Dorothy Jeakins Costume Design Archive, 1932-1975
Processed by Arts Special Collections Staff; machine-readable finding aid created by Sue Hwang and Julie Graham.
UCLA Library Special Collections
Performing Arts Special Collections
Room A1713, Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575
spec-coll@library.ucla.edu
URL: http://www2.library.ucla.edu/specialcollections/performingarts/index.cfm
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Descriptive Summary
Title: Dorothy Jeakins costume design archive
Date (inclusive): 1932-1975
Collection number: 124
Creator: Jeakins, Dorothy
Extent: 14 boxes (7 linear ft.)
Abstract: Dorothy Jeakins built an impressive list of credits in theater, film, and television and came to be respected as one of the
best costume designers in the entertainment industry. The collection contains costume designs, preparatory sketches, textile
swatches, and designer notes related to her career.
Language: Finding aid is written in English.
Repository:
University of California, Los Angeles. Library.
Performing Arts Special Collections.
Los Angeles, California 90095-1575
Physical location: Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact the UCLA Library, Performing
Arts Special Collections Reference Desk for paging information.
Administrative Information
Restrictions on Access
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Open for research. Advance notice required for access. Contact the UCLA Library, Performing
Arts Special Collections Reference Desk for paging information.
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library,
Performing Arts Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright,
are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of
the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the
copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC
Regents do not hold the copyright.
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Gift of Dorothy Jeakins, 1990.
Preferred Citation
Dorothy Jeakins Costume Design Archive (Collection 124). Performing Arts Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library,
UCLA.
Biography
Dorothy Jeakins was born January 11, 1914, in San Diego, California; her father, George Tyndall Jeakins, was a stockbroker,
and her mother, Sophia Maria (von Kempf) Jeakins, was a couture dressmaker. After her parents separated, Jeakins was placed
into foster care. Following graduation from Fairfax High School, in 1931, Jeakins submitted original drawings to a competition
and won a three-year fine arts scholarship to the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where she studied drawing and painting.
Jeakins graduated from Otis in 1934 and joined the Works Progress Administration, Southern California Art Project as its youngest
woman artist. In 1936 she accepted a position painting animated cells in the color department at the Walt Disney Studio ,
then in the late 1930s, she joined the Los Angeles department store I. Magnin, drawing fashion layouts in the advertising
department. Her work caught the attention of a Twentieth Century Fox art director, who hired her as an assistant to illustrate
costumes for the studio; she was eventually assigned as an assistant to costume designer Ernst Dryden.
After a short marriage Jeakins resumed her career in the mid-1940s and began sketching the couture creations of Balmain and
Dior. In 1948 Jeakins became an assistant to the RKO studio costume designer Madame Karinska and worked on Joan of Arc (1948).
She was awarded an Oscar for her work on this film, the first of three Oscars she would receive, out of twelve Academy Award
nominations. Joan of Arc also made history as the first film to be recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and
Sciences for excellence in the category of costume design in color. In the years that followed, Jeakins built an impressive
list of credits in theater, film, and television and came to be respected as one of the best costume designers. She was affiliated
with nearly eighty film productions, including
Samson and Delilah (1949), for which she earned her second Academy Award;
The Children's Hour (1961);
The Night of the Iguana (1964), a solo credit for which she received her third Academy Award;
The Way We Were (1973);
Young Frankenstein (1975);
On Golden Pond (1981); and her last film,
The Dead (1987).
Jeakins's strong ties with the theater brought opportunities on both East and West Coasts to work on productions for the American
Shakespeare Festival, Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, UCLA University Theater Group, and Los Angeles Center Theater Group.
Among her theater credits are
King Lear (1950 and 1964),
The World of Suzie Wong (1958),
The Winters Tale (1958; 1960-61),
Juno and the Paycock (1974), and both the Broadway and film versions of
South Pacific and
The Sound of Music. In 1962, Jeakins was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship to study traditional Japanese costume in Noh drama and
spent a year in Tokyo. In 1969 she was appointed curator of costumes and textiles for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Scope and Content
The collection contains costume designs, preparatory sketches, textile swatches, and designer notes related to the career
of costume designer Dorothy Jeakins. The bulk of the costume designs are original color works documenting precise details
of buttons, bows, trim, hair styles, and, occasionally, props. Additionally there are pencil sketches that were probably not
intended to function as exact costume drawings; instead, it is likely they were created to capture the characters' collective
persona. Many of the renderings include swatches of fabric representing the designer's ideas for color, texture, and/or fabrics,
and some contain her handwritten annotations documenting a project title, scene, actor and/or character name, measurements,
or other notes about the character. The sampling of projects document numerous motion picture and theater projects in which
Jeakins was involved including
All's Well That Ends Well (American Shakespeare Theatre),
Any Wednesday,
Hawaii,
Joan of Arc,
Juno and the Paycock,
The Music Man, and
The Winter's Tale, among others.
Indexing Terms
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Subjects
Jeakins, Dorothy--Archives
Women costume designers--United States--Archival resources.
Genres and Forms of Material
Swatches.
Slides.
Costume design drawings.
Box 12
Loose pages from designer work book(s) with moslty swatches
Box 14
Loose pages from designer work book(s) with moslty swatches
Box 4
Slides of sketches and swatches
Note
Represents various projects.
Box 8
1776
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Color sketch.
Box 10
4th of July
Physical Description: 4 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches.
Box 6
All's Well That Ends Well
Physical Description: 7 items
Note
Color skethes with swatches. American Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford, CT, 1959. (folder
2 of 3)
Box 6
All's Well That Ends Well
Physical Description: 7 items
Note
Color skethes with swatches. American Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford, CT, 1959. (folder
3 of 3)
Box 6
All's Well That Ends Well
Physical Description: 7 items
Note
Color skethes with swatches. American Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford, CT, 1959. (folder
1 of 3)
Box 8
Annie Get Your Gun
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Color sketch with swatch. L.A. Civic Light Opera, 1957.
Box 1
Any Wednesday
Physical Description: 15 items
Note
3 original sketches with swatches and 12 photocopies of sketches for Jane Fonda
character. Warner, 1966.
Box 7
Besty (The)
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Worklog (schedule).
Box 11
Besty (The)
Note
Notes from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 8
Carousel
Physical Description: 10 items
Note
Pencil and color sketches with swatches. L.A. Civic Light Opera, 1953
Box 11
Childrens Hour
Note
Notes from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 5
Coriolanus
Physical Description: 14 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches. Possible UCLA Theatre Group.
Box 11
Dead (The)
Note
Notes from designer work book.
Box 8
Duchess of Malfi
Note
Work log (schedule) and cast list. L.A. Civic Light Opera, 1975.
Box 8
Duchess of Malfi
Physical Description: 7 items
Note
Mostly color sketches with swatches. L.A. Civic Light Opera, 1975.
Box 8
Duchess of Malfi
Physical Description: 8 items
Note
Mostly color sketches with swatches. L.A. Civic Light Opera, 1975.
Box 11
Duchess of Malfi
Note
Playbill for performance at the L.A. Mark Taper Forum, 1976.
Box 11
Duchess of Malfi
Note
Notes from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 8
Elmer Gantry
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Sketches with swatches.
Box 11
Green Mansions
Note
One page of notes from designer work book (with swatches)
Box 7
Hawaii
Physical Description: 4 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches for Thetis Voyage.
Box 10
Hawaii
Physical Description: 3 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches and pencil drawing. United Artists, 1966.
Box 1
Jack Cole Las Vegas show
Physical Description: 7 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches.
Box 8
Joan of Arc
Physical Description: 5 items
Note
Color sketches. RKO, 1948.
Box 11
Joan of Arc
Note
Notes from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 7
Juno and the Paycock
Physical Description: 10 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches and one schematic of swatches only.
Box 11
Juno and the Paycock
Note
Notes from designer work book.
Box 11
Juno and the Paycock
Note
Playbill for performance at the L.A. Mark Taper Forum, 1974
Box 15
Les Miserables
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Pencil sketch with swatch.
Box 10
Little Big Man
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Color sketch with swatch. National General, 1970
Box 11
Little Big Man
Note
Notes from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 11
Loose pages from designer work book(s) with moslty swatches
Box 15
Masquerade
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Color sketches.
Box 3
Merry Wives of Windsor
Physical Description: 9 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches. American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, 1975.
(folder 1 of 2)
Box 3
Merry Wives of Windsor
Note
Worklog (schedule). American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, 1975.
Box 3
Merry Wives of Windsor
Physical Description: 19 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches. American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco, 1975.
(folder 2 of 2)
Box 11
Merry Wives of Windsor
Note
Notes from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 10
Michele Abele
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Color sketch with swatch.
Box 9
Molly Maguires (The)
Physical Description: 5 items
Note
Color sketches most with swatches
Box 15
Molly Maguires (The)
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Sketch with swatch.
Box 1
Murder in the Cathedral
Physical Description: 10 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches. UCLA Theatre Group, 1960
Box 1
Music Man
Physical Description: 6 items
Note
Mostly black and white ink sketches with swatches. Warner, 1961
Box 10
Music Man
Physical Description: 5 items
Note
Black and white and color sketches most with swatches. Warner Bros., 1961.
Box 15
My Cousin Rachel
Physical Description: 3 items
Note
Color sketches. Fox, 1952.
Box 11
North Dallas Forty
Note
Notes from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 5
Oliver!
Physical Description: 5 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches along with one black and clear transparency. L.A. Civic
Light Opera, 1962.
Box 11
Oliver!
Note
Playbill, telegram, pages from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 2
On Golden Pond
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Not originals. Photocopies of black and white pencil sketches of Katherine Hepburn, 1981.
Original sketches found under The Prodigal on the verso of The Priest and Agamemnon sketches in
box 5; and under Juno and the Paycock on the verso of Sean O'Casey in box 7.
Box 11
On Golden Pond
Note
Notes from designer work book (with swatches). Appears to include unindentified pages
not related to On golden pond.
Box 5
Othello
Physical Description: 5 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches. L.A. Mark Taper Forum, 1971
Box 2
Postman Always Rings Twice (The)
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Not originals. One is a photocopy of sketch of Cora found under The Prodigal on the verso
of Aegisthus in box 5. One is a commerical reproduction of color Cora sketch.
Box 11
Postman Always Rings Twice (The)
Note
Pages from designer work book (with swatches).
Box 5
Prodigal (The)
Physical Description: 10 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches and one black and white photograph. UCLA Theatre Group,
1960. Original drawings of Cora from Postman Always Rings Twice found on verso of Aegisthus.
Original sketch of Hepburn from On Golden Pond found on verso of Agamemnon.
Box 9
Rainmaker
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Color sketch Tommy Lee Jones, Paramount TV, 1982.
Box 15
Samson and Delilah
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches. Paramount, 1949
Box 9
Santa Barbara Museum of Art Dorothy - Jeakins Drawings for Actors
Note
Exhibit announcement, 1969. Not an original.
Box 15
Sound of Music
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Color sketch with swatch for Julie Andrews character. Fox, 1965.
Box 15
South Pacific
Physical Description: 8 items
Note
Ovesize black and white photographs of island natives for Boar ceremony.
Box 10
Winesburg, Ohio, National Theatre, N.Y., 1958 (George Wallace)
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Color sketch.
Box 2
Winter's Tale (The) (folder 1 of 3)
Physical Description: 12 items
Note
Moslty color sketches with swatches. 2 black and white photographs of sketches and a
page of swatches. American Shakespeare Theatre, CT, 1958 or 1959.
Box 2
Winter's Tale (The) (folder 2 of 3)
Physical Description: 9 items
Note
Moslty color sketches with swatches. American Shakespeare Theatre, CT, 1958 or 1959.
Box 9
Winters Tale (The) (folder 3 of 3)
Physical Description: 1 item
Note
Pen drawing of Bear.
Box 2
Within the Gates
Physical Description: 6 items
Note
Color sketches. Student assignment from Otis Arts Institute, 1932
Box 15
Within the Gates
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches of Young Whore and The Athesist.
Box 2
World of Suzie Wong (The)
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches. Broadhurst, NY, 1958.
Box 15
World of Suzie Wong (The)
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Color sketches with swatches of Coolie Blue and Prostitute.
Box 7
Yeats plays
Physical Description: 2 items
Note
Color sketches (one with swatches). Inlcudes Cathleen NiHoulihan (1952-1953); and Full
Moon In (UCLA, March 1965).