Though her Oscar win for Adventures of Don Juan (1948) did not make her the only Oscar winner from downstate Illinois, Marjorie Best was Jacksonville’s most-nominated native, getting recognized by the Academy for her work in Giant (1956), Sunrise at Campobello (1960), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
It seems particularly surprising that the Morgan County newspaper serving the twenty thousand residents of Jacksonville did not even run an obituary for Best when she died in 1997, ninety-four years after being born there on April 10, 1903.
Best was respected for her knowledge in the field of costume design, even becoming an educator herself, but she never actively sought the spotlight. She moved to Los Angeles with her parents, Frank and Lizzie Osborn Best, in the late 1920s, where Frank worked as a real-estate agent. Best studied at the Chouinard Art Institute, intending to become a painter or a commercial artist, but changed her mind. “From the first time I visited a costume design class, I knew I had found the work that I wanted to do,” Best said.
After graduation, Best took a position at United Costume, a large company that rented wardrobes of every type to film studio. Though not her first choice of employment, Best believed that the experience would prepare her for a studio job when one presented itself. At United, she designed both men’s and women’s costumes, but soon her assignments veered strongly toward male attire. “I suppose I did a good job once, and the others just naturally followed,” she said. When Warner Bros. acquired United in 1943, Best finally landed that “dream position” she had waited for. The studio offered jobs to United’s top designers. “I went along with the rest of the purchase—bag and baggage,” Best said.
Designers for men’s costumes were scarce. Creating wardrobes for men never brought the designer the prestige that designing gowns brought to her male counterparts. “The work was obviously more difficult than designing for women—and more limited in its scope,” Best said. “I found each new problem fascinating.” Besides specializing in men’s costumes, Best worked on period films and designed many westerns, including The Hanging Tree (1959) with Gary Cooper and Rio Bravo (1959) with John Wayne. Best’s roster of male stars included some of the biggest names then working at the studio—Errol Flynn, William Powell, Paul Henreid, Dennis Morgan, and Jack Carson.
A Marjorie Best design for Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story (1959).
When designing for men in the period before 1800, Best likened men’s clothes to the natural coverings of male birds and animals. “[Men] led fashion, and women trailed far behind,” Best said. “For generations, men wore the finest materials, the most jewels, the gayest colors. Then something happened, and for the past century-and-a-half, their clothes have remained much the same as they are today.”
Of all the men she designed for, Errol Flynn had “the kind of physique I like to sketch when I make my designs,” Best said. Flynn usually had ideas of his own. If an actor expressed any preference, Best tried to work it out. “Differences of opinion like that are natural because of individual interpretations of the character,” she said. Flynn wanted low-cut vests for his suits in Silver River (1948) instead of the higher-buttoned-up style. Best agreed that his choice was more debonair than her original sketches.
Later in her career, Best returned to Chouinard and taught the history of costume design for many years. Best was also active in the Costume Designers Guild and the Costume Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She died on June 13, 1997, in Toluca Lake, California, of a heart ailment.
Gary Cooper in The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938).
Costume designer Michael Woulfe with models wearing gowns from The French Line (1954).