Edith Head

Her father, born in January 1858, was a naturalized American citizen from Germany, who came to the United States in 1876.

Her mother was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1875, the daughter of an Austrian father and a Bavarian mother.

Max and Anna married in 1895, according to the 1900 United States Federal Census records.

Just before Edith's birth, Max Posener opened a small haberdashery in San Bernardino, which failed within a year.

The marriage did not survive.

Edith Claire Head (née Posenor, October 28, 1897 – October 24, 1981) was an American costume designer who won a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design between 1949 and 1973, making her the most awarded woman in the Academy's history.

Head is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential costume designers in film history.

Born and raised in California, Head started her career as a Spanish teacher, but was interested in design.

In 1905, Anna remarried, this time to mining engineer Frank Spare, originally from Pennsylvania.

The family moved frequently as Spare's jobs moved.

The only place Head could later recall living during her early years was Searchlight, Nevada.

Frank and Anna Spare passed Edith off as their child.

As Frank Spare was a Catholic, Edith ostensibly became one as well.

In 1919, Edith received a Bachelor of Arts degree in letters and sciences with honors in French from the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1920 earned a Master of Arts degree in romance languages from Stanford University.

She became a language teacher with her first position as a replacement at The Bishop's School in La Jolla teaching French.

After one year, she took a position teaching Spanish at the Hollywood School for Girls.

Wanting a slightly higher salary, she told the school that she could also teach art, even though she had only briefly studied the discipline in high school.

To improve her drawing skills, at this point rudimentary, she took evening classes at the Otis Art Institute and Chouinard Art College.

Although Head was featured in studio publicity from the mid-1920s, she was originally overshadowed by Paramount's lead designers, first Howard Greer, then Travis Banton.

After studying at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, Head was hired as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Pictures in 1923.

On July 25, 1923, she married Charles Head, the brother of one of her Chouinard classmates, Betty Head.

In 1924, despite lacking art, design, and costume design experience, the 26-year-old Head was hired as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Pictures.

Later she admitted to "borrowing" other students' sketches for her job interview.

She began designing costumes for silent films, commencing with The Wanderer in 1925 and, by the 1930s, had established herself as one of Hollywood's leading costume designers.

She won acclaim for her design of Dorothy Lamour’s trademark sarong in the 1936 film The Jungle Princess, and became a household name after the Academy Award for Best Costume Design was created in 1948.

Head was considered exceptional for her close working relationships with her subjects, with whom she consulted extensively; these included virtually every top female star in Hollywood.

Head worked at Paramount for 44 years.

Her association with the "sarong" dress designed for Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane (1937) made her well known among the general public, although Head was a more restrained designer than either Banton or Adrian.

Although the marriage ended in divorce in 1938 after a number of years of separation, she continued to be known professionally as Edith Head until her death.

Head was instrumental in conspiring against Banton, and after his resignation in 1938 she became a high-profile designer in her own right.

In 1940 she married award-winning art director Wiard Ihnen, a marriage which lasted until his death in 1979.

Head's marriage to set designer Wiard Ihnen, on September 8, 1940, lasted until his death from prostate cancer in 1979.

She gained public attention for the top mink-lined gown she created for Ginger Rogers in Lady in the Dark (1944), which caused much comment owing to the mood of wartime austerity.

Over the course of her long career, she was nominated for 35 Academy Awards, annually from 1949 (the first year that the Oscar for Best Costume Design was awarded) through 1966, and won eight times – receiving more Oscars than any other woman.

The establishment, in 1949, of the Academy Award for Costume Design further boosted her career, giving her a record-breaking run of Award nominations and wins, beginning with her nomination for The Emperor Waltz.

Head and other film designers like Adrian became well known to the public.

In 1967, the company declined to renew her contract, and she was invited by Alfred Hitchcock to join Universal Pictures.

She worked at Paramount for 43 years until she went to Universal Pictures on March 27, 1967, possibly prompted by her extensive work for director Alfred Hitchcock, who had moved to Universal in 1960.

There she earned her eighth and final Academy Award for her work on The Sting in 1973.

She was born Edith Claire Posener in San Bernardino, California, the daughter of Jewish parents, Max Posener and Anna E. Levy.