Albert Wolsky, the French-born costume designer who received Oscars for All That Jazz and Bugsy and set hearts racing by dressing Olivia Newton-John in body-hugging black sharkskin pants and a leather-based jacket for Grease, has died. He was 95.
Wolsky died Saturday at his house within the Hollywood Hills, in keeping with a good friend who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter.
Throughout his profession, Wolsky obtained seven Oscar nominations for costuming, dressing Meryl Streep for Sophie’s Selection (1982) — she thanked him in her finest actress Oscar acceptance speech — and two members of the Cusack household: John in The Journey of Natty Gann (1985) and Joan within the Robin Williams-led Toys (1992).
His final two noms got here for his work on the Beatles-infused Throughout the Universe (2007) and Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Highway (2009).
He collaborated 11 instances with American director Paul Mazursky, together with Harry and Tonto (1974), for which Artwork Carney received the Oscar for finest actor, and An Single Lady (1978), starring Jill Clayburgh in one in all her Oscar-nominated turns.
In an attractive romantic sequence, Clayburgh steps out into the New York night time sporting an excellent cape. “I thought the cape was fantastic,” Mazursky says in Sam Wasson’s 2011 ebook, Paul on Mazursky. “Jill was a tall woman, and the cape had something to do with making her height OK. Also, it was something she could use for these moments outside when she’s clearly fallen in love.”
The pair additionally labored collectively on Subsequent Cease, Greenwich Village (1976), Willie & Phil (1980), Tempest (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), Moon Over Parador (1988), Enemies, A Love Story (1989), Scenes From a Mall (1991) and The Pickle (1993).
Nevertheless, in Wolsky’s personal phrases, an important movie of his embellished profession was Lenny (1974), Bob Fosse’s biography of comic Lenny Bruce that starred Dustin Hoffman.
“I really knew I had gone up one step to another level of learning and of opportunity, and it was an extraordinary job for me,” he mentioned throughout a 2017 interview for the Costume Designers Guild.
The expertise paid off for his or her subsequent collaboration 5 years later, Fosse’s semi-autobiographical All That Jazz. Wolsky’s vibrant costumes, which depicted the truth and fantasy worlds of the multitalented director and choreographer’s life, nabbed him his first Oscar.
“I don’t think there was ever anything quite like him,” Wolsky mentioned of Fosse, describing him as “intense and driven.”
For his second Oscar, Wolsky spent his budgeted $1 million for Barry Levinson’s Forties-era Bugsy (1991) on designing ballgowns, tuxedos, silk shirts and satin ties and importing uncommon Italian gabardine.
On the Oscar podium, he thanked Levinson and producer-star Warren Beatty for creating an “elegant and impeccable taste and climate for us.”
However moviegoers can be ceaselessly grateful to Wolsky for placing Newton-John in these tight black pants and leather-based jacket as she transforms into the rebellious Sandy Olsson in Grease (1978).
In 2018, the Aussie actress vividly recalled attempting out the outfit for the primary time within the wardrobe trailer as Wolsky seemed on.
“The jacket fit perfectly, and the red lining was great. The pants were fantastic too, but because they were actually from the ’50s, the zipper was broken, so I had to be stitched into them,” she mentioned.
“When I walked out onto the set in them for the first time, I got quite the reaction — everyone stopped — because it was unlike anything I’d worn before. After we wrapped the film, I was lucky enough to get to keep the costume.”
Olivia Newton-John with (from left) Kelly Ward, Michael Tucci and John Travolta in 1978’s ‘Grease.’
Paramount Photos/ Courtesy Everett Assortment
Forty-one years after her cinematic breakout efficiency, Newton-John auctioned off that jacket for $243,000 to lift funds for her Cancer Wellness & Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia. The customer subsequently donated it again to her.
The leather-based pants had been purchased by Spanx founder Sara Blakely for $162,500.
Most moviegoers pay little consideration to the importance behind a performer’s costume on a movie, however when the meticulous Wolsky started work on Mendes’ Melancholy-era drama Highway to Perdition (2002), he encountered issues sourcing genuine overcoats and fits from 1931.
“Nobody kept those clothes, there was no reason to; they were just worn-out clothes with nothing to commend them,” he mentioned.
The answer to copy them wasn’t so simple as one may assume. Wolsky recognized that fashionable materials are far lighter than these of the Nineteen Thirties and thus fell in another way on an actor’s physique. “The weight dramatically affects the way the clothes move,” he famous.
He employed the providers of grasp New York weaver Rabbit Goody, who reproduced with historic accuracy the burden of the material, which Wolsky then dyed and aged.
Born in Paris on Nov. 24, 1930, Wolsky and his household fled to America in the course of the German occupation of France throughout World Conflict II.
He graduated from Metropolis Faculty of New York, ran his father’s journey enterprise for a number of years and commenced an apprenticeship below costumer Helene Pons on the 1960 Broadway manufacturing of Camelot, starring Julie Andrews and Richard Burton.
His huge break into the film enterprise got here courtesy of costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge for the Southern-set The Coronary heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968).
For the following seven many years, his wardrobe wizardry was on show in movies together with The Turning Level (1977), the remakes of The Jazz Singer (1980), To Be or To not Be (1983) and The Manchurian Candidate (2004), back-to-back comedies You’ve Acquired Mail (1998) and Runaway Bride (1999) — 5 marriage ceremony attire had been made for the latter — and the area thriller Advert Astra (2019).
For his last credit score, he teamed with David O. Russell on the 2022 characteristic Amsterdam, set within the Nineteen Thirties.
Wolsky described working with Streep on Sophie’s Selection as a cathartic expertise. The movie’s flashback settings in a German focus camp mirrored what a few of his members of the family endured. “We were the lucky ones,” he mentioned. “We got here and a lot of our family got here, and some didn’t.”
For Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s finest image Oscar winner Birdman (2014), he satisfied the director to vary the time interval through which the movie’s Broadway play was set.
By transferring the Nineteen Seventies Raymond Carver manufacturing of What We Speak About When We Speak About Love to the ’50s, it helped distinguish the onstage segments from the offstage modern scenes.
Wolsky himself was nicely acquainted with Broadway, working as an assistant for legendary costume designer Ann Roth (A Case of Libel), for Mike Nichols on The Odd Couple (starring Carney and Walter Matthau), for Jerome Robbins on Fiddler on the Roof and for Jules Dassin in Illya Darling.
His solo star credit included Technology (starring Henry Fonda), Alan Arkin‘s The Sunshine Boys and Arthur Penn’s Sly Fox. In 2013, he obtained a Tony nomination for the revival of The Heiress.
Roy Scheider in 1979’s ‘All That Jazz.’
twentieth Century Fox Movie Corp/Courtesy Everett Assortment
When it got here to designing dance costumes, Wolsky’s No. 1 rule was to not constrict the dancer. “The body to me is so important, so you pare things down,” he mentioned. “You try not to hide the body, you want to feature the body so you can see a dancer’s movements and how graceful they are.”
Given the chance to work on the Fifties-era Grease, Wolsky envisioned a sensible city method to dressing the highschool musical, however producer Allan Carr demanded vivid, explosive colours as an alternative.
“These people are all meant to be in high school, and yet they are colouring the gray streaks in their hair,” Wolsky recalled thinking. “Why the hell am I trying to be realistic? It’s ridiculous!’ So, we just went mad with it.”
He was granted entry to a few flooring of cloth and inventory at Paramount and ended up utilizing colours he by no means used earlier than or since.
Wolsky served 4 phrases on the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Science’s board of governors, and in 2009, he donated 83 pencil and watercolor drawings spanning his designs from 1977-2007 to its Margaret Herrick Library.
In 2015, he obtained the CDG’s Award for Excellence in Modern Movie.
Wolsky’s associate of 39 years, dancer and actor James Mitchell (Palmer Cortlandt on All My Kids), died in 2010.
When requested by the CDG to determine an important facet of his craft, Wolsky defined that it at all times comes again to what the story is about, “so that it’s not just a bunch of clothes, otherwise we’ve lost. I can read something, and if I don’t get any ideas, if I don’t know what to do, then I feel maybe I shouldn’t do it.”
Mike Barnes contributed to this report.
