Marjorie Best

Birth : 1903-04-10, Jacksonville, Illinois, USA

Death : 1997-06-14

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Marjorie Best (10 April 1903 – 14 June 1997) was an American Hollywood costume designer known for her period designs. Best was born in Jacksonville, Illinois and studied at the Chouinard Art Institute. She taught school briefly before going to work for the Western Costume Company in 1926. She later moved to United Costumers. When that company was purchased by Warner Bros. in 1936, she was given a position in the studio's wardrobe department. Her first film as a costume designer was Silver River (1948). She earned an Academy Award for costume design in 1949 for her collaboration on the Errol Flynn film Adventures of Don Juan. She was nominated in 1956 for Giant, in 1960 for Sunrise at Campobello, and in 1965 for The Greatest Story Ever Told, the same year she retired. Best died on June 14, 1997 in Toluca Lake, California of a heart ailment.

Movies

Spencer's Mountain
Costume Design
Clay Spencer is a hard-working man who loves his wife and large family. He is respected by his neighbors and always ready to give them a helping hand. Although not a churchgoer, he even helps a newly arrived local minister regain his flock after he and Clay get into a bit of trouble. If he has one dream in life it's to build his wife Olivia a beautiful house on a piece of land he inherited on Spender's mountain. When his eldest son, Clayboy, graduates at the top of his high school class and has the opportunity to go to college, Clay has only one option left to him.
Tender Is the Night
Costume Design
Against the counsel of his friends, psychiatrist Dick Diver marries Nicole Warren, a beautiful but unstable young woman from a moneyed family. Thoroughly enraptured, he forsakes his career in medicine for life as a playboy, until one day Dick is charmed by Rosemary Hoyt, an American traveling abroad. The thought of Dick possibly being attracted to someone else sends Nicole on an emotional downward spiral that threatens to consume them both.
The Comancheros
Costume Design
Texas Ranger Jake Cutter arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves known as Comancheros.
The Sins of Rachel Cade
Costume Design
A female doctor in the Congo is torn between two loves.
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
Costume Design
In Oklahoma in the 1920s, Rubin Flood loses his job as a traveling salesman when the company goes bankrupt. This adds to his worries at home. His wife Cora is frigid because of trying to make ends meet. His teenage daughter Reenie is afraid of going out on dates, but eventually makes friends with a troubled Jewish boy Sammy Golden, and his son is a mama's boy. He finally storms out of the house when Cora falsely accuses him of having an affair with Mavis Pruitt.
Sunrise at Campobello
Costume Design
The story of Franklin Roosevelt's bout with polio at age 40 in 1921 and how his family (and especially wife Eleanor) cope with his illness. From being stricken while vacationing at Campobello to his triumphant nominating speech for Al Smith's presidency in 1924, the story follows the various influences on his life and his determination to recover - based on the award winning Broadway play of the same name.
Sergeant Rutledge
Costume Design
Respected black cavalry Sergeant Brax Rutledge stands court-martial for raping and killing a white woman and murdering her father, his superior officer.
Guns of the Timberland
Costume Design
Logger Jim Hadley and his lumberjack crew are looking for new forest to cut. They locate a prime prospect outside the town of Deep Wells. The residents of Deep Wells led by Laura Riley are opposed to the felling of the trees, believing that losing them would cause mudslides during the heavy rains. Conflict between the town's residents and the loggers is inevitable.
The Miracle
Costume Design
A novice leaves a Spanish convent to follow a 19th-century British soldier she loves.
Yellowstone Kelly
Costume Design
A fur-trapper named Kelly, who once saved the life of a Sioux chief, is allowed to set his traps in Sioux territory during the late 1870s. Reluctantly he takes on a tenderfoot assistant named Anse and together they give shelter to a runaway Arapaho woman. Tensions develop when Anse falls in love with this woman and when the Sioux chief arrives with his warriors to re-claim her.
The Nun's Story
Costume Design
After leaving a wealthy Belgian family to become a nun, Sister Luke struggles with her devotion to her vows during crisis, disappointment, and World War II.
Rio Bravo
Costume Design
The sheriff of a small town in southwest Texas must keep custody of a murderer whose brother, a powerful rancher, is trying to help him escape. After a friend is killed trying to muster support for him, he and his deputies must find a way to hold out against the rancher's hired guns until the marshal arrives. In the meantime, matters are complicated by the presence of a young gunslinger - and a mysterious beauty who just came in on the last stagecoach.
The Hanging Tree
Costume Design
Joseph "Doc" Frail is a doctor with a past he's trying to outrun. While in Montana, he comes across a mining camp with a hanging tree and rescues a man named Rune from the noose. With Rune as his servant, Frail decides to settle down, and he takes over as town doctor. He meets Elizabeth, who is suffering from shock, and the two soon fall in love. But when Elizabeth is attacked, Frail's attempt to help her lands them both in trouble.
Born Reckless
Costume Design
Rider Kelly Cobb travels to county rodeos to win money so he can buy a patch of land he wants to call his own. He rescues trick rider Jackie Adams from the clutches of an amorous sports ...
The Left Handed Gun
Costume Design
When a crooked sheriff murders his employer, William "Billy the Kid" Bonney decides to avenge the death by killing the man responsible, throwing the lives of everyone around him into turmoil, and endangering the General Amnesty set up by Governor Wallace to bring peace to the New Mexico Territory.
Fort Dobbs
Costume Design
An escaped prisoner helps a mother and her son flee marauding Indians. Director Gordon Douglas' 1958 western stars Clint Walker, Virginia Mayo, Richard Eyer, Brian Keith, Michael Dante and Russ Conway.
Lafayette Escadrille
Costume Design
A hotshot young flyer falls for a French sex worker during World War I.
Band of Angels
Costume Design
Living in Kentucky prior to the Civil War, Amantha Starr is a privileged young woman. Her widowed father, a wealthy plantation owner, dotes on her and sends her to the best schools. When he dies suddenly Amantha's world is turned upside down. She learns that her father had been living on borrowed money and that her mother was actually a slave and her father's mistress.
Shoot-Out At Medicine Bend
Costume Design
In Medicine Bend, a crooked businessman has the town mayor and sheriff in his pocket while his henchmen raid the wagon trains passing through the region.
Giant
Costume Design
Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas. She marries Benedict, but she is shocked by the racial bigotry of the White Texans against the local people of Mexican descent. Rink discovers oil on a small plot of land, and while he uses his vast, new wealth to buy all the land surrounding the Benedict ranch, the Benedict's disagreement over prejudice fuels conflict that runs across generations.
The Burning Hills
Costume Design
When Trace Jordan's brother is murdered by members of the land-grabbing Sutton family, he vows to report this injustice to the nearest Army fort.
The Silver Chalice
Costume Design
A Greek artisan is commissioned to cast the cup of Christ in silver and sculpt around its rim the faces of the disciples and Jesus himself. He travels to Jerusalem and eventually to Rome to complete the task. Meanwhile, a nefarious interloper is trying to convince the crowds that he is the new Messiah by using nothing more than cheap parlor tricks.
His Majesty O'Keefe
Costume Design
Men steal for it. Nations go to war for it. The it is oil - and it grows on trees. Coconut oil is the precious lifeblood of 1870s South Seas traders. And lots of real blood will be spilled to get it! Screen royalty Burt Lancaster ist His Majesty O'Keefe in this last of three adventures that (along with The Flame and the Arrow and The Crimson Pirate) blew a revitalizing wind into the sails of the swashbucker genre. Action, cunning and derring-do are watchwords of the title seafarer as he befriends, defends and ultimately rules the islanders of exotic Yap. Lensed on gorgeus Fiji locations, grandly scored by Robert Farnon and rousingly directed by Byron Haskin, His Majesty O'Keefe delivers heroics of regal proportions.
Blowing Wild
Wardrobe Supervisor
Wildcatter Jeff Dawson does his best to bring in a gusher in Mexico despite continual bandit raids. He asks for help from his ex-employer Ward Conway, but Conway, now married to Dawson's ex-lover Marina refuses, fearing that his wife will want to renew her romance with the other man.
The Charge at Feather River
Costume Design
A frontier scout leads prisoners on a death mission to save a railroad and rescue two women.
The Iron Mistress
Costume Design
In this biopic, Jim Bowie goes to New Orleans, where he falls for Judalon and befriends her brother, Narcisse. Soon, Jim is forced to avenge Narcisse's murder, but Judalon takes up with another man. Jim eventually has another romantic interlude with Judalon and is forced to kill one of her suitors in self-defense. Jim leaves town, and falls for the daughter of a Texas politician, but his entanglement with Judalon continues to bedevil him.
The Crimson Pirate
Costume Design
Burt Lancaster plays a pirate with a taste for intrigue and acrobatics who involves himself in the goings on of a revolution in the Caribbean in the late 1700s. A light hearted adventure involving prison breaks, an oddball Scientist, sailing ships, naval fights, and tons of swordplay.
Carson City
Wardrobe Designer
Mine owner William Sharon keeps having his gold shipments held up by a gang of bandits. Sharon hires banker Charles Crocker, who happens to have connections in the Central Pacific Railroad, to build a spur line from Virginia City to Carson City, so that the gold can be shipped by railroad. Silent Jeff Kincaid is the railroad engineer. However there is opposition to the railroad, chiefly from another mine owner, Big Jack Davis.
Room for One More
Costume Design
Anne and "Poppy" Rose have three quirky kids. Anne has a generous heart and the belief in the innocence of children. To the unhappy surprise of her husband she takes in the orphan Jane, a problem child who already tried to kill herself once.
I'll See You in My Dreams
Costume Design
Songwriter Gus Kahn fights to make his name, then has to fight again to survive the Depression.
Fort Worth
Wardrobe Master
Ex-gunfighter Ned Britt returns to Fort Worth after the civil war to help run a newspaper which is against ambitious men and their schemes for control.
Fort Worth
Wardrobe Designer
Ex-gunfighter Ned Britt returns to Fort Worth after the civil war to help run a newspaper which is against ambitious men and their schemes for control.
Along the Great Divide
Wardrobe Designer
New Federal marshal Len Merrick saves Tim Keith from lynching at the hands of the Roden clan, and hopes to get him to Santa Loma for trial. Vindictive Ned Roden, whose son Ed was killed, still wants personal revenge, and Tim would like to escape before Ned catches up with him again. Can the marshal make it across the desert with Tim and his daughter? Even if he makes it, will justice be served?
Raton Pass
Costume Design
Raton Pass is a curious western based on the rules of Community Property. Dennis Morgan and Patricia Neal portray a recently married husband and wife, each of whom owns half of a huge cattle ranch. Neal is a tad more ambitious than her husband, and with the help of a little legal chicanery she tries to obtain Morgan's half of the spread. He balks, so she hires a few gunslingers to press the issue. In a 1951 western, the greedy party usually came to a sorry end; Raton Pass adheres strictly to tradition.
Rocky Mountain
Costume Design
A Confederate troop, led by Captain Lafe Barstow, is prowling the far ranges of California and Nevada in a last desperate attempt to build up an army in the West for the faltering Confederacy. Because the patrol saves a stagecoach, with Johanna Carterr as one of the passengers, from an Indian attack, and is marooned on a rocky mountain, it fails in its mission but the honor of the Old South is upheld.
The Great Jewel Robber
Costume Design
Director Peter Godfrey's 1950 drama, inspired by true events, dramatizes the crime spree of the notorious jewel thief known as "The Hollywood Raffles", whose famous robbery victims included such real-life celebrities as Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn, Alexis Smith and Dennis Morgan. David Brian stars in the title role, and he's supported by John Archer, Marjorie Reynolds, Jacqueline de Wit, Alix Talton, Ned Glass, Perdita Chandler and columnist Sheilah Graham, playing herself.
The Flame and the Arrow
Costume Design
Dardo, a Robin Hood-like figure, and his loyal followers use a Roman ruin in Medieval Lombardy as their headquarters as they conduct an insurgency against their Hessian conquerors.
Bright Leaf
Wardrobe Supervisor
Two tobacco growers battle for control of the cigarette market.
The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady
Costume Design
An Irish horsecar driver's daughter meets New York showman Tony Pastor and goes into vaudeville.
Montana
Costume Design
An Australian sheep man comes to Montana looking for grazing space, is opposed by local ranchers and a wealthy cattle-woman.
Look for the Silver Lining
Costume Design
Musical biography of Marilyn Miller, who overcame heartache to become a Broadway star
Adventures of Don Juan
Wardrobe Supervisor
The adventures of the notorious Spanish Lothario Don Juan highlights Errol Flynn's swashbuckling and romantic antics.
Adventures of Don Juan
Costume Design
The adventures of the notorious Spanish Lothario Don Juan highlights Errol Flynn's swashbuckling and romantic antics.
Life with Father
Costume Design
A straitlaced turn-of-the-century father presides over a family of boys and the mother who really rules the roost.