Julie Harris

Julie Harris was interviewed by Jo Botting at the National Film Theatre on 8th June 2002.

Harris began her career in costume design just as the art was gaining recognition from the Academy; the first Oscar for Best Costume Design was awarded in 1948. In this interview she describes some of the changes that have taken place in the industry over the course of career.

• From Sinatra to Rollerball
• The Secrets of Success
• All the Beautiful Frocks

Interview © BFI 2002

From Sinatra to Rollerball

Jo Botting: Julie, you have worked on over 70 films during your career but you chose Goodbye, Mr. Chips to be shown at the NFT today. Is it you personal favourite?

Julie Harris: No, it isn't particularly. I would like to say thank you to the NFT for arranging this. It has been a real ego trip.

[Laughter]

I have to go back to my younger days, when I just adored Hollywood musicals. I didn't know whether I wanted to be an actress or a singer then. I don't know that I thought about costume design particularly. You are lucky that I can't sing tonight because I might get carried away. I might say, 'Matthew, tonight I am going to be Alice Faye' and go through the doors with the ice.

[Laughter]

I saw a very good Hollywood film the other day. It was about Cole Porter. Oh no, it wasn't. Anyway, the point is all these wonderful people were in it. Frank Sinatra, when he was young, and Tony Bennett, when he could sing, Lena Horne, Dinah Shore and all those people. And just at the end, there was a little bit of Gower Champion - who was a wonderful dancer and choreographer. And I would never have believed that 20 years on I would have met Gower Champion and that I would have danced with Gower Champion. He was going to direct Goodbye, Mr. Chips but in the end he didn't. It was directed by Herb Ross, who himself had been a choreographer and it was the first film he had directed. It was all a bit tense and uptight and it wasn't the happiest film for me. But I enjoyed it and went to lovely places like Pompeii and Sherbourne. I fell in love with Dorset and ended up living there for a while.

But it was a great deal of work and not all of it was the pretty frocks and things. There was a tremendous amount with those boys, as you can imagine. I can't remember how many there were but we had such trouble with endless jackets, trousers, shirts and ties. The boaters used to really suffer because they kicked them around a bit. We had an awful drama on the first day of shooting. Do you remember the first shot in the film, when the camera pans up and you see all these boys? That was the very first thing that we filmed and when the clothes were unpacked none of the ties and hatbands had any stripes on them. The costumiers had sent them all in plain because there had been some kind of drama there. There was a horrible moment when we thought we would have to say to the director that things were not ready.

But we had a wonderful wardrobe supervisor called Betty Adamson, who found art students in Sherbourne and lots of pots of white paint and brushes. And they all sat down and painted the stripes. It went on almost all night. They painted stripes on all the ties and boaters. It was fine in the end and they were all ready for the huge shot at the beginning. But the boys did have quite a lot of changes ' there was all that sporting stuff, the cadets and when it was wartime they had slightly different clothing. And, right at the end, they get into normal sports jackets and tweeds. And, again, there were all these shirts and ties and things. So it was a huge job.

On the speech day, the production designer, who has a lot of say in things, and sometimes I didn't agree with him but I had to do what I was told, wanted the speech day to be all in neutral colours for the women, which was a good thing. So there was a large crowd but no-one was wearing bright blue or pink or red. It was all cream, beige and grey. But it meant that every single dress had to be made and everyone had to be fitted because it was period. And we graded those dresses. There were some that had to be done quite cheaply and fairly quickly, and there were some that had to be quite nicely made. And, when we were fitting the crowd, we used to pick out the smarter ones and put them in an A dress. Those in the middle got a B ticket. And the other ones got C tickets and they were meant to be at the back of the crowd. But it doesn't always happen like that when you get them out on the set. Those with a C ticket could have been right at the front. I am sure none of you imagine all the work that does go on.

My favourite moment was the musical number. I also liked the song 'What a lot of flowers'. Petula had about 8 different changes of dresses. I liked some of those dresses better than some of the dresses that you saw for a longer time in the film. I always sit there biting my nails wondering if I like what I've done and then I think, 'Oh actually, I do.' It was really quite a lot of work but, was it was my favourite? - I really don't know.

JB: You've worked on many period films during your career. Are they a dream or a nightmare for a designer?

JH: They are much nicer. I would loathe to work on modern films. I don't understand what modern clothes are about at all. I really have a generation gap about modern clothes. You do sketches first when you do period films. People think that the sketches are quite pretty and they like that and that's how it's got to be. But with modern things it's different because the director can look at them and might say, 'Oh, my wife doesn't like that.' They all know about modern clothes. But with period clothes, people know less so they accept the pretty drawing that I give them. The people wearing them like them better as well.

The actors nowadays, both young men and young ladies, don't always wear their period clothes as well as they might. They tend to stomp around a bit in them. I would much rather do period things. I think one of my favourites was The Slipper and the Rose. It's a musical set in a rather nice period, the Georgian period. It's a fairytale - you can't have more than that.

JB: You also worked on a futuristic film, Rollerball. How do you set about designing for the future?

JH: It is interesting now, with all the World Cup going on. With Rollerball, there was this fantastic game going on. Although it's a very violent game, so you can't compare it to football. But the main character, Jonathan, is similar to Beckham. Everybody is chanting, 'Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan' in the film and he is a great star. He goes to Japan. But they play this violent game that is never explained, but I am sure it's all about possession. I don't know much about football but everyone seems to say that it is all about possession. It's the same with Rollerball, with this vicious little steel ball that they play with.

The film was made 30 years ago. At the time it was 30 years ahead and, of course, we are 30 years ahead now. So it's just as well we didn't dress them up in silly space costumes because we don't look very much different to 30 years ago. The production designer, John Box, was a great influence, which was good. I did not know how to tackle the women's costumes. He suggested that the evening dresses had a simple, Grecian air about them. I think some people might wear those kinds of dresses today. There was nothing in that film that we have today, really. There were no water bottles, mobile phones, computers ' none of the amazing technology we have today. There was just one huge, strange computer that Ralph Richardson seemed to be in charge of. All the books in the world had been put into this computer.

Otherwise, it dealt with the game and the corporate society that we live in. None of it does bear any relation to thirty years later. The film has been remade very recently. It has been shown in America and it will be shown here. It's very interesting to see how they do it thirty years later.

The Secrets of Success

JB: Do you have a favourite film amongst those you have worked on?

JH: It varies. Darling, obviously, is a favourite because it had the happy ending with the Oscar, which I never might have believed beforehand. Again, it wasn't a hugely happy experience. I joined the film at the last minute. John Schlesinger had one of his friends designing it and he had never done a film before. Ten days before it started, they didn't have any costumes. I was rung up and joined up. At the time, I thought, 'Oh no, a lot of shopping. I am not sure I want to do that'. I initially had to go shopping with Julie Christie to buy things for the Chelsea end of it. All of the better clothes, we were able to make. We had lovely locations, again, in Capri and Florence, and, for me, of course, a very nice ending.

I like films for silly reasons. I did a film called Dracula and it was very nice because I had lots of trips to New York on Concorde. So I liked that. I liked The Slipper and the Rose, as I have already mentioned, because it was such a lovely film to do. I liked The Beatles' films Help and A Hard Day's Night. They were great. It was so exciting to be working with them. It was great to be on set when they were doing their numbers. It was wonderful.

JB: Forty years in the business, one Oscar and one British Academy Award - what is the secret of your success?

JH: Luck. When you look at Darling and the Oscars, it has to be luck. It was a black and white film and it was the last time that there was a black and white Oscar. The colour winner that year was Doctor Zhivago. I was in the black and white category, which was great. The Americans thought that swinging London and that Darling look were great. But it didn't cut any ice here. There was not even a nomination.

JB: I think you are being overly modest and not really telling us the secret of your success.

JH: A lot of it, as it is in any job in life, is being in the right place at the right time. It is helpful when people who like working with you ask for you to work on the next one, like with The Slipper and the Rose. I had worked a lot with Bryan Forbes and if he had wanted someone else I might have gone. I was on the picture before him, actually, but when Bryan came on the picture he might have let me go if he didn't like working with me.

I got the boot once from Stanley Donen. The film was called The Little Prince. He had already gone through two designers and a friend of mine, who was a production designer, rang me up and asked if I would like to have a go. I had a rather nervous lunch with Stanley Donen and then went off to do my sketches. They were doing it at Elstree Studios, which is quite small. The set they were doing it on was quite cramped. It seemed silly to take all the sketches onto the set so I set them all up in the wardrobe room. I told Mr Donen that, if he would like to come and look at them, we could discuss it. I think he did eventually go and have a look at then. But then I got the chop because I was a prima donna. I think he had two more designers after that.

JB: You began your career after World War II and, in the early 1950's, you were contracted to Rank. Was that an enjoyable experience?

JH: The Rank contract years were good. The whole experience of film-making then was so much happier and simpler. We had better times then. The contract artists there weren't starlets ' they were simply contract artists. There were people like Dirk Bogarde on the list. I mostly used to dress the girls when they went to film festivals, like the Cannes film festival or the Royal Command. There was Diana Dors there, who had a dreadful mink bikini. You didn't get bothered by the script then. There was no, 'Oh, she's only secretary, you can't give her all those beads' or, 'The dress is going to get torn or get wet.' It was lovely, you could just do what you hoped were really good dresses.

All the Beautiful Frocks

JB: I would now like to throw it open to the audience. Does anyone have any questions?

Q: Were the designs for the 'London is London' number based on any show from the past?

JH: It's interesting that you say that because I did do lots of theatre reference from that period. There are wonderful museums with lots of photographs of 1920's musicals. So, the whole feeling of the hats and the other things was very much as they were. They were a little twee, perhaps. The designs were not copied, though. That was one of my favourite bits but you wouldn't have a musical running for eight minutes today and Petula Clark had five changes of clothing.

Q: Was there a big difference designing for black and white films and colour films?

JH: Yes. With the black and white films, one was concerned with tone. It was sometimes quite difficult if you wanted to do a dramatic dress and you might have thought that the lady was going to wear red. Red would just go grey in black and white so you would put her in something else. You had to make sure that the tone of your dress was not the same tone as the curtains, for instance. We did Darling in black and white and that was a lot later. It is sometimes a relief to do it in black and white.

Q: Does it make any difference to you who the director of photography is?

JH: Yes, it does. It's either the camera or the director. It makes me so cross when you give them a whole outfit and then somebody shoots it from very far away. Ossy Morris, who worked on Goodbye, Mr Chips, was a wonderful photographer to work with. It's nice when you work with someone who has an eye for clothes and will show what you've given them. In Goodbye, Mr Chips there was a scene when Ursula came down the steps and the whole dress was better than the bit at the top. It was beautifully shaded, beaded, orange and brown dress. The feathers all came from Paris and were specially dyed. But you just saw the top bit, the ugly bit.

Q: That's the director's fault

JH: But because Herb Ross hadn't directed anything, I think Ossy could have put it to him better.

Q: Do you prefer to work on a big budget film or low budget ones?

JH: I find shoestrings very hard work. I like big budgets. I liked Live and Let Die, where money was no object. Someone can come in and say, 'We want ten of those for tomorrow, go out and get them whatever they cost' and you could do it. But it's much more difficult on a shoestring. You spend a lot of your time going from shop to shop trying to find the same thing, but a bit cheaper. It is very wearing, I assure you.

Q: How much influence do the stars of the film have on what they wear?

JH: With period film, they have much less influence. Melina Mercouri, in The Gypsy and the Gentleman, didn't want to wear the Regency period clothes that were required. All her clothes had to be adapted. They came out rather like evening dresses. I don't think it really mattered because the film was a load of rubbish. Another one who could not wear high waists was Ursula Andress, who had such a beautiful figure and was such fun. It was the high waist period in Casino Royale, which was in 1967, but it just didn't suit her. So everything she wore had a waist. She had a wonderful little waist. They could say, 'I never wear blue' or 'I don't like this or that.' But I think that I was lucky in that I didn't get anybody who was too difficult. I didn't get any of the Faye Dunaways of the world.

I did get Joan Crawford. The first film I did with her was [The Story of] Esther Costello. She came with her own wardrobe from Hollywood. There wasn't a day without something being taken in or let out. She came with this whole entourage, so you never really got near her. That's another thing about today's stars that makes me glad that I'm not doing it any more. The stars come with ten people all around them. I don't know how you ever make any personal contact with them.

JB: Did you find some actors or actresses more of a pleasure to design for?

JH: My favourite was Deborah Kerr, a most elegant lady who was lovely. We did several films together, so we had a friendship. It becomes very easy in these instances. Ursula Andress was fun. As for the men - Gary Cooper, David Niven and Gregory Peck. It was wonderful measuring for those men. Richard Chamberlain on The Slipper and the Rose was lovely to work with. He wore the clothes so beautifully and sang his songs so well.

JB: I must ask you to tell the story about Edith Evans on The Whisperers.

JH: The Whisperers was a film by Bryan Forbes about an old aged pensioner who kept hearing things. The main part was played by Edith Evans, who was a truly grand lady. Sadly, people today say, 'Who's Edith Evans?' She was a wonderful actress. She could look absolutely stunning. On The Whisperers she had to look like this funny, dotty old lady. I got a load of old clothes and we tried them on. I had bought a tatty old fur coat for a pound on Portobello Road. This was 1967 or 1968. I put her in this moth-eaten old fur coat and strange felt hat. She still looked like this terribly grand lady. The fur coat was out. It was quite difficult making her look the part.

I did other films with her. She was in The Slipper and the Rose - it was her last film. She was so professional at fittings. She didn't fidget or want to sit down. We were filming The Slipper and the Rose at Southwark Cathedral during the hottest summer ever. Edith just sat there very quietly in her full costume and said, 'Why do they all rush about so much? Why don't they just sit still?' Everyone was running about everywhere, pulling their clothes off and using little electric fans. They were making themselves hotter and hotter. And dear Edith just sat there. It was wonderful.

Q: What happens to all the beautiful frocks that you make when filming finishes? Where do they go?

JH: During wartime, all the costumes were made new to hire - whether they were period or modern. The company therefore did not have pay the purchase tax. At the end of the picture, they all went back to the costumiers. When it was modern clothes, they were all kept in the wardrobe and looked after and dished out to the stars as and when they needed them. In an ordinary modern film, the stars were able to buy their clothes if they wanted. Or, if they were lucky, they were given them. In Casino Royale, Ursula Andress was given all her clothes - a mink coat, a broadtail coat, several beautiful dresses. She was a darling girl but so acquisitive. What she did with all these clothes I cannot imagine. I think they just hung in a cupboard somewhere. I have no idea what they do today.

Q: Does the costume designer have responsibility for the star's hair?

JH: I wish we did have responsibility for the hair. I have been screwed up by the hair on many occasions. I didn't actually like Petula's hair in Goodbye, Mr Chips. I think she looked much prettier when it was longer. Although they know that they are going to wear a hat sometimes, it doesn't always get through. Diana Rigg was busy doing a Sondheim musical during Hazard of Hearts and there wasn't much time for fitting. On the day that she came to shoot, on location, I walked into her caravan. And Cleo Laine was sitting there. She had a terrible curly thing going on. But it was there and we were stuck with it. It didn't enhance the clothes particularly and when she put the hat on it was pure hell.

It happened again on Perfect Hero with Nigel Havers. It was set in the forties. Joanna Lumley had to wear a blonde page boy style wig. It was a dreadful thing. She looked like a drag queen. Again, when my hat got put on it spoilt the whole thing. You have to tread very carefully to mention anything to the hairdressers.

Q: Do you work together with the hairdresser?

JH: Together is not quite the word but you try. It was wonderful in the old Lime Grove days. It doesn't quite happen like that, much as it should.

Q: Why was Petula Clark chosen for Goodbye, Mr Chips?

JH: She was chosen because she had just done Finian's Rainbow. She was money in the bank then. That was why.

[Laughter]

Q: Do some directors have clearer directions than others about what they want?

JH: Yes. They vary so much. Some are not particularly interested in the clothes. An American director called Raoul Walsh on The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw didn't give a damn about what Jayne Mansfield was wearing. He just wanted to get the horses going. Dick Lester would be very pedantic. He would say, 'I want him to wear a brown suit, a suede tie and red socks.' You would spend a whole day getting that together but you would never see it. He would have forgotten it by the time you get on the set. Some directors are more interested than others. Sometimes the producer has more say and the director takes what he is given. On other occasions, you don't see the producer very much and the director is the one who it is all about.

Q: What was it like working with Billy Wilder?

JH: Disappointing, in a way. I was so excited about working with him. I was so filled with admiration for his work but I worked with him when he was past his best. In the middle of the film, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Robert Stephens took it upon himself to take an overdose. Something mysterious happened and we had to stop for three weeks. The whole thing never came together after that. I never felt Billy was terribly interested in it. He certainly wasn't interested in the costumes or the period feel of it. He was not a period person. But I am very pleased to say that I have worked with him. He was wonderful.

JB: Thank you very much, Julie.

[Applause]