Head, who just got a Google doodle, was a costume designer whose work won her acclaim and 35 Academy Award nominations (8 wins). Her wins, in reverse order, were for The Sting, The Facts of Life (Lucille Ball's wardrobe), Roman Holiday, A Place in the Sun, All About Eve, Samson and Delilah and The Heiress.
The black dress Bette Davis wears in All About Eve that gathers around her shoulders? A mistake. The neckline was was too large and Bette came up with the idea of pulling it down around her shoulders.
Bette Davis was among the women she clothed in film -- a long list which also includes Audrey Hepburn, Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Doris Day, Ann-Margret, Julie Andrews, Marlene Dietrich, Kim Novak, Shirley MacLaine, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Rita Hayworth, Sophia Loren, Jane Wyman, Valerie Perrine, Tippi Hedren, Hedy Lamarr, Gloria Swanson, Joan Fonataine, Jaqueline Bisset, Carmen Miranda, Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck, Veronica Lake, Mary Tyler Moore, Ginger Rogers, Frances Farmer, Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour, Judy Garland and Mae West. She was responsible for designing Natalie Wood's wardrobe seven films: Love with the Proper Stranger, Sex and the Single Girl, Inside Daisy Clover, The Great Race, Penelope, This Property Is Condemned and The Last Married Couple in America.
That last one, the Natalie Wood comedy, would be Head's second to last film. She'd finish Steve Martin's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid just before she passed away. That 1982 film notes in the credits:
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid was Edith Head's final film. To her, and to all the brilliant technical and creative people who worked on the films of the 1940s and 1950s, this motion picture is affectionately dedicated.
