Dressed to Kill

Crime, Detective & Noir Films That Edith Head Designed Costumes For

The always stylish Edith Head (1897-1981) designed costumes for almost 300 films in her long and distinguished career, nabbing an amazing eight Academy Awards for “Best Costume Design” in the process.

Sure, she did Bob Hope and Bing Crosby flicks, and plenty of Jerry Lewis and Elvis movies, but she also handled the costumes for some much beloved films, including several classic crime, detective and noir flicks, and even a few that fell smack dab in the middle of the Shamus Game.

In fact, her very last film, Steve Martin and Carl Reiner’s Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, was a tribute to many of the very films she herself had worked on back in the day, and gave her the chance to recreate some of her own designs. When she passed away, shortly before its release, the film was dedicated to her memory.

Among those 300 or so films were plenty of crime or crime-adjacent films, including:

• The Grace Allen Murder Case (1939, Paramount)
• This Gun For Hire (1942, Paramount)
• The Glass Key (1942, Paramount)
• Lady of Burlesque (1943, United Artists)
• Double Indemnity (1944, Paramount)
• Ministry of Fear (1944, Paramount)
• The Blue Dahlia (1946, Paramount)
• The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
• My Favorite Brunette (1947, Paramount)
• I Walk Alone (1947, Paramount)
• The Big Clock (1948, Paramount)
• Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948, Paramount)
• Sorry, Wrong Number (1948, Paramount)
• The Accused (1949, Paramount)
• Manhandled (1949, Paramount)
• Sunset Boulevard (1950, Paramount)
• Dark City (1950, Paramount)
• The Lemon Drop Kid (1951, Paramount)
• Detective Story (1951, Paramount)
• The Atomic City (1952, Paramount)
• Shane (1953, Paramount)
• The Desparate Hours (1955)
• The Trouble With Harry (1955, Paramount)
• To Catch a Thief (1955, Paramount)
• The Come On (1956, Allied Artists)
• The Scarlet Hour (1956, Paramount)
• Vertigo (1958, Paramount)
• Man-Trap (1961, Paramount)
• Sylvia (1965)
• The Sting (1973, Universal)
• Family Plot (1976, Universal)
• The Big Fix (1978, Universal)
• Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982, Universal)

BY THE WAY…

• Renée Patrick (actually the husband and wife writing team of Rosemarie and Vince Keenan) have a series of frothy, stylish mysteries, featuring struggling actress Lillian Frost and up-and-coming costume designer Edith Head working as as amateur sleuths in Hollywood. The books include Design for Dying (2016), Dangerous to Know (2017), Script for Scandal (2020), The Sharpest Needle (2021) and Idle Gossip (2022). Mystery author Louise Penny calls the debut “a beguiling champagne-cocktail-of-a-crime-novel”.

List respectfully compiled by by Kevin Burton Smith. Image courtesy of mptvimages.com.