ORRY-KELLY: THE WOMEN HE'S UNDRESSED.

The Women He’s Undressed

Orry-Kelly. 1898 - 1964.

 

Review by Allison O’Donoghue

 

A Documentary by Gillian Armstrong.

 

Not everyone has heard of Australian costume designer to the stars Orry George Kelly, who came from obscurity, rose to the top of Hollywood then disappeared into obscurity again. He won three Oscars for An American in Paris (1951), Les Girls (1957) and Some Like It Hot (1959), and dressed the most glamorous women in Hollywood. He was a gay icon with a large following in Sydney, so I’d heard of him and seen some of his costumes in various films, but knew very little about him. The arts scene in Sydney loved him and aspired to be like him. If a little known gay guy from the tiny seaside town of Kiama, NSW could make it in Hollywood, then so could they. Today, Hollywood is awash with Australians taking over tinsel town but back in the 1930s/40s Australians were unheard of, except for maybe Errol Flynn or Rod Taylor. We were a blip in the middle of the ocean.
 

So I trotted off with anticipation to my local cinema to watch Gillian Armstrong’s, The Women He Undressed, rather than wait for the DVD. I bumped into an old man who had seen it three times and this was his fourth before it finished its run. He sung its praises, so it must be good, right? Not so fast. In the end I was disappointed, and disappointed that I was disappointed. I’ll explain…
 
Orry-Kelly was born in 1898 in Kiama, NSW and moved to Sydney when he was 17 to study banking but ended up hanging out in Kings Cross with Les Girls gals and watched, with fascination, the streetwalkers ply their trade. He fell in love with their sense of style and referenced them often in his costume designs for such films as, Auntie Mame (1958), Les Girls (1957), Gypsy (1962) and especially Some Like It Hot (1959), which garnered him his third and last Academy Award.



Orry-Kelly With Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot.



Orry- Kelly fitting Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot.

With his love of all things sparkly, it’s not surprising he didn’t succeed in banking; his heart wasn’t in it, besides his nightlife didn’t quite suit banking hours. However, it was something more sinister and possibly illegal (no one really knows, but it’s safe to say with his attraction to the underground, he fell in with bad company) that saw him flee Sydney and head to America, specifically New York. He shacked up with a little known British actor named Archie Leach who later became known as Cary Grant and together they did everything and anything they could to survive. Rumors swirled that he enjoyed a live-in romantic relationship with Archie until Grant moved Hollywood, and moved on to women.

 

Cary Grant with Katherine Hepburn. 

The romantic entanglement apparently lasted for over 5 years, so it was obviously a well-established relationship, therefore a mystery why the filmmakers didn’t openly explore this theme. Annoyingly, the relationship is referenced in hushed tones, you know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Even more perplexing, is why Grant is referred to as the man-who-can’t-be-named or him, especially when they repeatedly show photos of him. Why? Homophobia is not nearly as prevalent in Hollywood today as it was back then, so it’s a pointless exercise. Besides, Orry-Kelly never hid his homosexuality - he was always out no matter the danger. I'm sure some of the stars he dressed felt safe and secure in the knowledge that he wasn’t going to cop-a-feel. Maybe that was also the not-so-secret ingredient to his success.
 

Orry-Kelly moved from NY to Hollywood in 1932, where the George was dropped and his named amalgamated to sound and look more European, which he thought was wanky, but he went with it anyway. He promptly secured work at Warner Bros as their chief costume designer where he stayed until 1944. He forged a life-long friendship with Jack Warner’s wife Ann who he bequeathed all his worldly goods.The researchers discovered his treasure trove stored in a warehouse gathering dust on the Warner’s Bros lot, along with his 3 Oscars. Some of this archival material along with his drawings, letters, swatches, costumes and film clips are now featured in an exhibition entitled Orry-Kelly: Dressing Hollywood, at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), which opened in August 2015. But strangely not all of the material was used in the film.

Orry-Kelly dressed all the major stars of the day, Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia de Havilland, Katherine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davies, Kay Francis, Ava Gardner, Delores del Rio, Shirley McClain, Jane Fonda and many, many more, until he was bumped out by the likes of Edith Head. Film clips of various movies featuring the beautiful women he dressed in magnificent costumes are interspersed throughout the documentary, however not enough attention is paid to individual pieces, especially his Oscar winning wardrobes. 

Casablanca.

He made the costumes for classics such as, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Oklahoma! and 42nd Street, to name but a few. He worked on over 300 films during his spectacular career, but in the end alcoholism got the better of him, which saw him fired from Warner Bros in 1944. He went into Rehab, then known as a sanitarium and came out ready to take on Hollywood again, where he freelanced for Universal, RKO, MGM and 20^th Century Fox. But alcohol was his undoing and he died in 1964 at 65yrs from liver disease and given a Hollywood send off with pallbearers, Cary Grant, Billy Wilder, Tony Curtis and George Cukor. In the end Cary didn’t completely desert his long lost lover, he came back to send him off, however the film doesn’t touch on this point, which is odd given the focus on their relationship. Orry-Kelly was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in the Hollywood Hills,  near all his contemporaries and not far from MM’s tomb. 

Marilyn Monroe screen test.

Orry-Kelly wrote a memoir Women I’ve Undressed and gave it to relatives in Kiama for safe keeping, who unearthed it when they heard a documentary was being made. So presumably the source material for the film was based largely on the memoir, hence the title. And if he did ruminate about his lost love affair with Cary Grant, then maybe it was a way of purging his soul and getting it out there, but I’m sure he shared much more on his brilliant career that was certainly worth chronicling.

Archie Leach. 

 It’s widely reported Grant threatened to sue Orry if he published his memoir, and maybe that's why he gave it to his relatives. But all parties concerned are long since dead, so who’s going to sue now? Exploring the lovers theme in depth may offend some people, but surely most of them are long gone. Even more annoying, Armstrong went back to the relationship repeatedly hinting and speculating, instead of focusing on Orry-Kelly and his brilliant career. By all means make mention of the relationship, but not over and over again without a satisfactory resolution or conclusion. Quite frankly, it was a missed opportunity to really expose the relationship and out Cary Grant, once and for all.

Cary Grant.

And now to my biggest beef with The Women He’s Undressed. You’d be safe in thinking a film depicting the life and times of Orry-Kelly would feature, surprise, surprise, Orry-Kelly. Not so. Instead, Armstrong used the tried and tested narrative device of reenactments. Nothing wrong with that, but when the person in question has a plethora of costumes in Museums and private collections, three Oscar winning acceptance speeches and endless stills photography of him dressing and undressing stars, it's insulting to the man himself and the audience to show only 2 minutes of a few stills at the very end of the film.

I want to see more of Orry-Kelly and less of the actors. It’s ok to use the reenactment device intermittently and sparingly, but not for every scene. Although, Darren Gilshenan who plays Orry-Kelly with a permanent smirk on his face, and Deborah Kennedy, who plays is mother, are superb, it’s nonetheless distracting and it takes away from the film instead of enhancing it. Gilshenan spends the majority of his appearances in a row boat. The metaphors not lost, smooth sailing, rough waters, sinking, drowning in debt, drowning his sorrows, etc. The narrative was often snippy, bitchy and condescending, and maybe that’s who Orry-Kelly really was, especially when drunk. If that's the case then explore that aspect of his personality, but we’ll never know, because we don’t hear him speak much less see him.

    
When the film actually delves into things he did say about dressing stars like Bette Davis with her extra large breasts and refusal to wear a bra - as she thought it caused breast cancer - and his inventiveness to distract from her breast line and accentuate other features - that’s when the film got interesting. This is when I sat up again, and took interest, but disappointment loomed large when Armstrong delved back into his relationship with Grant and his relationship with Randolph Scott. Who cares? It’s not about Cary Grant, it’s supposed to be about Orry-Kelly. Show me some costumes. Show me more of Orry-Kelly.

Randolph Scott and Cary Grant.

Maybe Orry-Kelly was heartbroken over his love affair with Cary Grant, and it would have been difficult in Tinsel town to avoid him completely, especially when they worked on Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) together, but this was only one aspect of his life. I’m sure his body of work, which was enormous, spoke volumes about his work ethic, ingenuity and beautiful costume design, which in turn, inspired many future costume designers including the elusive Edith Head, and Australian Oscar winner Catherine Martin. He went from one film to another, in a bid to keep himself busy and relevant. But with so much focus on Archie Leach and their ill-fated love affair, we have no idea if he had other relationships, for how long or with whom.

Jane Fonda.

The only true insights you get into the man come from the few women he dressed who are still alive today like, Jane Fonda and Angela Lansbury who obviously admired and loved him. Or fellow costume designers like the crusty Ann Roth who worked with him or fellow Australian and Oscar winner Catherine Martin who aspired to his greatness, and succeeded. Again, that’s when it gets interesting.    

If Academy award winning documentary filmmakers the Burns Brothers, can make outstanding documentaries using only still photography about how the West was won in America, then surely Armstrong could have strung together a series of photos to give us a clearer picture of Orry-Kelly, the man.

I’m disappointed, more so, because I admire Gillian Armstrong and have watched every film she’s ever made. I particularly loved her 2005 documentary Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst which was very entertaining. Although, she uses the reenactment device, it doesn’t distract because she also gives us plenty of photographic images of her and samples of her wonderful wallpaper designs which fleshed out her character so we have a clear picture of who she was. Her death was an unsolved mystery, and the perpetrator never caught which only adds to the story. After watching The Women He’s Undressed I am no clearer on Orry-Kelly than I was before I walked in to the cinema.   

I’ll have to get his memoir, The Women I‘ve Undressed to find out all the gossip on the stars he dressed and undressed with salacious little ditties about their likes, dislikes and indiscretions, which would’ve made for a very stimulating and enlightening documentary, and one I’d really like to see.

As a true documentary, The Women He’s Undressed was very disappointing.

MM with Lauren Bacall.

Lauren Bacall, Steven and Humphrey Bogart.

Marilyn Monroe in a figure hugging dress.

Natalie Wood.