Edith Head Comes to Life in Coronado

Photo of Susan Claassen performing as Edith Head

The Coronado Public Library presents A Conversation with Edith Head, an award winning performance and one-woman show starring Susan Claassen as the legendary Hollywood costume designer.  The performance will be presented on Saturday, October 27 at 3:00 pm in the Winn Room of the Coronado Public Library,    640 Orange Avenue in Coronado.  The performance is free of charge.

 A Conversation with Edith Head features Susan Claassen playing Edith Head, the Hollywood costume designer who dressed the great movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Age. Ms. Claassen plays Edith Head late in the celebrity designer’s career as she reminisces about her life. In playing this role, Susan Claassen will feast the audience with movie lore and delicious anecdotes centered on Edith Head’s six-decade-long career.  Edith Head received thirty-five Academy Award® nominations and won eight Oscars® for costume design.  She dressed stars such as Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Mae West, Gloria Swanson, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Kim Novak, Natalie Wood, and many other movie stars.  Susan Claassen, in look-alike costume, tells Edith Head’s story based on a book by Paddy Calistro. Ms.Calistro and Susan Claassen wrote the play the performance is based on. It is a story filled with humor, perseverance, nostalgia, and glamour.  Set in the last years of Edith Head’s life, Claassen portrays Edith Head’s tenacity, self-promotion, wit, and above all, her love of the film industry that she was so much involved in.

To complement the performances, an exhibition featuring many of Edith Head’s original costume design drawings has been installed at the Coronado Public Library.  The "costume sketches" as they are known as, served as the working designs for the film costumes. The sketches were usually passed around from star to director or producer before going back to the studio wardrobe department for fabrication. The exhibition is up currently and will remain on view until November 15, 2012. This is a unique opportunity to go back in time to Hollywood’s Golden Age of movies. The performance is sponsored by the Friends of the Coronado Library. Seating is open and is first-come first served.

 Edith Head costume sketch for Natalie Wood