DOLPHINS IN THE GULF, LARRY HAGMAN IN FT LAUDERDALE

Last week I had the pleasure of spending a week with my sister in a part of Florida that I was totally unfamiliar with, the Gulf Coast, the part of it they call “The Emerald Shore”. I was enchanted with the incredibly white beaches, blue water and skies, and was feeling so relaxed I wondered how I could think about costumes for my weekly blog!

But then I remembered my 4 week stay in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1992 while filming a TV movie called “Staying Afloat” with Larry Hagman. Other than the fact that it was August, when no one in their right mind goes to Florida (heat, humidity), I remember it fondly as a wonderful experience.

It was actually my very first film, and naturally I was nervous. As often happens, the first day of filming was not a simple one, but one of our biggest days with hundreds of extras. The location was the local racetrack, and we had spectators, horses, jockeys, trainers etc to deal with besides our stars Hagman, Claire Yarlett, Gregg Henry, and Dakin Matthews. But I had a good crew and all was going well until we were getting ready for our first shot with Larry. My assistant came running to me and said that Larry had just spilled coffee all over his trousers! YIkes! I didn’t have a double, so we had to clean off the pants as best we could and then dry them with a hair dryer, and get him back on set as quickly as possible. Actually, he was very embarassed and very apologetic.

Other days we shot on the beach in full sun, and it was all we could do not to strip off our clothes and run into the cool water! We went to Boca Raton for 2 days and shot there at the harbor, pool, and resort, and in a number of other locations around Fort Lauderdale. Since the series of movies NBC planned to film was based on around a renovated 1930’s yacht that once belonged to the Dupont family, Larry had wanted to film in different exotic locations, which was fine with me! (not that he asked).

I love going on location, especially if it is somewhere fairly civilized and for not too long a period. In Florida I was put up in a nice hotel on the 12th floor with a view of the beach and the inter-coastal waterway and could watch boats go by all day on my day off. My husband flew in from Los Angeles for a weekend in the middle of my stay, so we were not separated for too long. Location work is one of the things that has kept my life interesting, varied, and full of new places to discover. Though what I’m really waiting for is a film that shoots on the Amalfi Coast in Italy!

THE GLOBAL REACH OF SANTA BARBARA

Sometimes I wonder if my chosen profession really has any serious positive effect on the world. After all, I’m not feeding the poor, healing the sick, or working to change the world. I design costumes. I help tell stories. 

But every once in a while I am reminded of how much pleasure certain shows I have been part of bring to people in places outside of my limited world. “Santa Barbara” is one such show, a daytime soap opera that told the stories of beautiful people in the sunny California town. 

A few years ago I heard from a young Russian woman from Bellarus who wrote me about how valuable and popular the show was in her bleak communist country, when it first started opening up to the Western world. I can’t express it better than the author herself: 

More than just a popular TV show, “Santa Barbara” was a phenomenon in my homeland. Every night at seven o’clock the street were empty as the citizens of the former Soviet Republic huddled around their television sets to watch the first American program to air in the post-communist era. Not only the world of American culture portrayed through Santa Barbara was mesmerizing, it also provided a possibility for escape from the bitterness brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a place shrouded in snow for most of the year, where the average temperature seldom climbs above 40F, the warmth and sunlight of that Southern California town and the luxuries if its inhabitants hypnotized most of my fellow countrymen, and certainly myself.

After that email, the young woman, named Antonina Grib, who had come to the US on a tennis scholarship, contacted me again, eventually came to LA to intern with me on “Passions” and is now a very successful and in-demand costumer in Hollywood, living indeed “the American dream”.

Recently, I was “found” by another fan, this time one who lives in Torino, Italy, who to this day  loves Santa Barbara. He runs a fan site in Italy and his interview with me appears this month at the link right below this post.

He wrote me: 

Santa Barbara came to Italy in 1989  and it ran until the last episode in 1999. I followed the soap from the beginning until the end and never missed one episode.   And I often wonder: Why?

The reality is that “Santa Barbara” struck my imagination because I could share it with the person who most of all taught me something about life, my grandmother, Grace.

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When I was about 12 years old, one morning I was awakened by a mild earthquake.

My mother rushed to me and to my grandmother to tell us to leave the house immediately for fear of collapse. We did not have much time, so I took a backpack and filled it with all the videotapes of Santa Barbara. Nothing else interested me, I just wanted to save “Santa Barbara” - (What a hero!). When my grandmother saw me full of videotapes, she began to laugh and then all of us began to laugh. The house did not collapse... perhaps for this reason. That was many years ago, but if there was to be another earthquake today, I would do the same.

So if my career creating lovely costumes for characters on stage or in films and TV has brought a little bit of joy, then that makes it all worthwhile.

Santa Barbara Blog: AN UNUSUAL AND EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH DIANA EDEN...

Santa Barbara Blog: AN UNUSUAL AND EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH DIANA EDEN...: Diana Eden has decided to release for you of " Santa Barbara Blog " an exclusive interview about her experience in " Santa Barbara ". Du...

MORE THAN A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY: REBA AND STACEY

This past week I had the pleasure of doing the wardrobe styling for a music video starring a young Canadian singer, the up and coming country vocalist and song-writer Stacey McKitrick. As I went to research her, I saw that one of her idols was Reba McEntire. Interesting co-incidence.

Years ago, when I was just starting to make a name for myself as a designer, I got a phone call from a personal manager who was looking for someone to design an outfit for another up and coming country singer, namely Reba McEntire. Reba and I met for a coffee to see if we were a good fit and though I had never much listened to country music, Reba was so down to earth and engaging I felt I could do a good job. 

In looking for inspiration, I turned to a current passion of mine, patchworking, and decided to design for her a high end “log cabin” patchwork skirt, made out of cotton prints in rusts and browns, which I  then had lightly beaded to add that show business sparkle. The blouse was a peasant style, again in a lacy fabric that was also embellished with some beads. 

The tricky part for me was that I chose to have the outfit constructed at Bob Mackie’s company, Elizabeth Courtney Costumes. It was tricky because, on one hand I knew that the workmanship would be brilliant, but awkward, as Bob had been my first employer and mentor,  and now I was expecting to be treated as an equal while bringing my client to his costume workroom.

Everything went well, Reba loved the outfit, and on the evening of the CMA Awards I watched anxiously from home to see my outfit. Horrors! When I first spotted her she was not wearing it! But then later she changed, and when the 5 nominees for Entertainer of the Year were announced, and Reba WON for the first time in her career, I got to see my outfit go up on that stage to accept that award!!

Many years later I was filming a TV series at Sony Studios and saw that she was also filming her sitcom “Reba” a few sound stages away. I was nervous about dropping by to see her, because now she was a huge star, but she was extraordinarily gracious and kind, and sang praises for that costume, telling me it was now on  display in the CMA Museum in Nashville.

So then last week, I got to meet and outfit the lovely Stacey McKitrick, for her first music video. From a small town just outside Vancouver BC, Stacey is tall and stunning, and I and everyone on the crew had a ball working with her. Her music is great and I hope when she is up for her first CMA award, she will call on me!  

For information on online costume training, please visit me at http://hollywoodmentors.com

Chimps, Orangutans, a dog and a rat

Strangely enough, not all my actors have been human. But if you are against putting dresses on dogs or costumes on animals in any way, this post is not for you. 

The first non-human I costumed was a primate called “Bubbles”, owned by Michael Jackson. Bubbles was cast as the mascot for the Peaches team in “A League of Their Own” and had to have a Peaches uniform made for him. My assistant Kiki and I called the trainer and asked for his measurements! - chest, waist, shoulders? do they have shoulders?  We just applied what we usually asked for when measuring humans. When Bubbles came for a fitting, he sat on the table as we tried the outfit on and looked at me with big brown eyes. The dress was a little big. “Can I pin it?” I asked the trainer. “Will he be OK with that?” “ Yes”, he replied, “as long as you don’t stick him”. Believe me, I was VERY careful.

But by far the most extensive and varied were my costumes for non-humans on NBC’s daytime drama “Passions”, a show that never vied far from the weird, exotic, magical, and unique.  In one scene one of the characters has a bad date and turns her nasty suitor into a rat. To make the point, we had to make a little vest for the rat to match the one that the charactor was wearing, and figure out how to keep it on him. And yes, the rat was brought in for fittngs, three in fact.

But anyone who watched Passions for more than one episode knows of the character “Precious”, played by a young orangitang called Bam Bam (a male). Mrs Wallace, Beth’s mother, was so cantankerous that all her nurses had quit, so they finally hired Precious the nurse to take care of her! Then Precious got a crush on Luis, played by the soap opera-gorgeous Galen Gering, and began having daydreams about him! So I had to create outfits for these many fantasies! First I had to make him a wedding gown, then a Scarlet O’Hara “Gone With the Wind” outfit. Then a hot pink peignoir with boa trim. Then an Olympic skating dress in blue sequins. And many many more.

One of my favorites was a green velvet cape with white fur trim for a winter skating scene. I had spotted the cape at a well known vintage store, a child’s cape. I didn’t have the heart to tell the owner that I was putting the lovely vintage cape on an orangutang.

We all adored Bam Bam. On the days he was coming up to the wardrobe department for a fitting, all the wardrobe crew wanted to come and watch. He arrived piggyback on the back of his trainer (who had him since birth) and stood on our big cutting table. Out came the outfit, and on the direction of his trainer, he would lift first one leg and then the other to step into it. So cute. Once I apologized to his trainer for putting him a particularly frilly outfit, and he told me, “he’s an animal, he doesn’t know its pink and frilly”. Oops, of course not.

Not everyone liked seeing this character. There were protests from animal lovers who felt it was un-natural (which of course it was) and cruel. However, other than the fact that Bam Bam didn’t like wearing hats and got bored from too long a shooting shceudle (much like human actors) he never seemed unhappy. He loved getting picked up and posing for photos with his arms around his human friends.

Eventually, Bam Bam grew into a fully grown adult, meaning his acting career was coming to an end. It was a truly emotional day when he did his last scene and all the actors and crew gathered on stage to say goodbye. He seemed to sense that something emotional was happening as he looked at all of us sillies crying our eyes out.

Bam Bam went to a “retirement home for primates” in Florida. Honestly. Every once in a while we hear that someone has ben to see him and that he is healthy and happy and being very orangutangish. 

Don't forget to visit me to find out more about online costume training at

http://hollywoodmentors.co