Howard Kenneth Greer used to say that he “grew up on the wrong side of the social tracks.” Those tracks were located in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Greer grew up there, though he was actually born in Rushville, Illinois, on April 16, 1896, to farmers Samuel and Minnie May Eyler Greer. While Greer was a toddler, a physician told Samuel to move to Nebraska to alleviate the elder Greer’s chronic asthma. The family settled on the outskirts of Lincoln, where Samuel operated a greenhouse for five years. After that business failed, Samuel became a clerk for the railroad.
Minnie wanted her son to become a musician, but Greer preferred drawing and going to the theater. Greer graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1916 and turned his eyes to New York and a career as a writer. He began writing letters to the famous people he read about in Vanity Fair, hoping one of them might offer him a job. When Greer could not secure a loan to pay for a move to New York, he took a holiday job in the bargain basement of Miller & Paine, Lincoln’s leading department store. One day, working as a window dresser, Greer was dispatched to get a strand of pearls to accessorize a display mannequin. After weeks went by without the jewelry department asking about them, Greer “liberated” the pearls as a birthday present for his mother, and replaced them with a cheap strand from Woolworth’s. Greer then took the pearls back to Miller & Paine’s jewelry department to have them restrung when his mother accidentally broke them. He was fired that day.
Just a short time before, Greer had written to Lady Duff-Gordon, the British dressmaker known as Lucile, asking for an interview. The weekend after Greer was fired, the British dressmaker, who had salons in Chicago, New York, London, and Paris, telegrammed back:
MEET ME IN CHICAGO THURSDAY WILL GIVE YOU DEFINITE ANSWER REPLY LUCILATION, SIGNED LADY DUFF GORDON
Greer could not believe his luck. He immediately replied:
DEATH ALONE WILL KEEP ME FROM YOU THURSDAY, SIGNED HOWARD GREER
Greer hastily made the 520-mile trip from Lincoln to Lucile’s Lake Shore Drive salon in Chicago. By the time he arrived for his appointment, everyone at the salon had heard about him. “Are you the one who sent that terrifying wire?” an assistant asked. “Madame can’t wait to see what you’re like!” When Greer was ushered into Lucile’s salon, she silently looked him over. “You don’t look insane,” she said at last. “Naturally, everyone thought a lunatic had sent the telegram.” Greer realized the woman was taunting him. He found out later that Lucile had not believed that a boy from Nebraska actually imagined that he had something to offer her. She had given him the interview as a joke.
Costume designer Howard Greer with actress Sylvia Sidney.
Lucile asked to see Greer’s sketches, which he had prepared especially for their meeting. “Dear me,” she said, “what a lot you have to learn!” Notwithstanding her haughtiness, Lucile hired Greer at her Chicago salon as a sketcher-apprentice. In 1918, Lucile transferred Greer to her New York workrooms on Fifth Avenue, but his promotion was short-lived. Like many designers of that era, Greer was forced to put his career on hold a year later, answering the call of duty in France. In 1918, he fought in the Battle of Château-Thierry under General John J. Pershing. After the war, Greer remained in France, where he reconnected with Lucile to work at her salon on the Rue Boissonade. Unfortunately, when business took Lucile from Paris, she entrusted her pet Pekingese to Greer. Greer came down with pneumonia, rendering him bedridden. Lucile returned to find that her pet had died under Greer’s “care.” She fired him for his negligence on the spot.
Director Milton Sills inspects Colleen Moore’s costume for Flaming Youth (1923), which helped to usher in the “flapper” look.
Kathlyn Williams in a Howard Greer costume in The Spanish Dancer (1923).
Greer returned to America, broke and dejected, in 1921. He survived at first by creating custom clothing for some of the wealthy women he had met abroad. John Murray Anderson hired Greer to design for a cabaret revue, paying him $25 a week and kept Greer on to costume his successive revue, The Greenwich Village Follies (1922–1923). Greer’s private commissions continued to compete for his time with his costume assignments. Greer also found himself in direct competition with Gilbert Clarke, a New York designer who only sought private clientele. When Jesse Lasky of Famous Players-Lasky, offered Clarke a designing job—a position Clarke found déclassé—he suggested that the studio hire Greer instead. Clarke’s strategy to eliminate his competition worked. Walter Wanger, Lasky’s assistant, hired Greer for a six-week trial period at $200 a week. It was 1922.
For his first assignment, Greer dressed the temperamental Polish actress Pola Negri, who was making her first American film, The Spanish Dancer (1923). Greer’s gowns not only pleased Negri, but his $25,000 wedding gown, featuring a pearl and crystal embroidered brocade and lamé, trimmed in ermine and sporting a fifteen-foot-long train, got plenty of press attention for the studio.
When Clare West departed Famous Players-Lasky in 1924, Greer succeeded her as head of the studio wardrobe department. Greer designed for Paramount’s biggest stars including Leatrice Joy, Pola Negri, Clara Bow, Billie Dove, and Bebe Daniels.
“Much to every dressmaker’s surprise, we got along famously together,” Greer wrote of designer Travis Banton, who had been brought to Famous Players-Lasky to design The Dressmaker from Paris (1925). “Money was something new and almost unknown to both of us before, and the spending of it went to our heads.” Both men were gay and both enjoyed hitting the town together.
In September 1927, Famous Players-Lasky changed its name to Paramount, and Greer, now in his fifth year of film design, reassessed his career. He had designed for some two dozen films, but now, more stars and directors were requesting Travis Banton. Greer believed Banton’s clothes actually looked better on-screen than his own creations. “I have always felt my clothes depended upon a third dimension,” Greer once said. “If I live another hundred years, I doubt whether I will develop a camera ‘eye’ and know, from its inception, whether an idea will live up to my expectations on celluloid.”
Greer opened his own salon in Los Angeles on December 27, 1927, with a guest list that included Norma Talmadge, Lilyan Tashman, Vilma Bánky, Mae Murray, and Adolph Zukor.
During a visit to Greer’s salon, Greta Garbo encountered Mrs. Samuel Goldwyn. After the two exchanged pleasantries, Goldwyn invited Garbo to meet Ruby Keeler, who was being fitted in another room. Keeler had not yet begun her acting career, and was then only known as the wife of Al Jolson. “But why should I meet Mrs. Jolson?” Garbo asked. Her inquiry was grounded in wariness, not arrogance, and Greer knew it. “Meeting anyone is a terrific ordeal for her,” Greer said. A few minutes later, Goldwyn appeared at Garbo’s fitting room and introduced her to Mrs. Jolson. “But you look exactly like your husband!” Garbo blurted out. “To this day I shall never know what she meant.” Greer said.
From 1935 to 1937, Greer took two years off to live in Paris, leaving his salon in the hands of his assistant. When he returned to Hollywood, Greer resumed his custom work, as well as designing for film, including dressing Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938) and Ginger Rogers in Carefree (1938).
When his old drinking buddy, Travis Banton, left Paramount, Greer took him on at the salon. “Howard didn’t really need him at all, but he knew Travis was awfully depressed and worried about him,” claimed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. “Howard’s manager told me he had been afraid at the time they might start tooting it up with too many cocktails and the shop would suffer, but Travis started getting offers to do some pictures again and things worked out.”
Thanks to the success of his creations and the support of Hollywood, Greer was able to maintain his salon during the Depression and the war. Wartime labor shortages forced Greer to devote more time to the salon. In response to the growth of the ready-to-wear industry, Greer and his new partner, Bruce McIntosh, began designing a wholesale line in 1946, which proved profitable. At first the two produced both custom and ready-made garments, but after several years, they produced exclusively ready-to-wear items. A couple of years later, rising supply costs and a shortage of skilled labor forced Greer to close shop. Greer remained active in costuming and design until his death on April 17, 1974.