For
many classic movie fans, costume design begins and ends with Edith Head, but
Orry-Kelly was nearly as prestigious in their day. He dressed some of Hollywood’s
most elegant actresses, but he did it at the gritty guns-and-gangsters studio,
Warner Brothers. Not that it’s anyone’s business, but he also happened to be
Australian. His fellow countryman Gillian Armstrong provides Orry-Kelly’s
overdue ovation in the documentary Women
He’s Undressed (trailer
here), which
screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
In
his early years, Orry Kelly (as he was born) probably knew more gangsters
intimately than all of Warner Brothers’ tough guys put together. In some cases,
“intimately” was indeed the right word. Surviving a number of scrapes, Kelly
eventually made his way to Hollywood, by way of New York. Almost immediately,
Kelly began living quite openly with a future legendary movie star. Armstrong’s
talking heads make no bones about their relationship, but evidently the
Hollywood icon was rather litigious on the subject, so we will leave it to Undressed to reveal his identity, when
it screens again in Toronto, North by Northwest of here. (By the way, that was
an impression of Walter Winchell.)
In
time both men caught on with the studios plying their respective crafts.
Warners wasn’t crazy about Kelly’s name, but they compromised on the hyphen,
assuming it sounded classier, like Rimsky-Korsakov or something. Obviously,
there was a falling out between Orry-Kelly and the other gent, but he had
plenty of champions, most notably including Bette Davis and Rosalind Russell,
neither of whom were shrinking violets. Of course, Orry-Kelly’s career had its
ups and downs, but somehow he managed to not merely dress, but shape the images
of some of Hollywood’s biggest sex symbols, such as Marilyn Monroe and Betty
Grable.
If
you want dish, Undressed delivers
dish, while always remaining impeccably tailored. In addition, Armstrong
enlisted an actor play Orry-Kelly to help tell his story through dramatic
monologues and expressionistic vignettes. However, these are rather
hit-or-miss, especially considering Darren Gilshenan is not exactly a dead
ringer for the actual Orry-Kelly (whom we only see in archival photos as the
film winds down). Nonetheless, the designer’s Hollywood in-fighting and his
deal-with-it attitude are always compelling and frequently entertaining stuff.
