Edith Head was one of the most versatile and successful costume designers in motion picture history. She was born in Los Angeles, California, on October 28, 1899. Most of her early years were spent in mining towns or on Indian reservations, wherever her father worked as a mining engineer. Later she lived in Texas, Arizona, and Southern California. She graduated from Los Angeles High School and enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, majoring in Romance languages. Upon obtaining her A.B. Degree from Berkeley, she entered graduate school at Stanford University, where she earned the degree of Master of Arts.
Head then took a position at the Bishop School for girls in La Jolla, California, where she taught French and Spanish. At the same time, she enrolled in evening classes at Otis Art Institute and Chouinard Art School. Among her students were the children of the famous movie director, Cecil B. DeMille. In the summer of 1924 when she tutored the DeMilles to supplement her income, she had opportunities to visit DeMille's movie sets. About these visits Miss Head said, “I was intrigued,” and by the end of that summer she had answered an ad calling for costume sketch artists. When Howard Greer, then head designer at Paramount, asked for samples of her work, she returned the following day with a portfolio of drawings borrowed from her fellow students at Chouinard. Head remembered, “Howard said he'd never seen so much talent in one portfolio. I got the job.”
She spent the first months of her work as a sketch artist for Greer and his assistant, Travis Banton, but then graduated into the “horse opera class” where she stayed four years doing “leather chaps and one- and two- pistol skirts for rip-roaring westerns.” The next move up the ladder took her to the “grandmother class,” which she explained as being the class “where somebody else does the leading lady and you do the grandmothers and the aunts and anybody that's left over.” She was in this class for another four years until Howard Greer retired to do free lance work, at which time she was made assistant designer under Travis Banton. When Banton resigned in 1938 to join Greer, Edith Head was named head designer at Paramount Studios, the only woman to hold such a position at that time. She worked for many years at Paramount Studios, but also worked at MGM, Warner Brothers Studios, Universal, Columbia, and 20th Century-Fox. Her last film was the comedy, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, starring Steve Martin in 1982.
Edith Head wrote two books, did radio work, made regular appearances on television, and wrote sketches for fashion magazines and periodicals all over the world. One of her books, The Dress Doctor, was a best-seller.
She had her own radio program, Edith Head's Fashionscope, on CBS radio. On television she appeared regularly once-a-month on Art Linkletter's House Party, and frequently on such television programs as the Mike Douglas Show, the Merv Griffin Show, Virginia Graham, and the Gypsy Rose-Lee Show. She expanded her career to work as a columnist for Newsday Specials and prepared two columns a week for leading newspapers all over the country.
Edith Head won the Costume Designers's Guild award as the leading and most outstanding designer in the motion picture industry. She was the Los Angeles Times' “Woman of the Year” and the President of the Costume Designers' Guild.
Over the course of her career, she won eight Academy Awards and thirty-five nominations for costume design. She received her first award in 1950. See the listing of Academy Awards and nominations.
Edith Head was married to Wiard Ihnen, noted architect and motion picture set designer, who won two Academy Awards himself, for the designs for the movies Wilson and Blood on the Sun. They lived in Beverly Hills, California. Ihnen died in 1979; Edith Head died on October 24, 1981.
Academy Awards (Awards presented following year):
| 1949: |
The Heiress (black and white)
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| 1950: |
All About Eve (black and white)
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| 1950: |
Samson and Delilah (Technicolor)
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| 1951: |
A Place in the Sun (black and white)
|
| 1953: |
Roman Holiday (black and white)
|
| 1954: |
Sabrina (black and white)
|
| 1960: |
The Facts of Life (black and white)
|
| 1973: |
The Sting (Technicolor)
|
| 1948: |
The Emperor Waltz (Technicolor)
|
| 1952: |
Carrie (black and white)
|
| 1952: |
The Greatest Show on Earth (Technicolor)
|
| 1955: |
The Rose Tattoo (black and white)
|
| 1955: |
To Catch a Thief (Technicolor)
|
| 1956: |
The Ten Commandments (Technicolor)
|
| 1956: |
The Proud and the Profane (black and white)
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| 1957: |
Funny Face (Technicolor)
|
| 1958: |
The Buccaneer (Technicolor)
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| 1959: |
The Five Pennies (Technicolor)
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| 1959: |
Career (black and white)
|
| 1960: |
Pepe (Technicolor)
|
| 1961: |
Pocketful of Miracles (Technicolor)
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| 1962: |
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (black and white)
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| 1962: |
Geisha (Technicolor)
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| 1963: |
Love With the Proper Stranger (black and white)
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| 1963: |
A New Kind of Love (Technicolor)
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| 1963: |
Wives and Lovers (black and white)
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| 1964: |
A House Is Not a Home (black and white)
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| 1964: |
What a Way to Go (Technicolor)
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| 1965: |
The Slender Thread (black and white)
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| 1965: |
Daisy Clover (Technicolor)
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| 1966: |
The Oscar (Technicolor)
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| 1969: |
Sweet Charity (Technicolor)
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| 1970: |
Airport (Technicolor)
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| 1975: |
The Man Who Would Be King (Technicolor)
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| 1977: |
Airport'77 (Technicolor)
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