COSTLY WARDROBES

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 January 1926, Page 7

COSTLY WARDROBES

FILM STARS’ EROCKS.

Give any woman, the chance —just the chance—of spending £2OO a month (not her own hard-earned money, but hpr manager's) on silk stockings, £25 a week on,’ perfume, £2500 a year on lingerie—what would she say? The answer is not hard to guess. Gloria Swanson has that chance —and uses it. Such joys form part of the everyday routine of a film star’s existence; though, in a sense, the joy is tempered with sadness, since it is not possible to lay out sums of money running into five figures without considerable sacrifice of time and patience, to say nothing of the skill required in choosing the right things. Some of the figures revealed in connection with screen stars’ garments and their necessary accessories are positively staggering. Clothes are a tremendous item; not only those worn when facing the camera, for which the management has to pay, but also those in which a star is seen in public, at restaurants, theatres, race" meetings, in her car—which she must provide herself. And her contract stipulates, probably, that she must be seen in public constantly, dressed in the very latest, most up-to-the-minute fashions. Once upon a time, an actress was expected to provide her own stage clothes, as well as those she wore in private life, except in the case of costume plays. But the enormously elaborate wardrobe required by an up-to-date screen star, and its huge cost (says a writer in an exchange), has made. this quite impossible. So the management provides the clothes; the star wears them, only once, before the camera; and then —well, then, if she likes a dress sufficiently well, she may buy it for her private wardrobe, from her manager, for a mere fraction of its original cost. But this doqs not happen often; so the elaborate day and evening, gowns

silversheet beauties must wear

continue to make a large hole in the substantial weekly pay-envelope that sounds so enormous until the cost of clothes and living comes into the picture. To dress Gloria Swanson for the screen costs something like £35,000 a 'year.. That does not include any jewellery. When such casual items as tiaras, rings, bracelets,, and necklaces come to be reckoned, these light and airy trifles represent at least another £125,00Q in value. But they are . not purchased outright —for which a manager must heave a sigh of vast relief. They are merely hired, as wanted - about 10 or 15 per cent of their full value. Shoes are a heavy item; 25 pairs of shoes for one production is a moderate estimate. As for her stockings, already quoted as costing £2OO a month, these are bought fin bunches of 12 dozen, and are mostly of the finest, sheerest black silk, at £3 a pair. And no pair is worn more than twice. To these essential possessions must be added 200 hats. Gloria Swanson does not allow her hat-cupboard to contain anything less than 200 smart hats at one* time. Possibly 50 per cent, of the collection has never been worn after the initial trying-on stage; but they are ready for any sudden emergency. For a single screen play it costs, on an average, £12,000 to dress ADiss Swanson. In one play, “Her Love Story,” the star’s clothes cost no less than £24,000. Wearing such gorgeous gowns in the correct manner necessitates a slender, graceful figure; so Gloria Swanson’s contract—like those of /then screen stars —stipulates that her weight must not exceed 150 pounds; which is, per-

haps, the fly in, the ointment, the snag that calls forth visions of endless dry toast and lemon, lamb chops and pineapple, afl nauseam. Popular Marion Davies wears clothes costing thousands of pounds in her screen pictures. When she played “Janice Meredith,” she used no less than 22 costumes, costing nothing under £BO each, plus two cloaks at £125 each. This pales considerably before her clothes-bill for “Yolanda,” when her wardrobe was more elaborate, for every dress cost at least £125, and the dresses ran into dozens. Marion Davies makes many “costume” pictures, which take about six months to complete. ‘ Consequently her dresses have to be made of the finest and most expensive materials, in order to stand the strain of long and hard wear in

the studio. For her private use Miss Davies allows £12,000 a year, most of this representing invested capital, not extravagance.., Spanish shawls', xfor example, are a craze with Miss Davies ; she pays as much as £4OO for one shawl, but most of them are worth far more than she gave for them, and she could sell her fine collection for a very large sum of money at any time. Another silversheet star whose clothes cost a fortune is Norma Talmadge. In one of her productions, called “Sacrifice” —not her most expensive production by any means — about £5OOO was spent on her clothes. Norma Talmadge makes at least four big pictures a year, so fin the course of twelve months her husband and producer, Joseph M. Schenck, spends £15,000 to £20,000 on her screen dresses. Like other stars, Norma is photographed in many dresses in which she is not seen in the finished film. Dozens of effects are tried before the right one is reached. In the screen version made by this popular star of the stage play “Secrets,” she (was filmed for one short scene only no fewe/ than eight different times in eight different dresses. She is seen in just one of these dresses in the finished film; seven pictures were discarded, and the best retained—that is the way some of the money goes. As in the case of other screen stirs with a vast following of “fans” all over the world, Norma, and Constance Talinadge buy very few handkerchiefs, because they receive hundreds from unknown friends at Christmas and on their birthdays. This is perhaps the only modest item on a heavy expensesheet. • To dress a screen beauty or a king’s daughter must be, of necessity, an expensive matter. And it seems highly probable that the favoured favourites of filmland spend money at a rate that no princess could afford. But to keep up their position on the screenthrones, stars must glitter incessantly -—backed by their manager’s money.