Dressing Up the Act

Costume Designer Paul du Pont had a perfectly clear idea of how Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow should be dressed.

When Marguerite Piazza played the role on TV, he had her poured into a skintight gown with nothing underneath. Then, as Soprano Piazza took a deep breath to reach for a high note, the gown split down the back. At that portentous moment, Tenor Jack Russell, singing with her, grabbed for the back of the dress. He caught it just in time to keep the show from being cut off the air.

Watch the Color. Designer du Pont* does not usually have to depend on a tenor to get him out of the tight squeeze he puts a soprano into. Resourcefulness is merely one of the qualities needed by the costume designer for Max Liebman's NBC-TV spectaculars. In addition, he must sometimes do the impossible. Last week's The Chocolate Soldier was Du Pont's 20th spectacular of the season. This time he had ten days, instead of the more usual five, to dress the entire company for the Oscar Straus operetta, starring Rise Stevens. That meant he had to create about 100 individual designs and fit about 600 costumes for the show. He also had to keep in mind that he was working for both color and black and white (if he uses the wrong shade, the heroine's face might turn green in certain lights).

Designer du Pont, who looks a decade younger than his 50 years, faces his task every fortnight with the equanimity of a man who knows and loves his job. He appears at his office at 7 every morning, leaves after 7 at night. But two days before a spectacular goes on the air, he turns, up at NBC's vast Brooklyn studio at 8 a.m. for a 40-hour siege. He is equipped with a cot and icebox and, for emergencies, aspirin, Empirin, Desoxyn, phenobarbital and Dexedrine.

Emergencies are an old story to Du Pont. As a child, he sang in vaudeville with his mother. As a young man, he danced ballet. But his dancing career ended when he fell through a trap door in the Manhattan Opera House and fractured his spine. After doing the costumes for 64 Broadway shows, he went to work for Liebman on TV seven years ago at a starting salary of $50 a week (he now gets close to $500) and a costume budget per show of $250 (it now averages $10,000).

Dull the Shine. Often Du Pont does not even have time to make finished drawings, but has the bolts of cloth he orders cut and sewn from work sketches. He has two days to gather material, suits, dresses, underwear, stockings, shoes, brassieres, furs and jewelry for everybody in the show from principals to walk-ons. It is the last-minute scramble that is most harrowing. Every man and woman in the show gets one fitting only. Next to the last day, they are fitted at the rate of one every 20 minutes. If anything is wrong, there are 14 tailors and 14 dressmakers backstage to lend a hand--or a pin.

Last week, when The Chocolate Soldier went on the air, Designer du Pont was on hand with a Flit gun. If any dress or suit was too bright or shiny for the TV cameras, he was there to spray it with liquid wax to dull the luster. As TV's top costume designer, Du Pont knows that there is a limit to how brilliant a dressmaker should be. That limit is reached when viewers start looking at the clothes rather than at the people wearing them.

* No kin to the Delaware Du Fonts.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.