Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

"Old Clothes! Old Clothes!" 31 inaugurated voice the complaint of "nothing to wear," when you consider that, at the present time, there are seventy-two thousand dresses hanging there, covering fashions from the day that Moses stood on Mount Sinai, until Herbert Hoover was President of the United States. Maybe you figure on one day every month to stay at home and repair your clothes, to keep them looking neat. Consider, then, the forty or fifty people who are constantly employed by Paramount to see that those seventy-two thousand get-ups are spick and span. Not only seamstresses, but office help are required to take care of them, for every suit of clothes, and every dress, is indexed, filed, and assigned to a particular place on the rack, just as books are accounted for in the public library of your town. It takes a lot of oil to keep all the Paramount sewing machines running smoothly, and scores of expert hands to manipulate them, for approximately one hundred and fifteen gowns are always in the making, about forty-five of them new, and the other seventy renovated, or done over. These madeovers are worn by the extras, or occasionally by the less important principals. The new creations that reflect the very latest modes of Paris are meant for the stars. The materials are the handsomest procurable, and they are put together in many striking and bizarre color combinations, the beauty of which, unfortunately, is lost to the audience in the neutral shadows of the screen. To design and supervise the progress of these gowns that shall perfectly suit the individual type of each actress, is the work of experts who are as thoroughly connoisseurs of fashion as Patou, Chanel, Lelong, and other arbiters of style for Deauville, the Lido, and Paris. You will, of course, argue that the studio's concern over preserving these dresses, when they have been worn first by the stars, and then made over for those of lesser rank, is a little unwarranted. It is true that modes change with each season", but the wardrobe department learned long ago that the production chiefs are capricious in their choice of stories, and it may be called upon at any moment to resurrect dresses that were made ten years ago, and that are now desired for a its action in 1919 The First National studio used to feel that preserving costumes in such numbers was unnecessary. But they their minds, and three years ago installed the same system that has prevailed at the Charles Rogers shows his sister one of the seventy-two thousand costumes catalogued and hanging on orderly racks in the Paramount studio. scenario dating changed Paramount studio since 1912. The custodians of the First National wardrobes discovered that it was more difficult to find the proper styles for a scene laid in America five years back, than to procure clothes for Babylonian dancers, or Aztec princesses. So now they carefully keep each dress that has temporarily fulfilled its mission, for to-day's dernier cri will be dug up a decade hence for a costume drama, and there will be no arduous research necessary to have its lines exact. The Fox studio works along the same principles. What a museum their wardrobe racks are ! There are Theda Bara's evening gowns, low-cut black-velvet things with snaky trains, the correct rigs for the seductive vamp of 1915. On a hanger close by are the costumes worn by William Farnum, in "The Corsican Brothers," and those from "A Tale of Two Cities." Farther along, you'll come across some of the ginghams the little girls of the family wore in "Over the Hill," the royal robes from "A Connecticut Yankee," and many hundreds of olive-drab uniforms used for "What Price Glory?" Just outside the main wardrobe is a smaller room which bears the sign "Retake Closet." This, they will tell you, is the place where all costumes are temporarily stored, between the time that camera work is completed, and the picture is playing all over the country. At any moment in the interim it may become necessary to retake various scenes. Perhaps the film editor insists on having an extra sequence shot, perhaps the first preview may suggest some change, or perhaps the picture is torn to pieces by a censor board, and ad Duval frock Lo Rayne wears a made at the Universal studio.