Orry Kelly was six years old the Christmas his mother told him there’s no such thing as Santa Claus. Eyeing a department store window she endeavoured to entice him with a set of carpenters tools. Upon a hand painted card in the middle of the window, were printed the words: “A Lady’s Companion”. Underneath were two plush boxes- one red, one green- containing many spools of coloured silks. ‘if there’s no such thing as Santa Claus, I’ll have the red lady’s companion.” announced little Olly Kelly and so the needle of his life was threaded.
Orry Kelly was born the last day of 1897, named for a Danish king and brought up in the hamlet of Kiama. The sign over his father’s shop read; William Kelly, merchant tailor. As well a cutter of cloth, Dad was a keen horticulturist, a hybridiser of carnations, a shocker in shocking pink, which he named for his son.
At age seven, Orry Kelly was taken to his first panto at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney.”When the panto ended and the house lights came up, I sat as in a dream.”, he recounts in his lush and luscious memoir, WOMEN I’VE UNDRESSED.
Smitten by Dick Whittington and his kitten, he played at set building, then at seventeen was shipped off to Sydney to start a career in banking. During lunch hour he would audition for shows, until finally cracking it as a straight man with one line in a Stiffy and Moe revue.
From then, he was introduced to the bohemian side of Sydney, of Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross and Darlinghurst, the pimps, prostitutes and peddlers of all manner of pleasure and vice, the sly groggers and the slashers of the Razor Gang set.
This episode of his life is a fascinating back story to his embarkation to America in 1923, reminiscent of the great Australian writer Kenneth Slessor’s classic work, Darlinghurst Nights.
A first hand account of an encounter with Tilly Devine gives an illustration of Kelly’s sense of fun, elegance and style: -“We heard Tilly holler “I’m going to tear this firkin street inside firkin out.” A firkin is an old fashioned implement used for measuring churned butter, but I don’t think Tilly had this in mind, although she certainly churned up the entire street!”
Arriving in America he eked out an existence as an interior decorator for speakeasies and a designer of ties, a business he was aided in by another young hopeful immigrant wishing to burst into show business, Archie Leach, who would later become cinema superstar, Cary Grant.
After making something of a name for himself in New York, Orrry-Kelly went west to Hollywood, where, ‘everywhere there were neckers, petters, white kisses and red kissers, pleasure mad daughters and sensation craving mothers.’
With less than a dollar in his pocket, he had three or four hundred dollars owing by various people he’d loaned money to in the Big Apple. Contrary to his public persona, Jack Benny was the only one who ever paid him back.
Finally getting his break into films at Warner Brothers, Kelly forged a lifetime friendship with Ann Warner, wife of studio head, Jack Warner. She “had the gentle features and aristocratic look of Queen Alexandra. Scholarly and refined, she delighted in collecting objets d’art…and if there was a human being who needed help or understanding, she collected them too. She wrote strangely sensitive poetry. No wonder her house– the finest in southern California- was like a poem.”
Ann Warner was not the only woman in Hollywood that took Orry-Kelly under her wing. He was championed by Marion Davies, Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, Bette Davis and Rosalind Russell.
And he had a lot of male buddies too ,including Cary Grant, George Burns,Cole Porter and compatriot Australian, Errol Flynn.
Orry-Kelly laments “One sad thing about an amateur writing a book is that just as you begin picking up the loose ends, putting things where they belong and start bundling them all together, you suddenly realise you’re only starting to learn to write.”
WOMEN I’VE UNDRESSED took him a wee while to write, but the inimitable minty style is there from the get go. “Most autobiographies must travel the same ground I found myself asking advice – should I tell this or that. If it was about someone my friends didn’t particularly care for, the would invariably say, ‘ Kelly you must tell that’.
Kelly tells a lot, but its not a kiss and tell book, very little bitchiness comes out, and his disdain and reprimands are born of bad manners and lack of civility.
Tidbits become titbits as in the case of draping Ava Gardner’s naked body in white jersey for One Touch of Venus, Kelly confides he’d never seen nipples tilted liked hers. And Talulah Bankhead answering her door in just her mules in preparation for a fitting…
The women of the title include Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Rosalind Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Kay Kendall, the list is a litany of A list performers in fact, few female motion picture stars between 1933 and 1963 would not have been gowned by Orry-Kelly.
Accompanying and augmenting the tripping off the tongue text are stills, sketches, posters, postcards and portraits, publicity shots and candid camera clicks.
Orry-Kelly designed glorious clobber for nearly three hundred pictures, including that dress for Bette Davis in Jezebel, the classic ensembles for Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, and the marvelous creations for Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame.
He won three Academy Awards for his work on An American In Paris, Les Girls and Some Like It Hot.
With a forward by Catherine Martin, our other multi Oscar winning costume designer, who openly acknowledges the influence Orry-Kelly has had on her own work, WOMEN I’VE UNDRESSED is a bloody beautiful, gorgeous, glittering, handsome hardback, a fitting production for the kid from Kiama who became one of the giants of the golden years of cinema.
WOMEN I’VE UNDRESSED by Orry-Kelly is published by Ebury Press. RRP 39.99.