Gowns by Adrian

Gloria Swanson, playing Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard famously said, “We had faces then.” That’s true. But even more importantly, the female stars of Hollywood’s golden age had clothes.

Adrian Greenburg (1903-1959, shown at left with Greta Garbo in the pajamas he designed for her in The Single Standard (1929), generally known by the name Adrian alone, was a Connecticut born Hollywood costume designer famous for The Wizard of Oz and other MGM films of the 1930s and 1940s. During his 25-year career, “Gowns by Adrian” was a credit attached to more than 230 films. He created the padded shoulder look that Joan Crawford made famous. He dressed Greta Garbo* for virtually her entire movie career.

The December 1932 issue of Fortune magazine wrote an in-depth piece about MGM’s success. Focusing on Irving Thalberg, the studio executive in charge of production at the time, he said that the praise for MGM’s success should really go to two others – art director Cedric Gibbons and costume designer Gilbert Adrian, as he was known for a while (Gilbert Adrian was a combination of his and his father's first names).

Born Adrian Adolph Greenburg (his last name is often misspelled with three “e”s) on March 3, 1903, he graduated from Naugatuck High School (Connecticut) in 1920. His parents, Gilbert and Helena Greenburg, owned a millinery shop on Church Street.

Adrian studied art at the New York School for Fine Arts and Design (now the Parsons School of Design), then transferred to the school’s Paris campus, where American composer Irving Berlin admired one of Adrian’s costumes on a model. Seeking fresh material for his next project, Berlin asked Adrian to join him in New York to work on costume designs for the show Music Box Revue.

Although openly gay, in 1939 Adrian entered into a lavender marriage with actress Janet Gaynor, the lover of Mary Martin, in response to the anti-gay attitudes of movie studio heads, particularly Louis B. Mayer, who ran MGM studios.

In 1925 Adrian (at left) became head costume designer for Cecil B. DeMille's independent film studio. When DeMille moved to MGM, Adrian became chief costume designer at the studio, where he went on to design costumes for over 200 films. Among them were George Cukor's 1939 film, The Women, filmed in black and white; it originally included a 10-minute fashion parade in Technicolor, which featured Adrian's most outré designs. Often cut in TV screenings, the segment was restored to the film by Turner Classic Movies.

During this time, Adrian worked with some of the biggest female stars of the day like Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Jeanette MacDonald, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford. After leaving MGM, he established his own fashion house, which produced designs sold through Macy's department store. He also produced fragrances, notably"Saint" and "Sinner" perfumes and "Gilbert" cologne.

After suffering a heart attack in 1952, Adrian closed his business and retired to a ranch in Brazil, where he spent his time painting landscapes. He returned to California in 1958 to design costumes for two stage musicals. Before competing Camelot, he suffered a second, fatal heart attack in 1959 at the age of 56. However, there was rumor and speculation at the time that his death was actually a suicide.

*Garbo's film Camille (1936) is considered to be an entirely gay film, because every actor (notably Robert Taylor) and actress involved, as well as the director (Cukor) and all the designers, were either gay or bisexual.

Adrian's famous costume design for Katherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story (1940):

...and for Jean Harlow in Dinner at Eight (1933):

...not to mention Joan Crawford in Grand Hotel (1932):

...and Miss Crawford again in Letty Lynton (1932):

Duncan Grant

Duncan Grant: Bathing (1910)

Scottish born artist Duncan Grant (1885-1978) accomplished much more than the homoerotic nudes for which he is best remembered. He also worked in interior design and forged a career in costume and stage set design.  At age 28, along with art critic and fellow Bloomsbury figure Roger Fry, Grant founded the Omega Workshops, which changed the course of applied art and design in Britain. In this capacity Grant made major contributions to pottery and textile design.

One of his greatest commissions, however, was never realized. Hired to decorate the interiors of the great ocean liner, the Queen Mary, he completed the task, submitted his designs and was paid for his work. Although he was offered no explanation as to why his designs were not used, it was commonly understood that his work was too avant garde for tastes of the time.

Self portrait in mirror (1920)



Grant grew up an only child in Scotland, Burma and India, where his father served in British military regiments. Duncan’s English nanny encouraged his painting and took delight in his juvenile designs for wedding dresses. The young Duncan was influenced by the spectacle of the weekly regimental ceremonies and parades that took place in the numerous cities in India where his family was stationed at the close of the 19th century. They enjoyed a life of privilege, strictly maintaining British customs while living in the Subcontinent. At age nine Grant returned to Britain to attend boarding school. Although he won awards for art and music, he was otherwise a poor student. Coupled with his father’s financial difficulties, Grant  was unable to attend the prestigious schools his mother had hoped for. Instead, he settled into the Westminster School of Art (London). From that time forward, he never strayed from pursuing a career as an artist.

Duncan studied in Paris in 1906, and later at the Slade School of Art. He moved to 21 Fitzroy Square (London) in 1909 and thereafter became a regular at gatherings of members of the Bloomsbury group. Sharing with Roger Fry and Vanessa Bell a commitment to the decorative arts, he became co-director of the Omega Workshops in 1913.

Duncan Grant: textile design for embroidered firescreen, 1913







By all accounts a handsome, kind and charming person, Grant’s lovers included Adrian Stephen, Maynard Keynes and David Garnett, as well as his cousin Lytton Strachey. Though his sexual orientation remained homosexual throughout his life, he was the father of Vanessa Bell's daughter Angelica, and lived for many years at Charleston farm with the Bell family.

Charleston manor house

1930s photograph of the drawing room at Charleston, decorated by Duncan Grant


Herself an accomplished artist, Angelica grew up believing that Clive Bell was her father; she bore his surname and his behavior toward her never indicated otherwise. Angelica had sexual relations with two of Duncan Grant’s lovers, the Russian painter George Bergen and David Garnett, whom she married, unaware that her husband had been her father’s lover. I’m not making this up. In 1994 Angelica donated more than 8000 sketches and drawings by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell to The Charleston Trust. Some of Grant’s major works hang in London’s prestigious Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery.

Duncan Grant: Interior with the Artist’s Daughter (oil on canvas, 1935)
   
In Grant's later years, poet Paul Roche (1916–2007), whom he had known since the mid-1940s, took care of him and enabled Grant to maintain his accustomed way of life at Charleston for many years. When Grant had been commissioned to decorate the Russell Chantry in Lincoln Cathedral in the late 1950s, Grant used his lover Paul Roche, youthful, blond and handsome, as the model for the face and body of Christ (below). The murals have recently been restored and the chantry reopened. Roche was made co-heir of Grant's estate, and Grant eventually died in Roche's home in 1978.