^Richard Holcomb, 1986 NEW STAGECRAFT PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO TWO MUSICAL
COMEDY COSTUME DESIGNS OF MILES WHITE
by
RICHARD H0LC014B, B.A. , M.A.
A DISSERTATION
IN
FINE ARTS
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
May, 1986 CONTENTS
FIGURES ^^
CHAPTER
I. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL AND MILES
WHITE'S CAREER AS COSTUME DESIGNER 1
Introduction 1
Vita-Miles White 4
A Brief History of the American Musical and Its
Relationship to the New Stagecraft 12
Summary 32
II. A CHRONOLOGY OF MILES WHITE'S MUSICAL COMEDY DESIGN CAREER. . 33
Chronology 36
Right This Way 36
Best Foot Forward 37
Oklahoma! 39
Ziegfeld Follies 40
Early to Bed 42
Allah Be Praised 43
Dream With Music 45
Bloomer Girl 46
Carousel 48
The Day Before Spring 49
Gypsy Lady 51
High Button Shoes 52
ii Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 54
Bless You All 55
Pal Joey 57
Three Wishes for Jamie 58
Two' s Company 59
Hazel Flagg 60
The Girl in Pink Tights 62
Ankles Aweigh 63
Jamaica 64
Oh, Captain! 65
Take Me Along 66
Bye, Bye, Birdie 67
The Unsinkable Molly Brown 68
Show Girl 69
Milk and Honey 71
A Quarter for the Ladies' Room 73
Tricks 73
Summary 74
III. AN ANALYSIS OF MILES WHITE'S COSTUME DESIGNS FROM TWO
REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS: BLOOMER GIRL AND BYE, BYE, BIRDIE. . . 77
Bloomer Girl 79
Simplicity 81
Color 81
Rhythmic Patterns 88
Sculpture 92
Wit 94 iii Suggestion 96
Color 97
, Rhythmic Patterns 101
Sculpture 102
Wit 103
Synthesis 104
Color 105
Rhythmic Patterns 105
Sculpture 106
Wit 106
Bye, Bye, Birdie 107
Simplicity Ill
Color Ill
Rhythmic Patterns 115
Sculpture 120
Wit 123
Suggestion 126
Color 126
Rhythmic Patterns 134
Sculpture 139
Wit 142
Synthesis 144
Color 144
Rhythmic Patterns 145
Sculpture 145
Wit 146 iv IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Summary ^ .
Conclusion ,gQ
BIBLIOGRAPHY ,cc 165 FIGURES
1. Mrs. Horatio Applegate 83
2. Octavia Applegate 84
3. Julia Applegate 85
4. Phoebe Applegate 86
5. Delia Applegate 87
6. Dolly Bloomer (red) 98
7. Dolly Bloomer (blue-green) 99
8. Bloomer Girls 100
9. Teen-age boys and reporters 113
10. Mae Peterson 114
11. Rose Grant 116
12. Teen girl Karen 127
13. Teen girl Leda 129
14. Teen boy Tracy 131
15. Teen boy Gary 133
VI CHAPTER I
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL
AND MILES WHITE'S CAREER
AS COSTUME DESIGNER
Introduction
As the only true American theatrical art form, the musical comedy, which traces its origin to foreign operettas and musical revues, has been the subject of extensive published literature. Although insights
into elements of plot, staging, scenery, cast, themes, and songs are found in the published literature, very little is found about costume designs or about the designers of the caliber of Miles White.
The years between 1915 and the late 1940s were years of develop ment and of growth in popularity for both American musical comedy and the New Stagecraft movement reflected in the career of White. This parallel growth of the American musical and of the influence of the
New Stagecraft movement has been attributed to certain shared factors.
In the 1922 work. Continental Stagecraft, Kenneth Macgowan and Robert
Edmond Jones noted that the New Stagecraft movement provided a record of the use of symbols, sculpture, significant form, and simplicity to add Realism as well as Expressionism to theatrical production. Jones,
Kenneth Macgowan and Robert Edmond Jones, Continental Stagecraft (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1922), pp. 5-53. 1 who brought this influence to America in his design for The Man Who
Married a Dumb Wife in 1915, paved the way for a new generation of designers.
Ethan Mordden, in Better Foot Forward, puts these years of development and growth into a more comprehensive perspective:
The musical theatre entered its finest era in the forties. Elementary lessons in form and stagecraft had been learned; it remained only to utilize them in dramatic penetration. To some, these last few years before Oklahoma! in 1943 represent the final hours of the musicals infancy, leading in clear steps to the great Rodgers and Hammerstein triumph and exultantly moving on from there. But the first half of the forties had more than Oklahoma! to prove its maturity. Some of the big ones even preceded it, for Oklahoma 1 was less a culmination in itself than a reassurance that this culmination had already come about.
The American musical, the most complex of all theatre art forms, combined vaudeville, opera, drama, and ballet in a fluid yet compressed manner. Design for the musical stage demanded a sympathetic under standing and passion for those forms. The costume in the American musical was used to reveal character, period, and mood of the play as well as the stylistic conventions established by the designers. The use of symbols, sculpture, significant form, and simplicity referred to by Macgowan and Jones was evident in the costume designs of Miles
White, a second generation designer, who was linked to the movements noted above by his association and collaboration with Norman Bel Geddes, a first generation American designer.
2 Ethan Mordden, Better Foot Forward, the History of American Musical Theatre (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976), p. 182. This study will investigate and analyze two Broadway musical comedy costume design works from the career of Miles White, whose complete vita may be found at the end of this introduction. White's life work spanned thirty-five years and embraced designs for twenty- nine musical comedies and revues, six plays, seven ballets, ten circuses, numerous night club acts, and five movies. As a costume designer of major magnitude during the Golden Age of the American musical, his work warrants study as being representative of the period.
The two productions chosen for study are Bloomer Girl (1944) and Bye,
Bye, Birdie (1960), both of which are representative of White's work and were produced within his period of greatest popularity between
1943 and 1961.
The study of White's work will proceed through analysis of available renderings, color swatches, photos, reviews, and actual costumes. The study will not attempt to decide whether the designs were appropriate for the production, but instead it will attempt to relate White's style to the New Stagecraft principles of simplicity, suggestion, and synthesis.
Chapter One contains a brief parallel historical account of the
American Musical and the New Stagecraft movement both of which, taken together, place White's career in context.
Chapter Two offers a chronology of White's musical comedy produc tions, which places Bloomer Girl and Bye, Bye, Birdie, representative of
White's work, into their historical and creative perspectives within
White's career. Chapter Three presents the analysis of Bloomer Girl and Bye, Bye,
Birdie, and includes a discussion of the costume design in these works as related to the New Stagecraft principles through color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit. Plates of cost\ame design renderings for these productions can be found here.
Chapter Four is a summary of the study and its conclusions.
The Bibliography includei^. interviews with the designer, his co workers, and other designers. It should be noted that renderings and photographs of the original costumes were found in the Van Damm photo collection in the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, the Muse\im of the City of New York, the Old Jail Foundation, the theatre design collection of the University of Arizona Department of Theatre, the
Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the Arsenal, and White's personal collection of renderings, swatchbooks, costumes, and costume plots. Various disser tations on musical comedy or designers were also consulted, as well as works by Nathan Knobler, Don Fabun, and James Schinneller. Other sources include writings by prominent experts such as Robert Edmond
Jones, Howard Bay, Irene Sharaff, Agnes de Mille, and Jo Mielziner.
Vita-Miles White
White, a native Californian, was educated in Oakland, where he was born 27 July 1914 to Carlos G. White, an attorney, and Verna Edgren 3 White, a housewife. His two brothers Duwain Houston White, deceased.
3 All information found m the vita was taken from personal inter views with Miles White on 8, 9, and 10 December, 1981. Other sources used in this vita will be cited. and Carlos Wadsworth White, an attorney in San Jose, California, did not share White's interest in art. Influenced by the cultural ten dencies of his mother and her father, an artist in his own right as well as founder of the Swedish Baptist Church in America, White's childhood held many positive experiences.
His artistic training started in Piedmont High School (1929-1933), where he had the opportunity for individualized study of art and art techniques with a trained artist through a program with the University of California at Oakland. His training included exposure to the works of the Impressionists and Matisse as well as practical experience and exposure to artistic trends. Upon graduation from high school (1933), he entered San Mateo Junior College that same year, and later (1934) enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley.
White's driving ambition was to succeed in art and he concen trated on his art-related courses in college. He became intrigued by the design and fashion of glamorous clothing and followed the path from general art to clothing design. His college experiences included the design of one costume for a college production of Maxwell Ander son's Elizabeth the Queen. Prior to this experience. White was inter ested only in designing clothing. Now, with the new interest in costume design. White became an apprentice to Jack Birchenall, a dress maker, who collected clothing from the 1890s to 1900, including garments by French Couturiers. Birchenall's clothing collection was accumulated from a variety of San Francisco thrift and second-hand shops and a major portion of his collection was from the current French designers. The study of the cut and draping of these garments as they were repaired and cleaned helped to educate and stimulate White in his career pursuit.
Through his association with Birchenall, White began to learn the skills of the dressmaker, which he furthered by working at a ladies' tailor ing business in 1935.
During the Depression, White moved to Hollywood in 1936, and through a family connection, he was hired at Universal Studios as a designer. Despite his new found knowledge and skills. White was dis appointed to find that Universal Studios took the glamour out of design work. This was true because many designers participated in the mass production line concept of design established at Universal Studios, in direct contrast to White's idea that each designer should be responsible for the entire ensemble and oversee the execution of that design. Feeling stifled. White left Universal Studios that same year and while unsuccessful in finding design work in Hollywood, he began to build a network of friends and colleagues upon which he would later draw as a professional.
Enticed by the prospect of designing costumes for a friend's night club act. White moved to New York City in 1937. In a meeting at the Ritz shortly after his arrival. White discovered the design job was in reality a fifty dollar commission to design and execute one hat.
In desperate need of money. White drew fashion plates and peddled them through the couture houses of New York City. During these endeavors, he discovered that he had a flair for the theatrical, and realized that the fashion houses were too limiting for him and his 7 goals of design. White sold a few of his plates, but more importantly he broadened his New York contacts throughout the garment district.
One of the contacts in the garment district pointed White in the direction of a theatrical agent, who was dissatisfied with the efforts of the Brooks Costume Company for one of his clients. The agent gave
White a description of the act and its needs and asked him to return the following day with some sketches to show his ideas to the staff.
White met Marjery Fielding, the choreographer for the night club act.
His glamorous designs excited Fielding, and, through her influence, the designs were accepted.
A sudden illness which forced him to return to California in late 1937, ironically, proved to be an aid to his career. While recuperating from a severe case of pneumonia. White set out to learn more about the cutting of garments by working with some of the employ ees of Adrian's, a leading American clothing designer who had an office in Los Angeles. But the everpresent desire to design costumes pulled
White back to New York City in 1938, because of the opportunities there.
Once settled in New York City, White contacted his friend,
Marjery Fielding, who had been hired to choreograph Right This Way
(1938). At Fielding's insistence. White was hired to design the cos tumes, and White's residence in New York City became a permanent one.
Right This Way marked White's first large design project, one on which he learned from his mistakes. For example, he became aware that costume houses wanted to complete the project quickly, and in doing so, tried to sacrifice quality in the cutting, the building, and in 8 the fabric. School could not teach these lessons. Other major lessons came in the handling of people, agents and money.
Now more aware of the world in which he had chosen to work. White pursued his career and made important contacts for the future. He also pursued his knowledge of sewing, cutting, and draping techniques which enhanced his design and execution of garments. Most importantly.
White's design work began to be seen at various night clubs in 1939 and 1940.
White's second venture into musical comedy was Best Foot Foirward
(1941). George Abbott chose for his design team Jo Mielziner as set designer and Miles White as costume designer. Mielziner, a noted designer, attributed his personal success to his ability to read a playscript from the point of view of the director, which allowed him as a designer to communicate his ideas effectively and still produce a synthesized production.
White, although a shy individual, was not intimidated by the creative force of Mielziner. White remembered designing the costumes with a particular purpose in mind: the alteration of certain fashion styles through the exaggeration of the silhouette and decoration would result in a statement that allowed modern ball gowns for a school dance to look like they would belong in the 1830s. The design collaboration with Mielziner left White with a feeling of satisfaction about the
4 David William Weiss, "Jo Mielziner's Contribution to the American Theatre" (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1965), pp. 41-42. production of Best Foot Forward that reinforced White's belief in the practice of one man insuring the unity of all production elements to achieve a desired effect.
Following White's positive design experience with Mielziner, he was engaged to design costumes by the Norman Bel Geddes agency in 1941.
Bel Geddes, a first generation designer, did not choose to design cos- tiomes for many of his design commissions. Instead, he wanted to collaborate on the design and its concept. White's job with the organization was his first nine to five encounter for, previously, design for White has been a start-to-finish round the clock process with no breaks. The new schedule meant that he could pursue his own independent designs after work hours.
White's association with the Bel Geddes organization allowed him the opportunity to work directly with the client and Bel Geddes, himself, which provided additional learning experience of high value.
The majority of White's efforts were utilized in designing the visual effects for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. White's design work led to important changes in the costuming of the circus:
He changed the colors from plush tones to brilliant pastels- "Dress the acrobats in blood-red velvet and they look as if they'd crash from heaviness. But dress them in sequins and they seem to fly. With aniline dyes you get color that vibrates, then you put sequins on top and you have the giddiest vibrations in the world."
United States Institute for Theatre Technology, Program from the Heritage Reception, 19 March 1985. The author of the quote is not identified in this source. 10
White's understanding that the actor is the center of focus along with
his ability to collaborate with Bel Geddes and others, were the keys
to his development and success. In "Behind American Footlights," Aline
Bernstein wrote about the importance of the ability to collaborate:
The drama is the only art in which so many kinds of minds and hands are employed; for a plan does not exist fully as an entity until it is performed, until the actors speak their parts in costume and move about on the stage under the lights. First in importance is the playwright; follow ing him comes the producer and director, the actors and actresses, and the designer. They must be of one accord; their work must add up ultimately to the author's idea. With so many people of such varied temperaments and skills, it is surprising that unity is achieved so often: that is one of the wonders of working in the profession.
White's ability to achieve a quality product for his employer
was evidenced by John C. Wilson, the director for the new comedy.
The Pirate, by S. N. Berman. The Pirate (1941), written for Alfred
Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, was to be co-directed by Lunt who, along with
Wilson, was wanting the talents of a designer like White. With White
as costume designer, the Lunt and Wilson choice brought the skills
of draping, cutting, decoration, and color to enhance the humor in
the production through the costume design. White attributed his
emergence as a recognized costume designer with this production of
The Pirate, but the most highly acclaimed and memorable production
associated with White was the musical Oklahoma! (1942).
Aline Bernstein, "Behind American Footlights," Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museiom of Art 7 (March 1949), p. 201. 11
As the theatre critics reacted favorably to Oklahoma!, White's
place in musical comedy costume design as well as his own marketability was achieved through the refinement of his skills as evidenced by the
colorful period costumes for this production. These effective designs were reused for the touring productions. With five renderings of the
chorus intact and the rest of the renderings destroyed by fire, the
true genius of White's work can be viewed in the black and white photos
of the Van Damm photo collection in the New York Public Library at
Lincoln Center.
As White's career grew with the success of Oklahoma!, he had
already gained the experience and collected the colleagues upon which
to draw. Although new to musical comedy costume design. White's exper
tise in period costume design proved an asset in this and later musical
comedy productions.
White now resides at 360 East 55th Street, New York City. As a
confirmed bachelor. White spends his time as an avid reader, theatre goer, and enjoys the company of his life long friends. Throughout his career. White has had his theatrical design work in major exhibitions and more recently in retrospectives like "This Way To The Big Show"
(1985) featuring his circus design work for the film The Greatest Show on Earth and for Ringling Brothers Circus (1942) to the current exhi bition "De Mille Dynasty" (1968) which includes his design work as 7 they relate to Cecil B. de Mille and Agnes de Mille. Miles White has
7 "This Way To The Big Show" pamphlet for an exhibition of New York's Circus History producer Herbert Clement, 1985. 12
been recognized often and with respect by his peers, as attested to
by the following list of awards:
Donaldson Award for Bloomer Girl (1944) Donaldson Award for High Button Shoes (1947) Donaldson Award for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949) Antoinette Perry Award for Bless You All (1950) Donaldson Award for Pal Joey (1952) Antoinette Perry Award for Hazel Flagg (1953) Purple Heart Award for lifetime career recognition from United States Institute for Theatre Technology (1985)
From 1938 until 1976, Miles White was a dominant force in musical
comedy costume design. His success was in his ability to collaborate
with those involved in the musical comedy productions. Influenced by
the New Stagecraft movement, he carried the ideas of simplicity,
suggestion, and synthesis throughout his costume design career. These
elements were exemplified through color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture,
and wit in White's costume designs.
A Brief History of the American Musical
and Its Relationship to the
New Stagecraft
The American musical theatre prior to the 1890s was a mixture of theatrical forms, including the burlesque, the revue, and the foreign operetta. David Ewen, in The Story of America's Musical
Theatre, speculates on exactly when American musical comedy started.
Q New York, New York. United States Institute for Theatre Technology. New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, Heritage Reception 19 March 1985. 13
Some historians credit Flora, which opened on 8 February 1735, as the beginning of musical comedy. Flora was a spoken play with interpolated popular tunes and timely lyrics. Others point to John Poole's bur-
lescjue production of Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1828. Still others credit
a minstrel show organized by Dan Emmett and performed by the Virginia
Minstrels at the Chatham Square Theatre on 17 February 1843, said to be the first vaudeville entertainment, with popular music written for
it. The Black Crook which opened on 12 September 1866 at Niblo's
Garden in New York City has also been cited as the birth of musical
comedy in part because of its emphasis on elaborate staging. And the
influence of Jacques Offenbach's opera-bouffe in 1867 has sometimes 9 been noted as leading to musical comedy. Looking for sophisticated musical entertainment, Americans copied the European style which did not relate to the simpler tastes of their audiences. Finally, one
should not overlook the effect of Gilbert and Sullivan's work on Amer
ican audiences who easily understood and mastered the stories and songs
in the comic operas. It is probably safest to say that musical comedy assimilated elements from each of the forerunners listed above, and that the time was ripe for musical comedy to emerge in its own right in the late 1800s.
Q David Ewen, The Story of America's Musical Theatre (New York; Chilton Company, 1961), pp. 1-7. Mordden, Better Foot Forward; pp. 22-23. 14
Burlesques, revues, comic operas, vaudevilles, parodies, and emerging musical comedies were popular at the turn of the century, but they were all of inferior quality, due in part to stale plots and songs irrelevant to the dramatic action. At a time when Americans were becoming aware of the development of an American culture, they found themselves still dependent upon Europe for sophisticated musical entertainment. Productions mimicking Sullivan's and Offenbach's works by foreigners were devoid of American ideals, and failed to offer familiar characters portraying the less sophisticated American 12 culture.
American composers were soon attracted to the growing popularity 13 of the musical theatre. Through their efforts the American musical theatre assimilated the foreign influence, nurtured the American ideal and developed into an original form. Deserving of mention first is George
M. Cohan, actor, writer, composer, lyricist, and producer of his own shows, who brought a sparkling freshness to his musical productions.
Cohan, who had no musical training, not only provided upbeat music which was easy to sing, but also presented characters who were recog nizably real people. Cohan's new ideas and creative force led to musical comedies filled with his youthful exuberance, his spontaneity.
Lehman Engel, The American Musical Theatre (New York: Macmillan Company, 1967), p. 30.
12Mordden , Better Foot Forward, pp. 30-31. 13. Ibid., p. 24 15 14 and his patriotic sentimentality. This is probably best exemplified
in his production Forty Five Minutes from Broadway (1906).
A second American composer worthy of note is Victor Herbert,
Cohan's contemporary, who introduced into the new form a new dimension
of improved musical quality. Born in Ireland, educated in Europe, 16 and an immigrant to America at age 27, Herbert was both a composer
of comic operettas and the musical director of the Pittsburgh Symphony
Orchestra. Herbert wrote for gifted singers and insisted on high
standards and quality scores. Although his work was in the tradition
of the romantic operetta, he created dazzlingly orchestrated works
which appealed to the audience of the musical theatre. His reign as 17 "the king of operetta" ended just before World War I.
A third notable composer, Jerome Kern, embodied the qualities of
both Cohan and Herbert, and tempered the vitality, American patriotism,
and orchestration pioneered by these two with his firsthand knowledge
of the secret of a successful show learned from his years as an appren
tice and collaborator with Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse in staging
shows at the Princess Theatre. In The American Musical Theatre,
Lehman Engel shed light on this collaboration:
Stanley Green, The World of Musical Comedy (New York: Ziff- Davis Publishing Company, 1960), p. 35.
Mordden, Better Foot Forward, p. 31
Green, The World of Musical Comedy, pp. 9-12.
Ewen, The Story of America's Musical Theatre, p. 26. 16
During this period, Kern met Guy Bolton the English librettist, and together in 1915 they created a show for the tiny Princess Theatre (seating capacity, 299). Although this first show was unsuccessful, a second, produced that same year, "Very Good Eddie," was a smash. In this and in five succeeding Princess shows, in which Kern and Bolton were joined by P. G. Wodehouse as lyricist, Kern put into practice ideas that were integrated into the action; comedy material grew out of character and situation; the books had "reasonable" and contemporary plots and characters; and the language of books and lyrics was everyday.
The simplicity of these Princess productions (competing with the lavish revues and extravaganzas of the time), the "everydayness" of the books (in sharp contract with the operetta fairy-tale-ishness), and the integration of all of theatrical elements, constituted the first important breakaway from the conventions into which our musical theatre had been born and was still steeped.
Kern's work with Bolton and Wodehouse led to many changes in the form of musical theatre, but probably the most noteworthy was the reduction in the number of songs and the integration of the songs into the book, where doing so added to the dramatic quality of the production.
Kern's later association with Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. and collab oration with Oscar Hammerstein, II produced Show Boat, a superb musical, which also helped to introduce "The New Stagecraft" into
American musical theatre, through the choice of the design staff of 19 Joseph Urban and John Harkrider.
Urban, a Viennese artist, brought to the United States the theories of scene design which were practiced in Europe and which
1 8 Engel, The American Musical Theatre, p. 31. 1 9 Abe Laufe, Broadway's Greatest Musicals (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1970), p. 23. 17
were formulated in what became known as "The New Stagecraft."
Kenneth Macgowan discussed these European elements in Scene Design
for Stage and Screen:
The new stage-craft put imagination before everything. To take a new view, an impassioned view, and to record it fearlessly, that was its first duty. Many qualities hitherto little appreciated in scene design came to its aid. There was simplicity, for instance. The stage was not to be cluttered with meaningless detail. Every 'property' was to have its use, each stretch of wall to express the one thing for which it stood. The results were productions of calm design and broad surfaces, stronger, sincerer, more direct, and so more beautiful. It crept out of simplicity. A touch or two of Eastern decoration on a flat wall surface summoned more of the Orient than acres of carved filigree. A third quality gave aid from the other arts, impressionism. The artist in scene design, like the artist in oils, created an atmosphere of reality, not reality itself; the impression of things, not crude, literal representations. Flakes of color here and there brought a unity of beauty.
Edith J. R. Isaacs and Rosamond Gilder in their article in Theatre
Arts stated:
Urban's importance as the man who gave artistic substance to Ziegfeld's dream undoubtedly did much to open the doors of musical comedy to later designers. After years of complete neglect as one of the minor craftsmen in show business, the artist was allowed to sign his work.
The three New Stagecraft qualities of imagination, simplicity, and impression made Urban's work important to the success of Ziegfeld's
20 Kenneth Macgowan, "Joseph Urban, Forerunner of the New Stage craft in America," Scene Design for Stage and Screen, ed. Orville K. Larson. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1961), p. 5 21^v--Ibid.^ , p. Ci5 . 22 Edith J. R. Isaacs and Rosamond Gilder, "American Musical Comedy," Theatre Arts, XXIX, No. 8 (August, 1945):467. 18
productions. With the arrival of Urban and his use of rich, exotic
colors, design became an important element in musical comedy. In
Stage Costume Design, Douglas A. Russell states that "with the new
stagecraft of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stage
costume once again became aesthetic and picturesque as well as unified, 23
simplified and controlled." In other words, the costumes were used
as a visual presentation of the character.
The New Stagecraft came from Europe where it had evolved.
Macgowan and Robert Edmond Jones in Continental Stagecraft recorded
their observations of the theatre practices of European theatres and
revealed a theatre in change—one battling with realism. As they
defined it, realism could be the literal representation of the idea,
person, or happening, or it could be the realism of the spirit—a
vision of the soul. Their discussion also dealt with aspects other
than realism: expression, for lack of a better word. They concluded
that throughout theatre history non-realistic periods led to the most 24 expressive and greatest creative change. Pertinent to this discussion is also the theory of visual art presented by Clive Bell in Art. Bell stated his theory in three parts:
first, "the aesthetic emotion," which was a personal experience of a particular emotion; second, "the assumption of essentialism," which was
Douglas A. Russell, Stage Costume Design (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall Inc., 1973), p. 24.
Macgowan and Jones, Continental Stagecraft, pp. 4-21. 19 a quality common to objects that provoke emotion; third, "the significant form," which was the existence of a universal value. 25
Macgowan and Jones drew upon Bell's conclusion of significant form to help explain the theatrical changes in Europe which depended upon the craftpersons of the theatre introducing into their work the hximan qualities found in the theatre, an introduction which required the realism of the spirit, minus the literal representation, to attain a 26 more universal and permanent value.
According to Macgowan, Urban brought the New Stagecraft qualities of imagination, simplicity and impression to American musical theatre.
But these changes in Eiiropean theatre design revolved about the works of two visionary men, Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig, who revolted against traditional scenic practices such as detailed realistic set tings and strove for artistic unity while maintaining the human quali ties of the theatre. Their combined efforts led to the reconsideration of the essentials of the theatre in Europe and America. What followed was simplification of decor, the sculptural setting, plasticity, and
lighting. 27 Previously, the audience's attention had been focused on the actor and the play. White, like other designers, attained this focus on the action by the manipulation of color, pattern, and sculpture
George Dickie, Aesthetics, an Introduction (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Education Publishing, 1971), p. 71.
^^Macgowan and Jones, Continental Stagecraft, pp. 21-23.
^"^Oscar G. Brockett, History of the Theatre (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1974), pp. 490-491. 20
The leading exponents of the New Stagecraft movement in America were Robert Edmond Jones and Lee Simonson who studied the changing trends in Einropean theatre between 1912 and 1915. Jones, upon his return to the United States, designed the New Stagecraft into his work 28 on the production. The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife (1915). By 1921,
Jones and Simonson were joined by Normal Bel Geddes with his published design for the Divine Comedy in the promotion of the American practice of New Stagecraft ideas. They were especially important since the three worked in every form of theatrical entertainment, their emphasis being the importance of the actor. The actor was, as Simonson stated 29 in The Stage is Set, the essential feature of theatre. Simonson explained Appia's design:
Picturesque atmosphere is made an integral part of stage pictures that, instead of dwarfing the actor, are directly related to him as a human being. Despite the shadowy shapes around him the actor remains the centre of our interest, the focus of dramatic emphasis. Appia's stage pictures are not conceived as effects into which the actor is put; they spring from the actor and are complete expressions of his assumed personality and passions.
Just as the American designers were reinterpreting the European
scenic practices, American composers were changing the musical form.
^^Ibid., p. 550.
^^Lee Simonson, The Stage is Set (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1931; reprint ed., New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1970), pp. 329-349.
^°Ibid., p. 364. 21
In the late 1920s, more attention was being paid to the plot and to the motivation of the characters, as evidenced particularly in Show
Boat. The integration of all elements—the book, lyrics, music, dance, and spectacle—was influencing musical comedy, and brought new stature to the form, as particularly evidenced in the Pulitzer Prize winner
Of Thee I Sing (1931)."^"^
In the thirties, the integration process continued, with a greater concentration on the inclusion of dance. Edith J. R. Isaacs and Rosamond Gilder commented in their Theatre Arts article, "American
Musical Comedy":
The dance has become at last an integral part of the plot and movement of a musical, not merely its ornament. From its origins as one of the separate elements of revue to its elaboration as a production number in the Thirties, it has moved swiftly to its present function of story teller and partner, with text and music, in the unfolding of the plot. Here also musical comedy has learned from its sister arts of ballet and modern dance, where experiment in dance that is theatre has been going on for years. Martha Graham's explorations in the modern idiom deeply influenced the whole concept of the dance. . . . Its role in the modern musical, so effectively explored by Balanchine, was carried forward triumphantly by Agnes de Mille in her compositions for Oklahoma!—dances which are an inseparable part of the narrative, as of the music and mood of the play.
The major change in the musical comedy form in the thirties paralleled corresponding major changes in the society of the thirties.
"^ Oscar G. Brockett, The Theatre, an Introduction (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1979), p. 407.
"^^Isaacs and Gilder, "American Musical Comedy," Theatre Arts, p. 490. 22
Stanley Green in Ring Bells 1 Sing Songs! comments on the changes in the thirties that caused the break with the spirit of the twenties:
The Thirties turned everything around. The decade began with the United States suffering from a severe Depression and proceeded inexorably toward the holocaust of World War II. It was a period of soup kitchens and dust storms, bonus marchers and breadlines, the repeal of Prohibition and the profusion of initialed agencies that became synonymous with the New Deal's feverish efforts to cxire America's economic ills. The country went through labor pains and labor gains, and nationwide lawlessness on an unprecedented scale. On the more distant stages of the world could be found the rising menace of Hitler, the death of the Spanish Republic, the rape of Ethiopia, Japan's bit-by-bit nibbling away at the continent of Asia, the thefts of Austria and Czechoslavakia, the Nazi-Soviet pact, the invasion of Poland that exploded into World War II. Everywhere the planet surged and boiled and the fabric of life seemed so thoroughly torn that it looked as if it could never be sewn together.
As the world became more complex, people yearned for a simpler, more cohesive life—happy, colorful and allowing escape from the severe problems surrounding them. Perhaps, the development of musical comedy in this era satisfied this desire in society, for the thirties brought works suitable to satisfy these desires, works by: Kern and Oscar
Hammerstein, II, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, as well as George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. These musical comedy teams provided productions which integrated the plot, staging, scenery, cast, theme, song, and dance. As the musical comedy became integrated in form, designers like Joseph Urban, Jo Mielziner,
33 Stanley Green, Ring Bells! Sing Songs! (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1971), p. 12. 23
Norman Bel Geddes, Donald Oenslager, Vincente Minnelli, Boris Aronson,
Irene Sharaff, Raoul Pene Du Bois, Lee Simonson, Stewart Chaney, Peggy
Clark, and Lucinda Ballard were striving to achieve a unified visual effect as well.
In 1938, New York audiences saw the first musical comedy costume designs of Miles White for Right This Way, in which he sought to bring a fresh look to the production. Briefly, White brought an elongated, graceful silhouette which produced an elegant and glamorous look for the production.
Boris Aronson states that "with a musical, especially an adapta tion, the need for newness, freshness, becomes all the more important. 34 You cannot come to it with a ready-made solution." The designers noted above were competing with the unrest of the times and the con cepts of the New Stagecraft movement and trying to fit them into the problems of design for the new musical comedy. Donald Oenslager wrote in "U. S. Design-Past and Present":
During the 1930s and 1940s, most of the New York designers, including new arrivals on the scene (among them Ralph Alswang, Lemuel Ayers, Howard Bay, Stewart Chaney, Charles Elson, Frederick Fox, Harry Horner, Albert Johnson and Sam Leve), applied their skills and talents, some to bringing theatrical style to opera, others to the development of the Broadway musical theatre of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter,
Boris Aronson, "Notes on Designing Musicals," in Contemporary Stage Design U. S. A., ed. Elizabeth B. Burdick, Peggy C. Hansen and Brenda Zanger (Middletown: International Theatre Institute of the United States, Inc., 1974), p. 34. 24 Richard Rodgers and Arthur Schwartz. In this jamboree, authors, composers, choreographers, directors and designers combined to exercise their fancy-free talents in transform ing the American musical into a unique flowering of American theatrical art.
Miles White became an important part of the design changes intro duced into musical comedy in the late thirties as evidenced by his work in the period. As the musical comedy form became more fluid with drama, music, and dance, the task of the costume designer was to design costumes which suited all three influences. The designer had to master the elements of color, rhythmic pattern, sculpture and mood
in order to control the simplest of design tasks. White met the chal
lenge of design for musical comedy by designing in night clubs where he gained further experience in the draping and cutting to create soft, flowing lines of the human silhouette and with two Broadway productions.
White experimented with brilliant color and decoration, a musical.
Best Foot Forward and a comedy. The Pirate. It was not until his design for Oklahoma! that he and musical comedy were completely inte grated and the new musical form founded in Oklahoma! became a commer cial and critical success.
With the opening of Oklahoma!, American audiences witnessed the complete integration of the musical comedy form. Oscar G. Brockett notes this in his History of the Theatre:
35 Donald Oenslager, "U. S. Stage Design-Past and Present," in Contemporary Stage Design U. S. A., ed. Elizabeth B. Burdick, Peggy C. Hansen and Brenda Zanger (Middletown: International Theatre Insti tute of the United States, Inc., 1974), p. 12. 25 This new direction reached its culmination in Richard Rodger's and Oscar Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1943), in which music, story, dance and setting were fully inte grated to tell a semi-serious story. With the triumph of the new approach, the old type of musical largely disappeared.
The popularity of Oklahoma! and the acceptance of Miles White's costume designs for the production launched him as one of the important figures in musical comedy design. With Oklahoma!, the pattern for a successful musical comedy was established, finalizing the effects that had been introduced by designers like Jo Mielziner, Normal Bel Geddes, and
Robert Edmond Jones. The new musical comedy form's intersection with the New Stagecraft movement had been proven as effective, and it led the way to many memorable productions. The creative forces that had emerged in the thirties were to influence the design of musical comedy for many decades.
David Ewen in The Story of America's Musical Theatre describes the reasons for the success of Oklahoma! more completely:
Musical comedies traditionally thrust a dazzling line of chorus girls from the stage aprons early in the production, most usually with the rise of the curtain. Since the Riggs play did not call for the presence of such a chorus until halfway through the act, Rodgers and Hammerstein decided to delay its appearance that long. Most musical comedies ex pected the music be written before the lyric-that's the way it had been with Rodgers and Hart-since the lyric was some thing functional tacked on to the melody. But so deter mined were Rodgers and Hammerstein to make each lyric an essential part of the text that they concurred at once for Hammerstein to write the lyrics first. Musical comedies avoided villains and murder, considering them completely antipathetical to escapist theater. But the Riggs play had villains and murder, and Rodgers and
^Brockett, History of the Theatre, p. 558. 26
Hammerstein had no intention of deleting them. Finally, musical comedy considered ballet poison at the box office. But American folk ballets, Rodgers and Hammerstein were convinced, were an inextricable part of their show.
After the huge success of Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein 38 became the outstanding craftsmen of successful musical comedy.
Their collaboration brought many works to Broadway: Carmen Jones
(1943), Carousel (1945) for which White designed the costumes. Allegro
(1947), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), Me and Juliet
(1953), Pipe Dream (1955), Flower Drum Song (1958), and The Sound of
Music (1959). The Rodgers and Hammerstein standard of excellence in musical comedy paralleled the excellence that emerged in design and designers.
Rodgers and Hammerstein were not alone in their production efforts in this era. Their contemporaries were also producing superb musical comedies. Productions like One Touch of Venus (1943), Annie Get Your
Gun (1946), Brigadoon (1947), Kiss Me Kate (1948), Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes (1949), for which White designed the costumes. Call Me Madam
(1950), and Guys 'and Dolls (1950) marked a decade of memorable successes in the forties.
The successes of the forties noted above were due in part to the efforts of designers. Jo Mielziner, in Carousel (1945), Annie Get Your
Gun (1946), Finian's Rainbow (1947), Allegro (1947), and South Pacific
3 7 Ewen, The Story of America's Musical Theatre, pp. 179-80, ^^Ibid., p. 184. 27
(1949); Oliver Smith in On the Town (1944), and High Button Shoes
(1947) for which White did the costumes; Lemuel Ayers and Miles White in Oklahoma! (1943), and Bloomer Girl (1944); and Robert Edmond Jones in Lute Song (1946) , made the "new" design an ever more important part of musical comedy. They worked with each other and influenced one another. In his book Designing for the Theatre, Jo Mielziner talked about this period:
I started in the New York theatre as an apprentice, first in the scenic studio of Joseph Urban and later under Lee Simonson and Robert Edmond Jones-I think I have learned what the obligations and duties of the theatre artist are. What I assimilated from Jones in particular has had a last ing effect on my work both technically and creatively. This was a man with rare talent and unswerving dedication. When he aimed at a far-distant objective, he raised his sights high into the heavens. The trajectory is a curved path between ambition and achievement-a long curve often marked by travail and disappointment. But because the aim is so high, the quality of the achievement if much greater.
Mielziner went on in his book to add to this overarching ideal of excellence the elements set forth by Macgowan and Jones in Continen tal Stagecraft, and restated by Kenneth Macgowan in his article, "The
New Path of the Theatre":
But behind all such conflicts and compromises and differences of method, there remain a few basic ideas and basic methods, without which we cannot have the beauty and expressiveness of modern stage art. They are simplification, suggestion, and synthesis.
39 Jo Mielziner, Designing for the Theatre (New York: Bramhall House, 1965), p. 3. Kenneth Macgowan, "The New Path of the Theatre," in Scene Design for Stage and Screen, ed. Orville K. Larson (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1961), p. 22. 28
Mielziner, in his article, pointed again to Robert Edmond Jones' design
of settings and costumes for The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife as the
first and pivotal expression of simplification, suggestion, and syn
thesis:
Up to this time, designs for the American stage had been rather literal attempts at realism, some of them skillful, others plain, tawdry, and uninteresting. Here, for the first time, was the work of an imaginative artist. The house in which the man who married a dumb wife lived was like a charming Persian print. Relationships between line, color, form and costume were beautifully balanced. Even in this, his first production for Broadway, Jones revealed his extraordinary ability to omit nonessentials and thus give greater authority to what was left. He made every line of his settings and costumes count, and count in terms of theatre, to be appreciated eighty feet away as well as eight feet away.
Jones' work in The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife apprenticed many
of the designers during the forties and directly influenced their
work, but also because he was the first to utilize costume design in
the same manner as the scenic designs-
Previously, most costume design work had been done by the scenic
designers and for that reason the term costume design is not mentioned
in reference to the New Stagecraft movement. Douglas A. Russell, in
Stage Costume Design: Theory, Technique, and Style, agreed with Mac-
gowan's assessment, i.e., that expressiveness in stage art could not exist without simplification, suggestion, and synthesis, and spoke of the place of costume design in musical comedy. The exaggeration.
41 Mielziner, Designing for the Theatre, p. 5. 29 humor, and color found in costume design in musical comedy were utilized in accordance with the elements of simplification, suggestion, and syn thesis. The musical comedy costume designs for Oklahoma!, according to Russell, applied the New Stagecraft principles, incorporating exag- 42 geration, humor, and color.
The forties saw the emergence of "integrated elements" in musical comedy. In the 1950s, musical comedy made the transition to musical 43 play through the successful adaptations of stage plays. Within this category, the most outstanding successes were My Fair Lady (1956),
West Side Story (1957), and Camelot (1960), each of which explored more 44 serious human value than musical comedy had dealt with earlier. In addition to more serious themes, there was also a change from the
Americana themes of the forties. A good example of this was The Golden
Apple (1954), an exciting production with a $60,000 budget, which ex plored an ancient Greek myth. For this powerful production, William 45 and Jean Eckart designed an expressionistic apple tree.
As the fifties moved toward a close, musical comedy was mimick ing itself with poor imitations of the past. Candide (1956) and
Jamaica (1957) for which White designed the costumes, were attempts to
42 Interview with Douglas A. Russell, United States Institute for
Theatre Technology Convention, Kissimee, Florida, 23 March 1984.
Ewen, The Story of America's Musical Theatre, p. 236.
^'^Ibid., pp. 238-46. Mordden, Better Foot Forward, pp. 250-55. 30 change this, but it was Take Me Along (1958) for which White designed the costumes, an adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Ah Wilderness!, that did so. This production, as with other adaptations of the fifties, brought a more dramatic musical to the stage than those written by 46 persons like Gershwin earlier. Analogously, Fiorello! (1958), a musical about the life of New York's major La Guardia, or Once Upon a Mattress (1959), an outrageous burlesque, were different from the previous successful musicals; nonetheless, they attracted audiences.
As musical comedy moved into the 1960s, the businessman's favor ites took center stage. Bye, Bye Birdie (1960) for which White designed the costumes. The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1961) also designed by White,
I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1962), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), and Man of La Mancha (1965) were representative of the reemergence of the successful musical comedy, sporting new musical sound, somewhere short of hard rock. However, there continued to be a significant 47 audience for the bright cheery musical built around a star.
By the mid-1960s, the New Stagecraft movement proponents had influenced numerous young designers. With the New Stagecraft ideals in effect and the philosophies established, new textbooks for stage design and costume design were published. Synthesis was the one aspect repeatedly discussed. And the new generation of designers applied this concept in their work, alone and with older-generation
^^Ibid., pp. 260-66.
^'^Ibid., pp. 288-99. 31
designers. In "U. S. Stage Design-Past and Present," Donald Oenslager mentions the new wave of young designers, who had been influenced by
previous work:
Those designers' successors are today's youngest designers with their proud manifestoes for tomorrow's theatre. Among them are Edward Burbridge, John Conklin, Eugene Lee, Santo Loquasto, Jerry Rojo, Douglas Schmidt, Robert U. Taylor and Peter Wexler. They seek out fresh identity. Many are peripatetic designers preferring to move from theatre to theatre cross-country, like the journeymen scenic artists before them. Theirs is theatre that has survived the theatre. Their liberated settings combine realistic, abstract, multi-media and environmental scenic techniques. They are at home on the proscenium, thrust, arena and open stages.
The middle part of the sixties saw economic difficulties affect musical comedy. Nonetheless, notable successes may be cited. In 1966,
Broadway openings included Mame, Cabaret, and I Do! I Do!. Hair (1967) ,
Zorba (1968), George M. (1968), and Coco (1969) followed in the next three years. But revues and small musical comedies were vanishing, and the economic difficulties were escalating, leaving vacant houses and fewer and fewer new musicals.
The seventies marked a deepening of the financial crunch. Musi cals had become too expensive to produce unless there was a strong indication of a successful run. Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) and
Godspell (1971) were two examples of successful rock musicals, which broke from the traditions of the past, and targeted their librettos 49 at the counterculture, the youth. '
48 Oenslager, "U. S. Stage Design-Past and Present," in Contem porary Stage Design U. S. A., p. 15.
49 Mordden, Better Foot Forward, pp. 310-14. 32
Summary
From its beginnings in foreign operettas and musical revues, the musical comedy evolved into a collaborative effort using the book,
lyric, music, direction, dance, and design elements of theatre. This
evolution was parallel with the emergence of the New Stagecraft move
ment and the application of its principles of simplicity, suggestion,
and synthesis. The modern musical comedy came into its own with the
production of Oklahoma! in 1943.
After the successful musicals of the forties with their Americana
themes, Rodgers and Hammerstein continued their succesful formula into
the 1950s, but the fifties also saw popular adaptations of stage plays.
These musicals portrayed deeper human values than those of earlier
decades. By the end of the fifties, recurrent themes and poor imita
tions led to a decrease in popularity of the musical comedy on Broad
way. The sixties introduced a slightly new musical comedy, the busi
nessman's favorites, which centered about a star. The sound also
changed, moving toward hard rock. Economic difficulties in the late
sixties caused a reduction in the number of small revues and musical
comedies. The seventies saw a continuation of a depressed economy
as well as the emergence of rock musicals. CHAPTER II
A CHRONOLOGY OF MILES WHITE'S MUSICAL
COMEDY DESIGN CAREER
By 1938, Miles White was a knowledgeable designer, new only to the Broadway traditions. With a background in art and design. White had developed an interest in fashion. Integrating his talents and his willingness to learn more, he associated himself with those who could best teach him. His apprenticeship in 1934 with Birchenall, offered White the opportunity to study period clothing and its charac teristics. The actual construction skills were learned by White in the tailoring businesses with which he became associated in 1935 in
Los Angeles.
One of White's ambitions as a designer was to design the entire ensemble and then supervise the execution of that design. Frustrated with the design methods of the Universal Studios in California where he had worked only a few weeks. White approached his New York design work on his arrival there in 1937 insisting upon control of the final product. His initial work with the various fashion houses in the garment district of New York City proved too limiting for him because he had little control of the final product, and, furthermore. White's standard of quality was not present. White's designs were more
See Birchenall, p. 5 33 34 stylistic and theatrical than these fashion houses required, since his view was toward the glamorous rather than toward the everyday fashion of the streets of New York City.
White soon found an outlet for his design talents in the night clubs throughout New York City. In designing for various club acts.
White naturally came in contact with the costxime houses, and in these encounters. White, again, was faced with the problem of having control over the final product he had designed. He was also annoyed by the fact that these houses often sacrificed quality in the costumes. By obtaining control over the costume house staff through personal super vision. White was able to surmount these barriers to quality and quickly gained the reputation of producing a quality costume that was completed on schedule and to his demanding specifications.
From his early art training. White was familiar with the Impre- sionistic use of color and pattern, the dimensionality of sculpture, and the characteristics of line. White combined the use of these elements with his knowledge of period fashion, draping, and cutting, as well as fitting. The results were evident in his costiome design work.
Through his association with Marjery Fielding in various night club acts, he was introduced to the possibility of designing on 2 Broadway. With his network of friends and colleagues firmly
2 See Fielding, p. 7. 35 established in both California and New York City, White began his career on Broadway in 1938 with Right This Way.
White's ability to collaborate and design a unified look was verified by the theatre critics throughout his career. Their reviews spoke of White's ability to use color in the following terms: "flam- 3 boyant," "stunning display," and "opulent." The list somewhat sximmarizes his talent. In White's design work, the color and rhythmic patterns are most prominent. However, it is from the extensive research into the contemporary fashion of various periods that enabled White to interpret the needs of the design and production collaboration into a desired effect. Various critics also verified White's ability to collaborate as one in the design team to achieve a lanified effect.
For example, Forrest Newlin cites White's collaboration in the produc- 4 tion Oklahoma! as to lending to the affinity of scenery and costume.
From White's first Broadway design for Right This Way, audiences grew to expect a "stunning display."
3 Rosamond Gilder, "Theatre International," Theatre Arts, 31 (November 1947):15; and "Berle Gives Boost to Ziegfeld Follies," New York World-Telegram. 2 April 1943 reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews) 5 April 1943, p. 340; and "Bless You All Blessed with Many Laughs," Daily Mirror, 15 December 1950, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews 18 December 1950), p. 170. 4 Forrest Arthur Newlin, "The New York Stage Designs of Lemuel Ayers" (Ph.D. dissertation. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1978), p. 51.
"Paree Redivious," New York Times, 6 January 1938, p. 22. 36
Chronology
Chronologically following the musical comedy design career of
White helps to place it in perspective. This chronological approach follows, utilizing the critics' reviews and other sources: working drawings, fabric and color swatches, and costume renderings. Each production will be discussed in terms of the elements of color, rhy thmic patterns, sculpture, and wit (indicates the amused interest or humor from the intellectual to the slapstick). The chronology covers twenty-nine musicals in which White's designs were used, spanning the years 1939-1973.
Right This Way
Presented by Alice Alexander 46th Street Theatre West of Broadway 5 January 1938
Book by Marianne Brown Waters, Parke Levy, Allan Lipscott Lyrics by Marianne Brown Waters, Irving Kahal Music by Bradford Greene, Sammy Fain Directed by Bertrand Robinson Dances by Marjery Fielding Settings by Nat Karson Costumes by Miles White Music directed by Max Meth
Orchestrations by Hans Spialek, Maurice De Packh, Claude Austin
This musical comedy in two acts dealt with the plot of a young
American couple in Paris who fall in love and return to America where he becomes a successful editor. Feeling a loss of romantic interest, his wife returns to Paris. Her husband follows hoping to regain what he has lost. Right This Way was Miles White's first attempt at costume design on Broadway and represented also his first learning experience. 37
Lewis Nichols, a critic from the New York Times, considered his
costumes the highlight to the evening entertainment.^ White brought
to this production the glamorous costumes Marjery Fielding as choreo
grapher wanted for the dance sequences.
White's costume design work for Right This Way centered about
1938 street clothes, as well as full length evening gowns. His work
displayed his ability to create soft, flowing lines. He created
emphasis through color and draping, accenting the actors' form as g elements of moving sculpture. White continued his use of simplicity
in his next show. Best Foot Forward.
Best Foot Forward
Presented by George Abbott Ethel Barrymore Theatre 1 October 1941
Book by John Cecil Holm Music by Hugh Martin Lyrics by Hugh Martin Dances by Gene Kelly Settings by Jo Mielziner Costumes by Miles White
The storyline of Best Foot Forward dealt with the inviting of a famous movie star. Gale Joy, to the Winocki school prom by Bud Hooper.
g New York Times. 6 January 1938, p. 22. 7 Interview with Miles White, retired costume designer. New York, New York, 9 December 1981.
Miles White, private collection of his costume renderings for Right This Way. 38
Miss Joy's press agent conceived this to be a good publicity stunt as she was in between engagements. Bud's jealous girlfriend ripped the
sash off Gale's dress and called it her souvenir. Other girls, also wanting souvenirs stripped the actress, providing a scandal in the well-bred school-
The choreography, however, for this fast paced story was in trouble. To remedy the situation George Abbott secured the services of Gene Kelly, Known for his athletic dance style, Kelly put White's 9 costume design work through a demanding workout.
Miles White's simplistic style of design was reflected in his costumes for this musical comedy in two acts. Theatre critic John
Anderson stated, "Miles White's costumes were attractively simple, and the whole thing had an air of unostentatious and unaffected good 10 spirits." From this statement and from the writer's observation of the costume renderings, wit was an important element in making
White's designs effective.
Mielziner who was the head designer for many shows collaborated and worked with White in their first professional association. Although he regretted giving up the designing of costumes, Mielziner understood that actors, as people, needed attention and nurturing. White could give those actors the attention and nurturing through a separate role as costume designer. Mielziner, however, recognized that it was
9 White, interview, 9 December 1981.
John Anderson, "Best Foot Forward Opens at the Barrymore." New York Journal American (October 2, 1941). 39 essential to integrate all elements into an over-all style of the production, and demanded a close collaboration between the set designer, costume designer, and the director, a factor that was a key factor also in the success of his next musical, Oklahoma! .^"^
Oklahoma!
Presented by Theatre Guild St. James Theatre 31 March 1943
Based on Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs Book by Oscar Hammerstein, II Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, II Music by Richard Rodgers Directed by Rouben Mamoulian Dances by Agnes de Mille Settings by Lemuel Ayers Costiimes by Miles White
The success of the comedy. The Pirate, led to the hiring of the design team of Miles White and Lemuel Ayers for the Rodgers and Hammer- 12 stein musical Oklahoma 1. In this musical, which depicted a cowhand who finally wins the heroine's hand from the foul clutches of the sinister ranch manager. White's costumes were a "forceful display of color"; their exaggerated lines "emphasized a theatric climate which, while very different from that of Lynn Rigg's play, had its own special charms."
Mielziner, Designing for the Theatre, pp. 43-44. 12 See Oklahoma!, p. 11. Rosamond Gilder, "Spring Pleasure and Awards," Theatre Arts XXVII (June 1943):329. 40
Newlin comments on the unity between the designers and their design work:
The production photo of the Ballet reveals beyond any doubt the affinity between Ayers and Miles White at this time. The frankly decorative costumes for the ballet, with their simple bold patterns of plaids, stripes, and polka dots, seem to make the same kind of bold statement as the back drop with its decorative presentation of the scene.
Newlin's reference to the patterns in plaid, stripes, and polka dots focuses on the element of decoration which White used so successfully in his costume design work. These simplified decorative forms, although used in Right This Way, developed into rhythmic patterns which were perfected in Oklahoma!, and also evidenced throughout White's career.
The skill with which White applied to develop these selected rhythmic patterns for Oklahoma! could also be seen in his next production, the
Ziegfeld Follies.
Ziegfeld Follies
Presented by Messrs. Shubert, Bloomingdale and Waters Winter Garden Theatre 1 April 1943
Directed by John Murray Anderson Lyrics by Jack Yellen Music by Ray Henderson Dances by Robert Alton Settings by Watson Liarritt Costumes by Miles White
•"•^Forrest Arthur Newlin, "The New York Stage Designs of Lemuel Ayers," (Ph.D. dissertation. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1978), p. 77. 41
White's night club experiences were used effectively in John
Anderson's production of the Ziegfeld Follies, which was certainly
enhanced by White's stunning costumes. This musical revue in two part
is about newly-weds who arrived in Washington on Tuesday just after
the passage of the loveless Tuesday bill. The newly-weds decide to
keep their room until 6 o'clock a.m. the next day when the groom is
arrested for having moved without notifying his draft board. One
critic from Theatre Arts was amazed with White's ability to continually
draw upon his "bottomless storehouse of his imagination" for his cos
tume designs. For the song "Come Up and Have a Cup of Coffee,"
White artfully designed a study in brown which so intrigued the New
York Times reviewer that he was satisfied merely to look rather than 16 listen.
In this production. White combined for the first time the hard-
edged geometric shaped garment with the softness of the draping. Keep
ing to the Ziegfeld tradition. White costumed the actresses with
glamorous clothing. Through furs, feathers, sequins, silks and satins.
White provided a working and moving garment for each of the actors.
This production provided White with the opportunity to design glamorous
costumes which utilized his knowledge of the costume's sculpture that was to become an integral part of his designs. This knowledge would be used again in his next production. Early to Bed.
1 c Gilder, "Spring Pleasures and Awards," Theatre Arts, p. 331. "Milton Berle, Ilona Massey and Arthur Treacher Head New Stage Revue " New York Journal American, 2 April 1943; reprint ed., (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 5 April 1943), p. 339. 42
Early to Bed
Presented by Richard Kollmar Broadhurst Theatre 17 June 1943
Book by George Marion, Jr. Lyrics by George Marion, Jr. Music by Thomas (Fats) Waller Dances by Robert Alton Settings by George Jenkins Costumes by Miles White Supervised by Alfred Bloomingdale
Early to Bed is the story based on a madame of a luxurious bordello in Martinique whose boyfriend did not know that she was a madame. She disguises herself and the bordello as the school teacher and her school to conceal her present occupation. This situation is further complicated by a visiting track team from the University of
California on a good will tour of Latin America and who become housed in one wing of her bordello.
In Early to Bed White drew upon the previously applied skills of handling the basic elements of color, rhythmic patterns, and sculpture to supply a visually interesting design. This was recognized by the critics who wrote that Miles White "brilliantly costumed" this Kollmar production, that the costumes were "striking in color, design, and always in good taste" and that, from "Fats" Waller's tunes to Robert
Alton's dances to White's costumes, the company "made the most of very 17 little at the Broadhurst."
"'"^"The Stage and Screen," Commonweal, 2 July 1943, p. 274; and "Early to Bed, Rowdy and Fast Musical, Has West Indies Color," New York Daily News, 18 June 1943; reprint ed., (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 29 June 1943), p. 315; and "Escapist Hot-Cha," New York Herald Tribune, 18 June 1943; reprint ed., (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 20 June 1943), p. 314. 43
The critics were so appreciative probably because of White's innovative use of color to carry the audience's attention from one scene to another. White arrayed the chorus in a monochromatic design, while the lead appeared in the complement or a contrasting color. In utilizing this method. White placed the focus on the leads and the action of the musical, thus meeting the special needs of this form.
As the locale or scene changed, the lead exited the scene from which he was the focus into a scene in which the focus was on another charac ter. To provide continuity. White used a technique in which the mono chromatic and contrasting colors of one scene were reversed in the next scene. This method was only one of the many ways White artfully manipulated color in new ways. His efforts were recognized as standards for costume design as attested to by the critics in his next production,
Allah Be Praised.
Allah Be Praised
Presented by Alfred Bloomingdale Adelphi Theatre 20 April 1944
Book by George Marion, Jr. Lyrics by George Marion, Jr. Music by Don Walker and Baldwin Bergersen Directed by Robert H. Gordon and Jack Small Dances by Jack Cole Settings by George Jenkins Costumes by Miles White
Allah Be Praised told the story of Emir's harem and a couple of visiting congressmen in Persia and their misadventures during their stav Even though the costumes were judged to be the best aspects 44 of Allah Be Praised, the designs were "below his usual high standard. "•'"^
In Ward Morehouse's opinion, theatre audiences had come to respect
White's career and work. White spent many hours researching the contemporary fashion from the period in which the play was set to design costumes that were faithful to the period and to the production.
The understanding derived from this research into the decorative ele ments, fabric, cut, draping and color provided White with an extensive range of possibilities. His stunning and creative designs were expected each time his name was associated with a Broadway show.
Critics had been kind to White because he provided a freshness for each production. White built in the freshness by following what had become a standard pattern for him. At the beginning he read a musical for its story and/or concept of the author. Next, he utilized his strong sense of color, rhythmic patterns and sculpture to delineate the relationships of the characters. And, finally. White captured the underlying truths by creating a humor, satire or pleasant diversion 19 about these characters in their situations. On his next production.
Dream With Music, White would add still another element of his style, lightness.
18 "Allah Be Praised Takes Cue from Author's Other Play," New York World Telegram 21 April 1944; reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 24 April 1944), p. 208; and "Allah Be Praised Costly but Unfunny Opens at the Adelphi," New York Sun. 21 April 1944; reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 24 April 1944), p. 208. 1 9 Miles White, private collection of his costiome renderings for Allah Be Praised. 45
Dream With Music
Presented by Richard Kollmar Majestic Theatre 18 May 1944
Book by Sidney Sheldon, Dorothy Kilgallen and Ben Roberts Lyrics by Edward Eager Music by Clay Warnick Directed by Richard Kollmar Dances by George Balanchine Settings by Stewart Chaney Costumes by Miles White
Dream With Music was a musical fantasy about a disillusioned writer
of soap operas; Dinah, tired of the drudgery of producing a story every
day, dreams of Scherezade, spinning out tales for a thousand and one
nights. The team of Stewart Chaney and Miles White provided the musical
fantasy Dream With Music with "one of the most beautiful visual back- 20 grounds seen on the stage m recent years." With his exotic costumes.
White "avoided mere Oriental gaudiness, bringing to the work a certain 21 lightness and sense of style." This lightness was created through
the sculpture of the costumes, which appeared to have a kinetic energy.
As each actor moved in describing visually the fluctuation of relation
ships on stage, the costumes also changed. The fluttering, floating, or
solidity of the garment enhanced the action in the musical fantasy.
In one costume. White designed a houppelande sleeve with exagger
ated dagged edges and an overskirt with the same dagged edges and
"Dream With Music Fails to Live Up to Its Promise," New York World Telegram, 19 May 1944; reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 22 May 1944), p. 189.
^•''"Very Pretty, But Awful Dull," New York Newspaper P.M. 19 May 1944- reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 22 May 1944), p. 188. 46 scallops which covered it. The movement of the hanging sleeves and the dagged work on both the sleeve and the skirt created a costume that moved. The costume did not provide the visual weight the form and mass required, but, rather, a lively, light feeling. Further, White added his use of pattern. With a strong diagonal, polka dot, and the lining of edges. White provided a fanciful costume. The costume remained light in part through the use of a rather limited palette of pink, avocado green and brown. Combining two heavy or weighty looking colors with pink did not add the visual weight, but instead sparkled in a visual 22 delight. White would use all of his now developed style in his next production. Bloomer Girl.
Bloomer Girl
Presented by John C. Wilson in association with Nat Goldstone Schubert Theatre 5 October 1944
Book by Sig Herzig and Fred Saidy Based on a play by Lilith and Dan James Lyrics by E. Y. Harburg Music by Harold Arlen Directed by E. Y. Harburg Book directed by William Schorr Dances by Agnes de Mille Settings by Lemuel Ayers Costumes by Miles White
Bloomer Girl marked the second Americana production on which White worked with Lemuel Ayers (the first was Oklahoma!). The production
22 Miles White, private collection of his costume renderings for Dream With Music 47 dealt with the crusade of a feminist, Dolly Bloomer, who called for the women's right to vote and for the end of the Civil War and of slavery.
Her cause was identified with the Bloomer fashion of Turkish trousers rather than the traditional hoopskirt of the Victorian women. Although the design was another high point in White's career, it marked the end of the design collaboration as a result of Ayers' belief that White's costumes were too intense in color and attracted attention to them selves. Agnes de Mille agreed with Ayers, but the critics and audience applauded White's costumes which appeared as White had conceived them, 23 with a backdrop of Ayers' scenery. Bloomer Girl, with "the most luscious costumes Miles White ever designed" parading before the charming 1861 sets of Lemuel Ayers, was 24 a new hit in October, 1944. Although it was extremely long in getting started and rather slow throughout, the critic, Wilella Walldorf, could not "recommend it beyond some of the most luscious costumes Miles White ever designed."
The period detailing of Bloomer Girl provided a challenge for
White. One of his innovations was in hairstyle. For White, the hair style was as important as the costume design. This view, however, was not shared by the chorus girls or even by some of the stars- The practice at that time was that actresses would wear a modern hairstyle
n -i Newlin, "The New York Stage Designs of Lemuel Ayers," pp. 95-96. 94 "Bloomer Girl A New Hit that Misses Now and Then," New York Post 6 October 1944; reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 30 October 1944), p. 120. ^^Ibid., p. 120. 48 that only suggested the period of the 1860s. White combatted this practice by taking a ruler and placing it on the head to make sure that the hair was flat on the scalp. The costume design realization, includ ing the details of the hairstyle, led to a great costume. For this design White won his first Donaldson award. His next production.
Carousel, followed within the year.
Carousel
Presented by Theatre Guild Majestic Theatre 19 April 1945
Based on Ferenc Molnar's Liliom Adapted by Benjamin F. Glazer Book by Oscar Hammerstein, II Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, II Music by Richard Rodgers Directed by Rouben Mamoulian Dances by Agnes de Mille Settings by Jo Mielziner Costumes by Miles White
Carousel, the musical based on Liliom, dealt with a carousel barker, Billy Bigelow, who married the gentle Julie, and made an attempt at robbery. Billy dies after being trapped by police only to return to earth to his daughter on her graduation from school. He leaves his daughter one bit of advice to hold her head up in the world.
The Theatre Guild brought Mielziner and White back together for their second musical design collaboration. Their efforts were applauded by critics, but most importantly about White's work, they stated that a
96 White, interview, 9 December 1981 49 variety of "quaint, old fashioned" costumes was offered by Miles White • ^ -. 27 in Carousel. He dressed people individually rather than trying to realize a mass effect. The actors and dancers alike wore the costumes .. 28 easily.
White utilized all of his skills to reveal the enchanting story through movement and motifs. Movement was a major concern for White when he designed costumes for a dancer. The color and decorative ele ments were secondary to the cut and freedom needed for dancing. White's motif for dancers' costumes in Carousel came from an exhibit at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, that included various artifacts from the same time period as Carousel. White drew his inspiration from the motifs used on these artifacts and reinterpreted them for his design 29 work in Carousel. White's next production. The Day Before Spring, opened only seven months later.
The Day Before Spring
Presented by John C. Wilson National Theatre 22 November 1945
27 "Carousel is Closer to Oklahoma! Than to Liliom," New York Post, 20 April 1945; reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Reviews, 23 April 1945), p. 227. Rosamond Gilder, "Spring Laurels," Theatre Arts XXIX (June 1945):330. 29 White, interview, 9 December 1981. 50
Book by Alan Lerner Lyrics by Alan Lerner Music by Frederick Loewe Book directed by Edward Padula Dances and Musical Ensembles by Anthony Tudor Settings by Robert Davidson Costumes by Miles White Music directed by Maurice Abravanel Orchestration by Harold Byrns
The Day Before Spring tells of a ten year reunion at the mythical
college, Harrison, and its alumni Peter, his wife Katherine, and Alex
with whom Katherine almost eloped ten years earlier- Alex, a writer
of romantic novels, talks of his latest book. The Day Before Spring,
which depicts what might have been if the elopement had occurred.
Facing a choice of what might have been and her now lackluster life,
Katherine chooses her husband.
The critics acknowledged White's contribution to the production 30 with costijmes that were colorful and satiric- Lewis Nichols said
that being "a production precisionist, Mr. Wilson had demanded of Miles
White some of his better costumes and from Robert Davidson completely
satisfactory settings." This Lerner and Loewe musical "turned out
to be a highly literate and imaginative fantasy which just missed being a hit."^^
"The Day Before Spring Buds at the National," Journal American, 23 November 1945, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews 26 November 1945), p. 94.
"^•'""The Play," New York Times, 23 November 1945, p. 27. 32 Greene, The World of Musical Comedy, p. 274. 51
White designed four distinct styles of costumes for the production, each style designed with a humorous insight. The four styles ranged from modern ladies' suits and dresses, to talking statues of Plato,
Voltaire, and Freud with the Greek, French, and German overtones; and from modern evening gowns to party dresses with luminescence much like 33 phosphorescent dresses. This accomplished the ten year flashback in fashion as well as two distinct choices Katherine faced. In the library scene when Plato, Voltaire, and Freud are philosophizing, a clear separation of cultures and ideas is presented through costumes. From the fantasy of The Day Before Spring, White turned to Gypsy Lady.
Gypsy Lady
Presented by Edwin Lester Century Theatre 17 September 1946
Book by Henry Myers Lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest Music by Victor Herbert Directed by Robert Wright and George Forrest Dances by Aida Broadbent Settings by Boris Aronson Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Adrian Awan Music directed by Arthur Kay
The story of Gypsy Lady with sixteen songs of Victor Herbert was about an impoverished actor who wishes to marry a Marquise. He, of course is considered a commoner by her father who would not allow such a marriage. The actor, Alvarado, conceives a plan that will break
^^Miles White, private collection of his costume renderings for The Day Before Spring. 52 the tradition of marrying within a class by persuading a discontented gypsy princess to act like a real princess to lure the Marquise's brother into marriage. Alvarado does not plan to fall in love with the gypsy, and courts her only to have her return to her home to marry her first love, foiling the entire effort.
This production adapted and utilized music from Victor Herbert's operettas successfully. The New York Times reported that the Gypsy
Lady was produced with "taste and enthusiasm" by Edwin Lester who believed in "doing an old thing well" and that the costumes of White 34 were "notably well designed." The use of rhythmic patterns was the basic element of well designed costumes which utilized simple geometric forms of line, polka dot, square, star, and diamond shapes. The rhythmic patterns in these designs marked another use of what had become an identifiable trait of White's style in musical comedy. Color, rhythmic patterns, and sculpture were identifiable elements in White's design work. White's next production. High Button Shoes, reinforced another characteristic of White's work, his sculptural ability.
High Button Shoes
Presented by Monte Proser and Joseph Kidness Century Theatre 10 October 1947
Book by Stephen Longstreet Based on the novel by Stephen Longstreet Lyrics by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn
34 "The Play," New York Times, 18 September 1946, p. 25, 53
Music by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn Directed by George Abbott Dances by Jerome Robbins Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Peggy Clark
High Button Shoes, the story about the New Jersey con man Harrison
Floy, who gained attention through his get-rich-quick operations and schemes, used the design team of Oliver Smith and Miles White. The settings and costumes were "worthy of a musical comedy triumph."
John Chapman, theatre critic, remarked that fashions progressed on
36 stage "while those on Fifth Avenue were marching backwards." State ments like these indicate that White's work was being acclaimed as a skillful and insightful interpretation of fashion into theatrical costumes.
White won his second Donaldson Award for costume design for
High Button Shoes in which his sculptural ability was used to its fullest. His costumes, much like a kinetic sculpture, used line in a variety of colors as a motif. The lines ran diagonally, vertically, horizontally, and draped around the figure. White's ability was strikingly exhibited in the use of various shapes and variations on those shapes. High Button Shoes, with the actors and actresses moving
35 "Pitchmen on Their Uppers," New York Herald Tribune, October 1947, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews 13 October 1947), p. 305. 36 "Uproarious Mack Sennett Ballet High Spot of High Button Shoes," New York Daily News, 10 October 1947, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews 13 October 1947), p. 306. 54 in costiomes which themselves seemed to move, and thus emphasized the actors' motion, must have been a spectacular visual delight. White's second Donaldson Award for High Button Shoes was to be followed by a third in his next production. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Presented by Herman Levin and Oliver Smith Ziegfeld Theatre 8 December 1949
Book by Joseph Fields and Anita Loos Adapted from the book by Anita Loos Lyrics by Leo Rubin Music by Jule Styne Directed by John Wilson Dances by Agnes de Mille Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Peggy Clark
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes's plot concerned itself with Lorelei
Lee and her friend Dorothy Shaw, two Ziegfeld girls who are "on the make" in 1924. The production records the adventures from a New York pier to the Eiffel Tower and back again. The production not only became a "suite of good travelogue settings" with Oliver Smith's designs which "combined the best features of New York and Paris," but also was a "welcomed change from the other recent drab backgrounds and decor 37 that had been haunting" audiences for a time. The reuniting of Smith and White in another production built its success in part on the famil iarity the two designers had with each other's creative processes.
37 "First Night at the Theatre," New York Times, 9 December 1949, p. 35 55
This familiarity permitted White to experiment and to provide the 38 production with "stunning costumes with a humorous accent." White designed, using the element of wit, which was derived from paraphras ing, elaborating, lengthening, and shortening in a continual process of clarification. For example, Lorelei's sequinned, boldly striped costume which draped over the left shoulder, evoked the philosophy of this "golddigger." The result of White's imaginative exploration was a rare degree of finish and perfection in his costume design work. As the audiences were applauding Lorelei's philosophy in song,
"Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend," White received his third Donald son Award for costume design and a year later, the Smith-White collab oration would continue in the production. Bless You All.
Bless You All
Presented by Herman Levin and Oliver Smith Mark Hellinger Theatre 14 December 1950
Music by Harold Rome Lyrics by Harold Rome Directed by John C. Wilson Sketches by Arnold Auerbach Dances by Helen Tamiris Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White
The Auerbach and Rome revue shows how a future candidate for the
Presidency can conduct a gaudy campaign without once leaving the television studio, and lampoon novels from the Deep South, miracle
"^ "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Is a Smash Musical," Daily Mirror, 9 December 1949, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 12 December 1949), p. 207. 56 drugs, foreign stars and P.T.A. school activities. In Bless You All, the combined talents of Oliver Smith and Miles White produced a "con- 39 tmuously effective picture." Smith's striking backgrounds were com- 40 plemented by White's "imaginative costumes." All in all, "it looked 41 both crisp and elegant, like a modern fashion magazine."
For Bless You All, Robert Coleman wrote in the Daily Mirror, "Co- producer Smith has designed an opulent production which is handsomely 42 complemented by Miles White's costumes." The costumes displayed some of White's most creative statements. The parade of costumes visualized and parodied the current political clime with "Federal
Waterpower," "Stabilized Currency," and "Natural Resources," Not only was this design work able to capture the essence of Swanson, Garbo,
Gable, and de Marco, but also the personification of inanimate objects like "Books," "Sports," "Fashion," "Cinema," and "Foreign Affairs."
For White's extraordinary work, he was presented with his first Antoi nette Perry Award for costume design. Another award winner followed.
Pal Joey.
39 "The Newest of Musical Revues," New York Post, 15 December 1950, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 18 December 1950), p. 171.
"A Glittering Revue," New York Herald Tribune, 15 December 1950, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 18 December 1950), p. 171.
"At the Theatre," New York Times, 15 December 1950, p. 42.
"Bless You All Blessed with Many Laughs," Daily Mirror, 15 December 1950, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 18 December 1950), p. 172. 57 Pal Joey
Presented by Jule Styne, Leonard Key in association with Anthony B. Farrell Broadhurst Theatre 3 January 1952
Book by John O'Hara Lyrics by Lorenz Hart Music by Richard Rodgers Book directed by David Alexander Dances by Robert Alton Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White
Pal Joey is the story about Vera, a Chicago socialite with a
"roving eye" and a "big bankroll," who sets up Joey, an egotistical young night club heel with a night club of his own, and ditches him before he ditches her. In this production. Miles White's wit was 43 again seen. The audience and critics alike recognized White's con- 44 tribution of "amusing costumes which frequently received laughs."
For Pal Joey, White was awarded his fourth Donaldson Award.
At this point in White's career, he had developed a style in which his point of view changed for each production. For each extra vaganza, spectacle, or musical comedy. White tried to develop a set of costumes that best expressed the concept and needs of the produc- 45 tion. Through research and clarification. White managed to always
43 "At the Theatre," New York Times, 4 January 1952, p. 17. 44 "Joey Just What Stem Needed," New York World Telegram, 4 January 1952, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 21 January 1952), p- 398. White, interview, 10 December 1981. 58 find the proper approach, as well as to provide a moving sculpture which reflected the character. This was especially true in his next production. Three Wishes for Jamie.
Three Wishes for Jamie
Presented by Albert Lewis and Arthur Lewis Mark Hellinger Theatre 21 March 1952
Book by Charles O'Neal and Abe Burrows Based on the novel by Charles O'Neal Lyrics by Ralph Blane Directed by Abe Burrows Dances by Ted Cappy Settings by George Jenkins Costumes by Miles White Orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett
Three Wishes for Jamie was about Jamie McRuin who is offered three wishes by a fairy princess. In using these wishes, he asks for travel, a beautiful bride, and a son who can speak the ancient tongue.
All are given to Jamie, but not in a direct way. He travels to Georgia, marries a beautiful but barren lady, with whom he adopts a son later to find that the son is a mute. All ends happily when the child is given the gift of speech.
White's costumes left "nothing to be wished for because they 46 needed no improvement." Brightly colored, the costumes were lovely
46 "Three Wishes for Jamie a Gentle Irish Musical," New York Daily News, 22 March 1952, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 24 March 1952), p. 332. 59 and lighthearted. They were unusually gorgeous and lavish, especially in the wedding scene.
The designs for this production displayed the skills of a master designer- White produced costumes that were eye filling, but never neglected the relationship of his work to that of the scenery or of the lighting. The designs were such that they enhanced the development of the character in the environment in which he existed. Thus, White depended on his skill of rendering and organization in color and fabric charts in conjunction with the design statement set up by fellow designers to ensure a complete work- By carefully making sure that all was in order before costumes were produced. White avoided the costly 48 mistakes once the design work reached the costume house. White's work in his next production. Two's Company showed again this ability to work toward the unified whole.
Two's Company
Presented by James Russo and Michael Ellis Alvin Theatre 15 December 1952
Lyrics by Ogden Nash Additional Lyrics by Sammy Cahn Music by Vernon Duke Sketches by Charles Sherman and Peter De Vries Additional Sketches by Mort Green and George Foster
"Three Wishes for Jamie," New York Herald Tribune, 22 March 1952 reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 24 March 1952), p. 332.
White, interview, 9 December 1981. 60 Sketches directed by Jules Dassen Supervision by John Murray Anderson Dances by Jerome Robbins Settings by Ralph Alswang Costumes by Miles White Music conducted by Milston Rosenstock
Two's Company was a revue which centered about the talents of
Bette Davis. The sketches for this revue burlesqued Hillbillies,
Tallulah Bankhead, southern accented predatory film females, a tropical
tramp like Sadie Thompson, and even spoofed Davis. In the production.
Miles White's costumes "created one of those magic microcosms that made 49 the musical stage inviting." The design team gave the production
the "appearance of a thoroughbred," but the songs and lyrics were not
"worthy of the capacity of these accomplished gentlemen."
For Two's Company, White provided an elegant, light, and flexible
garment for the dancer, as well as satiric designs for a hillbilly
sequence. The production allowed White to display his flair for color
and movement and his skill in draping and cutting. Only two months
elapsed before White's next prize-winning production. Hazel Flagg.
Hazel Flagg
Presented by Jule Styne in association with Anthony B. Farrell Mark Hellinger Theatre 11 February 1953
49 "Case of Bette Davis," New York Times, 21 December 1952, Sec. II, p. 3. "At the Theatre," New York Times, 16 December 1952, p. 43; and "Arrival of the Bette Davis," New York Post, 16 December 1952, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 31 December 1952), p. 117. 61 Musical by Ben Hecht Based on a story by James Street Lyrics by Bob Hilliard Music by Jule Styne Book directed by David Alexander Dances by Robert Alton Settings by Harry Horner Costumes by Miles White
Hazel Flagg dealt with a Vermont girl dying from radium poison ing, who in actuality is in good health, and her trip to New York.
The plot pokes fun at magazine promotion, publicity, politicians, and doctors. Set in the jazzy late 1920s and early 1930s, Hazel Flagg had the "unexpected trait of getting better as it went along." The electric colors of the many costumes allowed White to outshine his 52 53 earlier works. Again, he dressed the company "gorgeously."
White's ability to design a costume that could be read effec tively from eight to eighty feet was evidenced in this production.
In White's hand, one basic black dress would become six separate and distinct costume pieces. The costume design work for Hazel Flagg won for White his second Antoinette Perry Award. White followed his success in Hazel Flagg with another Americana theme musical. The Girl in Pink Tights.
^""""A New Broadway Musical Comedy," New York Post, 12 February 1953, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 16 February 1953), p. 362.
^^"Hazel Flagg Dazzles with People, Props," New York World Telegram, 12 February 1953, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 16 February 1953), p. 363.
^•^"At the Theatre," New York Times, 12 February 1953, p. 22. 62 The Girl in Pink Tights
Presented by Shepard Traube in association with Anthony B. Farrell Mark Hellinger Theatre 5 March 1954
Book by Jerome Chodorov and Joseph Fields Lyrics by Leo Rubin Music by Sigmund Romberg Dances by Agnes de Mille Settings by Eldon Elder Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Eldon Elder Music directed by Sylvan Levin Orchestrations by Don Walker
The Girl in Pink Tights told the story of the accidental birth of
the American musical comedy. A French Ballet company arrives in New
York to find that the theatre in which they were to perform had been destroyed. An American troupe located across the street offered a
solution to incorporate the ballet in their play about the West. For 54 It, Miles White designed a "very attractive wardrobe of costximes."
There were "pert and eyecatching outfits" conceived and executed by 55 the accomplished designer.
The Girl in Pink Tights was the third musical comedy with an early American theme on which White had worked. Through research.
White had gained considerable knowledge about the period. In approach ing each of these plays. White tried to discover the central reality or essence of the play and design in recognition of that essence. In the
"Bowling Green Scene" and the "Corps de Ballet," of The Girl in Pink
54 "At the Theatre," New York Times, 6 March 1954, p. 13. 55 "Jeanmaire Dazzling at Hellinger," New York World Telegram, 6 March 1954, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 8 March 1954), p. 356. 63
Tights was exceptionally accurate in portraying the basic ideal of the
play in his costumes using color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit.
After this series of successful plays. Miles White designed for the
production of Ankles Aweigh.
Ankles Aweigh
Presented by Howard Hort, Reginald Hammerstein, and Mr. Finklehoffe Mark Hellinger Theatre 18 April 1955
Book by Guy Bolton and Eddie Davis Lyrics by Dan Shapiro Music by Sammy Fain Directed by Fred F. Finklehoffe Dances by Tony Y. Charmoli Settings by George Jenkins Costumes by Miles White Lighting by George Jenkins Music directed by Salvatore Dell'Isola Orchestrations by Don Walker Supervised by Jerome Robbins
Ankles Aweigh dealt with an American movie star making a film in
Italy who has a romance with a naval lieutenant, a jet pilot, who tries
to find a quiet place to honeymoon after they are secretly married.
About this production, the New York Times theatre critic. Brooks
Atkinson, wrote:
Any threats of progress made in the last ten to fifteen years by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Cole Porter, Abe Burrows, and their colleagues have been successfully averted by Ankles Aweigh. It is a show that can be understood without looking or listening.
White, in interview, noted the hazards of commercial theatre as exem plified by the above comments by Atkinson. He explained that even
"At the Theatre," New York Times, 19 April 1955, p. 27 64
though the creative team might deliver an acceptable product, as in
Ankles Aweigh, the process could be circumvented by the producer, who
handled the purse strings, and in actuality, controlled the entire
effort. Ankles Aweigh died, not because of the work of the creative
team, but because the producer could not or would not carry their work
to fruition. This was fortunately not true in Miles White's next
production, Jamaica.
Jamaica
Presented by David Merrick Imperial Theatre 21 October 1957
Book by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy Lyrics by E. Y. Harburg Dance Music and additional vocal music by Peter Matz Directed by Robert Lewis Dances by Jack Cole Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Jean Rosenthal Music directed by Lehman Engel Orchestrations by Philip J. Lang
Jamaica is the tale about a native girl in love with a fisherman
who nearly loses herself with a big spender that intends to take her
to New York. The creative team of Oliver Smith and Miles White joined 58 together to design breathtaking sets and costumes. "Stunning and gay," the costumes "have a colorful loveliness that added enormously
57 White, interview, 9 December 1981. 58 "Jamaica a Smash with Sultry Lena," Daily Mirror, 1 November 1957, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 4 November 1957), p. 198. 65 59 to the style and excitement of Jamaica." The costumes evoked the sensuality and the color of Jamaica, and fit the action. For example, after a hurricane sequence, the cast, headed by Lena Home and Ricardo
Montalban, reappeared in what remained of their former costumes. The now minimal costumes were a stylish and accurate representation of the
island's populace and its state. The costumes provided an amused state ment that left the audience chuckling rather than dwelling upon the
ugliness of the devastation. In his next production. Oh, Captain!,
White resumed successful collaboration with Jo Mielziner and recreated
the success of their Carousel, thirteen years earlier.
Oh, Captain!
Presented by Howard Merrill and Theatre Corporation of America Alvin Theatre 14 February 1958
Book by Al Morgan and Jose Ferrer Based on the screen play "The Captain's Paradise" by Alec Coppel Lyrics by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans Music by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans Directed by Jose Ferrer Dances by James Starbuck Settings by Jo Mielziner Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Jo Mielziner
Oh, Captain! dealt with a proper English naval captain who keeps
a dominated wife in England and a sultry mistress in Paris. Oh, Captain!
with Jose Ferrer's staging was termed artistic. The smart casting.
^^"At the Theatre," New York Times, 1 November 1957, p. 32; and "Musical Triumph of Lena Home," New York Post, 1 November 1957, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 4 November 1957), p. 198. 66
White's fabulous costuming, and Mielziner's lovely setting "made it a 60 new work of art in the musical comedy field." Another critic noted 61 that his costumes were "atmospheric, revealing, and humorous."
Through White's use of caricature, he identified the eccentric
nation with its exaggerated peoples in Oh, Captain!- White's ability
to use line, form and mass, as well as texture and color in order to
instantly identify time, place, and character were evident with his
design work, as they had been in his previous work. By exaggerating
a simple human condition. White captured the vitality that bred life
in Oh, Captain!. From collaboration with Jo Mielziner, Miles White
returned to collaboration with Oliver Smith in his next play. Take Me
Along.
Take Me Along
Presented by David Merrick Sam S. Shubert Theatre 22 October 1959
Based on Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neill Play by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell Lyrics by Bob Merrill Music by Bob Merrill Directed by Peter Glenville Dances by Onna White Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Jean Rosenthal Music directed by Lehman Engel Vocal Arrangements by Lehman Engel
^^"Oh. Captain! a Splendid, Witty, Tuneful and Well-Played Musi- ^^l •" New York Daily News, 5 February 1958, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 10 February 1958), p. 373.
^ "Oh. Captain! Hits the Jackpot," Daily Mirror, 5 February 1958, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 10 February 1958), p. 370. 67
Take Me Along was an adaptation of O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! that
combined the tender romance of a school teacher and her attempt to reform
her drunken newspaperman with the appealing charm of a small town Con
necticut editor's affection for his family. White visualized this
effectively in the "Beardsley Ballet," executed in the black and white 6 9 Style of the graphic artist, Aubrey Beardsley. His costuming in this
play proved that White, known for his use of color, was also adept at
using a two color palette. Take Me Along was followed by one of
White's greatest successes. Bye, Bye, Birdie.
Bye, Bye, Birdie
Presented by Edward Padula Martin Beck Theatre 14 April 1960
Book by Michael Stewart Lyrics by Lee Adams Music by Charles Strouse Dances by Gower Champion Settings by Robert Randolph Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Peggy Clark
Bye, Bye, Birdie, a play which dealt with the invasion of a rock
star into Sweet Apple, Ohio, as a publicity stunt for his new record,
gave White the opportunity to design while taxing his imagination.
White had the task to design the youth fashion for 1960 in 1959 and hoped that his design choices reflected the actual youth fashion.
6 9 White, interview, 10 December 1981. 68
John McClain saw the costumes as usually inventive and tasteful. 64 Another critic saw them as animated.
White's costume design work for Bye, Bye, Birdie will be fully treated in Chapter Three. The Smith-White team was reunited for the seventh time in White's next work in The Unsinkable Molly Brown.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
Presented by Theatre Guild and Dore Schary Winter Garden Theatre 3 November 1960
Book by Richard Morris Lyrics by Meredith Wilson Music by Meredith Wilson Directed by Dore Schary Dances by Peter Gennaro Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Peggy Clark
The Unsinkable Molly Brown traces the life of Molly Tobin from a Missouri tomboy to her marriage with Colorado's Johnny Brown, a gold miner, and eventually to a national heroine after taking command of a life boat at the sinking of the Titanic. For this production. White delivered highly stylized costumes. Notable for his elegant and glam orous costumes. White was once teasingly told by the actress, Lotte
Lenya, that he could not design. Lenya explained that even if he were to design a cheap and "scroungy" costume, it would end up looking
63 "It's Hello, Triumph, Hello," New York Journal American, 15 April 1960, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 18 April 1960), p. 298. 64 "Bye, Bye, Birdie," New York Times, 15 April 1960, p. 13. 69 65 elegant. That was exactly what happened in the design work for The
Unsinkable Molly Brown. From Molly's first costume to the costumes of
the saloon girls. White rendered costumes that depicted the nature of
these characters in an elegant fashion, but not in a vulgar manner.
The flexible sets, tricky lighting, and appealing costumes all worked 66 together and resulted in a hit production. Two months after this
hit, the Smith-White magic worked again in another hit. Show Girl.
Show Girl
Presented by Oliver Smith, James A. Doolittle and Charles Lowe Eugene O'Neill Theatre 14 January 1961
Lyrics by Charles Gaynor Music by Charles Gaynor Sketches by Charles Gaynor Additional Sketches by Ernest Chambers Sketches directed by Charles Gaynor Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Peggy Clark Music directed by Robert Hunter Musical numbers directed by Richard D'Arey
Show Girl, "an almost one-woman show" with Carol Channing that
compares the musical theatre of the twenties to that of 1961 which
included several take-offs on Sophie Tucker, Judy Garland, Marlene
Dietrich, and Lynn Fontanne, opened briefly in New York City and toured
6 5 White, interview, 9 December 1981. 66 "Unsinkable Molly at Winter Garden," New York World Telegram, 4 November 1960, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 7 November 1960), p. 184. 70 67 the United States. White's imaginative and vast storehouse of costume ideas amazed the theatre critics and public as in this reviewer's comments, "Miles White needed a noggin to dream up the stars' stunning 68 dresses." This quick paced show needed "serviceable costumes" as many of the costume changes were done behind a small screen on stage 69 visible to the audience.
The costuming for Show Girl brought White's ability to utilize minimal effects to create the different personalities and ideas, but also made White one of the most published costume designers of the period. His designs appeared in numerous books and magazines, as well as on the promotional materials for this production. In a promotional postcard for Show Girl from Las Vegas, Carol Channing wrote White, 70 "Just look what you did!" The face of the postcard pictured Channing
in a dark green unitard draped in a yellow and white scarf wrapped around the back of her neck and tied over her hip. From the various
67 Daniel Blum, A Pictorial History of the American Theatre 1860-1980, 5th ed. (New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1981), p. 373. 6ft "Show Girl at the O'Neill," New York World Telegram, 13 January 1961, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 16 January 1961), p. 394. 69 "Show Girl Has a Limited Appeal," New York Mirror, 13 January 1961, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 16 January 1961), p. 396. 70 Carol Channing, Las Vegas, Personal Files of Miles White, New York, New York. 71
settings in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Miles White's next work, in Milk
and Honey, would provide a specific locale, Israel.
Milk and Honey
Presented by Gerard Oestreicher Martin Beck Theatre 10 October 1961
Book by Don Appell Lyrics by Donald Saddler Music by Donald Saddler Directed by Albert Marre Dances by Donald Saddler Settings by Howard Bay Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Howard Bay
Milk and Honey is the story of a group of United States Jewish
widows on tour of Israel and the romance between two of these American
travelers with an elderly man whose marriage has been a failure. White
captured the basic Middle East silhouette in this production, and his
designs supplied the sentimental, comic, and honest qualities needed to 71 depict the story of the two widowed American travelers m Israel.
In the wedding of two young Israelis, White provided a rich background
of colors and silhouettes, as attested to by this statement, "Miles 72 White's costumes fit perfectly into the sets."
White, by exacting a quality product that evoked the spirit of
the play, successfully handled a twenty-three years career designing
71 New York Times, 11 October 1961, p. 52. 72 "An Old Pro, Molly Picon, Put Zip into Interesting Milk and Honey," Daily News, 11 October 1961, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 16 October 1961), p. 238. 72 musical comedies, dramas, comedies, circuses, movies, and ballets. It was his sense of detail and finish that marked him as a leader in costume design and found his talent in great demand across the nation. The
West Coast soon found White in temporary residence where he secured several design commissions. These commissions not only allowed White to exhibit his expertise in designs that ranged from the entire costume design to only the female leads' costxames, but also gave White the needed time he wanted with his family and friends. After this short period in California, White returned to New York where he found the 73 prevailing economic conditions placed Broadway on hard times. White's exacting product was considered expensive in a time that sought monetary return for a small investment. According to Peter Wexler, scene design er, and personal friend to White, it was not his design work or his ability to produce, but the economic conditions that faced Broadway which caused fewer and fewer musical comedies being produced without
74 some reassurance of a long run. White, now a youthful 49, found in frequent commissions through his professional contacts and friends; unfortunately, these productions were unsuccessful and closed before the New York opening. But at the age of 56, White designed costxames for Candida in 1970, and following an eleven year absence from musical comedy. White's costume design work appeared the next year, 1971, in
A Quarter for the Ladies' Room.
73 See economic difficulties, p. 31. 74 Interview with Peter Wexler, Broadway designer. New York, New York, 9 December 1981. 73 A Quarter for the Ladies' Room
Presented by Phillip R. Production Incorporated Village Gate Theatre 11 November 1972
Lyrics by Ruth Batchelor Music by John Clifton and Arthur Seigel Directed by Darwin Knight Settings by David R. Ballou Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Lee Watson
A Quarter for the Ladies' Room, a cabaret musical concerned with women's liberation, set in a ladies' room where four women and the ladies' room attendant sing and dance about men, opened in Greenwich
Village, which according to White might explain its lack of success.
White said that productions which did not run on Broadway did not exist. In a strange way, he continued, the critical eye that was ex clusively Broadway's did not view this small musical. White did, how ever, admit that, although the costxime design was good, the production 75 did not measure up to the Broadway standard. White's last musical comedy work. Tricks, appeared two months later.
Tricks
Presented by Herman Levin Alvin Theatre 8 January 1973
Book by Jon Jory Based on a play by Moliere Lyrics by Lonnie Burstein Music by Jerry Blatt Directed by Jon Jory
75 White, interview, 10 December 1981. 74 Settings by Oliver Smith Costumes by Miles White Lighting by Martin Aronstein
Tricks, an almost unrecognizable adaptation of Moliere's farce,
Les Fourberies de Scapin, updated to a rock musical, is the story about stern fathers who are trying to influence their daughters and sons to marry someone of whom the parents approve. The tricky Scapin baffles the parents as he solves the young lovers' problem. Miles White's trademarks of bright and attractive costximes were evident, once again, in Tricks. His imagination successfully incorporated combinations of different styles, bright costxames. White's costuming was noted by 76 another critic as "handsome, colorful and inventive." Argante's costumes represented the accumulation of skills and knowledge from a fruitful career. These costumes were the New York audiences' last glimpse at White's distinctive use of color, pattern, fashion, move ment and wit. He never worked on Broadway, again, in musical comedy.
Summary
At the age of fifty eight. Tricks completed a career including twenty-nine musicals that lasted thirty-five years. The times and styles had changed, and Miles White had a reputation as an expensive designer. His meticulous attention to period cut and detailing were
^^"Tricks Moliere Musical, Bows," New York Daily News, 9 January 1973, reprint ed. (New York: Critics' Theatre Reviews, 12 January 1973), p. 391. 75
in part reasons for White's decline in popularity as a musical comedy •77 designer.
Like many costume designers of musical comedies and revues.
White worked in other theatrical forms: ballets, night clubs, play, television, film, and circuses. In each of these forms, he proved to have a profound influence. Musical comedy and revues, however, placed the greatest demand upon his talent, and, because of this, were his
favorites.
In White's work, the first and most striking feature was the use of color. Although color was utilized by many designers effectively.
White brought a fresh, crisp, and vital life to color through his use of patterns. By placing one color against another. White used the elements of stripes, lines, polka dots, checks, squares, diamonds, and plaids to enliven and embellish the character through another technique, the use of pattern.
In addition to color and pattern. White made notable use of sculptural quality and wit to describe the character. Peter Wexler, a Broadway designer, referred to White's design work as non-architec tural, and noted that a quality that was void of the rigidity of 78 architecture had a sense of lightness. This light, sculptural quality was evidenced in White's rendering. Each costxime was captured
77 Wexler, interview, 9 December 1981. 78 Wexler, interview, 9 December 1981. 76 as though the rendering was stop-action. White described the movement 79 as the fourth dimension of the costxime.
The marriage of sculptural quality and wit was achieved by the trained eye of White. The wit was established through the cut, the color, the use of pattern, or the exaggeration of the hxoman figure.
These qualities emerged in the outrageous and tongue-in-cheek costximes of his musical comedy costxime design work throughout his career.
White exemplified the New Stagecraft movement in his use of simplicity, suggestion, and synthesis. Furthermore, he utilized the theories set down by Macgowan and Jones of symbols, sculpture, signifi cant form, and simplicity. Throughout his costxime design work for the
Broadway stage, his use of color, pattern, sculpture, as well as wit, directly related to the theories of Macgown and Jones and the New
Stagecraft movement.
Chapter Three investigates the two representative productions of
Bloomer Girl and Bye, Bye, Birdie in relation to the New Stagecraft principles of simplicity, suggestion, and synthesis. These principles will be explained and revealed through attention to elements of color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit as utilized in fifteen represen tative costxime renderings from these productions. Through this analy sis, insights about White's use of these principles and musical comedy style will become apparent.
79 White, interview, 9 December 1981 CHAPTER III
AN ANALYSIS OF MILES WHITE'S COSTUME DESIGNS
FROM TWO REPRESENTATIVE PLAYS:
BLOOMER GIRL AND BYE, BYE, BIRDIE
The selection of Bloomer Girl and Bye, Bye, Birdie as
representative of White's work was made for several reasons:
1. Both were based upon American themes.
2. Both were highly acclaimed by the critics and the public.
3. Both were produced (Bloomer Girl in 1944, Bye, Bye, Birdie in
1960) at the height of White's popularity, but at different times
in his career, one earlier, one later.
4. Both were chosen over more popular productions like Oklahoma!,
Carousel, or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes because much primary
evidence was available for these, but not for the more popular
productions mentioned.
The primary evidence available included the Van Damm photo collection, working, drawings, fabric and color swatches, and the costume renderings. Only from primary evidence can it be determined that the costume which appeared on the stage was the costxime White had designed. Many of White's renderings for productions were sold at exhibitions, with no records kept of the sales, thus producing gaps in knowledge of the costxime designs for the major characters.
77 78
Additionally, the loss or destruction of other renderings also limited
the available primary evidence for White's design works. For most pro
ductions, this would seriously limit researchers such as the present
writer.
Through analysis of the available primary sources for Bloomer
Girl and Bye, Bye, Birdie, renderings were chosen from two scenes in
each play. The scenes and the renderings used from those scenes were
judged by the writer to be representative of the range of action and
actors in the plays.
This chapter analyzes the costume design rendering in terms of
the three principles of simplicity, suggestion, and synthesis explored
in Chapter Two. It does not deal with the appropriateness for the character or production. The analysis of the costume renderings in terms of principles is used as the data to provide comment on the appli cation of these principles to musical comedy costume design by White, and his use of the elements of the deocrative-plastic current. The decorative-plastic current combined in a selective manner the archi tectural simplicity of the plastic current with that of ornamental motifs and vivid color of the decorative current to reflect the play's ideas or mood.
The decorative-plastic current of the New Stagecraft movement which was popular with musical comedy designers was applied by White through his use of color, rhythmic patterns, and sculpture. To these elements. White added a fourth element, wit, which was intended to arouse an amused interest or evoke attention or a quality of mind that 79
predisposes to such expression. This element has been consistently
referred to as wit in previous chapters, and is meant to encompass all
the elements of color, rhythmic pattern, and sculpture that relate to
it.
For each production, a capsulized form of the plot and other
necessary information is first provided. This material is followed by
a discussion of the first principle of simplicity and its application
to the set of renderings under discussion. Under the subheadings of
color, rhythmic pattern, sculpture, and wit, each rendering is analyzed.
The second principle of suggestion is then discussed, and the set of
renderings analyzed using the same analysis subheadings. The same
procedure is used for the third principle, synthesis.
Bloomer Girl
Bloomer Girl, set in 1861 during the Civil War, tells the story of a feminist, Dolly Bloomer, who called for the women's right to vote and for the end of slavery and of the Civil War. In the opening scene, the prosperous Horatio Applegate inspects his six daughters in their
Applegate hoop skirts which he manufactures. For Dolly, these skirts are the representation of male tyranny over women which she denounces.
Instead, she advocates the wearing of Turkish trousers. Evalina Apple- gate, the youngest of Horatio's six daughters, joins her aunt, Dolly, in a struggle for emancipation in Cicero Falls, New York. In the course of the campaign, Evalina and Dolly are arrested for aiding in the escape of a runaway slave. 80
Love, in the person of Jeff Calhoun, a slave-owning Kentuckian
who was hired by Evalina's father, enters the scene, and helps Evalina
to withstand the domination of her father and to fight the masculine
traditions of the Sixties. In the end, when the boys come home from
the Civil War, Dolly and Evalina have won the first battle against the
Applegate hoop skirt, and Evalina has won her southern admirer.
The desirable setting for the musical was described by Newlin,
who stated:
It would require a kind of valentine world where one could believe such nonsense might take place and appear humorous, a valentine world of over decorated period settings where exaggerated hoop skirts seemed perfectly reasonable and Turkish trousers a comic intrusion.
The design team of Lemuel Ayers and Miles White provided stylish set
tings and beautiful costumes. This would be the last time Ayers and
White would collaborate, tracing to a disagreement about color. Ayers
believed the costximes were too intense in color for the rest of the
design statement. In a telephone interview with Agnes de Mille, Newlin
discovered that:
Miles' color key was much higher than Lem's and may have attracted undue attention to itself. Agnes de Mille speaks of this conflict: "Miles did sensational costximes that would stand alone as costumes--a monstrous use of color-- and hoops too big to get the dancers on stage." Agnes was unquestionably in agreement with Lem that the costumes should have been dipped.
De Mille wanted the costumes dipped into a dye vat containing a light tan dye in order to subdue the color. However, Bloomer Girl was viewed
Newlin, "The New York Stage Designs of Lemuel Ayers," p. 95
^Ibid., p. 96. 81 by the New York audiences and critics with undipped costumes. Bloomer
Girl was a highly successful and popular musical in part due to White's use of color to focus attention on the actors and away from highly- decorative two-dimensional scenery with applied three-dimensional 3 elements. The use of brilliant color to separate the actors from the scenery, which allowed the audiences to focus on the action, was one of the methods White chose to follow the first principle of simplicity.
Simplicity
Simplicity meant the subordination or elimination of detail so that it would not distract the spectator from the action. Other musi cal comedy designers used the same elements of color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit, but not as skillfully as White who used a smaller selection of elements to express the meaning of the play and the character. Every visual element--the costximes, lights, and scenery-- provided an environment that did not distract from the actor's human ity, character, or space. In order to place the focus on the actor, the designer reduced the material and forms down to a chosen few which would heighten the meaning. For White, this meant very specific choices in color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit.
Color
The surface treatments, or color, as applied to the three dimen sional costxime, helped to define individuals and also to divide them
3 Blxim, A Pictorial History of the American Theatre 1860-1980, I. 303. 82 into groups. For example. White's use of color separated the mother,
Mrs. Horatio Applegate, from her daughters by his design. Serena
Applegate's costume (figure 1) was a hoop dress designed in brown silk faille, trimmed in dark brown velvet applique with chenille fringe and tassels. The dress bodice had open sleeves which were lined in pink.
The white blouse had a Valenciennes border in insertions around the neck, down the front of the blouse and the sleeve cuffs.
Brown, a color which directly related to the earth, symbolized the warmth and nurturing of this character. The dark brown applique, fringe, and tassels provided a more somber, mature, and conservative quality to the brown dress. The pink underlining of the sleeves spar kled due to the movement of the fringe. The pink provided a link between mother and daughters, as well as relating to the youthful qualities which remained from her experience as a young woman. The colors of this costume not only related mother to daughters, but also separated them by age and station in life.
The Applegate daughters (figures 2-5) were dressed in pink and white. The daughters' costximes were also hoop skirted. Each skirt was designed with four to six tiers. White used folded fichus, blouses, girdles, and a jacket to vary each of the daughters' costximes. White's basic color scheme of white and pink was interpreted in pink on white, white on pink, and pink on pink. These interpretations allowed White the freedom to combine these colors in a consistent way for each costume. The color white provided the clean, fresh, and crisp look that the designer wanted for these young Victorian women, giving them 83
Mrs. Horatio Applegate
Figure 1 84
Octavia Applegate
Figure 2 85
Julia Applegate
Figure 3 86
Phoebe Applegate
Figure 4 87
Delia Applegate
Figure 5 88 a positive, light, and delicate quality. The color pink symbolized a frivolous, dainty, giddy quality. Using the two colors, the costume designs for the Applegate daughters provided a clean, soft, youthful appearance for each of the characters. The feelings evoked by the color were reinforced through the rhythmic patterns.
Rhythmic Patterns
The rhythmic patterns used by White were decorative motifs such as lines, dots, flowers, plaids, or other geometric figures applied in a repeated manner. Surface treatments that were handled in a diaper
(diamond pattern), stripe, or polka dot fashion provided an implied light, kinetic, and flowing movement on the costume. This type of adornment provided a visible textural change through its repetition and change in motif on a solid background, as in Mrs. Horatio Apple- gate's costxime.
The change in visible texture was established through the use of a different textured fabric and the repetition of that pattern. In
Mrs. Horatio Applegate's costume (figure 1), the dark brown velvet applique was utilized in two ways. First, it was used as a line that accentuated the exaggerated scalloped edges. As the line reached the uppermost apex of the two scallops, the line formed a trefoil (three leaf). The trefoil, although smaller, repeated the shape of the scallops. The lines were reinforced by the chenille fringe. This reemphasis provided a weight and bulk that one might expect in a matron. The second way line was used was in the dark brown velvet gppliqued floral motif, which provided White the opportunity to accentuate 89 weight. The weight was accented by placing in the center of the exaggerated scallops a large flower, which provided a relatively large border pattern. To complete the look. White finished the garments using a small flower in a diaper pattern. White's use of this pattern produced a heavy, lumbering movement. The texture of this applique on the shiny silk faille dress aided in creating the feeling of heavi ness for this character's figure.
In the Applegate daughters' costumes (figures 2-5), White again utilized the line and floral motifs, but also added dots. The rhythmic pattern accented the girlish qualities these characters possessed. In
Octavia's costume (figure 2), White emphasized the character's lightness through the use of a solid line of border scallops on each tier of the skirt, on the opened sleeves of the bodice, and on the folded fichu
(triangular scarf). The undulating of this line due to ruffles provided a soft quality. White also used a pink floral motif in a polka dot fashion covering the dress.
For Julia's costume (figure 3), White used horizontal stripes to evoke the character. Each of the five tiers on this skirt was treated identically. Each had a zig-zagged edge in a darker pink ribbon on pink linen. A white stripe, bordered with the darker pink ribbon on the bottom and top edges of this stripe, had a pink floral motif appli- qued at regular intervals. The white triangular scarf which covered the white blouse had a border of the ruffled pink zig-zagged edge. For the scarf, the border was tapered with small zig-zags at the waist enlarging to the shoulder. The border was attached with a darker pink 90 ribbon to the scarf. White also added a smaller tapering zig-zag edged to the inside, with the points over the folded white scarf. The pink open sleeves were also treated with the darker pink ribbon accenting the zig-zag edge. The use of stripe, zig-zagged edges, and floral motifs gave this costume a kinetic energy and lightness. White also designed these qualities into Phoebe's costume.
In costximing Phoebe (figure 4), White designed an exaggerated white and pink eyelet lace-look. The six-tiered, white hoop skirt again used the line and floral motif. White added pink dots as a motif.
Each tier was treated identically. The undulating edge of the scallops was accented with the applique of a darker pink ribbon. In the center of each scallop. White placed a flower. At the top of the apex. White placed a pink dot. Each border was ruffled, including the top tier.
The pink bodice was topped with a folded fichu of the same pink appli- qued look. The edge of this scarf was treated with a pink and darker pink ribbon border in a Valenciennes manner. Phoebe's blouse was of the same white and pink material. The sleeves were exposed under a darker pink-bordered pink bow. The same treatment was used in the ribbon sash, which White referred to as a girdle. The use of the line, floral, and dot motifs provided a kinetic energy that was built into the garment. With these same motifs White decorated Delia's costume.
In Delia's costume (figure 5), White used the same motifs of line, floral, and dots, but he relied on dots more heavily for this costume.
The skirt was designed with three tiers. Each tier was made up of two layers. The lower layer was a double thick, white, organdy, box-pleated 91 ruffle. The top layer was a pink linen with dark pink polka dots.
This appeared to resemble an exaggerated dotted swiss. The edge of
this layer was cut in a scallop and edged with the same dark pink as
the polka dots. Only the topmost layer of pink was treated in a varia
tion. The two pink underlayers were dotted pink, but the top pink
layer had white flowers with dark pink stems and leaves appliqued.
This fabric was used on the open-sleeved bolero jacket. The edges of
this costxime piece were lined with the dark pink edge. A girdle of the
dotted pink fabric wrapped the waist with a bow in the front. The
white blouse had folds which ran from the shoulder to the waist. The
sleeves were treated with two layers of box-pleated ruffles to the
wrist. The combination of line, floral, and dot motifs promoted an
exaggerated dotted swiss-like fabric with appliqued flowers, which
appeared to imply a light and flowing movement which was designed into
all the Applegate women's costximes.
In the costxime designs for the Applegate daughters. White used
patterns to establish an implied light, kinetic, and flowing movement.
The tiered skirts created the lightness. Through White's variety of
combinations of the floral and dot motifs. White introduced the kinetic quality. The flowing movement was a result of the continued use of
the tiers in the girls' costximes.
White, with a limited number of motifs, was able to separate mother from daughters, as well as to connect them through line, floral, and dot motifs. The patterns, as used by White, produced a sedate or matronly movement for the mother and a kinetic, light or bouncy 92
movement for her daughters. The floral and dot motifs provided a soft,
feminine quality. The lining accented the sculptural qualities found
in White's work.
Sculpture
The sculpture of these costumes shows the skill with which White
used form and mass to his advantage. Form and mass also includes the
use of space, highlight, and shadow. This group of costumes from
Bloomer Girl illustrates White's ability to represent the silhouette
of the period as well as the individual characters wearing them.
With Mrs. Applegate's costume (figure 1), White captured the
hoop-skirted silhouette of the period. Through exaggeration. White
created a shape that eliminated the definite shoulder and extended the
sleeve to follow the downward curve of the hoop skirt. White created
an almost continuous line from shoulder to floor. Even though White
provided the period waistline, the piercing of the open sleeve visually
seemed to fill the space between the waist and arm. The exaggerated
size of the hoop skirt provided additional mass or weight to this
costxime. White's choice of material, the shiny fabric, reinforced the
sense of weight. This reinforcement was two-fold in nature, and pro
vided a solidity that moved easily. The velvet fringe and tassels added to the double nature White achieved with the mass.
With the play of light on the costume. White captured the essence of the period silhouette. The shiny surface of the faille reflected the light easily. The highlight and shadow on this costxime identified the two different textures used. The shiny fabric, although weighty, appeared heavier with the dark brown fringe and tassels. 93
White's sculptural quality of this costume projected the Victorian era of the production, relying on the movement of the garment. Not only did the highlight and shadow move as the actress moved, but the added movement of the fringe aided in the projection of the period silhouette.
The movement of the actress and the costume provided a visual discourse for the audience about the character in terms of form, mass, space, and light.
The daughters' costximes (figures 2-5), also reflected their characters. Although the silhouette of the period was again captured by the hooped skirt, the daughters' hooped skirts appeared lighter due to the tiers and the decorative edging. The ruffles, scallops, and zig-zags departed from the smooth curve of the mother's skirt. The mass or weight seemed to be eliminated by the undulation of the tiers around the hoop skirt. As the actresses moved in their costximes, the tiers also moved. The fluttering, waving, or floating quality of these skirts seemed to expand the characters into a larger space or volxime than would normally be required for the same costume minus the tiers. The material of organdy, poplin, and linen reflected a mat finish on the fabric of which the highlight and shadow provided a soft flow, which emphasized the feminine qualities of these characters. The slightest movement of the characters set the costxime in motion, achiev ing a light and lively feminine effect that White wanted for the male- dominated characters. 94 Wit
For White, the attitude expressed in his costume design for
musical comedy was important. Musical comedy costume design demanded
more than just characters; it required an amused interest that evoked
a swift perception about the character's personality. This amused
interest would be aligned in the total production to allow a unified
statement.
In Mrs. Applegate's costume (figure 1), the exaggerated hoop
skirt, the fringe, and tassels were designed to move. The fringe and
tassels added to the movement through their swishing and swaying. The
movement, coupled with the shiny fabric, provided an excitement to
the garment that was in contrast to the weighty or fallen quality
achieved in the design.
The costume for Octavia (figure 2) included an exaggerated hoop
skirt which was also designed to move, but the movement for the costume
was double in nature. First, the tiers of the costume would float or
blow as the costxime moved. Secondly, the hoop skirt itself would move
as a whole. The distortion of the shape of the hoop skirt as Octavia
moved through a room filled with her sisters' and mother's exaggerated
hoop skirts added to the comical nature. Octavia's costxime appeared
softer and more ultra-feminine than her sisters' costximes due to the
floating quality achieved through the tiers and sleeves as it moved.
In contrast, the zig-zagged and hard edges of Julia's costxime (figure
3) gave her character a more severe look. Again, the movement of the tiers and the hoop skirt worked for White. The zig-zagged edges picked 95
up the air as the actress, Toni Hart, moved and caused a kinetic
movement. This dynamic movement occurred as the actress rotated or
changed her relationship to the other characters. The severe qualities
were juxtaposed to the lively movement built into the dress.
The movement in Phoebe's costume (figure 4) was dynamic and
kinetic. As White designed this costume, he added extra ornamentation
in the form of a bow at the intersection of the folded fichu and the
sleeves, as well as a repeated bow with its long ties at the waist.
This ornamentation was deliberately placed to float and fly as the
actress moved to add to the kinetic energy of this costume. The over
all costxime defined Phoebe as a meticulous individual.
For Delia's costume (figure 5), White emphasized the somberness
or maturity of this character by breaking the hoop skirt with ruffles
from the knees down. This silhouette reflected much of the quality of
the mother because of the smooth shape of the hoop skirt. White aligned
this character to the other sisters through the box-pleated ruffles that
extended out from the jacket sleeves and on the tiers of the skirt,
which emphasized the straightforwardness of the character. Delia's
costxime showed the character's obvious relationship to the mother, as
well as the relationship to the youthfulness of her sisters.
Simplicity, as shown in White's work, involved his use of color,
rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit to identify individuals and groups,
Through a simple color scheme of white and pink. White was able to
identify individuals and groups. As noted earlier, the Applegate daughters were grouped together with the color pink, but at the same 96 time were related to their mother through the pink underlining of her open sleeve. The repetition of the floral and scallop patterns also helped to associate these women to each other. The dots and linear patterns were utilized to accent the cut and to give vitality to the costximes. The period silhouette, as seen by White, provided a form and mass which he altered slightly. The alteration caused exaggerated changes in the movement patterns. White was able, through the use of a limited color palette, rhythmic patterns, and sculpture, to provide a hximorous quality about these individuals which expressed each character's personality. The first principle of the New Stagecraft movement was simplification. White met this in his designs for Bloomer Girl.
Suggestion
Suggestion means the sximmoning of a spirit or recollection of that spiritual or aesthetic quality from a naturalistic or abstract occasion, idea, concept, or emotion. Suggestion can be derived from the elimina tion of detail and motif, but evoked by a singular element that embodies the quality. This singular element, if repeated, indicates relation ships and the alteration of relationships.
The design problem in Bloomer Girl, as far as suggestion was con cerned, was to create a world that embraced the exaggerated hoop skirt and at the same time accepted it as natural. In the production, this world was an extension of Mr. Horatio Applegate, the manufacturer of the
Applegate hoop skirt. Mrs. Applegate and her daughters were excellent examples of life in the exaggerated hoop-skirted world endorsed by Mr.
Applegate. Dolly Bloomer, however, proposed a different mode of 97
fashion, the Turkish pants, for which White altered the Applegate
fashion by eliminating the petticoats and cutting the skirt off at the
knee. Basically following a pared down version of the hoop skirt. White
continued the period silhouette through the blouse and overvest. White
suggested Dolly's conflict with the tyranny of men over women in several
costximes for Dolly Bloomer and the girls.
Color
In the Dolly Bloomer costume (figure 6), White chose a skirt in
vibrant red with white and yellow polka dots, worn over red Turkish
trousers. The red of the skirt and trousers signalled rage or danger,
and indicated the passion and emotion wrapped up in the cause. The minimal use of white and yellow added a cheerful quality to the costxime.
The black vest over the white blouse added a business-like formality to this costxime.
White continued this business-like formality in another Dolly
Bloomer costxime (figure 7), in which a blue-green (the complement of red), was used to project a somber feeling. The two-toned costxime evoked opposite feelings to the red used elsewhere, with the blue-green symbolizing a serene, cold loneliness. The alternating colors of the skirt provided a stable quality. The lighter blue-green around the edge of the skirt aided in a transition to the trousers of the same color. The color on the costume projected a somber feeling which emphasized determination and persistence of the women in their cause.
The Bloomer Girls' costxime (figure 8) combined the colors of gray, white, and grayish yellow to promote a disciplined feeling. The 98
Dolly Bloomer (red)
Figure 6 99
Dolly Bloomer (blue-green)
Figure 7 100
Bloomer Girls
Figure 8 101 trousers and overskirt were striped with white bordering the gray and yellow. A white blouse was topped with a gray vest. The colors in these costumes presented a dual statement, that of passion, associated with the grayish yellow and white, and that of resignation, associated with the gray. The color scheme, used in a striped manner, provided a hximorous regimental quality to these advocates of reform, reflecting both the passion and resignation necessary for soldiers with a cause.
Rhythmic Patterns
The motifs White used in these costumes were dots and lines.
Dots placed in a polka dot manner were alternated in color, adding a kinetic energy to the skirt and handkerchief for Dolly Bloomer's cos txime (figure 6). The line motif which ran parallel to the placket and accented the hem of the skirt was utilized to outline the shortened garment. The use of pattern was effective. For example, the black broadcloth vest was edged in black velvet, the subtle change in texture providing a source of suggested movement. White's combined use of patterned and solid garments made an effective statement about the character.
In the second Dolly Bloomer costxime (figure 7), the scallop motif and striped motif prevailed. The overskirt had tapered stripes from several inches above the hem to the waist while the bodice also had tapered stripes from the shoulder to the waist. The bolero jacket that covered the bodice was designed with the two shades of blue-green.
The black lining of the scalloped edges was repeated at the hemline.
The lining at the hem was executed with a straight line under the 102
darker blue-green stripe and scallops to the hem and up to the next
blue-green stripe. The two motifs, line and scallop, used in the trim
work were a repetition of the cut of the garment. Two tassels were
placed on the straight trim which accented the darker blue-green stripe,
White's use of the motifs continued the business-like formality that
had been introduced with the element of color.
In the costxime design for the Bloomer Girls (figure 8), White
depended entirely upon the use of line motif to establish the rigid
determination of the women. The line or stripes of the skirt and trou-
ser tapered from the hem of the skirt to the waist, with an opposite
taper for the trousers. The stripe pattern, again, symbolized a regi mental feeling, due in part to the regularity of the pattern created.
The exaggerated Applegate hoop skirt reflected the 1860s. The highly patterned valentine world that Ayers created was reinforced with the costume designs for the Applegates, but for those costximes designed for Dolly and her girls. White designed a more severe, un cluttered look. By the use of the designs for Dolly and her girls.
White was able to separate them from the dominated Applegate women and to emphasize qualities about Dolly's group and their cause. White implied conflict with the decorative complemented by the sculptural qualities addressed next.
Sculpture
The sculptural qualities found in these costumes related to the ideas or emotions in the play by reflecting an appropriate silhouette.
The prevalent hoop skirt silhouette was distorted through the use of 103 the abbreviated skirt and the baggy Turkish trousers. The alteration of the hoop skirt silhouette injected an out-of-the-ordinary quality to the new mode of fashion. When a circular movement was executed, the skirt's flare and trousers would be reminiscent of a young child's spinning top. To this image. White's use of texture in Dolly's cos txime added a touch of solemnity. The texture of the velvet on the broadcloth vest added a weight or a conventional tone to the costume.
The Bloomer Girl silhouette provided a distinct change from the hoop skirt silhouette, and reflected a humorous quality.
Wit
The hximorous attitude projected in costume was not intended to reflect on the cause, but to keep the audience focused on Dolly in a hximorous way. The colors used in the designs were, in themselves, a statement of position. The passion, symbolized by red; the business like nature, represented by the blue-green; and the controlled or regi mental quality provided by the gray, white, and grayish yellow, were all important attitudes for the characters in the play.
In Dolly's costume (figure 6), two competing statements juxta posed, "business as usual" and "rights with a passion." The dual state ment adds interest to the character as well as heightening the contro versy. Through the use of the vibrant red color. White boldly dis played the passion of this character while tempering this passion with a traditionally black vest and white blouse gave a business quality to the character.
In Dolly's blue-green outfit (figure 7), the same double state ment is evident, but this time done in a broader fashion. The skirt 104
and parasol resemble in color and motif those items which might be
found in a circus. The bodice and bolero jacket represent and look
like everyday wear. Again, White has focused on the essence of the
production through his use of dual statements in costxime designs for
Dolly Bloomer.
In the Bloomer Girls' costximes (figure 8), as in the previous
costxime designs for Dolly, White also provided a dual statement. The
hard edges of the stripes and the bittersweet combination of colors
evoked the discipline and life of a soldier while the white, frilly
blouse indicated women's perceived place in society.
Suggestion, as used in White's costume design work overall for
Bloomer Girl, started with the 1860s silhouette. The silhouette was
then distorted with softened shoulders and hoop skirts. White chose
not to reveal the figure with a baggy pants leg that was tapered to
the ankle. White remained consistent overall with the period and
remained true to the period's beliefs and practices, while indicating
the conflict to the audience with the distortion of the figure.
Synthesis
Synthesis for the overall design means the blending of the
scenery, costximes, lights, actors, and play to achieve a total effect that reflected the play's statement. In Bloomer Girl, the designs consisted of a village green, an open landscape, and a pavillion. The highly decorative scenery used chiaroscuro to give the two-dimensional and three dimensional appliqued elements to a three-dimensional look. 105
The use of highlight and shadow created a hyper-realistic setting,
with the conservatory commanding much of the audience's attention.
Color
White, in his attempt to keep the focus on the actors, chose a
high color key which pushed the actors out from the scenery, allowing
their easy viewing by the audience. White used color on the costximes
to group and to separate individuals, as was shown in his costume
designs for the Applegate women, discussed earlier. Color was also
used to evoke emotions that implied aspects of various character's
personalities. Using a limited color palette. White was able to group
or separate, but most importantly, to keep the focus on the actor and
the play.
Rhythmic Patterns
Through the motifs of lines, florals, and dots. White was able to express the sense of the action and to create a mood with a few selected symbols. These symbols were arranged in different ways to capture the ideas behind the characters and the play. The decorative essence of the
Victorian period was established through these few motifs. The exag geration used to decorate the garments was the cornerstone on which
White designed these costumes, with the edging techniques providing insight into the sculptural quality of the costumes. 106 Sculpture
With his sculpturing knowledge. White captured the 1860s period
silhouette. From the cut of the vest to the folds and tucks on the blouses, with pleats and with ruffles, and with other techniques noted above. White established the period silhouette and effected the move ment of the garment that helped to establish it further. As a result of White's design of the exaggerated hoop skirt, the hoop would glide as the actress walked and would sway side to side when the actress
stopped. The addition of ruffled or tiered layers resulted in a float
ing or fluttering motion. This additional movement provided another dimension of lightness to the costume. The tiers allowed the breaking of the definite line of the hoop shape into a softened irregular line which helped to eliminate the weight evoked by the mass.
White was cognizant, too, of the effect of lighting of the costxime designs. The costume design for Mrs. Applegate in brown silk faille as noted earlier, characterized this awareness. The fabric finish on the costumes provided an added interpretative element that aided in the visual representation of the characters. Through the silhouette, the movement, and the lighting. White controlled the visual qualities of the characters and placed the costumes into the time period.
Wit
White's use of exaggeration in the Bloomer Girl costume designs introduced wit. In the development of the Victorian silhouette. White chose to design costumes that were exaggerations of the era. The huge skirts were elegant in appearance and extended into the costxime design 107
a hyper-reality found in the valentine world Ayers created with the
scenery. This hyper-reality was interrupted by the Turkish pants for
the Bloomer Girls.
Color was also exaggerated. The color of this time period was
much more subdued than that used for the costumes of Dolly Bloomer and
her girls. The vibrant reds of Dolly Bloomer's costume marked a break
with the common colors used in the everyday wear of the period shown by
the designs for the Applegate family. White's use of exaggerated color
helped to focus attention on the crusade.
The final exaggeration was contained in the motifs. In the Vic
torian period, many of the garments were edged. Although White used
edging in his costumes, the Victorian use of motifs like polka dota,
florals, and stripes, was not as bold and dynamic as the effects White
created. With the exaggerated motif. White forced the audience into an
understanding of the details of the period. Wit was evident in the
designs through the exaggeration of various elements, so that the
hximorous presentation created the proper reactions to the characters
and the environment of the play.
Bye, Bye, Birdie
Bye, Bye, Birdie provided a "fresh, unpretentious, funny, and
me Iodic show that kidded the flourishing rock-and-roll rage and its 4 wriggling superstar, Elvis Presley." In Bye, Bye, Birdie, the current
rock-and-roll singing sensation Conrad Birdie (modeled after Elvis
Gerald Bordman, American Musical Theatre (New York: Oxford Un iversity Press, 1978), p. 616. 108
Presley), is drafted into the armed forces leaving his agent, Albert
Peterson, without his commissions. As a result of the loss of commis sions, Peterson did not have enough money to marry his secretary. Rose
Grant, which pleased Albert's mother, Mae Peterson, a poisonously doting, coarse, and vocally abrasive woman. Rose concocts a scheme, to write a song called "One Last Kiss" which Birdie would sing to a typical teen-age admirer, Kim MacAfee, a resident of Sweet Apple, Ohio.
If the song is as popular as Peterson and Grant hope, they can live from the royalties until Conrad is dischraged. Conrad's entourage enters the quiet town of Sweet Apple where Conrad stays at the MacAfee' s home, interrupting the courtship of Kim and her boyfriend, Hugo Pea- body. Albert's persistent mother forces a wedge between Albert and
Rose. Rose reacts by accompanying Hugo on a "bender," and, before long, an intoxicated Rose disrupts a serious, small-town Shriner's meeting.
Kim soon tires of the overpowering and arrogant ways of Birdie, who, in due time, returns to the army. The young lovers and Albert and Rose are reunited for a happy ending.
The two major groups represented in Bye, Bye, Birdie are youth, representable by Rose Grant and the teen-agers in the Jungle Gym scene and adults, representable by parents like Mae Peterson. These groups are separated by a generation gap, as exemplified in the lyrics sung by Mr. MacAfee, "What is the Matter With Kids Today?"
The storyline of Bye, Bye, Birdie centers about the changing relationships of the family and society, the generation gap, sex, marriage, and the new channels of communication, the telephone and television. The traditional values of society are being influenced 109 by the changing technology and times. The younger generation's worship of television personalities like Ed Sullivan and Conrad Birdie is an
influence about which parents are skeptical. The public communication
systems provide an instant influence on both younger rural and urban populations. Charles Strouse, the musical composer, chose not only to
look at middle America's youth at the height of rock-and-roll, but also to capture the spirit of a restless, but not alienated, youth. Conrad
Birdie, the rock-and-roll idol, is presented as a sex object. His gy rating pelvis, which would not have been allowed on television in the fifties, and his screaming fans become a vivid sexual image for the fashionable younger generation.
In reality. Bye, Bye, Birdie examined the universal problem of the generation gap. In the design for Bye, Bye, Birdie, White depicted two segments of society, in which youth was a positive, strong element and the parents were a humorous negative segment. He used the clothing of the younger generation and the older generation's reaction to it as the key element. Thus, youth donned the tight pants and leather jackets worn by the current rock-and-roll idol, Conrad Birdie. This new style of dressing was assumed by the parents to be a corruption of their children's moral fiber.
Barbara Eraser referred to the traditional and fashionable style in the costximing of Bye, Bye, Birdie:
Green, The World of Musical Comedy, p. 372. 110 The urban characters in Birdie who invade and disrupt Sweet Apple have an urban style of dress in contrast to the simple citizens of Sweet Apple, yet as the influence begins to increase the costximes of certain impressionable folks in Sweet Apple can become urbanized. Birdie's leather jacket and tight pants become interesting to teenage boys in Sweet Apple.
Unlike the nostalgic 1860s of Bloomer Girl, Bye, Bye, Birdie was
set in 1960 which provided the design team of Robert Randolph, Miles
White, and Peggy Clark a musical on which they could focus their energy
and imagination to think about the 1960 society and current trends.
White, in interview, noted that he began by analyzing the fashion
trends of 1959 and reinterpreting those trends for the production of 7 Bye, Bye, Birdie.
The costume designs from Bye, Bye, Birdie that will be examined
here are from two scenes, "The Penn Station" and "The Jungle Gym." No
Conrad Birdie renderings were available, but the costxime design render
ings available from "The Penn Station" include costumes on youth like
those he wore. Overall, the renderings came from a cross section of
groups, including the dancing teen-age boys, the reporters, Mae Peter
son, Rose Grant, the teen-age youths--two girls, Karen and Leda, and
two boys, Tracy and Gary. Through the investigation of these designs
using color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture and wit. White reflected this
musical's ideas or moods on the 1960 society and current trends through
the New Stagecraft principles of simplicity, suggestion, and synthesis.
Barbara Means Eraser, "A Structural Analysis of the American Musical Theatre between 1955 and 1965: A Cultural Perspective" (Ph.D, dissertation. University of Oregon, 1982), p. 201. 7 White, interview, 9 December 1981. Ill Simplicity
Simplicity means the elimination or subordination of detail so
that it would not distract the spectators from the action, but to
emphasize the action through a limited and meaningful use of detail.
For Bye, Bye, Birdie, White chose to simplify by using a two color
palette for the Penn Station scene, a choice that could handicap a
good designer, which allowed White to place the focus on the actors.
Through the skillful use of the other elements of rhythmic pattern,
sculpture and wit, the costumes would heighten the actor's humanity,
character, space and meaning of the play.
Color
White, known at this stage of his career for his brilliant use
of color, brought to the Penn Station scene an intricate use of a mono
chromatic color scheme. The Penn Station scene required an active
background of people as well as an intimate scene for several actors
that quickly moved into the active background. The primary color used
by White, burma brown, was a deep, rich color that matched the color
of the drapes in the act. White's use of this color and its tinted
variations might have provided a rich sepia which would have given an
aged look. White, instead, chose to bolster and strengthen the costxime
design through the use of the saturate brown and white. White's use
of color played an important role in the Penn Station not only by relating the characters to the scenery, but also to visually advance the actors out of the scenery, as described below. 112
The use of burma brown, the identical color used by Randolph on
the curtains of the act provided White the tool that he could use to
advance the action of this musical and solve the movement problem in
this scene. In each of the chorus's garments, the burma brown velveteen
found in the scenery was used. This use of the same fabric as that
found in the background permitted the chorus to turn upstage, revealing
the velveteen back panels of the garments, and causing the chorus to
blend with the scenery. This focused the attention of the audience on
the more predominant, lighter colors of white used in Rose's costxime.
The costumes (figure 9) of the teen-age boys and reporters also used
the color brown to outline the figure in dark brown, by inserting the
color both as piping on accessories and for the total effect. The
teen-age boys wore dark brown trousers and a short waisted coat designed with a dark brown collar, white yoke, white shirt front, and white
sleeve fronts accented with brown sleeve cuffs and waistband.
The same technique was used on the costxime of the reporters
(figure 9), who wore dark brown trousers and had a white coat front with dark brown collar and dark brown piping on the sleeve cuffs, pockets, and epaulets. To the reporters' costume. White added a dark brown hat.
White added a neutral tan and buckskin to the high contrast colors of white and burma brown to complement the color scheme. Thus, buckskin was the predominant color in Mae Peterson's costume (figure
10). Her costume was the only costxime exclusively designed using buck skin as its main color, complemented by a few accents of white and dark brown. White separated Mae Peterson from the other characters 113
Teen-age boys and reporters
Figure 9 114
Figure 10 115 through the use of this color, and also through the elimination of the
dark brown velveteen from this garment. The fur coat, lined in dark
brown, placed Mae Peterson in the Penn Station sequence design. The
lining outlined her silhouette, another White trait. Dark brown was
used on the accessories (the handbag, the gloves, and the flowers), and,
in combination with dark brown, on the hat. The bright white against
the buckskin and dark brown projected the clean, crisp, and fresh
vitality required in the Penn Station scene.
Rose's coat costume (figure 11) was designed in white. The cut
of this costume was accented with a small dark brown piping. White
gloves, large brown polka dots on a white scarf, and a white cloth hat
trimmed in dark brown piping were some of Rose's accessories. Rose's costxime was lightened in appearance considerably from the others, by virtue of the lack of backing with dark brown fabric that had been used
for the chorus.
The monochromatic scheme for the Penn Station scene evoked a vitality and freshness, and provided through a simple use of color and design, an environment that focused on the actor. This focus on the actor was reinforced through the rhythmic patterns.
Rhythmic Patterns
The rhythmic patterns in the Penn Station scene were created by the use of lines, dots, and geometric figures in a repeated manner.
The surface treatments, handled in stripes and polka dots in recurrent fashion, accented the cut, implied movement, and provided decoration. 116 ^^^^^ol^H
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Figure 11 117
This type of ornamentation produced a heightened silhouette and a visible textural change.
In the design for the reporters' costximes (figure 9), the lining of the epaulets, coat sleeves, and placket buttons and top pocket edge was utilized for two reasons. The first reason was to reinforce the cut of the costume, by providing a variety of lines through the choice of varying piping widths. The second reason for the use of line was to avoid the stark dark brown and white color combination's overpowering the cut of the garment. This was avoided by the carefully planned detail, which the audience required, in order to identify the charac ters. The renderings also show the thicker use of line in the burma brown backpieces of the garment, which were cut to wrap to the front of the garment, thus creating a silhouette lined in brown. White balanced the reporters' costume design with a solid hat, collar, belt and pants. The burma brown velveteen lines gave the costximes a rich ness of texture against the white cavalry twill. White's lining of the buttons emphasized the buttons, but also suggested polka dots.
These suggested polka dots were also found on the dancing teen-age boys (figure 9).
In the design for the dancing teen-age boys (figure 9), White used the dot and line motifs as strong visual elements. The dot motif was utilized in several ways, for example, with white buttons on the burma brown coat sleeve cuffs, and with burma brown-lined buttons at the coat closure. The dot motif was combined with the line motif to provide the variety and decoration in these designs. To accent the 118
cut of the garment, line was used on the yoke and the coat placket.
Again, the heavier brown velveteen back pieces were cut to wrap toward
the front of the garment, thus creating the silhouette lines. White
established balance through the use of a solid collar, coat sleeve cuff
and waist band. The dancing teen-age boys' costumes were completed
with solid burma brown pants.
Further in this rendering (figure 9), the male traveler's cos
txime provided texture to the scene through the use of a large hounds-
tooth checked coat. The rendering does not supply enough information
about the cut of this garment to comment further.
For Mae Peterson's costxime (figure 10), White again used the line
and dot motifs, but the line was subtly used in this costume to imply
movement, through the diagonal cut of this dress. The several inch-
wide buckskin-colored diagonal line wrapped the right shoulder and
across the bust, and wrapped around and under the left breast to re-
emerge on the right hip across the pelvic area to just above the left
knee and appeared over the right knee where it ended in the fullness of
the skirt. The rendering showed this diagonal line to be of a shiny
fabric which helped to separate it from the rest of the dress. White
provided no silhouette outline for this design except in the dark brown lining of the coat. The dot motif was used in the veil on Mae's hat as well as in the three layers of large white beads which acces sorized this costume. The line created by the hat band provided the strongest use of the color white in this costume, which focused atten tion to Peterson's face. 119
In the design for Rose's costume (figure 11), the motifs of line
and dot were again utilized. White emphasized this character effectively
through the use of line. The costume had a white piping that was
flanked on either side by a small dark brown piping. The use of the
thin brown piping gave this costume a white on white appearance, and
also reinforced the cut of the coat. The piping created a symmetrical
balance as it flared in from the coat bottom to the waist along the
coat opening, and then flared out to the neck opening. The piping was
sewn across the neck edge, continued to the right and flared in at the
waist and out to the coat bottom. The coat's detailing was finished
with two sets of piping on the sides of the coat which ran up the skirt
of the coat to the waist and across the dolman sleeve to the coat cuff.
The coat cuffs were accented with the piping. White used large white
buttons on the coat cuffs and as the coat closures to continue the white
on white look. The dot motif was again used on Rose's scarf. The white
scarf had large brown polka dots which wrapped around her neck and draped down the back of the coat. The hat designed for this costxime was three-tiered. The bottom tier, which fit the head, was white with a brown stripe around the top edge. The middle tier was smaller than the bottom tier, again white with a brown stripe at the top of the tier.
The top tier, the smallest, was white with a brown stripe across the top. The design of Rose's coat gave her a clean and tailored look.
White, with a limited number of motifs, was able to reinforce the cut of the garments, imply movement and to provide decoration.
His use of patterns and line in all cases accented the sculptural qualities found in the Penn Station scene designs. 120 Sculpture
The sculpture of the Penn Station scene costumes indicated the skill with which White used form and mass to his advantage. The use of space, highlight, and shadow played an important part in the devel opment of form and mass. The Penn Station scene costume design presented the 1960s silhouette effectively, and in addition, provided insights into the characters wearing them.
In the reporter's costume (figure 9) and its stereotypical sil houette. White provided a vitality through his use of sculpture. The white overcoat, often a cliche for detectives and private eyes, was handled in a unique manner. The white cavalry twill front provided the sense of the overcoat, through the weight and stiffness associated with the traditional overcoat. The non-traditional handling of the overcoat came with the use of burma brown velveteen to accent the cut.
This accenting had a dual purpose: the establishment of the modern silhouette and the solution to a movement problem. The movement prob lem in this scene was to provide an active background of people and at the same time provide an intimate background for a few actors. White provided the background through the burma brown panels of the costximes.
White's design allowed the characters to turn upstage and to blend into the background as a result of the burma brown velveteen backing. This also held true for the dancing teen-age boys (figure 9) and the report ers, since the pants for the dancing boys and the reporters were of the same colored velveteen. 121
The cut of the short jacket for the teen-age boys was representative of the black leather jacket of that period. White again used a non-traditional combination, with the white cavalry twill and edging in brown velveteen. The short jacket's cut was emphasized by the brown lining. The lining of the cut and silhouette captured a masculine essence. The stark contrast of these fabrics and their colors played with the light. The white twill fabric reflected light easily whereas the brown velveteen absorbed the light and provided a rich, soft texture. The white twill and brown velveteen provided a sharp contrast with no intermediate texture or color.
In the design for Mae Peterson's costxime (figure 10), White revealed a voluptuous figure through texture, highlight, form, and mass. The buckskin color scheme for this costume was rich in texture, with the shiny diagonal line that wrapped the body providing an off- center, asymmetrical and broadening effect. The contrast between the soft curves of the figure and the crisp, shiny, hard-edged diagonal line helped to accent a full figure. White chose to soften this effect with the two-tiered bias-cut sleeves and the bias-cut skirt. To Mae
Peterson's dress was added a heavy fur coat which covered the body.
The soft texture of this garment was juxtaposed with the crown-like hat which ornamented Mae Peterson's head. The white fur band anchored the dark brown crown which was adorned with various emblems and covered in a white polka dotted netting. The sculptural quality of this costume represented well White's ability to design in such a way that he revealed a character's personality through texture, highlight, form. 122 and mass. The design projected Mae as a woman who imagined herself more important than what she was, a spoiled woman looking for attention.
In contrast to Mae Peterson's costume, an elegant feeling was designed into Rose's costume (figure 11), through the uncluttered symmetrical cut of the coat. Further, the soft white fabric and the tailored design worked effectively to project a clean and pristine image. The softness created by the fabric of the coat was supported by a white voile scarf. White completed the clean statement with a white hat trimmed with brown and white gloves. The fabric chosen for the coat provided a rich mat texture that not only caught and reflected the light, but also promoted the softness of the feminine form. The cut, accented by the piping, revealed the figure. The piping reduced the weight implied by the large skirted coat and, by emphasizing the slender symmetrical shape and the cut of the coat, a reduction of the visual weight focused the audience on the actress and not the coat.
White's design sculptural qualities were probably more important in the projecting of the nature of the characters than the previous elements of color or rhythmic patterns. The costximes of the reporters, the dancing teen-age boys, Mae Peterson and Rose all captured the modern silhouette. White was able to control the mass of the silhouette through his use of lining. In Peterson's costxime (figure 10), the juxtapositioning of hard edges with soft curves produced at one time both the revealing of the figure and the concealing of the figure, providing insight into the human nature and diversity of the character.
The insights into the characters provided through the use of sculptural qualities were further developed with the use of wit. 123 Wit
The attitude White designed into the Penn Station scene costximes
seems to reveal that these characters were vital but not to be taken
seriously. White's attitude effectively presented the deterioration
of the old standards and the wholesomeness of the new guard.
In the reporters' costume (figure 9), the clean and sharp image
projected in the design seems to indicate that these characters are wholesome. However, White exaggerated the button size, edged the gar ments, and kept to the monochromatic color scheme. These exaggerations
removed the characters from the real world and placed them squarely in
the make-believe Penn Station.
The costumes of the dancing teen-age boys (figure 9) also helped
to create the make-believe Penn Station environment. The exaggeration
of the button size, the edged elements of the garments and the mono
chromatic scheme reinforced the fantasy world established by the re
porters' costxime designs. The overall attitude established for the
dancing teen-age boys by the costxime was clean-cut and straightforward.
Neither of the costximes discussed previously provided an amused
statement. In Mae Peterson's costume design (figure 10), however.
White built in an amused interest in the character's personality. The buckskin-colored costxime with its large fur coat, diagonal line across
the torso and crown-like hat gave the character the look of a monarch.
White played off the mass established by the large fur coat against
the character's bird-like legs. The visual symbols, the monarch-like
appearance, and the top heavy look stimulated the audience into an 124 amused interest in the character. The use of neutral brown did not
provide the clean, crisp feeling established in the reporters' or danc
ing teen-age boys' costumes. The cut of the sleeves, the skirt bottom,
and the hat net produced built-in small quick movements to the garment
that were visually contrary to the monarch-like image already estab
lished. It would seem that White's design reflected the inflated ego,
and the destructive nature of Mae in contrast to the statement that he
made about Rose.
In Rose's costume design (figure 11), White refrained from an
amused statement. Instead, he created a costxime that related the char
acter more closely to the audience. As with the reporters' and dancing
teen-age boys' costximes. White exaggerated the button size, edged the
cut of the gannent and continued the monochromatic scheme. Rose's
costxime design related her more closely to the audience because it
appeared closer to street clothing. The costume design created a pris
tine, vital image that reflected Rose's personality.
White used the Penn Station scene as a whole to present a clear
and amused statement that centered about Mae Peterson. White's pro
jected attitude reflected the deterioration of the old standards or the old guard in Mae Peterson's costume design and the cleanliness or wholesomeness of the new guard in Rose's costxime design. The older characters, Mae Peterson and Mr. MacAfee, distrust their children when, in the end, their children make the proper decisions. White's designs reflect this central idea, and indicate that youths are aware, vital, enthusiastic, and ready to experience life. The youthful characters appear stronger and more wholesome while their parents appear weaker. 125
Simplicity, as shown in White's work, involved the use of color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit to solve problems of movement and decoration. Through the monochromatic color scheme of burma brown and white. White focused on the differences between the attitudes of the reporters, the dancing teen-age boys. Rose and Mae Peterson. The use of the exaggerated buttons and large piping or lining on the report er and the dancing teen-age boys' costumes removed them from the real world and placed them in a fantasy world created by the designers.
The modern silhouette, as designed by White, provided a mass and form which he altered slightly to achieve a slender light quality for some characters and a more massive heavier quality for others. The alteration caused by the backing of the costumes of the reporters and the dancing teen-age boys with the burma brown fabric shaped a slender silhouette. This created less visual weight than if the garment had no backing or lining. White was able to alter the silhouette in order to achieve more mass where needed, as in Mae Peterson's costume (figure
10). The heavy bulk of the fur coat was contrasted sharply with the thin legs of the actress. The legs look as though they would not be able to hold up the weight created by the mass of the large coat. The use of linear patterns also helped to create less weight, as in the costume of Rose (figure 11). White was able, through the use of a limited color palette, rhythmic patterns, and sculpture, to provide an overall statement about these individuals. 126 Suggestion
Suggestion in "The Jungle Gym" scene was derived from the elimination of detail and motif, and the use of line to embody the quality of strength for the younger generation in Bye, Bye, Birdie.
This singular element, used in repetition, indicated the relationships and group memberships in "The Jungle Gym" scene, which reflected the growing pains facing these youths.
The overall design problem of Bye, Bye, Birdie was to create a world that emulated 1960 and its styles, and that provided a hximorous insight into the 1960s and captured the restlessness of its youth.
The costume design had to reflect the restlessness of youth and its changing ideals. White recognized the essence of youth in "The Jungle
Gym" scene by the use of leotard and tights, sweaters, shirts, pants, and shoes that revealed the figure with little use of distortion. He indulged the modern youth culture by revealing youth as strong through the elements of color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit.
Color
In "The Jungle Gym" scene. White reflected the fresh, clean strength of the unaffected teenagers through an aggressive and reces sive color scheme. As a result, the youth culture exploded on stage with a passionate enthusiasm. The teen-age Karen's costume (figure 12) incorporated three colors, the neutral black with a blue-green and lemon yellow. The brilliance of the yellow did not detract from the design, but rather enhanced it. The stretch pants were horizontally striped with alternating bands of black and blue-green, and to the over sweater 127
Teen girl Karen
Figure 12 128
White added horizontal lemon yellow stripes. This color combination
provided a bitter-sweet quality, which evoked the proper feelings
about both the transition facing society and the growing pains of youth.
The young people of Sweet Apple altered some and rejected others of the
traditional values of their parents in order to accept Conrad Birdie
and his way of life.
The use of the color black along with the creation of an appro
priate silhouette created a strong visual symbol in Leda's costume
(figure 13). White chose a four color scheme consisting of black,
green-blue, light-blue, and white to strengthen the silhouette. The
horizontally-striped pants used three colors. The banding on the ankle
of the blue-green stretch pants consisted of a wide band of black with
a white line on the calf. The striping continued up the leg with a wide black band topped by four lines of polka dots, alternating with white bands. A wide black band over the thigh and the pelvic area was covered with four lines of polka dots. This ensemble was topped with a light-blue midriff/peasant blouse, trimmed at the hem and sleeves with horizontal bands of colors. The sleeves began with a two-inch band of blue-green at the hem, continued with a one-inch light-blue band, and was completed with a one-inch band of white. The pattern established by the sleeves was not broken. The pattern on the midriff hem was the same as the banding on the sleeves. To complete the cos tume. White used a sleeveless black leotard worn under the blouse.
The bottom light-blue band of the blouse read well over the black leotard. 129
Teen girl Leda
Figure 13 130
White captured both the strength and the vulnerability of the
teenagers with his color combination of black, blue-green, white, and
light-blue. He successfully combined the cooler colors of blue-green
with the neutral black to create a recessive feeling. To this the
color white added a positive and aggressive quality.
The aggressive and recessive color scheme was used also on the
teen-age boys Tracy and Gary. For Tracy (figure 14), White designed
a collegiate sport-look, that included shorts, sweater, ascot, socks,
and black high-topped tennis shoes. The shorts were white with light
blue vertical stripes approximately one-half inch thick and about an
inch from each other. The long sleeved, V-necked sweater was the same
light blue, but treated with bands of colors. A one-half inch white
band accented the neckline while a small line of light-blue separated
the white from a one-half inch band of vermillion red. Following the
red was a two-inch white band with a light-blue line approximately
one-quarter to one-half inch in the bottom edge of the band. The red
color was then repeated in an inch-wide band, and the banding completed
by a white band approximately one-quarter inch wide. The neckline was
finished with a dark blue ascot with white polka dots. White accented
the strength of Tracy by visually broadening his shoulders through the
use of the V stripes of color accenting the V-neck.
To complete the collegiate look for Tracy, White designed athle tic socks that were folded down to add thickness to the ankles and to expose the light-blue band over the traditional black high-topped tennis shoes. The use of the cool light-blue color provided a recessive 131
Teen boy Tracy
Figure 14 132
quality. The blue combined with the white gave a clean fresh crispness
to the character. White added red at the V-neck to visually expand
the shoulder and supply strength for the character. The color combina
tion used in this costume provided the aggressive and recessive quali
ties that were required to portray the restlessness of youth. The red,
white, and blue colors also associated a positive patriotic strength
with Tracy. Finally, White used dark blue at the neck and created a
central focal point that had visual energy through the use of small
white polka dots.
In Gary's (the other teen-age boy) costxime design (figure 15),
White again used recessive colors, accented by white and red, to expand,
to strengthen, and to create a kinetic energy. The costume includes
black stretch pants, a sweater, and a derby. The black stretch pants
were not treated with additional colors, the single color providing White
the opportunity to create a sleek silhouette of legs. The bulks sweater
designed for this costume combined blue, blue-green, white, and red.
Light-blue was the primary color of the sweater. To this. White added
horizontal stripes, thus dividing the sweater into bands of colors. The
sleeve and the body of the sweater were treated identically. At the
waist there were two bands, comprised of a single center line of blue-
green polka dots on a light-blue background bordered on each side with
a half-inch white line. The bands made up about eight to ten inches of the lower portion of the sweater. White then added a two-inch red band which was located at the base of the rib cage. He then used the two bands of light-blue with a center single line of blue-green polka 133
Teen boy Gary
Figure 15 134
dots. To complete the sweater, a two-inch band of red from shoulder to
shoulder created a large neck opening. A black derby completed the
look. By placing the color on the torso of the body. White was able
to expand, heighten, and strengthen a recessive color scheme. In this
particular design, the horizontal bands of colors expand the torso, the
use of color on the sweater heightens the visual impact, and the warm
color red strengthens by virtue of the color itself as well as the
placement of that color at the shoulder and rib cage. A kinetic energy
was designed into this costume by placing large blue-green polka dots
on a light-blue background.
The color scheme chosen by White for these designs exemplified the
teen-age qualities in Bye, Bye, Birdie. The unaffected qualities of the
rural and urban teen-age populations were reflected in the fresh, clean
look of the blue-green, light-blue, and white color combination. The
crispness created by these colors provided a stability for the viewer.
The accent of warm color provided a strengthening of the costxime designs.
The bright colors of lemon-yellow and red provided the needed aggres
sive and positive qualities.
Rhythmic Patterns
The rhythmic patterns in "The Jungle Gym" scene were comprised of the motifs of lines and dots. These motifs created surface treat ments, and the rhythmic manner in which White handled these motifs created a pattern that implied movement, provided decoration, strength ened the silhouette, and provided a textural change. 135
In the teen-age girl's costume (figure 12), the horizontal stripe was used for two reasons: to separate this costume from the rest of the costxime designs in the scene and to vary the width of bands or lines in the costume design. The thick bands used in the stretch pants and bottom portion of the sweater were consistent in size.
Smaller lines in the top half of the sweater provided more visual interest and focused on the head and shoulder of the individual. The decorative use of wide lines aided visually in the stability of the design by producing a sharp crispness in all of the teen-agers' costximes
White used the line motif in particular to add power to Karen's sil houette through the utilization of the vibrant lemon-yellow color in various band widths.
In the teen-age girl Leda's costume (figure 13), the motifs of line and dots were used to decorate surfaces and to produce texture and kinetic motion. White used lines of varying thickness in the stretch pants. The black and blue-green horizontal lines created stability in the garment. The color white was used to accent, to pro vide texture, and to imply movement. The white line was a change in value from the dark value of black and blue-green, which created an expanding or advancing line in space, and implied the restlessness and kinetic energy needed for the character. The white polka dots at the knee and pelvic areas provided a visual texture that occurred because of the change in motifs. The placement of white polka dots on the blue-green color created an optical illusion. Since the value and chroma of the color white are light and bright respectively, by placing 136 the white polka dots on the blue-green color which has a dark value and dullish chroma. White caused the value visually to appear to lighten the blue-green base color, which produced a kinetic energy in the gar ment. The polka dots strategically located at the moving knee and pelvic areas did more than just change the texture and appearance of the blue-green. They added a kinetic movement because as the body turned, the polka dots that were moving away from the audience changed in diameter as did those moving toward the audience. The line thickness would remain constant, but the diaper pattern used to place the polka dots would provide a change in relationship as the character moved.
White also built into Leda's costxime design (figure 13) added strength through the use of line on the midriff blouse. The light-blue base color used for the blouse was intensified through White's use of line. The black leotard under the blouse has the darkest value and the dullest chroma, opposed to the value and chroma of the blue-green color. The cup-like shape carried the eye directly upward toward the shoulders. The addition of a small white stripe accented the space from shoulder to shoulder. White used line to produce a curving line that accented the upper torso.
Just as White used line to emphasize the upper torso of the teen age girls' costume, so too did he use line to provide a strengthening effect for the male teenagers. In Tracy's costume (figure 14), the broadness of the shoulders was repeated through the use of a single motif, that of line. The visual broadening came from the V-shaped lining of the V-neck sweater. The male torso creates an upright V-shape 137
This natural masculine shape plus the V-neck lining added strength to and focused on the upper torso. White assured that this would be the
focal point by contrasting the light value and bright chroma of the
V-neck with the dark value and dull chroma of a dark blue ascot. Using
the lining technique to accentuate the cut of the neck opening. White
also provided a visual strengthening of the upper torso. This major
statement of strength was provided from the base color of the sweater.
White made the thickest use of line and created a strong visual impact
from the tapered waist to the shoulders. The implied strength did not
come from the use of light and bright color lines, but instead, by
accenting the body of the sweater with light and bright colored lines which appeared as a wide dullish line that provided the major emphasis
that implied strength.
The implied strength of the sweater was supported also by the
shorts, on which vertical blue stripes were placed on the white, pro viding a visual base of support for the sweater as well as reflecting an inverted V. The ascot for this costume was decorated with small quarter-inch white polka dots on a dark blue background. The polka dots added a different texture and emphasis to the neck, and the dark ascot placed against the lighter, brighter sweater accentuated the broad shoulders.
In the teen-age boy Gary's costume (figure 15), White again used line and dot motifs to emphasize the character. The sweater was designed with horizontal stripes that were comprised of lines and dots.
The white lines were used on the light-blue background to divide the sweater in equal sections. The body of the sweater and the sleeves 138 were handled in the same manner. At the waist, the first two divisions
had a single center line of blue-green polka dots, the third band was
red, the fourth and fifth bands were a repeat of the first two bands with blue-green polka dots, and the sixth and seventh bands were wide
lines, the sixth in white running from shoulder to shoulder, and the
seventh in red. The costume was completed by black stretch pants and
a black derby.
White's design work on Gary's costume exemplified his skill at
expressing the kinetic energy of a character through selected motifs.
White, with one exception, chose to limit the colors and motifs to
the sweater, allowing the neutral black pants and derby to express
the silhouette. The one exception was that the black shoes had a
light-blue lining that White used to provide a visual balance in the
costxime.
The sweater, utilizing the two motifs of lines and dots, provided
stability and strength for this character. The uniform division of
the sweater balanced the overall design. With the polka dot lines, a kinetic movement as well as balance was created. The even placement of these dots in a line implied movement. As the character turned, the dots would diminish in size and vanish as the actor moved upstage, with the dots reappearing on the downstage side of the actor. Implied movement was thus created. The bands of color would not change like the lines of polka dots, providing stability. The implied motifs of stability as well as movement gave the character a sense of searching.
White, with a limited number of motifs, was able to reinforce the cut of the garment, to imply movement and to provide decoration. 139
The arrangement and use of the motifs provided an instant visual description of the garment as well as suggesting qualities about the characters.
Sculpture
Sculpture, used as form and mass in the costumes in "The Jungle
Gym" scene, revealed the body. White used stretch pants, shorts, and
sweaters to reveal the silhouette. In the design work of the scene,
space, highlight and shadow played important parts in the development of form and mass. The costume design work centered around the 1960
silhouette and the influence of the rock and roll star, Conrad Birdie, represented by his leather jacket and tight pants.
With the teen-age girl Karen's costume (figure 12), White cap tured the essence of the youth in Sweet Apple. The revealing of the body was integral to the movement and flexibility of this scene. The use of stretch pants, common to the modern silhouette, offered an instant association with the changing active lifestyle facing the youths of the town. The sweater also emphasized the figure with the body of the sweater revealing the hximan contour. The sweater clung to the hips and remained close to the upper torso. With the sleeves pulled up over the elbows, the sweater emphasized the decorative horizontal stripes.
The black hat, worn off-center, completed the design. The hat's func tion was to focus the audience's attention back to the head of the actress, while continuing the stripe motif. It also served to stop the upward momentum created by the broad lemon-yellow stripes of the upper torso. 140
In the teen-age girl Leda's costxime (figure 13), a comfortable feeling was presented through the use of a loose fitting midriff peasant blouse, stretch pants and a towel-wrapped head. The soft fabric and the fullness of the peasant blouse projected a free feminine feeling. The softness of the blouse was repeated in the headdress. The softness was opposed to the clean hard lines of the geometric motifs used as decoration. The costume, like the others, revealed the hxxman silhouette.
The symmetrical quality of the decorative motifs and the hximan form pro vided the cornerstone in projecting a feminine stability. This was aided by the fact that there was no sharp contrast in texture. The fullness of the peasant blouse allowed the play of light and shadow on the gathered fabric. By gathering the fabric, the fullness forced the fabric to stand away from the body and allowed it to move as the ac tress moved. The mass designed into this costxime appeared to be light and agile, due in part to the color and motifs combined with the sculp tural form. White revealed the hximan figure by the use of tight stretch pants. The towel-wrapped head added focus to the actress's head and suggested that she had just washed her hair. The overall design rein forced basic youthful tendencies of quickness, freedom, and straight forwardness.
In the teen-age boy Tracy's costume (figure 14), the design con centrated on revealing an athletic, virile, broad-shouldered youth.
The emphasis on the broad shoulder is evidenced by the color and dec orative motifs about the V-neck. The mass of the design supplied visual weight to the shoulders and upper torso. This visual weight 141 allowed an emphasis on the strength of the youth, but at the same time maintained balance with the rest of the design. The poplin fabric of the shorts provided the appropriate weight for the traditional athletic shorts. The overall design incorporated visual weight, implied strength, and a clean-cut look. More importantly, it focused on the appearance of the traditional. The multistripe around the V-neck, the youthful form and the traditional approach to athletic dressing were as important as the red, white, and blue color schemes. White designed a costume that described the character while giving the audience the "flag,"
"mom," and "apple pie," of the American traditional qualities.
In the teen-age boy Gary's costume (figure 15), a feeling of youthful exuberance and "kookieness" was revealed in the silhouette.
The form allowed revealing the figure in the lower torso. The bulky sweater revealed the form, but also provided a slight distortion at the waist and elbows and a blousing effect at the waist. The blousing was soft, unlike the effect in the sleeves of the sweater, which were pulled up to the elbow, causing a solid mass at the elbow. The mass created in this design relied on the slender silhouette of the actor to accentuate the distortion supplied by the sweater. The derby which completed the design provided a balance in visual weight. The round glasses provided another sculptural element, related to the decoiacive polka dotJ on the sweater.
The variety of textures used in Gary's costxime included the smooth finish of the stretch pants balanced against the sweater knit and the hard round-shaped derby with its relation in shape to the polka dots 142
and glasses. White designed this costume to communicate the universal
desire of the younger generation to experiment with new things in life
and arrive at their own conclusions. In addition, the red, white, and
blue color scheme was used to convey a wholesomeness for the character.
White's sculptural qualities projected the characters in "The
Jungle Gym" scene as individuals as well as a segment of the popula
tion. The restless and aggressive qualities that the biological change
from children to young adults creates were captured in the color scheme,
motifs and sculpture. The designs captured the modern silhouette also.
White controlled the form and mass to emphasize the qualities of the
characters, while, as a whole, visually projecting the generation gap
in attitudes described next.
Wit
The attitude reflected in "The Jungle Gym" scene provided insight by illuminating qualities found in the teen-age population. White,
interested in the coherence of the production, sought to project a youthful restlessness, but not an alienation. White coded this attitude by using color, rhythmic patterns, and sculpture to reflect a crisp, fresh stability in the Sweet Apple youth.
With the teen-age girl Karen's costume (figure 12), a bitter sweet image was projected through the color choice. First, the light, bright lemon-yellow color contrasted to the blue-green produced a harsh and bitter quality. The form also aided in projection in that the illusion of broad shoulders in part denied the feminine form and created an abnormal physical appearance. Secondly, the sweet quality was introduced in large part by the recessive nature of the blue-green color 143 Line also was used. The only contrast in line was the soft curve
of the flip in Karen's hair. The softening of the hair and the asymmet
rical placement of the hat helped to provide the needed contrast set
up by the sleek silhouette and hard-edged geometric form. The result
ing bitter-sweet quality emphasized the strength which White accomp-
plished through exaggeration of form reinforced by line and color. The
overall design did indeed reflect restless youth.
In the teen-age girl Leda's costume (figure 13), White again used
amused interest. To the stereotypical teenager with a towel-wrapped
head. White built in a kinetic energy derived from two sources: the
cut of the midriff blouse and the decorative qualities derived from the
motifs and color schemes. Effectively playing the variety of color,
of motif thicknesses of curved and straight edges, and of sculptural
effect, the elements produced a visual expanding and advancing of this
character. The result of White's design brought a fresh energy-filled
attitude to a somewhat tired cliche.
With the teen-age boy Tracy's costume (figure 14), the suggested attitude was that of positive clean, fresh, and strong qualities. The ail-American qualities were realized in the red, white, and blue color
scheme. This teenager's costume embodied traditional qualities, with which the audience could easily associate.
With the teen-age boy's costxime (figure 15), White again utilized the red, white, and blue color scheme, and projected a kinetic energy.
The youthful exuberance expressed in this costume was caused by the limiting of color and motif to one garment, the sweater. When con trasted with the rest of the solid black costume, the sweater produced 144 a visually lighter and brighter attitude, drawing focus to the upper torso. The combination of garments also seemed to produce a humorous attitude. The audience accepted the tight-fitting pants and sweater as normal, but the addition of the derby hat was out of the ordinary.
The combination of youthful exuberance and humorous use of garments again, established a restlessness in the teen-age boy's costume.
Suggestion, as used in White's costume design work for Bye, Bye,
Birdie, revealed the 1960 silhouette as the current fashion trend.
Kinetic energy and restlessness were designed into these costumes through White's use of the elements of color, rhythmic patterns and sculpture. By the use of the elements described. White was able to project the 1960 fashion and trends.
Synthesis
White's use of synthesis meant that the focus would go to the actors while a total effect was achieved. The effect to be achieved depended upon the statement made in that production. Bye, Bye, Birdie presented the changes faced by everyone in society, which included the rapid advancement in technology, changing concepts of marriage and sex, and a widening generation gap. Traditional values seemed to be doomed, but there was hope for the future. The costume design work for the production reflected these concepts in the production.
Color
White kept the focus on the actor by his skillful use of color.
The color schemes in Bye, Bye, Birdie as noted earlier, visually advanced the actors into the foreground. White used color to group 145
and separate individuals, as shown in the discussion of the costume
design work for "The Penn Station" scene. Utilizing his strong sense
of color. White was able to group and separate individuals within the
ensemble by using a combination of warm and cool colors. White used a
limited palette for each sequence, which helped to keep the focus on
the actor.
Rhythmic Patterns
Through the motifs of lines and dots. White was able to express
the nature of the characters with a limited use of symbols. The group
ing of these symbols was arranged in different ways to express the ideas
behind the characters and the play. White was able to capture the 1960
decorative essence through these limited motifs. The varied arrange
ment used to decorate these garments provided the endless supply of
patterns needed.
Sculpture
White captured the 1960 silhouette while altering the mass to
create a slimming or implied weight. His ability to take the given
norms of fashions and translate them into costumes for the stage are
evident in "The Penn Station" scene, which expressed the new social norms. White was aware that form and mass play an important role in the sculptural quality, as shown in the implied weight in Mae Peter son's costxime or the slimming effect of Rose's coat.
The fabric's texture played a key role in White's development of these designs. The play of one texture on another as in Mae Peter son's costume can provide variety without changing color. White, by 146 controlling the texture, provided visual qualities for the characters and various segments of society. His lining and banding techniques also emphasized sculptural qualities.
Wit
White's use of an attitude or point of view as he conceived the designs was clearly expressed in his design work. For example, Birdie's tight pants provided the major design element which described the teen agers in "The Jungle Gym" scene. In the entire production. White relied on the elements of color, rhythmic patterns, and sculpture to express point of view of the play. CHAPTER IV
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The American musical comedy which had its origins in foreign operettas, musical revues, burlesques, and vaudevilles, emerged in the late 1800s as an identifiable form. As the musical comedy devel oped, the New Stagecraft movement influenced American designers work ing in this genre. The years between 1915 and 1940 were years of growth both for musical comedy and the American New Stagecraft design ers .
One of the major designers of this era was Miles White. The purpose of this study was to investigate the career and accomplish ments of Miles White in the context of the development of American musical comedy and the introduction of the New Stagecraft ideas in the United States.
Sximmary
Chapter One briefly discussed the historical development of the
American musical and the New Stagecraft movement in order to place
White's career within that context. It was pointed out that while the American musical was developing, the European influence on the staging practices of productions was considerable due to the introduction of New Stagecraft ideas. The European New Stagecraft principles of imagination, simplicity, and impression became the
147 148 working vogue of many designers such as Robert Edmond Jones, Lee
Simonson, and Norman Bel Geddes.
These designers and their apprentices, of whom White was one,
designed productions which influenced the nature of American scene
design throughout the 1900s. The term "scene design" is taken to in
clude all the visual elements of scenery, costximes, and lighting, and many of these designers worked on all the visual elements of production.
In 1943, the complete integration of music, story, dance, and
spectacle was embodied in the great musical comedy, Oklahoma!. Miles
White's costume design work for this production laxinched him as an
important figure in musical comedy design. His early collaboration with the New Stagecraft advocates Jo Mielziner and Bel Geddes gave
White the impetus for his guiding principle, that all visual elements had to be xinified so that the focus was placed on the main action and on the actors. Prepared by a rich background in period clothing from his experience with Jack Birchenall, in the ladies' tailoring business at Los Angeles, and in various theatrical work White focused the audience's attention on the actor through expert use of the elements of color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit. These elements allowed
White not only to control the focus, but to control the audience's attitude, through designs that reflected the nature of the character or the segment of society.
The fifties brought many successful adaptations of stage plays to the musical comedy stages. Musicals were changing from Americana themes to a new more serious dramatic content derived from stage plays. 149
The change was successfully carried out through the diligent work of many designers, notable among them Miles White, who adhered to the principles of the New Stagecraft movement, embodying simplification, suggestion, and synthesis. White used these principles effectively, to create the total impression or atmosphere of the play by providing recognizable visual symbols that interpreted the spirit of the produc tion.
White believed that, in musical comedy, symbols should be used to create a sense of wit, to accentuate the characterizations, and to maintain an amused interest. The creation of a particular feeling with the design work was in line with the New Stagecraft movement in all three of its principles. The first of these, simplification, the elimi nation of detail to establish the mood of the play, was the creation of an environment which did not distract from the actor's humanity, character, or space. The second, suggestion, was used to evoke a res ponse from a naturalistic or abstract idea, concept, or emotion. This element was realized through the use of color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit. The costxime designer utilized these to create costximes that were plastic and three-dimensional, so that as the cos tximes were viewed from many sides, the relationship to the actors and the environment changed. The third, synthesis, dealt with the consis tency among all elements, which enabled designers to evoke a total mood of place, time, and action, rather than to depict a locale.
Barton described the New Stagecraft movement in three categories: decorative, plastic, and decorative-plastic. The decorative category 150 was exemplified in the works of Leon Bakst, with exotic colors and less literal use of form. The plastic category included the perpendi cular scenery, the horizontal floor, the actor, and the lighted space.
In the United States, designers adopted the last category, the decora tive-plastic. The architectural simplicity of the plastic category was embellished with selected motifs which helped to evoke the play's mood.
The decorative-plastic category was the perfect vehicle for the musical comedy designers, especially in following the major tenets of the New
Stagecraft movement.
White's costume design work exemplified the use of the decorative- plastic category and the New Stagecraft principles. His professional musical comedy design career started in 1938 with Right This Way. Six years and two musical comedies later. White had worked closely with Jo
Mielziner, Norman Bel Geddes, and Lemuel Ayers to establish an overall style for production. White succeeded as a costume designer because of his ability to collaborate, to accentuate characterizations, and to focus on the action.
Chapter Two offered a chronology of White's musical comedy pro ductions, placed Bloomer Girl and Bye, Bye, Birdie into their historical and creative perspective within White's career, and discussed reasons behind White's success. For thirty-five years. White carefully designed costumes that provided a stunning visual appearance. Armed with a vast storehouse of colors and selected motifs. White designed twenty- nine musical comedies and revues, in addition to working in other thea trical forms: ballets, night clubs, play, television, film, and circuses. 151
The most striking feature of White's design work was his use of color. The visual effect he created by placing one color on another brought life to his use of the motifs of lines, polka dots, checks, squares, diamonds, and plaids. The use of these motifs and the resul tant visual effects enlivened and embellished the characters. Equally important was his utilization of sculptural quality or wit. The sculp tural effect achieved in White's costume design work was non-architec tural, which meant that his costumes had a sense of movement and light ness. Wit was established through the cut, the color, the use of pattern, or the sculpture created by the costume.
Chapter Three analyzed the costume design work from two represen tative plays. Bloomer Girl and Bye, Bye, Birdie. Each of these produc tions were examined in light of the three New Stagecraft qualities: simplification, suggestion, and synthesis, which provided the major divisions within the chapter. The four categories addressed under each division were color, rhythmic patterns, sculpture, and wit.
The costxime design works discussed in Chapter Three were selected on the basis of available original supporting docximentation. The support evidence for Bloomer Girl included the working drawings and fabric description with swatches. For Bye, Bye, Birdie the support evidence included the fabric swatch and color plot sheets.
For Bloomer Girl, the costume design works discussed under the division of simplicity were those for Serena Applegate and her daugh ters: Octavia, Julia, Phoebe, and Delia. White was able to group and separate within this population through the use of color. The color 152 usage evoked qualities which embellished the characterizations. White used brown, pink, and white for these characters. For Serena Applegate, brown symbolized warmth and nurturing. White connected the Mother to her daughters by the use of a pink underlining. The Applegate daughters were dressed in white and pink. The color white provided a fresh, clean look. The pink color symbolized a frivolous, dainty, and giddy quality.
The combination of the colors emphasized the clean, soft, and youthful qualities of the daughters.
The rhythmic patterns used for the family grouping were lines, dots, flowers, and plaid and other geometric figures, motifs that pro vided a visual kinetic texture. For example. White used the line and floral motifs to emphasize the weight and bulk of Serena Applegate, but with the Applegate daughters. White used the motifs to accentuate the characters' lightness and softness.
The sculptural qualities of the Applegate women's costumes were indicative of the skill with which White used period fashion to exag gerate form and mass to his advantage. The exaggerated skirts of the
Applegate women not only allowed White to capture the period silhouette, but also to express two different feelings: for Serena Applegate, the hooped skirt added a visual weight and bulk to the mass of the skirt; for the Applegate daughters, the skirts projected a lighter feeling due to the numerous rows of ruffles, scallops, and zig-zags which broke the line of the skirt.
White used color, rhythmic patterns and sculpture also to design what he called wit, which he expressed in these designs through the exaggerated skirts with their pendulxim movement. In combination with 153
the bright color and exaggerated rhythmic patterns, the sculpture helped
to create the feminine costumes for the Applegates and the militia-like
costximes for the Bloomer girls. The elements of color, rhythmic pat
terns, sculpture, and wit created both individual and group feelings while maintaining a light and flowing quality overall.
Costume design works used in discussing suggestion included two
costumes for Dolly Bloomer and the Bloomer girls' costxime. White's
use of the color red on Dolly Bloomer's costxime signalled danger and
evoked the feeling that this character had to be watched. Dolly Bloomer
emerged later in a blue-green costume similar in cut to the first cos
txime. The two-toned blue-green evoked a serene, cool, and somber feel
ing.
The Bloomer girls' costume projected an unpleasant bitter-sweet
quality. The combination of gray, yellow, and white with accents of black signalled a passive resignation. The gray and yellow colors
provided a neutralizing effect to produce an overall bitter-sweet
feeling.
White, again, limited his choice of motifs here to lines and dots.
With the Bloomer girls' costxime, the motifs added sparkle, accented the cut of the Turkish trousers, and provided a regimental feeling through the striped pattern. The motifs for the Applegates added a highly decorative effect which was juxtaposed with a somber effect achieved through the motifs for Dolly Bloomer and her girls. The new silhouette of the shorter skirt and baggy Turkish trousers for Dolly removed Dolly and her girls for the Victorian world of the Applegates. 154
This silhouette was reminiscent of a young child's spinning top. White
added weight to Dolly's costume by a change in texture, lending a conven
tional tone to the costume. The Bloomer girls' costumes provided a dual
statement, that of a soldier's discipline and femininity. While these
costume design works revealed the 1860s period silhouette that distorted
the figure. White remained consistent to the period practices while
revealing the characters' personalities.
White also successfully achieved synthesis, the blending of the
visual elements to achieve a total effect. Ayers' scenery was highly
decorative and provided a hyper-realistic setting. Through color, however. White was able to keep focus on the actor. A high color key
pushed the actors out from the scenery and provided for ease of viewing by the audience. White also separated and grouped the actors through
color and, in addition, used color to project aspects of the character's personality.
Rhythmic patterns further helped to express the characters and the ideas of the play. White was able to capture the decorative essence of the Victorian period aided by his use of line to edge the cut of the garments.
Having captured the 1860s silhouette. White used his expertise in period garment structure to complete his works and to provide the necessary exaggeration of the period silhouette to achieve the desired effects. The exaggeration of the hoop skirt provided additional dimen sion to the movement. Overall, the visual effects used by White produced an exaggerated quality, based on proper insertion of color. 155 rhythmic patterns, and sculpture. This exaggeration provided the view the audience needed to interpret the period detail, as well as to see the humorous quality established by Ayers in the highly decorative scenery for Bloomer Girl.
For the second representative musical comedy. Bye, Bye, Birdie, the costume design works discussed were chosen from the Penn Station scene which provided a cross section of groups: townspeople, Mae Peter— son, and Rose Grant; and from the Jungle Gym scene, which provided an overview of the teenagers of Sweet Apple, Ohio.
The costume design works for Penn Station were examined under the heading simplicity. The monochromatic color scheme of burma brown and white not only strengthened the design and advanced the action by rela ting the characters to the scenery, but also pulled them out of the scenery. The choice of colors for the teen-age boys' and reporters' costumes accented the nature of the characters and the cut of their garments. In contrast, for Mae Peterson's costxime. White chose a com plementing buckskin color to accent her voluptuous figure and to focus on her. With Rose's coat costxime design. White created an elegant visual statement in white with accents in burma brown, which appeared fresh and clean. Unlike the design work for Bloomer Girl, the colors evoked a wholesome quality which provided a focus and reinforced the action.
The rhythmic patterns used for this design work were lines, dots, and geometric figures. The ornamentation implicit in the use of these motifs reinforced the cut of the garment, implied movement, and 156 provided decoration. The reinforcement of the cut of the garment was important. The stark color contrast of the burma brown and white over powered the cut with the additional support of the lining. White used a large houndstooth check on the male traveler's coat, which provided variety in texture in the overall costxime design scheme.
In Mae Peterson's costume, line and dot motifs were also used.
The subtle use of lines was achieved through the cut of the garment.
The line was heightened by choice of a shiny fabric, which separated it from the rest of the design. White, again, used a dot motif on the accessories to provide a texture.
Rose's costxime also utilized the motifs of line and dot. White achieved a white on white effect with the triple piping used on the coat, which reinforced the cut of the coat and implied movement. The dot motif completed the ensemble by adding texture as well as unifying all the costumes in this sequence.
The sculptural qualities provided in these costumes focused on form and mass. In dealing with the 1960 silhouette. White designed costumes that were an extension of that fashion statement. The repor ters ' overcoat could have been a stereotypical statement about that character, but White added a new "twist": the cavalry twill was accented with the rich texture of burma brown velveteen. This strategy removed the costxime from the fashion reality and stereotypical state ment and placed it within the coordinated elements of the Penn Station scene. The dancing teen-age boys' costume was also placed in the make- believe Penn Station by using the same lining method. 157
With Mae Peterson, White used texture and the cut of the garment
to create an asymmetrical feeling. The selection of garments, fur coat, and hat revealed much about this character's personality. The off- balanced feeling created in Peterson's costume was juxtaposed to the elegant, balanced feeling established in Rose's costume, in which tex ture and color created a soft, pristine image. The mass of this cos txime was lightened through the cut of the garment.
White's overall attitude about these characters was important in that it provided a quick perception of the character's personality.
With a limited use of color, the projected attitude was made apparent.
The designs for the reporters and the dancing teen-age boys reflected a wholesome and straightforward quality. Mae Peterson's costxime pro moted a top-heavy, monarch-like appearance that removed her even farther from what reality was created in this scene. In contrast,
Rose's costxime related her closer to the audience than the other char acters. The attitude reflected in the costumes overall suggested the deterioration of conservative ideals and the clean wholesomeness of the youth.
Costumes from the Jungle Gym scene which illustrated changing youth were used under the heading, suggestion. The difference between the parents and their children was described in the lyrics of a song sung by Mr. MacAfee, Kim MacAfee's father, which asked the question,
"What's the matter with kids today?" "The matter" was the changing norms of society, innovations in technology, and the altering rela tionships between the young people and their parents. The youth of 158
Sweet Apple, like urban youth facing a new society and set of relationships, were influenced by the changes they saw and felt.
The dress of these youths reflected change, by incorporating the tight pants and leather jackets worn by Conrad Birdie, which was so differ ent from the parents' conservative clothing. This difference was seen by the parents as a corruption of their children's morals.
For White, the difference was a positive reinforcement for the youth culture, which he exploded onto the stage in an array of warm and cool colors. The color combinations included blue-green, black, white, light-blue, red, and lemon-yellow. The relationships of these colors were explored to bring emphasis to the characters and focus on a general attitude. For the teen-age girl Karen's costume. White used blue-green and yellow to focus on the upper torso, calling atten tion to the head of the actress. The bitter-sweet color combination also reflected the growing pains of youth.
In the teen-age girl Leda's costume, which used the midriff peasant blouse, the emphasis was also on the upper torso, but the cos txime captured both the strength and the vulnerability of the young people. The recessive qualities of the light-blue were highlighted by White's placement of the darker and duller blue-green at the hem of the midriff peasant blouse.
The two teen-age boys' costumes utilized the same color combina tions of red, white, and blue, with accents of black and blue-green.
Both of these designs focused on the broadening of the shoulders, which provided a strengthening to the characters. White used the color 159 schemes in two ways that grouped and separated these individuals: the
V-neck sweater gave a traditional, patriotic quality and the horizon tally-striped sweater evoked a rebellious quality.
The rhythmic patterns on these costumes were comprised of the motifs of lines and dots handled in such a way that they provided a unifying factor. The line motif was used horizontally to add strength to the design. The polka dot motif added variety, kinetic movement, and visual texture. The visual impact of these motifs implied both strength and movement in the costume design work for the teenagers.
The sculpture of the costximes revealed the hximan form, and the silhouette provided insights into the youth culture. The shoulders were strengthened to accentuate the characters' youth as well as to place them within the youth culture.
Wit was introduced by the illximination of qualities found in the teen population. White used color, rhythmic pattern and sculpture as his symbols. The strength of these costumes for the teen girls was created from the denial of the female form by adopting the broad shoulder look. The energy found in these costximes was derived from the placement of the colors and the relationship of those colors.
Synthesis was achieved through the total effect of all visual elements and its use to focus on the characters. In the production, the restless changing youth in the Jungle Gym scene was described by a recessive and aggressive color scheme. By implying strength and kinetic movement. White kept the focus on the story by accenting the actors with color which was carefully worked out to group and separate the 160 individuals with the ensemble. In the Penn Station scene. White used color to solve the movement of the chorus on and off stage. The rhythmic patterns involved were line and dot motifs. White achieved an implied energy by the placing of a lighter color on a darker color. The var ious relationships created from the numerous combinations provided an endless supply of pattern. White used the line motif to accent the cut of the garment. Further, the modern silhouette was translated into the stage costumes, with the establishment norms of Penn Station con trasted with the new social norms of the Jungle Gym scenes. The sculp tural qualities were enhanced by the textures in the costximes, which accented the form and mass relationships.
The costxime design works for Bye, Bye, Birdie projected a positive quality to the new social norms of the youth which reinforced the groups as well as the individuals. From the projection of the traditional values through Mae Peterson's costxime to the projection of new attitude through the strength of the teenagers' costximes. White allowed the cos tximes to express the characters as well as to relate each individual character to its group.
Conclusion
Theatrical stage design work has played an important part in the visual impact of musical comedies. The study of such works needs to be investigated and evaluated. Many of the designers have histories, with their creative process, and their manner of operation recorded.
There have been no investigations of the New Stagecraft principles and its relationship to the costume design work in musical comedies. 161
Although textbooks provided some insight, they did not demonstrate the practice.
The purpose of this study was two-fold: briefly to examine the parallel growth of the musical comedy and New Stagecraft movement and its influence upon White's career, and to discuss the application by
White of the New Stagecraft principles to two representative produc tions. The previous section, Sximmary, has commented on White's work.
Several additional comments on his career seem worthy of sximmarizing.
White's Broadway costxime design career which spanned thirty-five years included twenty-nine musical comedies and revues. Although he worked in other theatrical forms, the majority of his career was spent designing for musical comedies. The famous costume design works by
White are readily associated with the productions in which they appeared, although the designer's name is not widely known. Although the costxime design work for his third production, a comedy. The Pirate, launched his theatrical career, it was the impact created by the musical comedy,
Oklahoma! for which he will be remembered.
White's driving desire to design the entire ensemble and collab orate on the design concept was realized through musical comedies.
Working with Jo Mielziner, a total effect was created for Best Foot
Forward in 1941. In that year. White was contracted by the Normal Bel
Geddes agency to design costumes. His position with the agency allowed him to collaborate, which proved to be one of his strengths. The work, the collaboration, and the influence of his collaborators prepared
White for his long costxime design career. With the third production of his career. The Pirate, White was teamed with Lemuel Ayers who was 162 once apprenticed to Mielziner. The stylized approach to this production was a testimony to the creative abilities of this team. Audiences appreciated the colorful world created by these men, and White was soon recognized for his use of color. Throughout his career. White used the geometric elements of lines, dots, checks, diamonds, and scallops to enhance his design work. Use of these elements was estab lished by the production of Oklahoma! and remained an identifiable trait. The elements were varied in color and their placement upon another colored surface set up relationships which White carried throughout that production's design and throughout his musical comedy career.
The musical comedies with which White was associated were varied in locales, themes, and periods, but White linked them together through his use of many techniques, and notably his sculpture. The sculptural quality which appeared in these productions was that of lightness or arabesque, and this was associated with a soft, flowing, or floating movement. This quality, designed into the costumes, aided the dancers in the execution of their dances and linked the actor visually with the dancer.
White had many successful collaborations, but none was longer or more fruitful than that with Oliver Smith. Together they comprised the design team on nine productions.
It was not uncommon for White to work on three different produc tions at the same time. This prolific output kept White's design work visible to a public who expected a colorful and dazzling array of 163 costximes. His career had a profound impact upon the style of musical comedy costume design.
Utilizing the New Stagecraft principles of simplicity, suggestion, and synthesis. White's contribution to the American musical comedy was through the use of a limited color palette, rhythmic patterns, sculp ture and wit to effectively portray the character's personality as well as to focus on the action of the play. White's style has affected his musical comedy costxime design in several ways:
1. Through the selective yet vivid color palette. White was able
to arrange these colors to clarify groups and individuals while
maintaining focus on the action. Another important aspect of
color was its ability to express feelings about the characters
and groups.
2. With the bold and dynamic use of rhythmic patterns, a sense of
period detail and decoration was achieved in conjunction with
elaborating on the character's personality. These exaggerated
motifs also were used to separate groups, to imply movement and
to accent the cut of the garment.
3. The light, floating or arabesque quality of the sculptural elements
of the costxime revealed a vital character that was not to be taken
seriously. Through the real and implied movement of the costxime.
White created a garment that identified groups, causes, and rep
resentative period.
4. White expressed an amused interest or wit through his ability to
identify aspects of the character through the exaggeration of 164
color, rhythmic patterns and sculpture. For the costxime to facilitate
this expression White chose first to reveal the action of musical
comedy, and secondly to supply an added comment on the action or
characters as found in the costxime design work for Bloomer Girl
and Bye, Bye, Birdie.
White created costximes that utilized color, rhythmic patterns, sculp ture and wit which marked the distinctive style he brought to musical comedy and with which he affected the musical comedy design of 1938-1973 and beyond. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Aronson, Boris. "Notes on Designing Musicals." In Contemporary Stage Design U. S. A., pp. 34-37. Edited by Elizabeth B. Burdick, Peggy C. Hansen and Brenda Zanger. Middletown: International Theatre Institute of the United States, Inc., 1974.
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The Theatre, an Introduction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979.
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Unpublished Materials
Barton, Mike A. "Aline Bernstein: A History and Evaluation." Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1971.
Costxime Rendering for The Pirate New York, Miles White's personal collection.
Eraser, Barbara Means. "A Structural Analysis of the American Musical Theatre between 1955 and 1965: A Cultural Perspective." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Oregon, 1982.
Harrison, Eelin Stewart. "The Rise of the Costxime Designer: A Critical History of Costxime on the New York Stage from 1934 to 1950." Ph.D. dissertation, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 1968.
Hirsch, Virginia A. "Edith Head: Film Costxime Designer." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Kansas, 1974.
Lane, Richard Albert. "A Critical Analysis of the Treatment of Selected American Drama in Musical Adaptation." Ph.D. dissertation, Washington State University, 1974.
Newlin, Forrest Arthur. "The New York Stage Design of Lemuel Ayers." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Nebraska, 1978.
New York. Miles White's personal collection Postcard Carol Channing, Note to Miles White, Janxiary 1961.
New York, New York. United States Institute for Theatre Technology. New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, Program from the Heritage Reception 19 March 1985.
Weiss, Donald William. "Jo Mielziner's Contribution to the American Theatre." Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1965. 171
Interviews
Russell, Douglas A. United States Institute for Theatre Technology Convention, Kissimee, Florida, 23 March 1984.
Wexler, Peter. Scene designer. New York, New York. Interview, 9 December 1981.
White, Miles. Retired costxime designer. New York, New York. Interview. 8 December 1981.
. Retired costume designer. New York, New York. Interview, 9 December 1981.
. Retired costxime designer. New York, New York. Interview, 10 December 1981.