Born January 11, 1914, in San Diego, CA; died November 21, 1995, in Santa Barbara, CA. Costume designer. Dorothy Jeakins was perhaps not as well known assome of her contemporaries in costume design-- such as Edith Head, who supervised design for Paramount Pictures for decades--but she was nominated for twelve Academy Awards (Oscars) for her work, winning three. Jeakins began her career as a cel painter at the Walt Disney Studios. She then went to work for director Victor Fleming as a sketch artist. It was while working on her firstpicture for Fleming, Joan of Arc (1947), that Jeakins was suddenly promoted from sketch artist to costume designer. She shared the first Academy Award presented for costume design with Karinska for her work on that picture. Her other two Oscars were for Samson and Delilah (1949) and Night of the Iguana (1964). Her later work included the films The Way We Were (1973), On Golden Pond(1981), and The Dead (1987). Jeakins also designed costumes for Broadway productions, including King Lear, Major Barbara, and My Mother, My Father and Me.In 1961 she won a Guggenheim fellowship to study Noh costumes in Japan, andfrom 1967 to 1970 she was curator of textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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