Gile Steele

Birth : 1908-09-24,

Death : 1952-01-16

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gile Steele (24 September 1908 in Ohio – 16 January 1952 in Culver City, California), was a Hollywood costume designer. His career began at MGM in 1938 with one of his first assignments being the Norma Shearer film Marie Antoinette. He also worked on many of the company's prestige pictures including Pride and Prejudice and Boom Town (both 1940), Blossoms in the Dust and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (both 1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942) and Madame Curie (1943). He was one of the first nominees when the category for Best Costume Design was introduced at the Academy Awards in 1948 for his work on The Emperor Waltz. He won the Oscar for The Heiress in 1949 and Samson and Delilah in 1950. He died abruptly in 1952 at the age of 43.

Movies

Lone Star
Costume Design
Rip-roaring big star, big budget semi-historical story about cattle baron Devereaux Burke, who is enlisted by an aging Andrew Jackson to dissuade Sam Houston from establishing Texas as a republic. Burke must fight state senator Thomas Craden, in the process winning the heart of Craden's newspaper-editor girlfriend Martha Ronda.
The Belle of New York
Costume Design
In squeaky-clean New York at the turn of the century, playboy Charlie Hill falls so much in love that he can walk on air. The object of his affections is beautiful Angela Bonfils, a mission house worker in the Bowery. He promises to reform his dissolute life, even trying to do an honest day's work.
Callaway Went Thataway
Costume Designer
Two smart marketing people resurrect some old films starring cowboy Smoky Callaway and put them on television. The films are a big hit and the star is in demand. Unfortunately no one can find him. When a lookalike sends in a photo, the marketing team hires him to impersonate Callaway. Things get sticky when the real Callaway eventually shows up.
Callaway Went Thataway
Costume Design
Two smart marketing people resurrect some old films starring cowboy Smoky Callaway and put them on television. The films are a big hit and the star is in demand. Unfortunately no one can find him. When a lookalike sends in a photo, the marketing team hires him to impersonate Callaway. Things get sticky when the real Callaway eventually shows up.
The Law and the Lady
Costume Design
A former housemaid (Garson) now works as a confidence trickster, but her plans for a big job in California go awry.
Kind Lady
Wardrobe Designer
Mary Herries has a passion for art and fine furniture. Even though she is getting on in years, she enjoys being around these priceless articles. One day she meets a strange young painter named Elcott, who uses his painting skill to enter into her life. Little does she expect that his only interest in Mary is to covet everything she has.
Copper Canyon
Costume Design
A group of copper miners, Southern veterans, are terrorized by local rebel-haters, led by deputy Lane Travis. The miners ask stage sharpshooter Johnny Carter to help them, under the impression that he is the legendary Colonel Desmond. It seems they're wrong; but Johnny's show comes to Coppertown and Johnny romances lovely gambler Lisa Roselle, whom the miners believe is at the center of their troubles.
Fancy Pants
Costume Design
An American actor, impersonating an English butler, is hired by a rich woman from New Mexico to refine her husband and headstrong daughter. The complications increase when the town believes the actor/butler to be an earl and President Roosevelt decides to pay a visit.
Samson and Delilah
Costume Design
When strongman Samson rejects the love of the beautiful Philistine woman Delilah, she seeks vengeance that brings horrible consequences they both regret. The classic story of Samson and Delilah as told by Cecil B. DeMille.
The Heiress
Costume Design
Dull and plain Catherine lives with her emotionally distant father, Dr. Sloper, in 1840s New York. Her days are empty — filled with little more than needlepoint. Enter handsome Morris Townsend, a dashing social climber with his eye on the spinster's heart and substantial inheritance.
The Paleface
Costume Design
Bob Hope stars in this laugh-packed wild west spoof co-starring Jane Russell as a sexy Calamity Jane, Hope is a meek frontier dentist, "Painless" Peter Potter, who finds himself gunslinging alongside the fearless Calamity as she fights off outlaws and Indians.
The Emperor Waltz
Costume Designer
At the turn of the 20th century, travelling salesman Virgil Smith journeys to Vienna in the hope he can sell a gramophone to Emperor Franz Joseph, whose purchase of the recent American invention could spur its popularity in Austria.
California
Costume Design
"Wicked" Lily Bishop joins a wagon train to California, led by Michael Fabian and Johnny Trumbo, but news of the Gold Rush scatters the train. When Johnny and Michael finally arrive, Lily is rich from her saloon and storekeeper (former slaver) Pharaoh Coffin is bleeding the miners dry. But worse troubles are ahead: California is inching toward statehood, and certain people want to make it their private empire.
Monsieur Beaucaire
Costume Design
A bumbling barber in the court of King Louis XV becomes engaged in political intrigue when he masquerades as a dashing nobleman engaged to the princess of Spain.
The White Cliffs of Dover
Costume Design
American Susan travels with her father to England for a vacation. Invited to a society ball, Susan meets Sir John Ashwood and marries him after a whirlwind romance. However, she never quite adjusts to life as a new member of the British gentry. At the outbreak of World War I, John is sent to the trenches and never returns. When her son goes off to fight in World War II, Susan fears the same tragic fate may befall him too.
Broadway Rhythm
Costume Design
Broadway producer Johnny Demming is only interested in big-name talent and scoffs that his sister, father and other small-time talent could be used in a successful show.
Best Foot Forward
Costume Design
Bud Hooper, a cadet at Winsocki Military Academy, sends an invitation to movie star Lucille Ball to come to Winsocki's big dance. Ball's publicity-hungry agent convinces her to go in order to boost her career. Complications arise when Bud's girlfriend Helen Schlesinger unexpectedly shows up, too.
I Dood It
Costume Design
Constance Shaw, a Broadway dance star, and Joseph Rivington Reynolds, a keen fan of hers, marry after she breaks up with her fiancé. Connie thinks Joseph owns a gold mine, but he actually works as a presser at a hotel valet shop. When everyone learns what he really is, Joseph is banned from the theater. When he sneaks in again, he learns of a plot to set off a bomb in the adjoining munitions warehouse.
Du Barry Was a Lady
Costume Design
Hat check man Louis Blore is in love with nightclub star May Daly. May, however, is in love with a poor dancer but wants to marry for money. When Louis wins the Irish Sweepstakes, he asks May to marry him and she accepts even though she doesn't love him. Soon after, Louis has an accident and gets knocked on the head, where he dreams that he's King Louis XV pursuing the infamous Madame Du Barry.
The Man from Down Under
Costume Design
An Australian blowhard raises two orphaned children as his own in the years leading up to WWII.
Above Suspicion
Costume Design
Two newlyweds spy on the Nazis for the British Secret Service during their honeymoon in Europe.
For Me and My Gal
Costume Design
Two vaudeville performers fall in love, but find their relationship tested by the arrival of WWI.
Mrs. Miniver
Costume Design
English middle-class family, The Minivers, experience life in the first months of World War II.
Tortilla Flat
Costume Design
Danny, a poor northern Californian Mexican-American, inherits two houses from his grandfather and is quickly taken advantage of by his vagabond friends.
The Vanishing Virginian
Costume Design
The perineal District Attorney and conservative southern patriarch cherishes the old ways and does his best to adjust to change.
Smilin' Through
Costume Design
John Carteret has long been depressed and lonely, because, at his wedding years ago, his bride, Moonyean, was murdered. He accepts into his house Kathleen, the 5 year old orphaned niece of Moonyean, and she quickly grows up to look just like her aunt. Kathleen meets and falls in love with a mysterious stranger from America, Kenneth Wayne. When John hears of this he is furious, and we learn that it was Kenneth's father, Jeremy, who had killed Moonyean years before. John carries his grudge against Jeremy to the new generation, and threatens to ruin his niece's happiness, but he softens in the end.
Billy the Kid
Costume Design
Billy Bonney is a hot-headed gunslinger who narrowly skirts a life of crime by being befriended and hired by a peaceful rancher, Eric Keating. When Keating is killed, Billy seeks revenge on the men who killed him, even if it means opposing his friend, Marshal Jim Sherwood.
The Bad Man
Costume Design
Lopez is a bandit who has stolen the herd at Gil's ranch, so Hardy is about to foreclose. But Lucia has come back from New York and Gil is happy until he meets her husband, Morgan.
Comrade X
Costume Design
An American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.
Go West
Costume Design
Embezzler, shill, all around confidence man S. Quentin Quale is heading west to find his fortune; he meets the crafty but simple brothers Joseph and Rusty Panello in a train station, where they steal all his money. They're heading west, too, because they've heard you can just pick the gold off the ground. Once there, they befriend an old miner named Dan Wilson whose property, Dead Man's Gulch, has no gold. They loan him their last ten dollars so he can go start life anew, and for collateral, he gives them the deed to the Gulch. Unbeknownst to Wilson, the son of his longtime rival, Terry Turner (who's also in love with his daughter, Eva), has contacted the railroad to arrange for them to build through the land, making the old man rich and hopefully resolving the feud. But the evil Red Baxter, owner of a saloon, tricks the boys out of the deed, and it's up to them - as well as Quale, who naturally finds his way out west anyway - to save the day.
Bitter Sweet
Costume Design
In order to avoid an arranged marriage with a man she doesn't love, Sarah Millick runs off to Vienna with her music teacher, Carl Linden, whom she does love. They are married. In Vienna, they struggle to make a living by making music. Carl writes an operetta and tries to get it produced. They are helped along by Viennese Baron, but his intentions are not honorable. He kills Carl in a sword fight. A big producer does put on the operetta, with Sari in the lead -- but without her husband, it is a bittersweet victory.
Escape
Costume Design
An American goes to Germany to find his mother and discovers her in a concentration camp. With the help of an American-born widowed countess he seeks to engineer her escape.
Boom Town
Costumer
McMasters and Sand come to oil towns to get rich. Betsy comes West intending to marry Sand but marries McMasters instead. Getting rich and losing it all teaches McMasters and Sand the value of personal ties.
Pride and Prejudice
Costume Design
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have five unmarried daughters, and Mrs. Bennet is especially eager to find suitable husbands for them. When the rich single gentlemen Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy come to live nearby, the Bennets have high hopes. But pride, prejudice and misunderstandings all combine to complicate their relationships and to make happiness difficult.
New Moon
Costume Design
A revolutionary leader romances a French aristocrat in Louisiana.
The Mortal Storm
Costume Design
The Roth family leads a quiet life in a small village in the German Alps during the early 1930s. When the Nazis come to power, the family is divided and Martin Brietner, a family friend is caught up in the turmoil.
Florian
Costume Design
Set against the backdrop of WWI Europe, a man and woman of different classes are brought together by their love of Lippizan horses.
Waterloo Bridge
Costume Design
On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front. Myra stayed with him past curfew and is thrown out of the corps de ballet. She survives on the streets of London, falling even lower after she hears her true love has been killed in action. But he wasn't killed. Those terrible years were nothing more than a bad dream is Myra's hope after Roy finds her and takes her to his family's country estate.
20 Mule Team
Costume Design
It is 1892 in Death Valley and the yields from the Borax ore are getting so small that refining it is a losing proposition. The only thing that will save the company is a new deposit of high grade Borax, and Skinner Bill Bragg has a pouch of it that he got from a dead prospector he buried on the road. Stag Roper knows the value of the strike could be worth millions, but he needs Bragg to find the prospector's claim so they can record it and become rich partners. While Roper has no intention of cutting Bragg in on the millions, he also has his eye on young Jean Johnson. Josie Johnson, Jean's mother, sees Roper as the scalawag he is, and that means trouble in Furnace Flat.
Marie Antoinette
Costume Design
The young Austrian princess Marie Antoinette is arranged to marry Louis XVI, future king of France, in a politically advantageous marriage for the rival countries. The opulent Marie indulges in various whims and flirtations. When Louis XV passes and Louis XVI ascends the French throne, his queen's extravagant lifestyle earns the hatred of the French people, who despise her Austrian heritage.
The Toy Wife
Costume Design
A Southern belle finds herself torn between two suitors.