Sunset Blvd.
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:08:01
Last year, somebody talked me
into buying a ranch,

:08:01
was the perennial holiday classic
"White Christmas".

:08:04
so I borrowed the money.
:08:05
Star Rosemary Clooney recalls
the black velvet gown Edith created.

:08:06
This year, I had to mortgage the
ranch to keep up my life insurance...

:08:10
Everybody talks about the great dress
and the diamond pin on my butt!

:08:15
There was a pin that Edith had said,
:08:15
After that,
I drove down to headquarters.

:08:18
That's how a lot of us
think about Schwab's drugstore.

:08:18
"We've gotta have something that just
kind of breaks up that black velvet."

:08:21
Kind of a combination office,
Kaffeeklatsch and waiting room.

:08:23
And so that was what she did.
She had a rare sense of humour.

:08:25
Waiting... Waiting for the gravy train.
:08:27
Edith didn't like to dress women, she
loved dressing men, Danny Kaye...

:08:30
I got myself ten nickels and started
sending out a general SOS.

:08:31
For instance, "The Best Things
Happen While You Dance".

:08:35
I couldn't get hold of my agent,
naturally.

:08:35
That scene where he was dressed
in grey, he had a grey-blue suit on.

:08:38
So I called a pal of mine,
Artie Green.

:08:40
But the socks and the shoes
were exactly the same colour,

:08:41
An awful nice guy,
an assistant director.

:08:44
He could let me have twenty,
but twenty wouldn't do.

:08:45
so the extension, dancing, it was never
broken because of a change of colour.

:08:49
Then I talked to a couple of yes-men
at Metro. To me, they said no.

:08:51
It was just...
They worked together beautifully.

:08:54
Finally, I located that agent of mine.
The big faker!

:08:55
Edith found it to be a formidable task
designing the clothes for Gloria Swanson

:08:59
Was he out digging up
a job for poor Joe Gillis?

:08:59
in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard".
:09:01
"Sunset Boulevard" was
an interesting challenge for Edith Head.

:09:02
He was hard at work in Bel Air,
making with the golf sticks.

:09:05
She and Billy Wilder
and Gloria Swanson got together

:09:09
and came up with a particular concept
for the clothes.

:09:09
You need $300? Of course I could
give you $300, only I'm not going to.

:09:12
They did not want to have Swanson
wearing 1920s styles.

:09:15
- No?
- I'm not just your agent.

:09:17
She was living in a 1920s-type house
:09:18
- It's not the 10%. I'm your friend.
- You are?

:09:19
that had never been remodelled
since Norma Desmond's glory days.

:09:22
The finest things have been
written on an empty stomach.

:09:23
But the basic lines of the clothes
were the New Look

:09:25
Once your talent gets into that
Mocambo-Romanoff rut, you're through.

:09:28
that Dior introduced in 1947.
:09:29
Forget that! It's a car I'm talking
about. Losing it is like losing my legs.

:09:31
And how they brought Norma Desmond
into this was just to exaggerate more.

:09:33
Greatest thing that could happen.
Now you'll have to sit down and write.

:09:37
One of the problems was that the
New Look accentuated waistlines a lot.

:09:38
What do you think I've been doing?
I need $300.

:09:42
Sweetheart, maybe what
you need is another agent.

:09:42
The ideal at that time was to have
a very tight waist and a very full skirt.

:09:48
Gloria Swanson,
though she was still quite thin,

:09:51
her waist was not as trim as it had been,
and she did not wear a waist-cincher.

:09:57
As I drove back towards town,
I took inventory of my prospects.

:09:57
There just aren't any faces like that
any more.


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