Edith Head

Head was born Edith Claire Posener on October 28, 1897 in San Bernardino, California, the daughter of Ashkenazi Jewish parents, Anna E. (nee Levy) and Max Posener, both of German-Jewish and Austrian-Jewish ancestry. Her father was a naturalized American citizen from Germany who came to the United States in 1876 at age eighteen, while her American mother was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1875, the daughter of an Austrian-Jewish father and a Bavarian mother. Shortly before Head's birth, her father opened a small haberdashery in San Bernardino. The business failed within a year, after which he abandoned the family and relocated to El Paso, Texas.

In 1901, Head's mother Anna married Frank Spare, a mining engineer from Pennsylvania. Anna and Frank passed Edith off as their biological child, giving her his surname, and raised her in his Roman Catholic faith. Due to her stepfather's job, the family moved frequently during her childhood to various mining camps, with a significant portion spent in rural Searchlight, Nevada. A shy and introverted only child, Head often spent time building makeshift dollhouses out of cardboard boxes, and creating figures out of greasewood that naturally grew in the desert. She would also create costumes for animals, including her pet dog and cat, as well as wild horned lizards. "I had no other children for playmates," she recalled. "Naturally, all of my intensive imagination in child's play had to be connected to activities I could pursue alone." Head was teased by classmates due to her front teeth never growing in properly, and because of this, rarely smiled.

She completed her elementary school education in Redding, California in 1911, before the family lived for a period in Mexico, where Head learned to speak Spanish. Head and her mother subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, where she graduated from Los Angeles High School.

Head enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley in 1915, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in letters and sciences with honors in French. She subsequently enrolled at Stanford University, where she earned a Master of Arts degree in romance languages in 1920. She became a language teacher with her first position as a replacement at The Bishop's School in La Jolla teaching French and Spanish. After one year, she took a position teaching French at the Hollywood School for Girls, where her students included Cecilia and Katherine DeMille, daughters of studio executive Cecil B. DeMille. Wanting a slightly higher salary, she told the school that she could also teach art, even though she had only briefly studied the discipline in high school. To improve her drawing skills, at this point rudimentary, she took evening classes at the Otis Art Institute and Chouinard Art College.

On July 25, 1923, she married Charles Head, a salesman for the Southern California Super Fine Metals Company, and the brother of one of her Chouinard classmates, Betty Head. Due to Charles's drinking problem and her reduced teaching salary during the summer months, Head began seeking work as a sketch artist to help supplement their income.

1923, 1929: Famous Players-Lasky

In 1923, despite lacking significant art, design, and costume design experience, the 26-year-old Head was hired as a costume sketch artist at the Famous Players-Lasky studios, which was later absorbed by Paramount Pictures. Later she admitted to "borrowing" other students' sketches for her job interview with the studio: "I was studying seascape and all I could draw was oceans. I needed a portfolio, so I borrowed sketches, I didn't steal them, I asked everybody in the class for a few costume design sketches. And I had the most fantastic assortment you've ever seen in your life. When you get a class of forty to give you sketches, you get a nice selection."

At Paramount, Head studied under lead designers Howard Greer, and later, Travis Banton. Head recounted the experience favourably, saying:

Travis Banton and Howard Greer sort of adopted me, and I went with them to all their fittings. I was accepted as part of the team in the fitting room, which also included the head fitter and usually a wardrobe girl. Sometimes I just watched and took notes; I did whatever I was told. With both Howard and Travis there was never any feeling that I would be a threat to them, as is so often the case in boss-and-assistant relationships in any profession. They were secure in their own careers. Both went overboard in encouraging and helping me. I think I had the greatest break that any young designer ever had. Working for them was the kind of training you couldn't get any place else, in any school in the world.

Head began designing costumes for the studio's silent films, commencing with The Wanderer in 1925 and, by the 1930s, had established herself as one of Hollywood's leading costume designers.

1930-1967: Paramount Pictures

Head remained employed by Paramount Pictures after the studio absorbed Famous Players-Lasky. After Banton's resignation in 1938 she took over as head designer for the studio. Her association with the "sarong" dress designed for Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane (1937) made her well known among the general public, although Head was a more restrained designer than either Banton or Adrian.

She gained public attention for the top mink-lined gown she created for Ginger Rogers in Lady in the Dark (1944), which caused much comment owing to the mood of wartime austerity. The establishment, in 1949, of the Academy Award for Costume Design further boosted her career, giving her a record-breaking run of Award nominations and wins, beginning with her nomination for The Emperor Waltz. Head and other film designers like Adrian became well known to the public.

Head was known for her particular working style and, unlike many of her male contemporaries, usually consulted extensively with the female stars with whom she worked. As a result, she was a favorite among many of the leading female stars of the 1940s and 1950s, such as Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman, Rita Hayworth, Shirley MacLaine, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor. In fact, Head was frequently "loaned out" by Paramount to other studios at the request of their female stars. She herself always dressed plainly, preferring thick-framed glasses and conservative two-piece suits.

In 1946, Head worked for the first time with director Alfred Hitchcock on his spy film Notorious. Head was loaned from Paramount to Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) pictures to work with Hitchcock on this film, at the request of actress Ingrid Bergman. At this time it was usual for costume designers to reflect their own style. Head had a different outlook on this, thinking that it was more important to design pieces that reflected the character. During their time working on Notorious, Head and Hitchcock found that they were like-minded and had the same bluntness in their careers and attitudes. The costumes she designed for this film reflected restraint and the need to blend in. This style suited what Hitchcock was looking for, since he did not want the clothes to be the focal point. The two went on to work together many more times.

On February 3, 1955 (Season 5 Episode 21), Head appeared as a contestant on the Groucho Marx quiz show You Bet Your Life. She and her partner won a total of $1,540. Her winnings were donated to charity.

Head wrote two books describing her career and design philosophy, The Dress Doctor (1959) and How To Dress For Success (1967). These books were re-edited in 2008 and 2011, respectively.

1968-1981: Universal Pictures

In 1968, at the age of 70, Head left Paramount Pictures and was contracted with Universal Pictures, where she remained until her death in 1981. By this point, Hollywood was rapidly changing from what it had been during Head's heyday in the 1930s-1940s. Studio-based production was giving way to outdoors and on-scene shooting, and many of the actresses from that era whom she worked with and knew intimately had retired or were working less. She thus turned more of her attention to TV, where some old friends such as Olivia de Havilland had begun working. She made a cameo appearance in 1973 on the detective series Columbo beside Anne Baxter, playing herself and displaying her Oscars to date. In 1974, Head received a final Oscar win for her work on The Sting (1973).

In the late 1970s, Head was asked to design a woman's uniform for the United States Coast Guard, because of the increasing number of women in the Coast Guard. Head called the assignment a highlight in her career and received the Meritorious Public Service Award for her efforts. Her designs for a TV mini-series based on the novel Little Women were well received. She also designed the costumes for Elizabeth Taylor in the Hallmark Hall of Fame segment "Return Engagement" (1978).

Her last film project was the black-and-white comedy Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982), starring Steve Martin and Carl Reiner, a job Head was chosen for because of her expertise on 1940s fashions. She modeled Martin and Reiner's outfits on classic film noir and the movie, released in theaters just after her death, was dedicated to her memory.

Unlike most other designers of her time, Head never undertook couture or wholesale fashion work, opting to "work only in the context of a certain actress in a certain film." Olivia de Havilland, whose costumes were designed by Head for the films To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949), said: "Every dress was perfect. Just putting them on, I became these women and I knew right where they were in the stories. Edith even came to New York with me before The Heiress and we studied the underwear at the Brooklyn Museum so it would be absolutely authentic."

Head herself regarded her work as apart from the world of fashion design, and did not consider herself a fashion designer. Commenting in 1978 on her view of her profession, she said:

I think that most people don't realize motion pictures are not "fashion." So many people say to me, "Isn't it lovely to be a fashion designer and dress these beautiful stars?" That is not what happens. I get a script, and the script says, "In this film, Grace Kelly is playing a princess, she's beautiful, and she has fabulous clothes." The next script says, "Grace Kelly is a middle-aged, dowdy housewife"... so you do dowdy clothes. I can do tacky clothes, dowdy clothes, sexy clothes, horrible clothes... anything the world should want, male, female, or animals... Costume design is like theater. Costume design is to tell a story. It has nothing to do with fashion at all, unless it is a fashion picture.

On July 25, 1923, she married Charles Head. The marriage ended in divorce in 1938, though she continued to be known professionally as Edith Head for the remainder of her life. She remarried art director Wiard Ihnen in 1940, a marriage that lasted until his death from prostate cancer in 1979.

Though both of her parents were Jewish, Head was raised practicing Roman Catholicism, the faith of her stepfather, and remained a "staunch Catholic" through her later life. She was a regular parishioner of Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills.

In 1972, Head was diagnosed with myelofibrosis, an incurable bone marrow cancer which causes excessive, uncontrolled scar tissue accumulation in the bone marrow. To treat the disease, Head received regular blood transfusions to prevent severe anemia. Head died at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles of complications from myelofibrosis on October 24, 1981.

A private funeral mass was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills, where actress Bette Davis gave a brief eulogy. Also in attendance were Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Ann Sothern, George Peppard, Loretta Young, Jane Wyman, and Lew Wasserman. She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

Head holds the distinction of being the most-credited costume designer in history, with a total of 432 film credits to her name.

Over the course of her career, she was nominated for a total of 35 Academy Awards, annually from 1949 (the first year that the Oscar for Best Costume Design was awarded) through 1966, and won eight times, receiving more Oscars than any other woman.

Head's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which she received in 1974, is located at 6504 Hollywood Boulevard.

As a costume designer, Head has a total of 432 credits to her name.

Selected design credits

Screen appearances

Head received eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, more than any other person, from a total of 35 nominations.