Taking Full Measure of Hollywood Glamour

What do you get when you ask the brash production team behind VH1’s “The RuPaul Show” and HBO’s envelope-pushing 1995 documentary “Shock Video” to create an original series about fashion for American Movie Classics, the 24-hour cable network devoted to Hollywood’s “Golden Age” of filmmaking?

The answer is “The Hollywood Fashion Machine,” a hip, smart and surprisingly reverent look at the history of Tinseltown glamour on AMC. The series is being launched with two showings today at 4:30 and 10:35 p.m.

Hosted by actress Daryl Hannah, each episode zeros in on a different aspect of the Hollywood fashion connection. The first profiles legendary costume designer Edith Head. Future segments will explore the studio system’s boot camp-like star-making machinery, Hollywood’s love-hate relationship with Paris fashion designers, glamour photographer George Hurrell and the movies’ influence on men’s fashion and cultural notions of “manliness.”

“We wanted viewers to come away from this show knowing about more than just hemlines and haircuts,” explains Randy Barbato, who with partner Fenton Bailey executive-produced and directed the series. “It’s also a great way to explore the American psyche.”

Also serving as executive producers are Jessica Falcon, AMC’s vice president of documentaries, and Marc Juris, the network’s senior vice president of original production, programming and packaging. Juris says that “Hollywood Fashion Machine” fits right in with the network’s overall goals for creating what he calls “the classic movie experience.”

“When you look at what resonates with moviegoers, one very big aspect is fashion,” said Juris.

Although movies and fashion have long been recognized as significant culture-defining forces in America, most fashion-oriented television programs tend to focus on runway trend-spotting, beauty make-overs or mean-spirited dissections of movie stars’ awards show outfits. Not that many of us don’t thoroughly relish that sort of thing.

“Hollywood Fashion Machine” contains plenty of dishy behind-the-scenes anecdotes (what show about Hollywood and fashion worth more than a tube of M.A.C. lipstick wouldn’t?), yet what sets it apart from the rest is that it takes its subject seriously.

“ ‘Hollywood Fashion Machine’ recognizes that movies are one of America’s truly unique art forms,” Barbato says. “Probably our biggest goal is to look at fashion--a subject that some might dismiss as trite--and walk away from it not only having found out lots of juicy tidbits and sexy information but also learning a lot about American culture.”

Tonight’s episode on Edith Head is a case in point. In many ways, the eight-time Oscar-winning costume designer epitomized the “magical” power of Hollywood and the fashion industry to create mesmerizing illusions of perfection. At the same time, Head’s own personal transformation from dowdy schoolmarm to one of Hollywood’s greatest costume designers (who was also the first woman to run a studio’s costume-design department) represents a capacity for self-invention that is quintessentially American.

“Hollywood Fashion Machine” also isn’t afraid to wipe the Vaseline off the camera lens to reveal the wrinkles beneath Hollywood’s glossy veneer.

For example, when applying for her first costume design job at Paramount, Head, who was never much of a sketch artist, borrowed some drawings from her design school classmates and passed them off as her own. When her ruse was discovered, however, nobody at the studio seemed to care much.

Head was a fast learner and quickly distinguished herself as a master of the art of camouflage. Not surprisingly, this talent endeared her to a number of female stars, many of whom had it written into their contracts that Head--and only Head--could design their costumes.

Actress Tippi Hedren, who wore Head’s dresses when she starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers “The Birds” and “Marnie,” is a featured interview in this episode. Reached by phone, the actress describes Head as “really consummate in her craft and her artistic talent. I still wear some of her gowns today, and they look perfectly contemporary.”

Hedren remembers that, among her many skills, Head had a knack for dealing with the notoriously autocratic Hitchcock. “Edith was really amazing. Hitchcock knew exactly what he wanted in his movies. He worked closely with every department through every phase of making a motion picture,” Hedren recalled. “If Edith didn’t agree with him, she could be very diplomatic in her way of turning him around to her own point of view. She always got her way, and you were happy with it.”

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Working closely with AMC’s production executives, Barbato and Bailey came up with the show’s fast-paced format, which uses quick MTV-style editing to integrate on-camera interviews of actors, designers and fashion editors with film clips, publicity stills and archival footage unearthed from studio vaults. The resulting show has the cutting-edge appeal that fashion acolytes crave yet contains enough in-depth information and insider tidbits to satisfy AMC’s core contingent of die-hard film buffs.

The show on “Hollywood Starmakers,” slated to air May 4, contains some priceless clips from an early studio training film. Aspiring starlets were schooled in hair and makeup, dance, elocution and “deportment”: how to sit, stand and walk up and down stairs with poise. These young hopefuls were also given “Hollywood-style” kissing lessons that taught couples how to smooch without clumsily bumping noses.

Although many bemoan the passing of old-style movie gods and goddesses, Barbato insists that today’s Hollywood is as glamour-conscious as ever. Cultural definitions of glamour, however, have changed dramatically over the years.

“Glamour has become democratized,” Barbato observed. “Today, people are incredibly savvy about it--the stars as well as the public.” Actors and actresses also have a lot more flexibility with respect to their personas. “They’re much more willing to reveal the ‘real’ side of who they are . . . and it doesn’t destroy our ability to acknowledge their role as glamour goddesses or for them to play that role for us.”

There is an unexpected downside to Hollywood’s current glamour renaissance, however, with Barbato sensing something of a reverse trend toward “safe” ultraconservative apparel, presumably an effort to avoid Joan Rivers’ often scathing red-carpet commentary on her fashion specials or a humiliating appearance in a “Worst Dressed” magazine spread.

“There is the danger of everyone looking so tasteful that you don’t have people taking risks--like Cher does, for example,” says Barbato. “Sometimes, she can look so fabulously appalling, it’s genius! We really need that sort of thing to keep fashion feeling alive and fresh.”

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“Hollywood Fashion Machine” will be broadcast Monday at 4:30 and 10:35 p.m. on American Movie Classics.