Gone With the Wind

The curtain dress was also stressed to look like faded lines from having hung in the window, and they might have used bleaches and brushes to create that fading which accelerated deterioration. The curtain dress created by Bob Mackie for the Carol Burnett Show, with the rod still in place, was destroyed from friends borrowing it for dress-up. He made a duplicate which is now part of his archives, but the original one is gone (this is a trade secret so don't tell anyone!)
 
Here it is Carrie - prepare to roll on the floor! Harvey Korman didn't know Burnett would be using curtains for her dress and has a hard time not cracking up.



The restoration of Scarlet's 5 gowns has been going on for a while, blogged about it a couple yrs ago. One of the reasons the costumes are in such poor condition is because Walter Plunkett couldn't finish the costumes due to film time constraints. Many of Leigh's costumes were simply pinned together and the Harry Ransom Center at the U of TX has been raising funds to fully restore and exhibit them in 2014 - GWTW's 75th anniversary.

Here's the blog if you're interested.

http://fallsavenue.blogspot.ca/search/label/Walter Plunkett
 
Great blog post Rita! I'm glad they let Plunkett design all the costumes: for starters, he did a great job but also because for consistency one designer should work on a production. That said, it's common for one designer to do the star's costumes and another to do the minor one. I don't like it though.

My memory (perhaps faulty) tells me that the GWTW costumes were toured, and enthusiastic helpers sprayed them with disinfectants and the like - which of course, deteriorated the fabrics. If I'm thinking of another set of costumes, please correct me but I thought it was Scarlett's.
 
Thanks Carrie and Nicole! Gawd, I never get tired of watching Carol Burnett, she's one funny lady.

As far as I know, the costumes were in Selznick's private archives until they were donated to the HR Center. Plunkett restored the costumes the best he could in 82 but they were too fragile, never really having been completely finished originally. The dresses were reproduced in 87 and went on display but the originals were never shown.
 
I gotta say, I'm constantly amazed, gratified, and humbled by the knowledge displayed on this board.

And I love the idea of Mackie's costume getting THAT much use....!
 
Sorry to drag up an old thread but if anyone made it to the V&A Hollywood Costume show they had two of these dresses on display - the red 'harlot' dress and the green curtain dress - amazing how made technicolour these appear so much brighter and more lurid to my eye! My friend whom I went with was particularly excited as she runs http://vivandlarry.com and has visited some costume archives in LA and was always very put out that these costumes were allowed to deteriorate as much as they did.

http://www.vivandlarry.com/classic-film/hollywood-costumes-come-to-london/ - we took some sneaky pictures as you weren't allowed - but there were coloured lights beamed down to highlight the dresses so they would appear as we remembered them on screen, when really the colours were much more muted - i don't know much about costuming, but what i learnt from going to the exhibition really opened my eyes
 
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