Dorothy Jeakins

Publish date: 2024-07-16

Dorothy Jeakins, who won the first Oscar awarded in costume design for her work on the 1948 film “Joan of Arc,” died Nov. 21 in Santa Barbara, Calif. She was 81.

Jeakins won three Academy Awards for costume design while collaborating with directors such as John Huston and Victor Fleming and stars such as Ingrid Bergman and Ava Gardner. She also shared the Oscar with Edith Head for 1949’s “Samson and Delilah” and won another for 1964’s “Night of the Iguana.”

Her designs also appear in films including “The Sound of Music,” “Little Big Man” and “Friendly Persuasion.”

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Jeakins trained at Otis Art Institute and began her career painting cels for animated shorts for Walt Disney Studios.

Jeakins won a Guggenheim Fellowship to study theater costumes in Japan. She worked for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company for 10 years beginning in 1953 and later became curator of the Textile and Costume Dept. of the L.A. County Museum of Art.

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