Tennessee Williams congratulating costume designer Dorothy Jeakins at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Jeakins was a three-time Academy Award-winning costume designer who went to public school in L.A. from first grade through high school. When she was a senior at Fairfax High School, she was offered a scholarship to study at the Otis Art Institute. Her fashion career began as a designer at I. Magnin's, where she was spotted by director Victor Fleming and chosen to work as a sketch artist for Joan of Arc (1948).
Jeakins worked steadily for the next thirty-nine years, winning another two Oscars, for Samson and Delilah (1949, shared with Edith Head and others), and Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana (1964), and another 12 nominations.
I can put my world down to two words:
Make beauty. It's my cue and my private passion.
-Dorothy Jeakins
Make beauty. It's my cue and my private passion.
-Dorothy Jeakins
