Las Vegas, my kind of town!

It's hard to believe that when I first stayed at Caesar's Palace (working with Ann-Margret), it looked pretty much like this! Well, in 1974, there had been one extension of the original tower, but I stayed in the round building in the center.

My connection with Las Vegas started in 1961, with a 30-minute stopover in the downtown train station on Main Street at 2 am. I was a very young dancer with the "My Fair Lady" National Company, and we were traveling from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. The 1970s, when I frequently visited for work with Ann-Margret, Raquel Welch, and Diana Ross, introduced me to the then-small town of Las Vegas in a proper fashion, and in 1980 and 1981, I spent a great deal of time here preparing the costumes for "Jubilee."

At that time, Las Vegas was still small. You could cross Las Vegas Boulevard directly; there were no overpasses. There was no 10 lane freeway running by it. The desert was a few blocks away. The airport was small. I don't even remember noticing the mountains all around...the focus was all on The Strip.

I wasn't prepared for the change when I returned in the late '80s. The airport had exploded! By this time, I was working full time as a costume designer for TV series and films in Hollywood and occasionally came up to Las Vegas to shoot on location. Las Vegas already felt somewhat like home.

And now it is home! As I was driving to the airport early this morning to drop off some friends, I admired the clear blue skies and the mountains on all four sides again. Do I pine for the old days? Absolutely not! So, there may be more cars. Still, my city is continually re-inventing itself with new hotels, stadiums, entertainment venues, and university buildings. And as I chronicle in my upcoming book, I too have had to re-invent myself several times….from ballet dancer to Broadway dancer to actress to costume designer. And now, author. Please watch for my book, coming out in the spring.

Women in TV, Film, and (why not) everywhere!

As I work on my book (and yes, I have only 7 more chapters on which to do a substantial re-write and edit!), I think how lucky I have been to be able to pursue a career that I wanted. It wasn’t always so easy for women to choose anything that excited them and go for it.

I have been lucky in my life that I was born into a family where I had many strong women as role models. My paternal step-grandmother was a judge, a mayor, and was, in general, a no-nonsense kind of woman! My great aunt was an obstetrician, one of the first females to graduate in the early 1900’s with a medical degree. There was also a distant cousin who was an Arctic explorer in the early 1900s! So it never occurred to me that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted because I was a woman. It just never entered my mind.

 In high school, most of my classmates were going on to be either nurses or teachers. It seemed a pretty limited selection to me, but I already knew I was going to be a dancer, so what did I care?

 By the early 1970’s I was living in Los Angeles, and it’s not to say that there weren’t obstacles to overcome as a woman. It was difficult at that time, if not downright impossible, for a woman to buy a house without a father or husband to co-sign. Can you imagine! Do you remember Edith Bunker trying to get a loan at the bank? The 1970s were a tumultuous time with all sorts of reexamination of women’s rights going on, and women such as Gertrude Stein, and Erica Jong and Germaine Greer drawing attention. And of course, the demand for equal rights and the sexual revolution changed so much in how we could lead our lives. It was an intoxicating period, with the promise of greater freedom and power!

 And as I started my transition to my career in costume design, many of the top television producers, stars, designers were women. Think Murphy Brown, Designing Women, and Gilmore Girls. The very first producer who took a chance on me, hiring me for The Facts of Life, was a woman, and many of the producers (and a few directors) I worked for in television subsequently were women, including Penny Marshall, Yvette Lee Bowser, Irma Kalish, and Lisa De Cazotte.

 I still believe that it’s important not to feel that you are coming from behind, but that you are starting from the same start line, and that excellence in what you do is the thing that will propel you forward. Not nepotism, not cronyism, not anything but commitment and talent and passion. Call me naive or an optimist, but I’d like to think even men wouldn’t be dumb enough to ignore someone who is really really really good at what they do!

Costume Training! Dance! Olympics!

My attention has been split recently between a lot of exciting things happening!

1.) My www.HollywoodMentors.co online costume training website is finally getting out there! Yesterday I heard from a potential student in Nigeria, as well as getting a number of emails and enquiries. I do hope I will have time enough to help all the interesting and talented people who contact me for help with entering a costume career in TV and film.

2) I was in Los Angeles over the weekend, enjoying a fabulous visit with my former intern from Belarus, who spent a summer with me on "Passions", and who now is a very successful costumer and pattern-maker, working on the TV series "Dexter". We went together to see the Dizzyfeet Celebration of Dance Gala at the Music Center in LA, where we met a number of our favorite choreographers and dancers from my favorite TV show "So You Think You Can Dance", and witnessed some amazing performances from many talented dance professionals in all types of dance. Even though I have been a costume designer for many many years, I started my working life as a dancer, and, you know what they say, "once a dancer, always a dancer"! We came away totally psyched by the positive energy of the wonderful evening, and it took several days to come down from the natural high!

3) Yes, I've been watching the Olympics every night on TV. It's wonderful to see the young athletes pushing themselves to be their very best, physically, emotionally, and mentally. All achievements come with dedication, commitment, occasional heartache, discipline, consistency, some sacrifice, and lots and lots of passion. Be it sport, costume design, or dance.

4.) We have six more days of filming on the Gregory Popovich movie during the month of August! I have two costumes yet to "establish", that of the "Voice of the American West", an iconic cowboy-for-al-times look, and one for "Johnny Fantastic", a mix between a ringmaster and an old Western medecine man.

Talk again soon. Got to get back to the Olympics.