Huge job on costumes

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 19

Huge job on costumes

The costume supervisor, Tommy Welsh, identifies himself as “chief-rag-picker” on “The Winds of War,” (TVI, 8.30 tonight). The job involved a little more than that, though — in fact it involved dressing an aggregate total of some 30,000 people, representing eight nations, in all seasons. Each shooting day (and in Europe it was a six-day week), Welsh was in the wardrobe department by 5 a.m. If the day’s shooting finished at 7.30 p.m., he was in the department until 8.30, watching carefully as eveiy last extra changed into his own clothes, every costume was carefully hung on the proper rack and the costumes for the next day were lined up and ready. A 15hour day was standard in the wardrobe department. Tommy Welsh had to make sure that each individual looked right for the day ahead, but he also had an ace up his sleeve for this wartime story. He had Johnny Napolitano, who is probably the movie business’s leading authority on uniforms of the period. “Johnny has studied

uniforms since World War H,” Welsh says, “so I never worried for a moment about that subject “This picture is a great opportunity for him to put that study to work; virtually every uniform that was used in Europe from 1939 to 1941 is used here, and Johnny knows them all.” Napolitano and his colleagues keep about 1800 costumes on hand at all times, along with the items that are never specified but that are simply expected of a wardrobe department: gauze for wounds, dirt for splashing on faces, gloves for handling that dirt, umbrellas for unexpected rain, braces to fit size 38 trousers to a size 30 waist if necessary, and military decals of every known variety to identify any species of soldier.

Finding the European uniforms involved several sources, including houses in Rome, Vienna, London and Yugoslavia. Since there is no source of American military uniforms in Europe, those were brought from Hollywood.