomfortable period as One Hundred Percent Pure, the film was finally shipped to theaters as The Read More

Rip Tide

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Herbert Marshall, Mrs. Patrick Campbell

Synopsis: A few unique touches aside -- notably the opening costume-party scene, in which the revellers are dressed as insects -- Rip Tide is a standard-issue Norma Shearer soap opera. Shearer plays Mary, a footloose and fancy-free American heiress who weds British nobleman Lord Rexford (Herbert Marshall). Read More

The Women in His Life

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Otto Kruger, Una Merkel, Ben Lyon, Isabel Jewell, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: In this crime drama, a famous criminal attorney is abandoned by his wife who has tired of his neglect and heavy drinking. She runs to the arms of a prominent gangster. Later, the lawyer must take a murder case--his ex-wife is the victim. It is quite a shock, but somehow he manages to keep it Read More

The Barretts of Wimpole Street

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan, Katherine Alexander

Synopsis: Based on a successful stage drama, this historical romance stars Norma Shearer as Elizabeth Barrett, an invalid largely confined to her bed. Elizabeth has little company beyond her dog and her obsessively protective father, Edward Moulton Barrett (Charles Laughton). Her one great passion and means Read More

Sadie McKee

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Gene Raymond, Franchot Tone, Edward Arnold, Esther Ralston

Synopsis: MGM's Sadie McKee is a superb example of how the "committee" system of moviemaking in the 1930s could sometimes yield unexpected delights. It all begins when Sadie McKee (Joan Crawford) is brought to big bad old New York by glib vaudevillian Tommy (Gene Raymond), only to be unceremoniously dumped Read More

Outcast Lady

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Constance Bennett, Herbert Marshall, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, Hugh Williams, Elizabeth Allan

Synopsis: Outcast Lady is a heavily censored version of Michael Arlen's once-notorious novel The Green Hat, previously filmed by Greta Garbo as A Woman of Affairs. Constance Bennett is Iris March, a woman cursed by her beauty, doomed to drive everyone around her -- including herself -- to destruction. When Read More

Operator 13

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Gary Cooper, Marion Davies, Jean Parker, Katherine Alexander, Ted Healy

Synopsis: If you can accept blonde, blue-eyed Marion Davies disguising herself in blackface, chances are you'll swallow the rest of Operator 13. Davies plays a Belle Boyd-like actress who agrees to become a Northern spy during the Civil War. She assumes the identity of an octoroon servant and heads into Read More

Nana

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Anna Sten, Phillips Holmes, Lionel Atwill, Richard Bennett, Mae Clarke

Synopsis: In this handsomely-staged adaptation of the story by Emile Zola, Anna Sten plays Nana, a woman of the streets who is spotted by noted theatrical producer Gaston Greiner (Richard Bennett). Greiner is so impressed by Nana's beauty that he gives her a part in his latest revue. Almost overnight, Nana Read More

The Cat and the Fiddle

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jeanette MacDonald, Frank Morgan, Charles Butterworth, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: Based on the stage musical by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach, The Cat and the Fiddle stars Jeanette MacDonald as a music student and Ramon Novarro as a struggling composer. When the leading lady walks out of Victor's (Novarro) upcoming operetta, the star's husband pulls his financial support. The Read More

Chained

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Otto Kruger, Stuart Erwin, Una O'Connor

Synopsis: Joan Crawford is at her most glamorous (a different outfit and hairdo in each scene!) in the romantic melodrama Chained. Crawford plays Diane Lovering, the mistress of prominent Manhattan businessman Richard Field (Otto Kruger). Though she really isn't in love with him, she feels obligated to Read More

Paris Interlude

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Madge Evans, Robert Young, Una Merkel, Otto Kruger, Ted Healy

Synopsis: In director Edwin L. Marin's film Paris Interlude, a beautiful French woman named Julie Bell (Madge Evans) unexpectedly falls in love with Sam Colt (Otto Kruger, a vulgar American news journalist. Based on (All Good Americans), a play by Laura and .J. Perelman , Sam spends most of his time in Read More

Dancing Lady

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, May Robson, Winnie Lightner, Fred Astaire

Synopsis: Virtually everybody except President Roosevelt was in the lavish MGM backstage musical Dancing Lady. Joan Crawford stars as Janie Barlow, an impoverished dancer reduced to working in a seedy Manhattan burlesque house. While on a slumming party with his society friend, wealthy young Tod Newton (Franchot Tone Read More

Gabriel Over the White House

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Walter Huston, Karen Morley, Franchot Tone, Arthur Byron, Dickie Moore

Synopsis: In 1933, at the height of the bleakness and desperation of the Depression, MGM released this genuine curiosity piece -- directed by comedy (!) director Gregory La Cava -- concerning a Warren G. Harding-like partisan hand-shaker President of the United States who, after seeing a vision, revokes the Read More

Going Hollywood

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Marion Davies, Bing Crosby, Fifi D'Orsay, Stuart Erwin, Ned Sparks

Synopsis: Reportedly at the request of Marion Davies herself, Bing Crosby was borrowed from Paramount for the MGM Davies vehicle Going Hollywood. Der Bingle plays a struggling crooner who falls in love with Davies, a French teacher in a girl's school. He rises to fame and fortune in Hollywood, leaving Read More

Secrets

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, C. Aubrey Smith, Blanche Frederici, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: Silent screen legend Mary Pickford makes her final movie appearance in Secrets, adapted from the play by Rudolph Besier and Mary Edgerton. Edgerton plays a 19th century New England belle who accompanies her husband Leslie Howard to the wilds of California. Pickford's first baby is killed when her Read More

The Secret of Madame Blanche

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Irene Dunne, Lionel Atwill, Phillips Holmes, Una Merkel, Douglas Walton

Synopsis: Secret of Madame Blanche is one of those "confessional" film dramas which movie fans of the early 1930s ate up like bonbons. Irene Dunne stars as a musical hall entertainer who is impregnated by a wealthy young man (Phillips Holmes). They marry, but the husband kills himself. Under the pressure of Read More

Dinner at Eight

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke

Synopsis: Based on the Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, Dinner at Eight is a near-flawless comedy/drama with an all-star cast at the peak of their talents. Social butterfly Mrs. Oliver Jordan (Billie Burke) arranges a dinner party that will benefit the busines of her husband (Lionel Barrymore Read More

Bombshell

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Franchot Tone, Pat O'Brien, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Jean Harlow is the "bombshell" of the title, a popular movie actress named Lola. Though she seemingly has everything a girl could possibly want, Lola is fed up with her sponging relatives, her "work til you drop" studio, and the nonsensical publicity campaigns conducted by press agent Lee Tracy. Read More

Peg O' My Heart

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Marion Davies, Alan Mowbray, Onslow Stevens, John Farrell MacDonald, Julie Compton, Irene Browne

Synopsis: The evergreen Laurette Taylor stage vehicle Peg O' My Heart was the basis for this Marion Davies picture. 36-year-old Davies plays a twentysomething Irish colleen who inherits a large sum of money from her grandfather. To collect the legacy, she must leave her beloved Pa (J. Farrell McDonald) and Read More

Midnight Mary

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Loretta Young, Ricardo Cortez, Franchot Tone, Andy Devine, Una Merkel

Synopsis: Loaned to MGM by her home studio of Warner Bros., Loretta Young suffers her way through the title role in Midnight Mary. A good girl led astray, Mary (Young) endeavors to save the life of her boyfriend Tom (Franchot Tone) by killing the aptly named Leo the Rat (Ricardo Cortez). As her case is Read More

Made on Broadway

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Sally Eilers, Madge Evans, Eugene Pallette, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: Heroine Mona (Sally Eilers) is "made" in more ways than one in this free-wheeling spoof of the press-agent business. A would-be suicide, Mona is rescued by public-relations whiz Jeff (Robert Montgomery), who decides to turn the girl into a celebrity -- and line his own pockets in the process. But Read More

Reunion in Vienna

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: John Barrymore, Diana Wynyard, Frank Morgan, Henry Travers, May Robson

Synopsis: Reunion in Vienna is a trapped-in-amber adaptation of Robert Sherwood's popular stage play. John Barrymore brings virtually the only life to the proceedings as an amorous Austrian archduke, long exiled from his homeland. Returning to Vienna after twelve years, Barrymore tries to take up where he Read More

Storm at Daybreak

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Kay Francis, Nils Asther, Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: A conflict between the Serbs and the Hungarians provides the framework of this drama that centers on a love triangle between a Serbian mayor and his closest friend, a Hungarian officer. The story begins as the Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated at Sarajevo. The trouble between them begins when the Read More

Stage Mother

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Alice Brady, Maureen O'Sullivan, Franchot Tone, Phillips Holmes, Ted Healy

Synopsis: After the death of her circus-aerialist husband, Kitty Lorraine (Alice Brady) dedicates herself to transforming her daughter Shirley (Maureen O'Sullivan) into a celebrity. Kitty is so determined that Shirley will hit the "big time" that she continues to issue instructions to the girl even while Read More

When Ladies Meet

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Ann Harding, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Alice Brady, Frank Morgan

Synopsis: Henry Beaumont directed this verbose adaptation of Rachel Crother's play. Ann Harding plays Claire Woodruff, the wife of philandering publisher Rogers Woodruf (Frank Morgan). Myrna Loy is Mary Howard, a lithe and beautiful writer of novels with whom Rogers is in love. Meanwhile, her friend Jimmie Read More

Today We Live

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper, Franchot Tone, Roscoe Karns, Louise Closser Hale

Synopsis: A love triangle forms the basis of this drama set during WWI. The screenplay was written by the story's original author William Faulkner. It centers on a pleasure-seeking British girl who is romantically involved with her brother's naval buddy. She then sees and falls for an American pilot. He Read More

Penthouse

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Charles Butterworth, Mae Clarke, Phillips Holmes

Synopsis: Society-lawyer Warner Baxter loses his prestige in the legal community when he successfully defends gangster boss Nat Pendleton. Later on, the soft-hearted Pendleton gets the opportunity to "do right" by saving Baxter's life. This redemptive move comes at the end of a complicated plot involving Baxter Read More

Queen Christina

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith, Lewis Stone, Elisabeth Young

Synopsis: If Queen Christina is not the best of Greta Garbo's films (as many Garbo fanatics insist), it is certainly the most luxuriously romantic of her talkie features. The star is cast as 17th-century Swedish queen Christina, who feels that she can best function in a male-dominated world by adopting Read More

Hold Your Man

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Stuart Erwin, Dorothy Burgess, Muriel Kirkland

Synopsis: There's nothing wrong with Hold Your Man that a little editing wouldn't cure. Clark Gable plays a raffish young petty crook who hides out in hard-boiled Jean Harlow's apartment after he pulls off a robbery. Harlow enjoys Gable's company, and soon the two are living together. Gable puts his Read More

Rasputin and the Empress

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Ralph Morgan, Diana Wynyard

Synopsis: It's hard to separate fact and fancy from the many accounts of what happened on the set when all three of the fabulous Barrymores -- Ethel, John and Lionel -- appeared together for the only time in Rasputin and the Empress. As for the end result, John offers the subtlest (!) performance as Russian Read More

The Huddle

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Madge Evans, Una Merkel, Ralph Graves, John Arledge

Synopsis: In this football drama, a tough steelworker's son wins a scholarship to Yale and attempts to use his talent on the football field to become popular. His ploy doesn't work. He cannot even con the girl of his dreams into going out with him. After four years, he finally grows up and his future begins Read More

Mata Hari

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Ramon Novarro, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, C. Henry Gordon

Synopsis: "So much for Carlotta" muses the head of German Espionage (Lewis Stone), shortly after secret agent Karen Morley is put to death. Morley's successor is exotic dancer Mata Hari (Greta Garbo), an enigmatic woman of Javanese-Dutch ancestry who seldom thinks twice about luring some poor swain to his Read More

Polly of the Circus

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Clark Gable, Marion Davies, C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Hatton, David Landau

Synopsis: In this romantic drama, a strait-laced preacher creates controversy when he marries a seductive trapeze artist . The two meet after the swinger is injured during a performance and taken to his home to recover. Love blossoms while she heals and they surreptitiously marry. When the minister's snooty Read More

But the Flesh Is Weak

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Nora Gregor, Heather Thatcher, Edward Everett Horton, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Ivor Novello's elegant stage play The Truth Game was the source for MGM's But the Flesh is Weak. C. Aubrey Smith and Robert Montgomery star as Florian and Max, father-and-son fortune hunters whose ethics and integrity wax and wane throughout the picture. Eventually, Florian outsmarts himself and Read More

Blondie of the Follies

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Billie Dove, Jimmy Durante, James Gleason

Synopsis: Marion Davies and Billie Dove, both veterans of the real-life Ziegfeld Follies, star in the entertaining comedy-drama Blondie of the Follies. Having both grown up in the New York tenement district, Blondie (Davies) and Lurleen (Dove) hope to escape their shabby surroundings in favor of the Read More

Arsene Lupin

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Karen Morley, John Miljan, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: John Barrymore plays a burglar and his brother Lionel Barrymore is the detective trying to catch him in this cleverly cast drama. An upscale thief who works under the name of Arsene Lupin is making the rounds of the homes of the wealthy and privileged, and Detective Guerchard (Lionel Barrymore) is Read More

Grand Hotel

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore

Synopsis: Based on Vicki Baum's novel and produced by Irving Thalberg, this film is about the lavish Grand Hotel in Berlin, a place where "nothing ever happens." That statement proves to be false, however, as the story follows an intertwining cast of characters over the course of one tumultuous day. Greta Garbo Read More

As You Desire Me

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Erich Von Stroheim, Owen Moore, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: This complex '30s film is based upon a play by Pirandello which involved a hapless amnesiac. In As You Desire Me, the legendary Greta Garbo plays a down-in-the-dumps amnesiac (she can't recall who her husband is) who ends up singing in a low-life nightclub and putting up with the advances of a Read More

Washington Masquerade

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Karen Morley, Diane Sinclair, Nils Asther, Reginald Barlow

Synopsis: Perhaps most noteworthy for the first onscreen performance by future Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel, this politcal melodrama from director Charles Brabin stars Lionel Barrymore as Jefferson Keane, a widowed US Senator who suddenly finds himself sought after by Consuela, a beautiful young Read More

Smilin' Through

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Leslie Howard, O.P. Heggie, Ralph Forbes

Synopsis: Director Sidney Franklin originally adapted Jane Murfin and Jane Cowl's play Smilin' Through for the silver screen in a 1922 silent film starring Norma Talmadge and (the other) Harrison Ford. Remaking his own film, Franklin directed Norma Shearer in this 1932 talkie. Leslie Howard plays John Read More

Red Dust

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gene Raymond, Mary Astor, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Red Dust was lensed almost entirely on MGM's back lot; even so, we are utterly convinced that the film takes place in Indochina (never mind that everyone pronounces "Saigon" as Say-gone). Even more importantly, the audience never doubts for one moment that the relationship between "hero" Clark Gable Read More

Letty Lynton

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Nils Asther, May Robson

Synopsis: Based on a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes, this drama chronicles the tangled web woven by a poisonous New York socialite who tires all her means to escape the unwanted attentions of a would-be lover before resorting to murder. Joan Crawford stars as the title character whose travails begin during a Read More

The Mask of Fu Manchu

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Boris Karloff, Lewis Stone, Karen Morley, Charles Starrett, Myrna Loy

Synopsis: Boris Karloff stars as the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu in this wild and wooly -- and wildly racist -- adventure yarn, based on Sax Rohmer's fiction about the personification of the "yellow peril." Sir Nayland Smith (Lewis Stone) of the British Secret Service recruits Sir Lionel Barton (Lawrence Read More

Unashamed

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Helen Twelvetrees, Robert Young, Jean Hersholt, John Miljan

Synopsis: Directed by Harry Beaumont, the courtroom drama Unashamed stars Robert Young as Dick Ogden, who will do anything to protect his sister Jean (Helen Twelvetrees). Unfortunately, Jean is in love with the sleazy Harry Swift (Monroe Owsley), who is only interested in her fortune. After Harry (Owsley) Read More

Strange Interlude

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Alexander Kirkland, Ralph Morgan, Robert Young

Synopsis: A remarkably smooth 110-minute adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's marathon eight-hour play, Strange Interlude was advertised as "the picture in which you hear the characters think," a nod to O'Neill's technique of having the characters speak their innermost thoughts out loud between dialogue passages Read More

This Modern Age

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Pauline Frederick, Neil Hamilton, Monroe Owsley

Synopsis: With a blonde wigged Joan Crawford offering one of her more high-handed performances, and veteran silent star Pauline Frederick doing her best to keep up, audiences are in for MGM soap-opera at its 1931 zenith. Reunited with her long-lost mother in Paris, Crawford fails to realize that the loving Read More

Private Lives

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Reginald Denny, Una Merkel, Jean Hersholt

Synopsis: Amanda (Norma Shearer) and Elyot (Robert Montgomery) -- a witty, sophisticated married couple -- divorce and marry other mates. Amanda chooses stuffy Victor (Reginald Denny), while Elyot's selection is the tiresome Sibyl (Una Merkel). Coincidentally, both newlywed couples honeymoon at the same Read More

Five and Ten

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Marion Davies, Leslie Howard, Irene Rich, Richard Bennett

Synopsis: Based on a story by Fannie Hurst, Five and Ten stars Marion Davies as Jennifer, the spoiled daughter of department-store magnate John Rarick (Richard Bennett). Because Rarick neglects his family, they all manage to get themselves into hot water. Jennifer's mother, Jenny (Irene Rich), nearly runs Read More

The Possessed

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Wallace Ford, Frank Conroy

Synopsis: Joan Crawford is her usual upwardly mobile self in this melodrama co-starring Clark Gable. She plays Marian Martin, a cynical small-town girl determining to give up the idea of marriage. Kept by wealthy attorney Mark Whitney (Gable), Marian assumes a new identity as a divorced woman of the world Read More

Laughing Sinners

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Neil Hamilton, Clark Gable, Marjorie Rambeau, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: The Kenyon Nicholson play Torch Song was the source for the Joan Crawford vehicle Laughing Sinners. Crawford plays nightclub entertainer Ivy Stevens, who loses her zest for living when she's thrown over by her salesman sweetheart Howard Palmer (Neil Hamilton). At her lowest ebb, Ivy is befriended Read More

A Free Soul

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, James Gleason

Synopsis: In this Academy Award-winning film, Stephen Ashe (Lionel Barrymore) is a hotshot Californian lawyer from a well-to-do family, whose main failing is his indulgence in alcohol. After winning a case for mobster Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable), Stephen brings his client along to a party at his parents' Read More

Strangers May Kiss

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Neil Hamilton, Marjorie Rambeau, Irene Rich

Synopsis: Norma Shearer stars in this pre-Code melodrama as Lisbeth Corbin, who is in love with Alan (Neil Hamilton), a globe-trotting newspaper reporter, but also strings along Steve (Robert Montgomery), a well-mannered local boy who is good friends with Lisbeth, even though she doesn't love him. When Alan Read More

Dance Fools Dance

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Cliff Edwards, William Bakewell, William Holden

Synopsis: Joan Crawford and William Bakewell play the spoiled-rotten grown children of stockbroker William Holden. When Wall Street lays its famous egg in 1929, Crawford and Bakewell find that they can no longer pursue their flamboyant lifestyle (for example, they'll have to put a moratorium on the sort of Read More

The Rogue Song

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Lawrence Tibbett, Catherine Dale Owen, Nance O'Neil, Judith Vosselli, Ullrich Haupt, Sr.

Synopsis: Metropolitan opera star Lawrence Tibbett headed the cast of The Rogue Song, an opulent Technicolor adaptation of the Franz Lehar operetta Gypsy Love. Set (vaguely) in 19th-century Russia, the film stars Tibbett as Yegor, dashing leader of an outlaw band called "The Robbing Larks." During one of Read More

Not So Dumb

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Marion Davies, Elliott Nugent, Raymond Hackett, Franklin Pangborn, George Davis

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1923, the George S. Kaufman-Marc Connelly stage comedy Dulcy was remade as a talkie in 1929 under the new title Dulcy. Marion Davies stars as Dulcinea, the illogical, cliché-spouting young housewife created by newspaper humorist Franklin P. Adams. Hoping to help her fiance Read More

Paid

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Armstrong, Marie Prevost, Kent Douglass, John Miljan

Synopsis: Paid was the third film version of the Bayard Veiller stage play Within the Law. Joan Crawford is cast as a shopgirl falsely arrested for stealing and sent to jail for three years. She swears vengeance on the store owner (Purnell Pratt), and to that end sets up a shady but legal racket wherein she Read More

Passion Flower

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Kay Francis, Kay Johnson, Charles Bickford, Winter Hall

Synopsis: In this drama, a two wealthy cousins find themselves involved in an unfortunate love triangle. The trouble begins when the one cousin, whose wealth came from marriage convinces the other, an heiress, to marry the family chauffeur. Years pass, and the first cousin ends up falling for the chauffeur Read More

Redemption

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: John Gilbert, Conrad Nagel, Eleanor Boardman, Renée Adorée, Claire McDowell

Synopsis: Based on Leo Tolstoy's The Living Corpse, Redemption was originally scheduled as John Gilbert's first talkie, but was held from release until distribution of his second, One Glorious Night. The official reason, as handed down by the MGM publicity hacks, was that Gilbert's efforts to tackle a role Read More

This Mad World

Crew: Costume Designer

Synopsis: In this espionage drama set during WW I, a French agent sneaks behind enemy lines into Alsace-Lorraine and decides to see his mother, who owns an inn. While there, the spy falls for a German general's wife and with her embarks upon a passionate romance. The romance is destroyed when the spy admits Read More

Our Blushing Brides

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Anita Page

Synopsis: Having starred in Our Dancing Daughters (28) and Our Modern Maidens (30), the next logical step for Joan Crawford was Our Blushing Brides (30). Crawford is featured with her Dancing Daughters costars Dorothy Sebastian and Anita Page in this tale of three roommates trying to make good in the Big Read More

The Divorcée

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Chester Morris, Conrad Nagel, Robert Montgomery, Florence Eldridge

Synopsis: Norma Shearer earned an Academy Award for playing the not so gay divorcée in this pre-Code offering based, loosely, on Ex-Wife, a 1929 Ursula Parrott novel. Shearer is Jerry, a socialite who marries handsome Ted (Chester Morris) after a whirlwind courtship. But Ted is not exactly the faithful type Read More

Anna Christie

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, George F. Marion, Marie Dressler, Charles Bickford

Synopsis: Accompanied by one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Hollywood history, Greta Garbo made her "talking picture" debut in this carefully chosen vehicle, the second screen version of Eugene O'Neill's 1922 play about the Minnesota-raised Swedish girl who desperately attempts to keep her Read More

In Gay Madrid

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Dorothy Jordan, Lottice Howell, Claude King, Eugénie Besserer

Synopsis: Originally filmed under the title The House of Troy, In Gay Madrid was one of four 1930 MGM operettas designed to show off the singing talents of silent-screen idol Ramon Novarro. The star is cast as Ricardo, a young, headstrong student in love with cabaret girl Goyita (Lottice Howell). Trouble Read More

Madame Satan

Crew: Costume Designer

Synopsis: The second of Cecil B. DeMille's talkies (as well as his second for MGM), Madam Satan is an exercise in incoherence, but this doesn't detract one iota from its entertainment value. Kay Johnson plays the sedate wife of philandering Reginald Denny, who is currently carrying on with "jazz baby" Lillian Roth Read More

Dynamite

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Kay Johnson, Charles Bickford, Julia Faye, Muriel McCormac

Synopsis: Filmed in 1929 and released early in 1930, Dynamite was Cecil B. DeMille's first all-talking feature. As one observer has noted, this 128-minute opus has enough plots for seven pictures. The basic storyline here involves spoiled heiress Cynthia Crothers (Kay Johnson) who will lose her fortune if Read More

Romance

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Gavin Gordon, Elliott Nugent, Florence Lake

Synopsis: Greta Garbo appears here (in her second talking film) as an Italian singer who seduces a young priest into falling for her. She admits that she had been the kept woman of an older man, and when she returns to her former lover (to tell of her new love), her visit is misinterpreted by the priest as Read More

The Lady of Scandal

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, Basil Rathbone, Ralph Forbes, Nance O'Neil, Frederick Kerr

Synopsis:
Based on Frederick Lonsdale's The High Road, The Lady of Scandal is typical of the "teacup drama" genre so prevalent during the early talkie period. It all begins with down-to-earth musical comedy star Elsie (Ruth Chatterton) visiting the home of her aristocratic fiancee, John (Ralph Forbes. Read More

Let Us Be Gay

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Rod La Rocque, Marie Dressler, Gilbert Emery, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: In this romance, a disillusioned wife, learning that her husband has been unfaithful, divorces him and moves to Paris where she is changed from a frowsy hausfrau to a sexy, sophisticated lady. A wealthy dame asks her to help destroy the affair between her granddaughter and the woman's ex-husband. Read More

Montana Moon

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian, Ricardo Cortez, Benny Rubin

Synopsis: Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown star in this high budget horse opera from M-G-M. She is Joan Prescott, a spoiled debutante en route to the family ranch in Montana and he is the cowboy she meets and marries after impulsively departing the train at a whistle stop. Surprising everyone, Papa Read More

New Moon

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Lawrence Tibbett, Grace Moore, Adolphe Menjou, Roland Young, Gus Shy

Synopsis: Metropolitan opera star Grace Moore's second movie vehicle was the 1930 adaptation of the Oscar Hammerstein II-Sigmund Romberg operetta New Moon. On this occasion, Moore was teamed with another "Met" alumnus, baritone Lawrence Tibbertt. The stars are cast respectively as Tanya Strogoff, a White Read More

A Lady's Morals

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Grace Moore, Reginald Denny, Françoise Rosay, André Luguet, Wallace Beery, André Berley, Gus Shy, Jobyna Howland

Synopsis: Metropolitan Opera diva Grace Moore made her film debut in MGM's A Lady's Morals. The film purports to be the biography of "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind, who was ballyhooed to stardom by 19th-century showman P.T. Barnum (Wallace Beery, who'd re-create the role in 1934's The Mighty Barnum). Most Read More

The Trial of Mary Dugan

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, H.B. Warner, Raymond Hackett, Lilyan Tashman

Synopsis: In this well-executed courtroom drama, a Broadway chorine is accused of stabbing her wealthy boy friend to death. The girl is defended by her good friend. During the trial, the lawyer refrains from cross-examining the witnesses. This enrages the dancer's younger brother, who has just passed the Read More

A Single Man

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Lew Cody, Aileen Pringle, Marceline Day, Eddie Nugent, Kathlyn Williams

Synopsis: In this comedy, an aging fellow falls in love with a free-spirited flapper. His crush causes the normally dignified middle-ager to begin trying to act as young as the flapper, and he becomes a fool. One day, the fellow's secretary, who has secretly loved him for years, fixes herself up and reveals Read More

The Thirteenth Chair

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Leila Hyams, Margaret Wycherly, Helene Millard, Holmes Herbert

Synopsis: Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks) directed this second film version of the Bayard Veiller play, which was his first collaboration with Bela Lugosi, whom he would launch to stardom two years later. Lugosi plays Inspector Delzante, who investigates a series of murders near a British mansion in Read More

Their Own Desire

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Belle Bennett, Robert Montgomery, Helene Millard

Synopsis: Yet another early talkie about love, jealousy and divorce among the upper classes, Their Own Desire remains a dramatically stilted if technically efficient star vehicle. Lewis Stone is married to frumpy Belle Bennett, whom he leaves for the more streamlined Helene Millard. Stone's daughter, Norma Read More

Wild Orchids

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Lewis Stone, Nils Asther

Synopsis: In this silent film, the beautiful Lili Sterling (Greta Garbo) meets up with the enchanting Prince de Gace (Nils Asther) while on a trip with her husband, John (Lewis Stone), and the two find themselves impossibly drawn to one another. However, when John begins to suspect his wife of infidelity Read More

The Single Standard

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Nils Asther, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian, Lane Chandler

Synopsis: Worried that Greta Garbo's rich, deep voice and thick Swedish accent would not record properly, MGM executives kept Garbo in silent pictures longer than any of the studio's other contractees. The star's penultimate silent effort (with music and sound effects added) was The Single Standard, based Read More

Untamed

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Ernest Torrence, Holmes Herbert, John Miljan

Synopsis: Untamed was touted by MGM as Joan Crawford's talking-picture debut, even though she'd already been heard as well as seen in Hollywood Revue of 1929. Best described as Somerset Maugham on toast, the film casts Crawford as Bingo, an oil heiress who has been raised in the tropics. When her Read More

The Godless Girl

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Tom Keene, Lina Basquette, Marie Prevost, George Duryea, Eddie Quillan, Noah Beery, Sr.

Synopsis: Completed as a silent film, Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl was quickly converted into a part-talkie by the simple expedient of tacking on a 10-minute coda, wherein the characters discuss the weather. The film begins as a condemnation of the atheistic movement then prevalent on high-school and Read More

Marianne

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Marion Davies, Cliff Edwards, Lawrence Gray, Benny Rubin, Scott Kolk

Synopsis: Marion Davies made her talkie debut in this early musical romance set during World War I. Marianne (Davies} is a beautiful French girl who is engaged to marry a soldier fighting on the front. However, she soon attracts the attentions of Pvt. Stagg (Lawrence Gray), an American soldier fighting in Read More

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Basil Rathbone, George Barraud, Herbert Bunston, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: This early talkie was based on Frederick Lonsdale's successful Broadway play. Fay Cheyney (Norma Shearer) is a cunning jewel thief who impersonates a wealthy widow as she travels to Monte Carlo, planning on stealing a fortune in pearls from one Mrs. Webley (Maude Turner Gordon); Fay's henchmen Read More

Devil May Care

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Ramon Novarro, Dorothy Jordan, Marion Harris, John Miljan, William Humphrey

Synopsis: This romantic adventure chronicles the escapades of one of Napoleon's followers. After his leader's exile, the follower is arrested and slated for execution. He is before the firing squad, but manages to escape. To hide, he dashes into the bedroom of a bedazzling Royalist. He falls in love, but Read More

Our Modern Maidens

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Rod La Rocque, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Anita Page, Eddie Nugent

Synopsis: This follow-up to MGM's 1928 hit Our Dancing Daughters reunites the female stars of the earlier film: Joan Crawford (in her last silent film) and Anita Page. Crawford is engaged to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (her real-life husband at the time), but both she and her fiance fall in love with other people Read More

The Kiss

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, Conrad Nagel, Anders Randolf, Holmes Herbert, Lew Ayres

Synopsis: MGM's paranoid fear of audience reaction to Greta Garbo's speaking voice must have been the only reason for this plodding courtroom melodrama to have been made as a silent. Released with a synchronized score and two important sound effects, The Kiss would prove to be Garbo's, and Metro's, final Read More

The Unholy Night

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Ernest Torrence, Roland Young, Dorothy Sebastian, Natalie Moorhead, Sidney Jarvis

Synopsis: A group of Londoners gather at the home of their host in order to solve the murders of two company officers. Once assembled the host announces that half of one of the deceased's fortune will go to the guests and if anyone should die, that person's share would go to the others. Before any money is Read More

A Woman of Affairs

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lewis Stone, Johnny Mack Brown, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Synopsis: Michael Arlen's notorious novel The Green Hat was considered such a hot potato censor-wise that the property's title could not be used when it was adapted to film. Retitled A Woman of Affairs, this tale of a woman destroyed by syphilis was heavily laundered for the screen. Greta Garbo plays an Read More

A Lady of Chance

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Norma Shearer, Lowell Sherman, Gwen Lee, Johnny Mack Brown, Eugénie Besserer

Synopsis: In her last silent film, Norma Shearer plays Dolly, aka Angel Face, a young woman engaged in blackmailing rich libertines. Cheated out of her loot by a couple of former associates, Bradley (Lowell Sherman) and Gwen (Gwen Lee), Dolly commits a bit of larceny but manages to skip town with her latest Read More

Stand and Deliver

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Lupe Velez, Warner Oland

Synopsis: Produced by Cecil B. DeMille, Stand and Deliver was directed by former D.W. Griffith associate Donald Crisp. Set in postwar Greece, the story concerns an expatriate Englishman named Roger Norman (Rod LaRoque), who is bored with civilian life and seeks out thrills. He gets more than he bargained Read More

Wise Wife

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Phyllis Haver, Tom Moore, Fred Walton, Jacqueline Logan, Joseph Striker

Synopsis: The "wise wife" is Helen Blaisdell (Phyllis Haver), the loving missus of John Blaisdell (Owen Moore). Unfortunately, John's head is turned by a younger woman, saucy flapper Jenny Lou (Jacqueline Logan). Rather than scratch Jenny Lou's eyes out, Helen allows her rival to see what life would be like Read More

Fighting Eagle

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Rod La Rocque, Phyllis Haver, Sam de Grasse, Max Barwyn, Julia Faye

Synopsis: This Cecil B. DeMille-produced swashbuckler was based on Brigadier General, a story by Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle. Set during the Napoleonic era, the film stars Rod La Rocque as young adventurer Etienne Girard, who becomes involved in the political intrigues fomented by the Read More

The Forbidden Woman

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jetta Goudal, Ivan Lebedeff, Josephine Norman, Victor Varconi

Synopsis: Forbidden Woman was the first production by PDC Pictures to be released after the defection of the company's founder Cecil B. DeMille (though DeMille's brother William upheld family tradition by supervising the picture). Threatened by the imperialistic inventions of the French army, an Arab sultan Read More

His Dog

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Joseph Schildkraut, Julia Faye, Robert Edeson, Sally Rand

Synopsis: Former D.W. Griffith cameraman Karl Brown held the directorial reins for His Dog. Joseph Schildkraut stars as a roughneck gardener who squanders his monthly pay at the local tavern. While weaving his way home one night, Schildkraut rescues a wounded collie then takes the dog home with him, despite Read More

Dress Parade

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, Bessie Love, Hugh Allan, Louis Natheaux, Maurice Ryan

Synopsis: Despite his accomplishments as an actor, Donald Crisp's talents as a director were slight at best. What makes Crisp's Dress Parade work are the engaging star performances of William Boyd and Bessie Love. Filmed on location at West Point, the story concerns a brash young cadet (Boyd) who is Read More

Chicago

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Phyllis Haver, Victor Varconi, Eugene Pallette, Virginia Bradford, T. Roy Barnes

Synopsis: Based on a real-life incident, Maurine Watkins' semi-satirical novel and play Chicago was first brought to the screen in 1927. Phyllis Haver was ideally cast as gum-chewing dance-hall girl Roxie Hart, who shoots her lover full of holes and then is forgiven by her faithful -- if not entirely honest Read More

The Angel of Broadway

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Victor Varconi, May Robson, Alice Lake, Elsie Bartlett

Synopsis: Glamorous Broadway actress Babe (Leatrice Joy) is cast as a Salvation Army lass in her latest musical. For research purposes, she pays a visit to a Lower East Side S. A. Mission, dons a uniform, and goes to work on a street corner, complete with tambourine and contribution pot. This upsets her Read More

Vanity

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Charles Ray

Synopsis: Although Vanity was one of Leatrice Joy's most successful films, it can hardly be considered one of her best. Joy is cast as spoiled society girl Barbara Fiske, who, out of boredom, begins romancing roughneck tramp-steamer skipper Dan Morgan (Alan Hale). She offers to spend the night with Morgan Read More

Walking Back

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Jane Keckley, Arthur Rankin, Sue Carol, Richard Walling

Synopsis: This lively outing chronicles the adventures of a daring young buck who defies his father, who grounded the lad for getting bad grades, and swipes his neighbor's car so he can take his girl to the dance. Afterward, he and his buddies begin playing "chicken" and the lad destroys his neighbor's rig. Read More

The Volga Boatmen

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, Elinor Fair, Robert Edeson, Victor Varconi, Julia Faye

Synopsis: One feels that if Cecil B. DeMille had been assigned to direct the one-character play Krapp's Last Tape, he'd have added 15,000 extras and a flood. A typically overbaked (and immensely entertaining) DeMille effort, The Volga Boatman was "inspired" by a Konrad Bercovici novel. Set in the months Read More

Her Sister from Paris

Crew: Costume Designer

Synopsis: Constance Talmadge was at the peak of her career when she made this comedy; she was also near the end of her career. The star would only make a handful of films after this one before retiring in lieu of switching over to talkies. Helen Weyringer (Talmadge), a nice but slightly dowdy housewife, has Read More

The Eagle

Crew: Costume Designer

Actors: Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, Louise Dresser, Albert Conti, James Marcus

Synopsis: Based on a Pushkin novel, The Eagle stars Rudolph Valentino as a Russian cossack who is the special favorite of the formidable Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser). He spurns her attentions, preferring not to be a kept consort. When his lands are stolen from him, Valentino transforms into a Read More