Costume Designer Travis Banton

For our very first log in the new Drink the Screen: The Yawning Masters of the Golden Age of Filmmaking lay down we are leaving to claim Travis Banton, one of the greatest extent conventional identical designers in Hollywood fashionable the 1930s. Wearing his dub at Elementary, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal studios he created over 250 beautiful gowns for stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, Kay Francis, Mae West and Carole Lombard.

Travis Banton was uneducated in Waco, Texas on Pompous 18, 1894. At the age of two his family motivated to New York Civil everyplace, being enclosed by the appearing in society women of the Big Apple, he fashioned an ancient applause for beautiful fabric. This pursuit led him to study organization nature and art at Columbia Academe and the Art Students Confederation.

In 1915, what still a baby chicken adherent, he was precise the path to nature Norma Talmadge's garments for "Poppy", an development haze creation about to be repair in New York Civil. He created a beautiful camel personalized fulfill for Ms. Talmadge with a hat line airy downcast to exposition her courageously new bobbed hairdo. He was a neurotic, uncomfortable fool but, in harm of a few mistakes in his drawings, Norma Talmadge assumed each finish equal with eagerness and homage.

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The gowns of Sinners in the Sun ( 1932 )"

At the same time as Life War I impoverished out, Banton shipped extraneous to help deviate and his costume-sketching was put on private as an interim measure, but upon his return he plunged taking into account again into the constant battle of beauteous organization. His along with suit was to flash the garments for one of Hollywood's up and coming stars, Alice Joyce. His agreeable experience with Ms. Talmadge and Ms. Joyce gave him the school-boy attraction that all female image stars were courtly, engaging and accepting. As he grew in experience, he then intellectual before.

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Esther Ralston separation sketches Banton created for her '27 haze, "Fashions for Women"

In the ancient 1920s Banton was effective for luxurious Madame Frances of New York organization boutique. One of his skip creations, a bridal gown of bouffant colorless net, had traditional wide pronounce and push. It traditional steamroll better push a few weeks then because Mary Pickford chose the gown for her boundless marriage to Douglas Fairbanks. This only helped to make Banton better luxurious in the world of organization and a direct time then he opened his own dressmaking salon. Creating designs for the Ziegfeld Follies was only one of the assignments his salon had. In 1924, a beckon call from Elementary Studios brought Banton out to Hollywood to sign a tolerant.

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Dietrich's beautiful fur gown in Shanghai Stately ( 1932 )"

While in tinseltown, Banton intended costumes for Pola Negri, Florence Vidor and steamroll the "It" girl herself, Clara Bow, in movies such as "The Dressmaker from Paris, The Grand Duchess and the Waiter", and "Wings". At the same time as Paramount's furthest designer Howard Greer deceased the loft in 1927 Banton was promoted to the position and was answerable for dress the studio's greatest extent profound stars.

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Mae West in Belle of the Nineties"

About the 1930s and 1940s he created an extensive amount of beautiful fashions, imposingly Mae West's considerable gloomy velvet gown in "Belle of the Nineties" ( 1934 ), Claudette Colbert's ineffectually clad gold and black map in "Cleopatra" ( 1934 ), and Loretta Young's lovely satin queen's robe with pearl-studded plaque in "The Crusades" ( 1935 ).

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"A considerable fringed evening gown and the luxurious Cleopatra head indistinct "

Wearing the 1930s Banton's "look" veered towards dress the female stars in suits, dressing pants and extreme male clothes. Carole Lombard and Marlene Dietrich helped to make this style bonus mesmeric in movies such as "Shanghai Stately, The Scarlett Empress, "and "No Man of her Own."

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Dietrich in The Ruby Empress and a finish equal for her "Morocco" fulfill"

Fifteen years of the call of creating fashions on sum what feuding with the stars and the executives over identical niceties were flinch to critical remark their levy on Banton and he turned to spending. In the late 1930s he was becoming more and more unsuitable in effect, evenly redoubtable and not very curb due to his alcoholism and, at the creation of his subordinate Edith Command, was constrained to tear Elementary Pictures in 1938. One time this, he fixed Howard Greer's permit, Greer Inc. and alike intended freelanced for Columbia Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox, everyplace he worked for two years.

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Rita Hayworth modeling Banton's Parentage Teenager gown"

Since at Fox, he bent the handsome matador attire for Tyrone Smack and the lovely gowns for Linda Darnell in "The Strategy of Zorro" ( 1940 ) and "Blood and Shore "( 1941 ), and created the exciting south-of-the-border expressive dresses for Alice Faye and Betty Grable in the musicals "Nip Argentine Way" ( 1940 )", That Day's end in Rio "( 1941 ), and "Moon Higher Miami "( 1941 ).

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Grable's golden gown in Nip Argentine Way"

Upper limit usual of all were the fruit-topped concoctions he intended for Carmen Miranda in these movies. Next to beads and fruit galore atop her head she jingled and jangled in service with the songs that she sang.

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The Tutti-Frutti Member of the aristocracy"

From 1945-1948 Travis Banton worked at Universal Pictures everyplace he intended the gowns used in movies such as" I'll Be Yours" ( 1947 ), "Break of day Becomes Electra" ( 1947 ), "The Paradine Lid" ( 1947 ) and "Letter from an Unknown Mortal "( 1948 ).

"One of his greatest extent striking designs though was not a gown at all - it was Share March's black housecoat in Ruby Thoroughfare "( 1945 ). At the same time as Fritz Lang and Joan Bennett teamed up again for just starting out haze noir, "Unnamed Greater than the Read", Travis Banton was taking into account again called in to nature garments, which this time included better modern clothes, such as the black and colorless dressing fulfill she wears because she pleads with Michael Redgrave.

This was one of the carry on movies that Banton worked on former he retired from the hustle-bustle of show identical scheming and specific all his attention on his organization salon he set up with the Russian couturier Marusia Sassi. He returned to Hollywood only taking into account, in 1956, to dressing the endlessly clothed in Dinah Coast for an epoch on her Chevy Lecture.

Travis Banton agreed not worth it two years then, in 1958 at the age of 63, from gullet pest. His carry on creations were the well-appointed gowns that Rosalind Russell festooned herself in, in "Auntie Mame" on Broadway in 1956.

In our time, mass of Banton's creations can be seen in museums across the nation everyplace they look just as mechanized and chic as the day he created them. Everlasting organization, now that is the compute of a truly great organization designer.

This vacancy is a part of our unproductive lay down Drink the Transmission : The Yawning Masters of the Golden Age of Filmmaking.

Travis Banton ( 1894-1958 )