Her face hinted at sadness. She suffered her first bitter taste of that not long after she was brought over from Stockholm by Metro, to land in the middle of a New York heat wave, when she spent most of her days sitting in a hotel bathtub full of cold water. It wasn’t Garbo that the studio wanted but Maurice Stiller, the Swedish director who had discovered her and refused to travel without her. But Stiller was subsequently fired by Irving Thalberg, and it was Garbo who was given the build-up. Stiller returned to Stockholm, a defeated, ailing giant of a man, and she was heartbroken.
She stored up bitterness against MGM. In her early days Pete Smith, head of publicity, had her pose for cheesecake shots wearing track shorts, to be photographed with another Scandinavian, Paavo Nurmi, the record-breaking runner, on the athletic fields of the University of Southern California. When she had made her name a household word and insisted on working in complete privacy on the set behind tall screens, Louis B. Mayer brought six important New York stockholders to see her. She sent them packing. “When Lillian Gish was queen of the lot, all I was allowed to do was show my knees. Now let these visitors bend their rusty knees to me, but they shall not watch,” she said.
Once Arthur Brisbane, Hearst’s top editor, came on the set to watch. When she saw him she walked out of the scene. “If he wants to see me, he can see me in the theater.” She went to her dressing room and wouldn’t come back until he’d gone.
Adrian accentuated Garbo’s assets and concealed her liabilities. For her he devised the high-necked, long-sleeved evening gown that swept the world of fashion in the thirties. For As You Desire Me, in which I played her sister, he invented the pillbox hat with strings tied under her chin, which became part of every smart woman’s wardrobe. He had her dripping in lace and melting costume lines for Anna Karenina, sent the dress industry off on an oriental kick with her exotic outfits for The Painted Veil. Her costumes in Grand Hotel could be worn today and still be high fashion.
He achieved much the same kind of fashion influence for Crawford. Her padded halfback’s shoulders in Chained and a dozen other movies convinced half the women of America that this was exactly how they wanted to appear. His Letty Lynton dress, with wide sleeves and sweetheart neck, was a garment-center classic. “If Crawford has an apron,” we used to say, “it has to be by Adrian.”
His new clothes for any top star were guarded like the gold of Fort Knox. Until the premiere costumes were kept under lock and key so manufacturers’ spies couldn’t run off with his designs and pirate them. A new Garbo or Crawford or Norma Shearer picture carried the fashion wallop of a Paris opening today.
No more. The tradition that the designers fostered has vanished. Women used to follow Hollywood fashion as avidly as they copied Veronica Lake’s peekaboo hairdo or dreamed that some miracle might endow them with legs like Betty Grable or Esther Williams’ classy chassis. Now they haven’t got much to build their diet of dreams on except Ben Casey’s surgical smock—television doesn’t go in strong for women, much less gals in glamorous gowns.
When I look at Jackie Kennedy these days I think: “If those fellows were around today, what they couldn’t have done for her!” She’d be queen of fashion the world over. Oleg Cassini can’t hold a candle to any of them, and he never had it so good, not even when he was married to Gene Tierney.
Who’s left in motion-picture fashions? Nobody much outside the industry has heard of Irene Sharaff, or Helen Rose. Edith Head started as Travis Banton’s sketch girl, and her designs continue to follow his lead. Jean Louis is the one designer that picture stars ask for today, just as stage stars beg for Mainbocher.
Sometimes Jean overdresses Doris Day, but the clothes he makes for her, at producer Ross Hunter’s insistence, have transformed Doris from a plain Jane into a fashion plate. One difference between Jean Louis and Adrian: Doris Day and Lana Turner got all the clothes to keep, as a wonderful bonus from Ross Hunter. At Metro, the dresses belonged to the studio, and Adrian had to ignore the pleas from a New York socialite who, after every Garbo picture, used to send him a blank check, willing to pay anything for just one of the costumes Garbo wore.