Designer Double-Dip: Belfry and the Bats

If you come here much, you know that every so often we like to point out the recycling of movie and/or TV costumes. It can be really fascinating to discover that something you've seen in a famous or favorite movie has turned up on the back of someone else later. There are precious few movies more famous or more of an overall favorite than the one we're looking at today, the 1965 international blockbuster The Sound of Music!

In the course of the film (spoiler alert!), novitiate Julie Andrews opts to avoid life as a nun in order to become the wife of ex-naval captain Christopher Plummer and mother to his seven children.

The sisters of the abbey provide a staggering locale for the nuptials. And the movie's costume designer Dorothy Jeakins provided Andrews with an iconic gown.

A simple, but expertly tailored dress of ivory silk was extremely clean in its lines, offset by a billowing, diaphanous veil which succeeded in giving Andrews an eye-poppingly angelic, appropriately chaste, appearance against the dim, archaic surroundings.

There are few bells and whistles with this gown (think of the monstrosities we've all lived through since then!), but its elegant simplicity won over the hearts of many a viewer.

The wedding sequence isn't terribly long and there aren't really all that many opportunities to see the dress up close. But here you can see the body of it pretty clearly. It sported a stand up collar with one side folded over the other in front and many little fabric-covered buttons on the arms.

Barely visible here are a long line of said buttons up the back of the gown as well. The wedding in The Sound of Music is a marvel of pale simplicity amidst a wealth of glorious gilt, stone, statuary and varnished wood. Such a ceremony would be the dream of virtually any girl.

Here in this on-set photo we get a really good look at the garment. But what ever became of it after shooting wrapped in 1964? Reportedly, the dress was simply turned over to Western Costume, ostensibly for use in future projects.

In 1966, the year after Music took the world by storm and had become an immortal favorite of so many moviegoers, the TV series Batman came to the airwaves. It, in its own way, was a smash hit as well. It's broadly campy tone and colorful, comic book look scored with youngsters and their parents alike. Here in episodes 21 & 22 (the stories were always told in multiple parts with a cliffhanger in-between), we find Burgess Meredith as The Penguin. He's pretending to go "straight" and wins the heart of a wealthy heiress played by Kathleen Crowley.

In truth, he's really after Crowley's dough. And one big part of it is this "dowry" of expensive wedding gifts that his henchmen are seen inventorying. (The one facing us is Harvey Lembeck, who did so many of the Beach Party films.) I'll explain the array of buckets in a moment...

Remember... this is a wacky, comic-book inspired show, so the plotlines are not going to be out of Faulkner or Hemingway. Meredith has invited a host of luminaries to attend his wedding ceremony in a hotel suite, but has a trick up his sleeve. He causes several water pipes to burst within the room! This will create the need for the guests to use umbrellas, which he has on hand, naturally.

When his bride arrives on the scene, she is startled to discover the dripping water pouring from various parts of the ceiling. And we are doubly startled to discover that she's wearing Andrews' dress from The Sound of Music!

Now is a good time to mention that Julie Andrews was 5'8" tall. Miss Crowley was a mere 5'2". So the dress, which had been carefully fitted to Andrews' frame, was altogether too big for Crowley. Not to mention, Andrews had very long arms, as well.

This meant that the gown needed considerable alterations done on it.

Whereas before, the front of the collar was folded across one side, it's now been crudely sewn together up the middle...!

The whole wedding becomes a total fiasco as water is falling, then all sorts of streamers and confetti come falling down and then Meredith gasses Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara. During the melee, Meredith makes off with his loot, leaving the bride behind. I will return to what effect this had on the gown in just a bit. 

First, though, we're going to shift our attention to another 1960s show, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Hope Lange. Based on a 1947 movie by the same name, it involved a widow who lives with her children and a housekeeper in a New England house, which is haunted by the ghost of a sea captain. In this pic, Lange is welcoming a pair of stranded motorists (no, not Brad & Janet.)

The couple, Jonathan Daly and Yvonne Craig, are about to be married, but their car has broken down nearby and they need a place to be sheltered from the rain.

Lange is kind enough to put them up (in separate rooms), but ultimately the ghost has other plans for them. If you haven't already made the connection, Miss Craig had her own association with the aforementioned series Batman...

In order to perk up that show's third season, she was brought on board as Batgirl!

Now toothy Daly, best known for sitcoms like Petticoat Junction, The Jimmy Stewart Show and CPO Sharkey, is not my type at all, but... as I am a completist about such things, I have to report that he is shirtless for about a fourth of his time in the ep.

Anyway, as I was saying, the ghost has his own ideas about what should be going on with Daly and Craig during their stay at "his" house. So Lange (seen here with her housekeeper, the always captivating Reta Shaw) arranges a late night wedding for the couple. 

To perform the ceremony, they drag this poor guy out of his bed. Do you recognize a toupee-free Charles Nelson Reilly, in a surprisingly understated performance??

Also on hand is one of the cutest damned dogs I have ever seen...! Scruffy as Scruffy. LOL What a sweet little pooch.

As the ceremony unfolds, Lange can't help but notice the longing gaze she receives from the ghost (Edward Mulhare.) Their unusual romance was the crux of much of the gently comic series. This was 1968 and Lange was but 35 years-old, yet is very often shot through a heavy filter (which, in my cattier moments I sometimes refer to as "being shot through an Indian blanket!")

But you know why we're here, right? For the wedding ceremony! Here comes Craig into the parlor for her nuptials.

And soon enough we find that yet another gal has donned Julie Andrews' dress!

Yvonne Craig was 5'3", just one inch taller than Crowley, so the dress basically fit her, too. (The altered sleeves look a little bit short on Craig, though.)

This time out, perhaps as a result of a bust measurement difference (?), the collar has been reworked in order be more like the folded-over look it originally bore. (Though on Craig, the flaps are reversed.)

I cannot be certain, of course, but I think this third outing was the final time this gown saw use in a TV show or movie. We do know what finally became of the gown, but one mystery remains...

This is a photo of the once-luminous gown as it appeared in 2013. As you can see, it had been distressed and damaged along the front and bottom. I know how, where and when that happened.

During all the watery, confetti-strewn squalor of that Batman episode, the delicate ivory silk was trashed by residual water spray! Complete disregard for the well-being of the garment. What I  don't know is how, two years later, the dress was seen on Muir looking bright, undamaged and stain-free. Perhaps that one was a duplicate or it was somehow cleaned, but then later the damage slowly reappeared over time? 

The dress eventually landed in the hands of former child star turned commercial zenith "Josephine the Plumber," Miss Jane Withers, who was a devoted preservationist of Hollywood memorabilia (along with noted fellow archivist Debbie Reynolds.) The gown sold at auction for $23,000 in 2013 and is hopefully being loved by whoever it was that bought it. 

I doubt that even Dame Julie Andrews is aware of the path that her famed costume took once she removed it for the last time. Noted as having adored it, I doubt she would be pleased to know that it was carelessly damaged in the making of a "zany" television episode! I know it did me no great favor to see it splashed with water and coated down in debris. But this was info I didn't feel I could keep to myself once I discovered it! Till next time...