When European designer René Hubert took refuge from World War II in Hollywood, he could not have been more pleased to have landed at 20th Century-Fox.
He instantly enjoyed autonomous creative control, designing wardrobes for Sweet Rosie O’Grady (1943) with Betty Grable and The Song of Bernadette (1943) with Jennifer Jones virtually unfettered. But that independence ended when Charles Le Maire became head of the wardrobe department at Fox in 1943. Hubert instantly resented being accountable to Le Maire, and the new department head knew it. Fortunately for both men, the script for Wilson (1944) gave Le Maire the opportunity to bring Hubert into his fold. Le Maire knew Hubert wanted the Wilson assignment, as he loved its period setting so much. Late one afternoon, after Hubert had left his office for the day, Le Maire piled on Hubert’s desk a stack of research books related to the Wilson era that the studio librarian had pulled for him that afternoon. “What are these for?” Hubert asked Le Maire when he arrived the next morning. Le Maire handed him the script for Wilson. “I had been looking for a special project to give to you,” he said. He joked with Hubert that Hubert so loved period costume that he probably considered the Wilson era to be modern. Hubert’s icy disdain for Le Maire’s authority instantly melted, and the two became friends.
Though sometimes described as a Frenchman, René Eugène Hubert was actually born in in Thurgau, Switzerland, on October 7, 1895. Throughout his life, he was a fervent admirer of French taste. His formal training in the arts began at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Colarossi in Paris, where he studied painting. As a student, Hubert submitted sketches to managers of theaters in Paris. The Folies-Bergère hired him to do a series of costumes. Because of his flair for color and imaginative costumes, Hubert also found work designing for the Comédie-Française and other important Parisian theaters.
In 1921, Hubert came to New York to design costumes for the production of June Love. Hollywood noticed his work. He was commissioned to costume part of Monsieur Beaucaire (1924) with Rudolph Valentino. He executed part of the costumes in New York and part in France, though in the end, only Natacha Rambova and George Barbier received credit for the film. Hubert began a happy association with Gloria Swanson when Paramount assigned him to Madame Sans-Gêne (1925), which was made in France. Hubert became Swanson’s personal designer, and created her wardrobes in The Coast of Folly (1925) and Stage Struck (1925). When his contract ended at Paramount in 1926, Hubert moved to MGM and designed for Norma Shearer in After Midnight (1927) and Marion Davies in Quality Street (1927).
In 1929, Hubert began designing for Universum Film in Germany, including The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna (1929) with Brigitte Helm and The Love Waltz (1930) with Lilian Harvey. The political unrest on the Continent prompted Hubert to move to England to work for Alexander Korda on films such as the futuristic Things to Come (1936). War came to Europe when Hubert was in Switzerland producing a fashion theater tableau for the Swiss National Exhibition in Zurich. Unable to get back to England, he moved to Hollywood, where he initially freelanced for Samuel Goldwyn and Charles Rogers, and then joined the wardrobe department at 20th Century-Fox. Hubert became a U.S. Citizen, and never lived in Europe again.
During his tenure at Fox, Hubert’s talent for period clothes was put to good use on The Fan (1949) with Madeleine Carroll and That Lady in Ermine (1948) with Betty Grable. Even for a modern film like State Fair (1945), Hubert designed clothes for Jeanne Crain that looked like peasant clothes in a fairy tale, with pink, lavender, and pale blue appliqué flowers.
When Darryl Zanuck brought Peggy Cummins from England to star in Forever Amber (1947), director John Stahl doubted that she could handle the role. Cummins was small in stature, but she was a terrific actress and Zanuck found her dramatic and dynamic. Charles Le Maire shared Stahl’s misgivings. He did not believe Cummins was feisty enough to play Amber. He assigned Hubert to do the many changes of expensive clothes that would be needed. The shooting schedule required five of the most important dresses to be filmed in the first two weeks of production. Le Maire soon discovered that Hubert shared his concerns about Cummins’s viability in the part. In anticipation of a potential change in stars, Le Maire wanted to use oversize hems and seams in all the dresses, but Hubert feared the seams would show on the petite Cummins. To compromise, they limited oversize seams to the bodices.
Marlene Dietrich in The Flame of New Orleans (1941).
René Hubert with Ingrid Bergman during the making of Anastasia (1956).
Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia.
The rushes made studio brass see that Stahl, Le Maire, and Hubert were right. Cummins was a fine actress, but failed to come across as a woman with the power to sway kings. Production was halted. Eventually Linda Darnell replaced Cummins. Despite his precautions in oversizing Cummins’s costumes, Hubert still had to produce new designs for Darnell. Hubert had been designing Cummins’s clothes to make her look bigger, and now he had to make Darnell look smaller. Other actresses wore the costumes intended for Cummins in the film.
A hefty $100,000 budget for costumes for Désirée (1954) did nothing to help Hubert reconcile the film production code with historical accuracy when he designed cleavage-revealing empire-period gowns. “In Europe, they’re much more free when it comes to décolleté,” Hubert said. “There they are their own judges of what’s decent and what is not. We tried all sorts of things, but CinemaScope makes costuming more difficult than before since the actors’ attire is constantly on view and close-ups are out.” Hubert eventually settled on the simplest of design tricks—adding flowers and handkerchiefs to the tops of dresses. “It’s odd but true, that were we to reproduce the actual costumes of the French postrevolutionary period on the screen, no censor in America would pass them.”
For Marlon Brando in Désirée, Napoleon’s uniform was surprisingly austere. “Napoleon was a little fellow with a big ego and a flair for showmanship,” Hubert said. “So he dressed up everyone around him elaborately while he himself stuck to the simplest unadorned clothes. This automatically set him apart from his entourage.”
Hubert designed Ingrid Bergman’s wardrobe for her return to American screens in Anastasia (1956) before leaving 20th Century-Fox. He designed only two more films, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) with Glenn Ford at MGM, and another Bergman film, The Visit, in 1964. Hubert died in New York City in June of 1976.
René Hubert costume design for Linda Darnell in Forever Amber (1947).