Filmland Follies

                Everyone loves a madcap remarriage rom-com, especially when it stars two of Old Hollywood's best and most gorgeous stars. Meet The Palm Beach Story , the perfect summer watch for comedy lovers, costume design lovers, and Joel McCrea lovers (so, everyone).                 The movie starts with a wild credits sequence in which we see our main characters, Tom and Gerry Jeffers (Joel and Claudette Colbert), race to the altar and get married. Five years later, they're broke (but somehow living in an amazing Art Deco apartment, of course). An old couple come to tour the now-for-rent apartment and find Gerry. The old man, who turns out to be the incredibly wealthy owner of a sausage company, likes Gerry enough to give her 700 dollars to pay off the rent and buy some nice things. As one does.               Tom, who is a struggling inventor, is trying and failing to get his plan for an all-new airport off the ground. (Pun intended). Gerry welcomes Tom home to the news t

               Here I am with another Dress in Detail costume analysis! (If you missed my others, on Judy Garland's "I Don't Care" dress and Ginger Rogers's "Never Gonna Dance" dress, give them a read!) I must confess to you that I've never seen Gone With the Wind , but the costume design is legendary. Walter Plunkett (who I just featured in my Singin' in the Rain article) was the mastermind behind the extravagant, historical costumes of this film - and none were grander than Vivien Leigh's. I'll be taking a closer look at the famous red dress from the birthday party scene which perfectly sums up the character of Scarlett O'Hara.             The "Scarlett" dress is meant to be a showstopping attention-getter, slightly scandalous for the 1870s. It certainly achieves its goals. The design for this costume was meant to be wildly different from both what the other characters were wearing and what Scarlett had worn in the rest