Costume Collection Focus Of Lecture, Film Series

by Debra Lawless

            Movie buffs, get set. On Feb. 17 the new “Ivy Cottage Lecture Series” on five classic Hollywood films will kick off at the Chatham Community Center.

            The first lecture will be on “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” with emphasis on its costumes. Lecturer John LeBold, who has been collecting costumes and movie memorabilia for close to 50 years, will display the gold lamé dress that Marilyn Monroe wore in the famous 1953 film.   

John LeBold with just three of the many items from his vast Hollywood collection: Judy Garland’s pinafore from “The Wizard of Oz,” and Marilyn Monroe’s gold lamé dress from “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds.” BOB NASH PHOTO

         To build a museum to house LeBold’s enormous assemblage of costumes and memorabilia, Silver Screen Collection, two local women, MarilynRose Guarino, who works as an administrative assistant at Pine Acres Realty in Chatham, and her friend Patty Whelan of Brewster, have joined forces to begin the awesome task of raising money. They hope eventually to open the museum in a secure, temperature-controlled building in a central Cape Cod location.

            Guarino and Whelan first saw some of LeBold’s costumes on display in the window of the Puritan shop during First Night Chatham in 2004. As they gazed at the costumes, Whelan vowed, “We will become this man’s best friend.” A few months later Guarino and Whelan met LeBold and did become his friend.

            “We’re closet movie stars,” Guarino jokes.

            LeBold, 68, was a sickly child who began collecting his Hollywood costumes by chance. “His mother and grandmother had a deli in New York,” Whelan says. Because LeBold was unable to play with other children after school, “they sent him to the movies every day.”

            “Stars were his friends,” Guarino adds. “They kept him from being lonely and sad.” LeBold began collecting by “buying one poster, then he wanted a present for his mother.” In a thrift shop, he found a black cocktail dress— a dress with a pedigree. Marlene Dietrich had worn the dress in the 1942 film “Pittsburgh.”

            When LeBold came of age, he moved to Hollywood, and initially worked in a bookstore that sold autographs of the stars. Later he took a low-level job in a studio’s costume department. One day he helped a woman carry some bolts of cloth down a stairway, and that woman turned out to be the famous costume designer Edith Head, winner of eight Academy Awards.

            During his subsequent career as a dresser for the Carol Burnett Show, the Smothers Brothers Show and the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, LeBold continued collecting. He now has more than 1,500 costumes, film props and accessories. He has thousands of photo stills, posters and lobby cards. He has toured all over the world with his Silver Screen Collection, and last summer exhibited it in the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in South Yarmouth.

            “He’s had an amazing career,” Guarino says.

            In LeBold’s collection are the jewels worn by Liz Taylor in “Cleopatra,” James Dean’s dungarees from “Giant,” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s leather suit from “Terminator II,” the “make my day” gun from the Dirty Harry series, and one of the Maltese Falcons from the classic 1941 movie of that name.

            The collection encompasses so many films that Guarino and Whelan can hardly escape it.  Recently Whelan was watching Goldie Hawn in the 1987 film “Overboard” when she spotted Hawn in a certain gold dress.

            “I’ve held that dress,” Whelan says. “I’ve been photographed behind it.”

            LeBold, who was a long-time summer resident of Cape Cod, moved to Brewster full-time after a powerful earthquake rocked the San Fernando Valley in Southern California in 1994. LeBold was then living in Sherman Oaks, not far from the epicenter of the quake which struck at 4:31 a.m. When he woke, two bookcases had formed a tepee over his bed, Whelan said.

            The earthquake underlined the necessity of conserving LeBold’s collection. Many of the outfits in the collection, such as Mary Pickford’s 1918 gossamer dress, are decades old. Others are just plain fragile.
            “These things need to be protected,” Guarino says, “and to be in a place people can see them. It’s American culture.”

            Guarino and Whelan dream of opening a museum where the costumes can continue to inspire young fashion design students. Also, “John can relax and know all his little children are taken care of,” Guarino says.

            On five Sundays from February to June, LeBold will show a costume and give a 30-minute talk on it. This will be followed by a question and answer session. The presentation will conclude with a free screening of the pertinent movie.

            Lectures will be given on Sundays, Feb. 17 on 1953’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes;” March 16 on 1948’s “Easter Parade;” April 13 on 1947’s “Green Dolphin Street;” May 18 on 1947’s “Mother Wore Tights;” and June 8 on 1941’s “The Strawberry Blonde.” All lectures are at 1 p.m. in the community center. The lecture and costume-viewing are $10; movies will be shown for free after the lecture. All profits will go to a non-profit foundation dedicated to finding a permanent museum for the Silver Screen Collection. For more information on the lecture series, call MarilynRose Guarino at 508-362-2062 or Patty Whelan at 508-896-2624.

2/7/08