Designer Double-Dip: Think Pink!

Today we're offering up another one of those fascinating instances in which a costume piece was reused after its initial purpose. We especially enjoy these when they have something to do with particularly favorite movies of ours, as in this case. First, though, we must travel back in time to the Napoleonic era. The 1954 movie Désirée told the tale of a rather simple young girl who falls in love with Napoleon Bonaparte, but is crushed when he winds up engaged to the extravagantly wealthy Josephine. In the photo shown here, deliberately in shadow, the girl is all gussied up as she heads to the palace to see Napoleon and Josephine for the first time since their marriage.

Riding beside our "pink lady" are costars Cameron Mitchell and Elizabeth Sellars.

After she pulls the carriage drapery aside, we can at last get a better look at the title character, Désirée, as portrayed by Jean Simmons. Her cotton candy pink satin cape with white fur trim is the piece in question for this post.

Upon her arrival at the soirée, the cape is taken from Simmons by a doorman and properly stowed away for the evening.

Here we can see what Simmons is wearing underneath as she joins Mitchell and Sellars for their entry into the ballroom. In the inset, Simmons meets Josephine, played by Merle Oberon.

In this shot, Simmons is reunited with Napoleon, portrayed by Marlon Brando. She is dejected by the fact that they cannot be together and is spirited away from the party by another man.

We see the cape once more now that she has departed the palace and is out in the cool night air.

The gentleman who has taken her away from the party and Napoleon is Michael Rennie, who she later marries in the film. This shot gives us a good look at the jewelry Simmons wears with her glamorous ensemble.

Their moonlight exchange on the bridge affords us a look at the back of the cape, which will be a key part of how it will be shot the next time it appears in a movie.

I don't know if it is tall, dapper Rennie or the provocative decoration on that urn (or perhaps both!) that gets Simmons romantic juices flowing, but...

Before it's all over, the two are engaged in a passionate embrace! Costumes for the exquisitely presented film Désirée were done by René Hubert and Charles Le Maire. They couldn't have dreamed then that thirty years later, the pink satin and fur confection shown here would find its way into the top-grossing film of the season.

Alert the media. Jean Simmons' cape is about to make a grand return to the cinema! Have you remembered (or figured out) which film it reappears in?

The throngs of people shown above are all gathered near the red carpet in order to celebrate the gala grand opening of the tallest building in the world, The Glass Tower. Yes, the movie is 1974's The Towering Inferno, a disaster blockbuster which was so gargantuan it required (a historic) two studios working together in order to make it. Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox (the makers of Désirée) teamed up for the project. The arrival of San Francisco mayor Jack Collins and his wife Sheila Matthews (soon to be Sheila Allen) is when we at last glimpse the cape.

Perhaps it's indelicate to mention, but the cape has a tad more trouble staying closed on Ms. Matthews than it did on Ms. Simmons. Matthews was the girlfriend of "Master of Disaster" Irwin Allen and appeared in many of his TV and movie projects. They wed after this.

Here we see the back of the cape as the Mayor and his wife make their way through the crowd of reporters on the red carpet.

Inferno's costume designer was Allen's longtime associate Paul Zastupnevich, who presumably designed a pink gown to coordinate with this cape (or who later picked the cape from Fox's considerable supply of costume archives because it went with the dress.)

It is the mayor's duty to cut the ribbon at the ceremony and he's given a huge pair of gold scissors with which to perform the task.

Matthews looks on proudly as her husband dedicates The Glass Tower as "Tallest building in the world!"

You know I scrutinized Matthews' earrings to see if they were also the same ones Simmons wore three decades prior, but they are not.

The brand new scissors aren't exactly sharp and Collins has trouble getting the ribbon cut! ("Whoa ho ho... We'll make it!")

Happy times. But they aren't to last...

Here we get our first good look at the shocking pink schmatte that Zastupnevich put together for Matthews. (God knows she wasn't going to be slipping into Simmons' old gold number!) Everyone's looking up because the tower has been lit from top to bottom as part of the ceremony.

Another glimpse of the cape just before Matthews (shown here with Susan Blakely) enters the scenic elevator. 

The ride up in the scenic elevator is a hell of a lot more comfortable than the ride down, and - though exciting - it's also far less eventful! This is the last (known) time that we ever see this cape. Judging by its condition, it's clear that the wardrobe department at Fox took considerable care of their pieces in order for this twenty year-old item to still look this good.

The Towering Inferno is a Top 5 favorite film of ours so we're going to continue on for a little bit longer, even though we've already exhausted the point of this post! Now in the Promenade Room, Matthews' cape is presumably tucked away in a coat check someplace. Note at far left, the lady in red. She was "bun lady" in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) in which she wore yellow chiffon. In Inferno, she escapes death in the scenic elevator in a brief scene that was cut from the movie, but appeared in the four-hour expanded TV version.

Here, builder William Holden explains to the crowd that there is a fire, fifty floors below them. At far right is Leoda Richards, our very favorite movie extra!

Long after this, Sheila Matthews Allen liked three-dimensional floral appliques on her clothing such as what was done on this gown.

Why do you always make me prove everything?! LOL (This was at a premiere of the execrable Poseidon, 2006, which Ms. Allen executive produced...)

In the movie, this scene between Collins and Matthews come before she is called up onto the roof for a (bungled) helicopter rescue yet her hair is not as stiffly coiffed as it was and her earrings are gone. Not sure what she went through that we didn't witness.

After the fiery and ferociously windy helicopter rescue attempt, we see a visible change in her appearance. Now she's set to head down to the ground in the scenic elevator, which is working merely from gravity after most of the power has gone out.

Nice try, but no one's going to outdo Faye Dunaway in the portentous worry department!

Note that even before the elevator is knocked off its track by an explosion, Matthews' dress is already dirty and mangled. (She was barely on the roof and not anywhere near the flames of the copter crash.)

Anyway, she gets a primo spot behind La Dunaway once the elevator is hanging helpless with only the inept facial musings of Mike Lookinland to compete with.

With him having given up trying to remain in character, she is free to try to out-ham Miss D. with her fretful emoting, but I for one have never been able to look away from Dunaway at any point of her screen time in this movie. Ha ha!

Once safely on the ground, it takes a battery of firemen to get Matthews out of the chamber of doom. By now her dress has really had it, along with her hair.

This sequence has wind machines pounding the cast, with hair and chiffon whipping around.

As Matthews is lowered onto a gurney, she's got one final opportunity to act with Dunaway before being wheeled off.

Suddenly the air is dead calm!! No more blowing wind as these two have a moment with one another...!

Anyway, this concludes our presentation on the pink satin cape with white fur trim which diligently did its duty in two films made two decades apart from one another. By the way, I tried desperately to somehow connect the two, either through Jean Simmons and Sheila Matthews or any other way, and the best that I could do was take note that both Matthews and Simmons' carriage-mate Cameron Mitchell had roles (not together) in Viva Knievel! (1977.) Matthews was a nun running an orphanage and Mitchell was a bad guy! LOL (And no, I don't think that's Debbie Reynold's habit from The Singing Nun, 1966, that Matthews is wearing!)

Pink chiffon and Napoleonic finery have been traded in for starched white linen and denim with puka shells...! (That's cuckoo Marjoe Gortner with Mitchell, not Evel Knievel.)