Last weekend, we levitated in pleasure under the spell of “Design for Living“ (1933), the sophisticated German-born film director’s version of the Noel Coward play.

Two Americans sharing a flat in Paris, playwright Tom Chambers (Frederic March) and painter George Curtis (Gary Cooper, gorgeous), fall for free-spirited Gilda Farrell (Miriam Hopkins, running the show). She can’t make up her mind which she prefers, and proposes a “gentleman’s agreement”: She will move in with them, but they will never have sex. 

Hopkins, shown in the photo at right kibbitzing with Lubitsch, forms the fulcrum of a love triangle that would be the envy of any woman. She swaps between Cooper and March, jangling the two men like charms from her bracelet.

Hopkins dresses in spectacular evening gowns designed by Paramount costume designer supremo, Travis Banton (one nifty number pictured above). Banton, of course, famously created Carole Lombard and did wonders for Marlene Dietrich.

Here’s a good Banton tidbit from his Paramount protegee, Edith Head, quoted in Paddy Calistro’s biography, “Edith Head’s Hollywood“:

“Travis was very slick and personable. He knew how to talk to the stars — how to make them feel absolutely beautiful in his clothes. I learned everything from him…I learned more from Travis Banton by watching him dress Carole Lombard than anything I’ve ever done. I spent every possible moment staying glued to Travis, trailing him everywhere like a puppy. After all, he was the best designer, bar none, in the world. And he taught me everything I knew about designing.”

The American Comedies of Ernst Lubitsch | LACMA | through July

• Banton dressed Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins in “Trouble in Paradise,” and Dietrich in “Desire.”
• Banton turned tootsies into stars.

Of all the ingredients simmering in this film’s sweet stew, it’s the pre-code evening gowns in which “Trouble”‘s two leading ladies circulate the sound stage dropping witty dialogue that most boggle.

These hand-stitched, body-clinging wonders are the consummate craft of Paramount’s great costume designer, Travis Banton, a Texas-born fashion genius with a deceptively common American name. His one eye on Paris, and the other on his audience in Peoria, Banton served up slinky little numbers like the ones Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins don in this wonderful movie.

[Costume guru David Chierichetti chatted with me about Banton a year ago. Read it here.]

Afloat on the frothy charm of “Paradise,” Friday’s packed house at LACMA’s Bing Theater enjoyed a second feature, “Desire” (1936), starring the great Marlene Dietrich, a film not directed but produced by Lubitsch.

[Double-bill programs, a staple of LACMA's classic film programming for forty years, are in jeopardy, according to LACMA president Melody Kanschat, sour and unpleasant in a recent Los Angeles Times interview. Kanschat tenaciously clings to her message that the museum's audience for film is inadequate -- a mere 30,000 clients lapped up classic cinema at the Bing over the just-finished 2009-2010 season.]

On happier note, Dietrich, at piano below, seduces one of Hollywood’s most notorious ladies’ men, Gary Cooper, in “Desire.” Not one pin dropped in the 600-person auditorium during this song; rather, pins and needles prevailed. The mane of black feathers framing Dietrich’s exquisite face: pure Travis Banton.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eskO1xY9uvA

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• Travis Banton turned tootsies into stars
  

Driving in L.A. traffic en route to the Egyptian Theater, Chierichetti laid down some good Hollywood dish.

An L.A. native, Chierichetti started collecting film memorabilia while at UCLA in the early sixties. Then Leisen, among other greats, was still alive.

He told me about costume designer Travis Banton of Paramount Studios, who dressed Clara Bow, Mae West, Norma Shearer, Loretta Young, and Betty Grable.

Chierichetti loves Banton because his look is so elegant and so much ”less flashy” than that of his rival Adrian, who worked at MGM.

[I wrote about Adrian's amazing gown for Kay Johnson in Madam Satan.]

Banton could “make a tootsie into a star,” according to Chierichetti. The best example was Carole Lombard. He glammed up Lombard significantly. He made her lose weight, taught her how to walk and carry herself, and, added Chierichetti in a dry, measured voice, “of course he dressed her so elegantly.”

According to another Edith Head biography, Paddy Calistro’s “Edith Head’s Hollywood,”: “Lombard was Banton’s other passion [along with Dietrich]. Hers was the body that best displayed the definitive Banton look: solid beading draped on the bias sliding over braless breasts, falling gracefully over her delicate hips… finally cascading into a train that rippled with every step. Banton considered hers to be the perfect body …”

Marlene Dietrich weighed 130 pounds when she signed on for Morocco. So of course the studio had no choice but to starve her. They put her on an all-tomato-juice diet and out popped her cheekbones.

According to Calistro: “Banton spared nothing in dressing Dietrich … She was the femme fatale, and he used his couturier flair to define her character. …Her trim silhouette allowed him to use thick, luxurious fabrics that would make most actresses look plump on screen. But not Dietrich. He could pile on ruffles, furs, and features and she always projected her svelte image.”

Chierichetti said he was attracted to writing the biography of costumer Edith Head, who was Banton’s assistant at Paramount, because Head was “such an interesting person.” Here is Edith Head with her buddy Gloria Swanson.