Irene (costume designer)

Irene Lentz
Irene Lentz, Edythe Chapman, and Charles Ray in A Tailor-Made Man (1922)
Born	December 8, 1900 Baker, Montana, U.S.
Died	November 15, 1962 (aged 61) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Suicide
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
Nationality	American
Other names	Irene Gibbons Irene
Occupation	Costume designer
Known for	designing for motion picture actors
Spouse(s)	F. Richard Jones, Elliot Gibbons
Labels	Irene Inc.

Irene Maud Lentz (December 8, 1900–November 15, 1962), also known mononymously and professionally as Irene, was an American fashion designer and costume designer. Her work as a clothing designer in Los Angeles led to her career as a costume designer for films in the 1930s. Lentz also worked under the name Irene Gibbons.^[1]

Early life

Born in Baker, Montana, to Emil Lents and Maud Walters, Lentz started out as an actress under her birth name, appearing in secondary roles in silent films beginning with Mack Sennett in 1921. She played ingenue parts opposite Sennett's leading comedians, Ben Turpin and Billy Bevan. Lentz was directed in her first film by Sennett's production chief, F. Richard Jones; their professional relationship matured into a personal one. They had been married for less than a year when Jones succumbed to tuberculosis in 1930.

Design career

Lentz had been taught sewing as a child and with a flair for style, she decided to open a small dress shop. The success of her designs in her tiny store eventually led to an offer from the Bullocks Wilshire luxury department store to design for their Ladies Custom Salon which catered to a wealthy clientele including a number of Hollywood stars.

Lentz's designs at Bullocks gained her much attention in the film community and she was contracted by independent production companies to design the wardrobe for some of their productions. Billing herself simply as "Irene," her first work came in 1933 on the film Goldie Gets Along featuring her designs for star Lily Damita. However, her big break came when she was hired to create the gowns for Ginger Rogers for her 1937 film Shall We Dance with Fred Astaire. This was followed by more designs in another Ginger Rogers film as well as work for other independents such as Walter Wanger Productions, Hal Roach Studios as well as majors such as RKO, Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures. During the 1930s, Irene Lentz designed the film wardrobe for leading ladies such as Constance Bennett, Hedy Lamarr, Joan Bennett, Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard, Ingrid Bergman, and Loretta Young among others.

Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Through her work, Lentz met and married short story author and screenwriter Eliot Gibbons, brother of multi-Academy Award winning Cedric Gibbons, head of art direction at MGM Studios. Despite her success, working under the powerful set designer Cedric while being married to his brother Eliot was not easy. Irene confided to her close friend Doris Day that the marriage to Eliot was not a happy one.^[2] Generally regarded as the most important and influential production designer in the history of American films, Cedric Gibbons hired Lentz when gown designer Adrian left MGM to join Universal Studios. By 1943 she was a leading costume supervisor at MGM, earning international recognition for her "soufflé creations" and is remembered for her avant-garde wardrobe for Lana Turner in 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice. In 1948, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White for B.F.'s Daughter.

In 1950, Lentz left MGM to open her own fashion house. After being out of the film industry for nearly ten years, in 1960, Doris Day requested her talents for the Universal Studios production Midnight Lace for which Lentz earned a second Academy Award nomination. The following year she did the costume design for another Doris Day film and during 1962 worked on her last production, A Gathering of Eagles.

In 1962, after Doris Day noticed that Lentz seemed upset and nervous, Lentz confided in her that she was in love with actor Gary Cooper and that he was the only man that she had ever loved.^[3][4] Cooper had died in 1961.

Death

On November 15, 1962, three weeks short of her sixty-second birthday, Lentz took room 1129 at the Knickerbocker Hotel, checking in under an assumed name. She jumped to her death from her bathroom window at about 3 p.m., landing on the extended roof of the lobby.^[5]

She had left notes for friends and family, for her ailing husband, and for the hotel residents, apologizing for any inconvenience her death might cause. Per her wishes, she was interred next to her first husband, director F. Richard Jones, in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.^[6]

Legacy

In 2005, Irene Lentz was inducted into the Costume Designers Guild's Anne Cole Hall of Fame.

Selected filmography

Year	Title	Notes
1933	Goldie Gets Along	Costume designer, uncredited
1933	Flying Down to Rio	Cosume designer, uncredited
1937	Shall We Dance	Gowns for Ginger Rogers
1937	Vogues of 1938	Gowns for Joan Bennett
1938	You Can't Take It With You	Gowns for Jean Arthur
1938	Topper Takes a Trip	Gowns for Constance Bennett
1938	Vivacious Lady	Gowns for Ginger Rogers
1939	In Name Only	Gowns for Carole Lombard
1939	Intermezzo: A Love Story	Costume designer for Ingrid Bergman
1939	Midnight	Gowns for Claudette Colbert
1940	Green Hell	Gowns for Jean Arthur
1940	Seven Sinners	Gowns for Marlene Dietrich
1941	That Uncertain Feelings	Gowns for Merle Oberon
1941	Mr. & Mrs. Smith	Gowns for Carole Lombard
1941	To Be or Not to Be	Gowns for Carole Lombard
1942	Take a Letter, Darling	Gowns for Rosalind Russell
1942	You Were Never Lovelier	Gowns for Rita Hayworth
1943	No Time for Love	Gowns for Claudette Colbert
1943	Girl Crazy	Costume supervisor
1944	Gaslight	Costume designer
1944	Meet Me in St. Louis	Costume supervisor
1944	Bathing Beauty	Costume supervisor
1945	The Picture of Dorian Grey	Costume supervisor
1945	Week-End at the Waldorf	Costume supervisor
1946	Harvey Girls, TheThe Harvey Girls	Costume supervisor
1946	Ziegfeld Follies	Costume designer/supervisor, uncredited
1947	Lady in the Lake	Costume supervisor
1947	Cass Timberlane	Costume designer
1948	Easter Parade	Costume designer (women)
1948	Pirate, TheThe Pirate	Costume supervisor
1949	Barkleys of Broadway, TheThe Barkleys of Broadway	Costume designer
1949	Neptune's Daughter	Costume designer
1950	Shadow on the Wall	Costume designer
1960	Midnight Lace	Gowns for Doris Day
1961	Lover Come Back	Gown for Doris Day
1963	Gathering of Eagles, AA Gathering of Eagles	Costume designer

References

1. Hall, Mary (March 23, 2009). "Angelina Jolie's Costumes in The Tourist Pay Homage to MGM Fashion Designer Irene Lentz". Huffington Post. Retrieved August 7, 2011.
2. In Day's autobiography, she wrote that in 1962, Irene "had an unhappy marriage to a man who lived out of the state and only occasionally came to visit her."
3. Day, Doris; Hotchner, A.E. (Oct 1976) [1975]. Doris Day: Her Own Story (Bantam mass market paperback) (6th printing ed.). New York: William Morrow. p. 237. ISBN 0-553-02888-X.
4. Day later wrote that she got the feeling that she was the first person to whom Irene had confided this information. She also wrote: "Thinking about it now, I cannot honestly say whether Irene's love was one-sided or whether she and Cooper had actually had or were having an affair."
5. "Irene Gibbons". Retrieved March 19, 2013.
6. Michelle Vogel (2012). McFarland, ed. Lupe V'Lez: The Life and Career of Hollywood's Mexican Spitfire. p. 47. ISBN 978-0786461394.

External links

• Irene at the Internet Movie Database
• Irene at Find a Grave