Norma H. Koch was born on April 23, 1921, to Jules and Clara Mathy Koch, in Kansas.
She grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where her father worked in her grandparents’ grocery store. When Norma was five, the family relocated to California, first settling in the Mojave Desert. By 1930, the family was living in Los Angeles. Norma, who was an only child, taught herself costume design beginning when she was twelve years old by copying dress designs she found in newspapers.
Despite the lack of any formal training in costume design, Norma landed a position with Edith Head at Paramount by 1943. Her work on Going My Way (1944) so impressed star Bing Crosby that he encouraged Norma to strike out as a freelance designer. She was offered her first design job on the independent production A Scandal in Paris (1946) starring George Sanders. Though she began her career designing elaborate period clothes, Koch carved out a niche for herself in westerns, including The Kentuckian (1955) with Burt Lancaster, as well as gritty dramas such as Marty (1955) with Ernest Borgnine. In her films, Koch designed the men’s clothes as well as the women’s clothes.
Norma Koch’s sketch for Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).
Norma Koch in a costume consultation with Olivia de Havilland for Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).
In the 1960s, Koch often worked for director Robert Aldrich. Koch won an Oscar for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and was nominated for Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), both directed by Aldrich and starring Bette Davis.
The 1963 Oscar costume design awards were introduced by Audrey Hepburn. “This award is not only of great interest to every actress, who depends on the artistry of the designer to help her create her roles, but it is also important to women throughout the world,” Hepburn said. “Historical or modern, every film with beautiful clothes launches some new trend in fashion.” It would be impossible to imagine that any woman would have left the theater after seeing Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and run to a store to emulate what they had just seen on-screen. Norma’s acceptance acknowledged “all the Baby Janes, wherever you are.”
On March 3, 1957, Norma married sound engineer Robert R. Martin. They worked together on Taras Bulba in 1962. Norma gave birth to her only son, Jules Martin, on January 23, just weeks before winning her Oscar in 1963. Her prolific career came to an abrupt end when she died at the age of fifty-eight on May 1, 1979, in Los Angeles.
Norma Koch makes an adjustment to George Sanders’s costume in A Scandal in Paris (1946).
Eleanor Parker and Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music (1965).