Edith Head: Hollywood’s Costume Designer
June 22, 2024 - September 29, 2024Organized by OKCMOA, this exciting retrospective of award-winning costume designer Edith Head will feature costumes from the 1930s to the 1960s that were worn by some of Hollywood's biggest stars of the 20th century.
The Oklahoma City Museum of Art announced its 2024 summer exhibition, Edith Head: Hollywood’s Costume Designer which will be on view from June 22, 2024, through September 29, 2024. Organized by OKCMOA and presented by The Ann Lacy Foundation, this exciting retrospective of award-winning costume designer Edith Head (1897-1981) will feature 70 costumes that capture the height of Head’s career and were worn by stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Ginger Rogers, Shirley MacLaine, Veronica Lake, Barbara Stanwyck, and Kim Novak.
 
“Edith Head: Hollywood’s Costume Designer has been generating a great deal of buzz behind the scenes as we’ve been working on this original exhibition for the past few years. Some of us recognize her name and associate her with some of our favorite films, such as director Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Rear Window, or we know her from the Edna Mode character in Pixar’s The Incredibles,” said OKCMOA President and CEO Michael Anderson, PhD. “We are thrilled to be part of people’s summer plans for next year as they join us for this much-anticipated exhibition.”
 
The exhibition will take up the entirety of the Museum’s third floor, where costumes, sketches, and two screening areas will showcase Head’s life and work. The exhibition will include sections displaying a variety of costume styles, such as formal gowns, musical performance costumes, daywear, and historical costumes. Visitors will also have the opportunity to learn more about her working relationship with Hitchcock, her life outside of her career, and her process.
 
“Head was famous for wearing sunglasses, but most people don’t realize there’s a reason behind the shades,” said Catherine Shotick, guest curator for Edith Head. “Her trademark glasses had custom, blue-tinted lenses, which allowed her to see how the costumes photographed in black and white: a trick used by costume designers during the Golden Age of Hollywood.”
 
With over 400 films to her credit, Head ruled the costume design departments at Paramount and Universal Studios from the early 1920s to the early 1980s. Head helped define the style of classic Hollywood with her striking designs, which earned her 35 Oscar nominations and eight Oscar wins — more than any other woman to date. To complement the exhibition, a related film series will be organized for the Museum’s Noble Theater highlighting Head’s work on the screen. Additional public programming will be announced in the coming months.
 
As with all exhibitions, Museum members receive free entry and early access to Edith Head: Hollywood’s Costume Designer, as well as invitations to exclusive events and discounts on films and programming. For more information, please visit okcmoa.com/membership.

The artistry is unparalleled Check out the new costume exhibit, “The Red Dress Collection,” on the main floor of Bizzell Memorial Library.
These works of art were designed by Associate Professor of Costume Design Lloyd Cracknell and made by the staff and students of OU School of Drama.
"This art form not only demonstrates a deep collaboration with the director/choreographers and performers on stage or in film, but also with the scenic, lighting and sound artisans. These dedicated people create the world within theatre and film in all its varied genres," says Cracknell, who has been at The University of Oklahoma as the professor of costume design since 2010.
The exhibit is a joint project, co-curated by Senior Exhibits Coordinator James Burnes, Ph.D., of OU Libraries, in celebration of the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts centenary year (1924-2024). It includes costumes from the School of Drama, School of Dance, OU School of Musical Theatre, and the OU School of Music for the Opera.
OU Fine Arts OU Dance

Spent all day at the museum.

 Before I saw this show, I'd owned the double album which we used to listen to at college parties, and of course I'd seen the movie with Elton John and Tina Turner, also in college.  My opinion of the album is that there were only a few songs that I could sing along with, and that basically it went on so long that by the time you got to the end of it, I had sort of forgotten that it was still playing. I did not know that they had already turned the album into a Broadway musical in the 1993. My husband knew but didn't get to see it when it came to Texas because he was out on tour. That show was nominated for 11 Tonys and won five of them and ran for two years. The 2023 revival was clearly a 30th anniversary nod to the original. It was only nominated for one Tony--Best Revival, which it didn't win, and is now closing after 132 performances. So I went into this show with certain expectations that weren't met. Was that fair? Probably not.  I am not a mega Who fan like my husband, who is himself a rock musician and frequently got compared to Keith Moon back in the day, although he always denied his style was anything like him, he preferred to think of himself as Phil Rudd of AC/DC. Anyway, the point is that the 1975 movie, directed by Ken Russell, is kind of a mess, a lot like Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was a huge mess, and I expected that the musical version would clear some things up for me. Those expectations were met.

If you know anything about the album at all, you know it's about child abuse. Here's an article about the 50th anniversary of the album that talks about his experiences, in case you didn't know. Pete Townshend suffered horrific abuse at the hand of his grandmother and her boyfriend, when he was sent to live with her during a difficult period in his parents' marriage, who were themselves heavy drinkers and fought a lot.  His grandmother and boyfriend inspired Cousin Kevin and Uncle Ernie. She tried to drown him in the bathtub when he was six and her boyfriend sexually abused him.  So it's one thing to watch adult Roger Daltry portray the character of Tommy in a movie, but another thing entirely to watch two small children play the role and take the abuse from adults live onstage. It made me hyper aware of the horrors of child abuse in a way that the movie never could. The chorus literally picked up Tommy bodily and basically carried him around and manipulated him almost the entire show.  Tommy's body was stiff as a board and the chorus moved his head and limbs and put him into poses like a barbie doll.  So in that way, I understood the album much better than any number of listening sessions or film screenings would have done for me. The adult Tommy was played by Ali Louis Bourzgui, who resembled Rami Malek. Tommy was Bourzgui's first Broadway appearance. The six year old Tommy was played by a tiny little girl and the ten year old Tommy was played by a boy. The both wore wigs to match the adult Tommy's hair.

The scenic design gives Tron vibes. There were six lit from within beams, four horizontal (2 pairs of 2) and two vertical that moved independently of each other and served to frame the stage as well as "crop" the stage picture in to focus attention on the action. There was very little actual scenery as seems to be the case more and more these days. They did have several pinball machines but I was disappointed to see that they were just blank tables with empty frames on one end so that Tommy could face the audience but we could still see his face.

There was also lot of projected scenery that served as location clues, such as a black and white photograph of rows of houses when we were in Tommy's neighborhood. The best use of the projections however, was in the beginning during the "war" phase of the exposition. The interior of Captain Walker's airplane is projected onto the scrim behind the actors who are sitting on the floor in their flight suits and parachute packs.  In the dark a trap door must have opened so that when the men get up to jump, they fall through the trap door.  It was so effective that I believed they were jumping out of a plane that was high in the air. The trick with the two way mirror was also really well done.  Tommy frequently sings to himself in the mirror and the audience can see him reflected in it but we can also see his other selves in it as well. Then the climactic mement when his mother smashes the mirror with a chair must also be a projection because you know they wouldn't have had shards of glass everywhere. There was also quite a bit of live video feed during the show especially in Act 2 when Tommy is healed and he then is performing for his fans.

I think my major problem with the whole show was that the abuse was too in your face. I was actually kind of bored.  At its core, even though it was the first Rock Opera, it's not  a rock and roll concert as much as it is a survivor's diary.  There were just long bits of music with no singing and without a band onstage to watch play. Divorced from the stardom of an actual Who concert, or even Elton John and Tina Turner, it's not a nice story. And these days, does pinball even translate anymore?  I grew up playing pinball at the one and only machine at the American Legion pool hall/bar that my dad would hang out in after a round of golf. But then Atari was invented and we never looked back.

​

We got a guided tour of Carnegie Hall at 10am.  Our docent's name was Bob.  He was great!  The photo of the building above is from Wikipedia because when we were there, it was undergoing a "facelift" in which there was scaffolding all around it, but through the scaffolding, you could see they'd hung big sheets of plastic printed with a brick facade. Carnegie Hall was built between 1889 and 1891. It is in Midtown Manhattan on 57th Street, which originally was very far north of the city center on land that was rural.  Two years after it opened, the city had grown up around it. The building actually has three concert venues that occupy an L shaped area that was built in stages.  The main one is the Isaac Stern auditorium which seats 2,790 people and is 7 stories tall.  There is another smaller venue The Weill Recital Hall, which is basically in the basement, next to and underneath the Stern Hall.  There's also a third performance space in the tower which was added onto the original structure several years later. 

The architect that Carnegie hired was a young man called William Tuthill, who was also an amateur singer and cellist. Carnegie wanted the building to have the best, most perfect acoustics in the world, so he sent Tuthill around the world to research concert halls. He came back from his European tour and started drafting plans. Naturally, the bones of the building were made with Carnegie Steel. Because Carnegie was friends with Thomas Edison, it was one of the first buildings to include electric light when it opened, even though there were no power lines going out that far into the "country" yet.  The bare bulbs were powered by a generator at first. It didn't include electrical air conditioning, but they did truck in enormous ice blocks and fans that circulated the cool air through vents out into the audience.  

The building officially opened on May 5, 1891. The first concert was Tchaikovsky, who was working on The Nutcracker at the time. Bob told us a funny story about opening night.  Tuthill was hanging out as the house was filling up and all of sudden he had a panic attack as he saw the balcony filling up with people.  He was worried that his design wouldn't be able to hold the weight of 900 people, even though the whole thing was supported by Carnegie steel pillars and concrete.  He rushed up to his office and redid all the calculations to assure himself that it wouldn't collapse mid concert. Of course all the math was done with pencil and paper back then, and he still finished checking his work in time to get back to his seat before the concert started. Needless to say, the balcony didn't collapse.

Due to Carnegie's goal of providing affordable entertainment to the masses, it wasn't making much money at first. To provide another income stream, they turned the space under the stage into a second performance space that was leased to the American Academy of Dramatic Art.  During prohibition it became a speak easy, then after alcohol was legalized again in 1933, it became dance hall, and in the early 1960's it became a movie theatre. These days it is a smallish concert hall.

The Studio Apartments were built between 1894-97 directly on top of the building creating an 8th floor above the main hall. The studio spaces were made available to artists, writers, and actors who could paint, compose, or even rehearse plays in them.  Additionally, Carnegie bought up two other adjacent buildings and converted them to the studio apartments available for renting out. Each floor was designed for a different purpose.  The top floor was designed for artists.  It had floor to ceiling windows to let in as much natural light as possible. Each studio has perfect acoustics for rehearsing plays or music. One floor had floating floors for dancers. By 1910 between 150 and 300 studio apartments were bringing in revenue for the concert hall.   Isadora Duncan is its earliest known resident. Other famous residents included Leonard Bernstein, Marilyn Monroe, and Marlon Brando. 

In fact, it's such a well constructed building that it has only had one renovation in its history, which happened in phases from 1982-86, when it needed major alterations to accommodate patrons with mobility issues as well as fire and safety standards. The lobby was not originally on street level, but up an impressive marble staircase, and there were no elevators to the upper levels, just two narrow and steep flights of stairs. To bring the building up to code, the lobby was lowered to street level, elevators were installed and stairways widened in phase 1 as well as adding fire alarms. Phase 2 updated all of the electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and HVAC components.  Phase 3 was replacing all the cosmetic elements which included installing new carpet, seats, flooring and paint, and only closed the hall for seven months.The building restoration team was lucky that the original blueprints and plans were preserved in the archives for them to refer to, so they were able to use all the original materials and methods in order to preserve the perfect acoustics.

To fund the aforementioned extensive renovations, rents on the studios were raised dramatically. The biggest selling point was that the studios would then be rent controlled, after the rent hikes, to encourage tenants to stay there and pay the higher rents. The other selling point was that the leases would be inheritable by the tenants' descendants. This is basically the premise of Friends.  Monica inherits the lease on her grandmother's rent controlled apartment in 1997 that's literally right by Central Park and she's only paying 1977 rent on it. This very sweet deal raised the necessary cash to not only fund the renovations, but also to build a new Tower on the other side that was completed in 1990. The new tower was rented out as office space to businesses, wall street types, tech bros, and other billionaire companies, at much higher rents, and not to any artists.

A funny story that Bob told about the renovation was that after the renovations were complete, they brought in a performer who had a long history of playing in the Stern hall to test out the acoustics.  His opinion was that the sound wasn't the same as before. He didn't know what was wrong, but something was off.  They brought in a forensic architect to figure out what the problem was.  He discovered that the contractor had bought more cement than needed to redo the flooring deep underneath the stage. The original floor had been modified to put in a lift for getting pianos up onto the stage from below. Instead of letting the excess cement go to waste, they just poured it all into the new floor which ended up being too thick.  So they had to methodically and carefully rip remove the entire stage floor to jackhammer out all the concrete, repour the concrete in the right amount, and then put the stage floor back exactly the way it was. That fixed the sound problem. Here's a pdf from the official website where you can read all about the history of the building.

So to get back to the issue of the studios, and the really sneaky and insidious thing that happened to the tenants. After the rent hike in 1977, no new leases were granted on the 8th floor above the main hall and slowly the leases in the towers were not renewed. The Carnegie corporation wanted the 8th floor to house the archives and the towers to house the necessary office space, rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms and space for the instruction of student musicians that the original building was sorely lacking.  The tenants eventually realized they were being forced out unfairly. It all came to a head in 2000 when they formed a coalition, hired an attorney, went to the newspapers, started a website and a fundraising campaign, and basically started a huge fight to preserve their homes, but ultimately they were unsuccessful. In 2007 the last of the Tower's remaining artistic tenants were evicted, a photographer, a pianist and a poet. 

 Bob told us so much of the building's history, but to understand where the building came from, you have to know about the man who financed it. Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835 and started life as a poor immigrant kid from Scotland.  His dad was a weaver and moved the family to the Pittsburgh when Andrew was 12 because Scotland was going through a famine.  Andrew left school at 13 to work in a cotton mill factory with his dad to support the family. He was smart and a good worker and was very disappointed to not be able to continue his education. He eventually moved to work at a telegraph office as a messenger boy and learned to translate morse code by ear.  He was quickly moved up to telegraph operator at a salary of $2.50 a week. His employer was a kind man who opened his personal library of 400 volumes to his employees every Saturday night, which Andrew took advantage of, educating himself through reading.  Seeing his thirst for knowledge and his good business acumen, his employer gave him $1000 to invest in the stock market for him and when he doubled his employer's money, Carnegie was put in charge of the telegraph offices for his railroads, at a salary of $4 a week, working his way up to managing the Pennsylvania railroad for $32 a week. He used his salary to buy the Morse Code Co. and then invested those profits in the railroad, leading him to own a steel mill to supply his railroad business. At this point he made a deal with himself that he would spend the first half of his life making money and the second half, giving it away, which he started doing at age 35.  By the time he died in 1919 he was the wealthiest person in the world. He funded the building of many schools, colleges, and universities all over the US, most notably Carnegie Mellon University. He built 1750 libraries all over the US and another 250 worldwide. He gave 7500 organs to schools, concert halls, and churches. And to the people of NY City, he gave a splendid concert hall.

We started our tour at the top of the building, in the Balcony, and worked our way down. ​The design of the auditorium is curved so that the sound is projected out and evenly dispersed across the hall so that every seat has the same acoustics, making your seating choice inconsequential because the sound is the same from every seat. Bob told us that the ceiling actually has a round pebble-like texture to it that you can't really see from even the balcony.  That is to improve the acoustics. There is no  amplification of any kind used in the hall. There are three mics in the hall but they are exclusively for recording concerts and also for the House Manager and backstage crew to hear what's going on out there. The acoustics are so good you can hear a whisper on the other side of the room.   The first thing I noticed is it is not decorated like other theatres that we had seen. There were no chandeliers or curtains in the hall.  Apparently, chandeliers aren't good for the acoustics. All the seats are red wool velvet and all the ornamentation is 14 carat gold leaf. The balcony has the most seats at 900, and originally it was meant for the poorer citizens who didn't own a tuxedo and couldn't afford "high class" entertainment. The people sitting in the balcony can't be seen by the rest of the audience sitting lower down, so it didn't matter what they wore or even if they were all that clean. The next level down is called the Dress Circle, because that's the last seating that required patrons to dress in tuxedos. The next two levels down are the private boxes, which seat 7-8 people each and have coat racks and a mirror in the vestibule. The last level is called the parquet, because that's how the floor is made, although you can't see it because it's covered in red wool carpet.  The floor has a gentle rake.  The stage floor is maple. The panels behind the stage are made of wood and covered in fabric. There is what looks like a tiny black hole in the back wall of the stage.  They call it the belly button of the stage.  It's actually a camera lense that is used for recording concerts. We did not get to see the other two venues, nor did we get to go to the 8th floor and see the archives, nor did we get to see any part of the towers. There is also now a cafe that just opened this year and a museum on the street level, which we got to see.  Yes, the museum has a gift shop.

Carnegie Hall has a museum dedicated to the performance history. Churchill spoke there, as well as Einstein and MLK.  THere was a suffragette rally and the Beetles played there in 1964. With the 3 performance spaces, there are approximately 1000 shows every year. The Hall invites one third of the performers, the other 2/3 of the performances are done by people who have rented out the hall, which costs $35,000 per night. Florence Foster Jenkins famously rented out the hall to make her singing debut, but she famously couldn't sing.  There was a movie based on her life. I've posted the trailer for it below.

The show was nominated for 7 Tony awards including Best Musical, Best Costume Design, Scenic Design, and Lighting Design, as well as Direction, Choreography, and Book of a Musical. The lead was Grant Gustin from Glee and Flash. He was great!

We got to NYC before the Met Gala but obviously didn't go.  We did however, go the next morning and the tent was still set up from the night before.

The museum was very large, but not intimidating. Sylvan and I stayed about four hours and we ate lunch there.  The food available was very expensive especially for what little you got.  It was very hot inside.  The arms and armour gallery was closed which was very disappointing.  The costume institute was also closed because they were opening a new exhibition Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion on Friday which I was unable to see since that's the day we were leaving.  I've included a video about the exhibit below.