The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
All the glam
Hollywood style, old and new is on display in Oscars red carpet book
Clothes make the movie star. To be an actor, you need talent, sensitivity, and a special kind of courage. To be an icon, you need style.
You also need to know how to work that red carpet.
Dijanna Mulhearn’s “Red Carpet Oscars” shows us, in exhaustive, extravagant detail, all the actresses and, occasionally, actors who have. Gigantic and gorgeously illustrated, it covers Hollywood glamour through the years.
This includes a few infamous moments of: What were they thinking? Do they own a mirror?
Although hard to imagine now, the Oscars began low-key. Movie mogul Louis B. Mayer dreamed up The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927 as a public relations move. He also hoped a studio-sponsored organization might distract Hollywood workers from forming unions.
Spoiler alert: It didn’t.
The annual awards were almost an afterthought, beginning as a small dinner in 1929. Movie sweetheart Janet Gaynor accepted the inaugural Best Actress prize — awarded to her for multiple films — wearing a blouse with a Peter Pan collar and a knee-length, thrift-store skirt.
“Those early years saw rising stars simply wear what they had,” Mulhearn notes.
Then, a self-conscious stuffiness prevailed, with some attendees embracing a more formal look. Helen Hayes accepted her Best Actress award in 1932 wearing white opera gloves and a large corsage pinned to her dress.
As the awards’ fame grew, so did the flash. Studio designers like Adrian Greenburg — famous by his first name alone — were assigned to whip up stylish gowns. What the stars wore to the gala — or didn’t — soon became stories in themselves.
Bette Davis was so insulted at only getting a write-in nomination for “Of Human Bondage” that when she received the award the next year for “Dangerous,” she attended the 1936 ceremony in a drab costume from her film “Housewife.” Since the moguls didn’t respect her, she said it felt appropriate to sport “something the hired help” would wear. Her outfit got people talking and served notice that this actress would not be ignored.
A decade later, Davis’ lifelong nemesis Joan Crawford stole the show by not going at all. She was so convinced she wouldn’t win for “Mildred Pierce” she stayed home, pleading illness. When she ended up winning, the film’s director delivered the statue to her bedroom, photographers in tow. The quickly recovered star “accepted the Oscar luxuriously attired in a Parisian peignoir set of lace-trimmed silk satin nightdress, sheer lacetrimmed scarf and a billowing chiffon robe,” Mulhearn writes.
The first televised Oscars arrived in 1953, and the first red carpet was unfurled eight years later. No one has looked back since.
“Audiences couldn’t get enough,” Mulhearn writes. “Optimism and affluence were demonstrated by the sheer volume of each dress and space they demanded… Strapless gowns perched perilously on gravity- defying bosoms held aloft by awe-inspiring feats of internal engineering, while flowing skirts ballooned into broad pedestals beneath.”
The combination of voluptuous stars and live television posed a problem. The industry’s solution was to put formidable Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head in charge.
“To ensure that all the gowns were Oscar-worthy and complied with television censors, the Academy assigned Head as the ceremony’s own fashion police,” Mulhearn writes. “Backstage, she and her team had a stash of silk roses, shawls, velvet wraparound skirts and cleavage covers to drape across immodest stars.”
Some stars didn’t need the guidance, like the always classy Audrey Hepburn, invariably dressed by Givenchy.
Few stars ever gained more attention on the red carpet than Cher, who, working with Bob Mackie, slid into gowns that looked more like costumes. None grabbed more stares than her 1986 outfit, which included a feathered headdress, jet crystals, and just enough velvet, Lycra, satin, and cashmere to keep the censors at bay.