The 1937 Shirley Temple film “Heidi” has a dream sequence where Shirley performs a Minuet with her peers, decked out in an elegant 17th century costume by Gwen Wakeling.
With a powdered wig, this ensemble was apparently deemed worthy of a photo shoot with the master himself, George Hurrell:
I’m not a huge fan of colorization, but decided to take a stab at it with this publicity shot:
How did I know what colors to select? By using Shirley’s original costume as reference, which I photographed at the Santa Monica History Museum back in 2015:
Want to see the shoes she wore? Of course you do!
This ensemble sold for $11,000 at the 2015 Theriault’s Love, Shirley Temple auction. From the catalog description:
Styled in the late 17th century manner of the French court, the ball gown has a skirt of four tiers of fine Alencon lace with appliqued paillettes, centered by green silk panniers supported by hidden hoops, and with a matching low-necked bodice having lace center panel. The gown is decorated with garlands of pink silk rose buds, delicate blue flowers and lace edging, and accessorized by a pair of green silk and kidskin dancing slippers. For this scene in the 1937 film "Heidi" a unique coiffure in the powdered upswept fashion of Marie Antoinette was also designed for Shirley. The listed costume designer for this film was Gwen Wakeling.
The way the description is written casts a little doubt as to whether Wakeling herself designed this ensemble. It was definitely not the normal Shirley Temple outfit, however, Wakeling was more than capable to create something this ornate. With credits as diverse as “The Grapes of Wrath,” “Samson and Delilah,” and “I Dream of Jeannie,” this talented woman could do it all!
See more Shirley Temple photos at my main website.
5 comments:
Great job on the color matching. I suspect what you did is a match for the original appearance under the right lighting. It's hard to judge a garment's current color decades later, even if well preserved.
And most garments for BW films were designed to look good in black and white...so the colors aren't always what you might expect them to be when you see the garments in color. In Shirley's case, her costumes were extremely well preserved; not a whole lot of fading occurred.
True!! The actual set of Beverly Hill Billies was pretty garish in color!
Not 17th century- 1700s. 18th century
Hi dspesert - The auction house listed the costume as 17th century, so I'm going with that unless you have some other kind of proof.
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