Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2012 - 36

boots with silver trim. But the confluence of warmer weather and a diva's
demands necessitated some unexpected costume changes:
Ethel insisted on the air conditioning being turned off on the stage
and in the dressing rooms . . . she had to have some summer costumes
. . . especially the leather one would be a problem . . . She said, "I
know what, make them all out of organdy." (Davis 1985, 106)

Ballard's working relationship with the Rodgers and Hammerstein
organization continued into the next year when she designed costumes for
the less-than-successful musical Allegro. She recounts her frequent battles
over the years with their business manager Morris Jacobs, often involving
the distressing of newly-made costumes, a process which horrified the
bean-counter. Jacobs once said of Ballard, "As a costume designer she's
the tops. . . . But hell, she's a reckless dame with a buck-particularly a
Rodgers and Hammerstein buck" (Zolotow 1948, 138).
Twelve years later, now in her fifties, she was still designing for Rodgers and Hammerstein, now for their final Broadway musical, the 1959
production of The Sound of Music. This time, because of the demands of
the star, she found herself sharing the assignment with another designer,
an arrangement which all found uncomfortable.
Mary [Martin] had fallen prey to [fashion designer] Mainbocher, and
he was really a terrible designer for the stage. Mary wanted him to
design her wedding dress and her party dress, leaving the rest of her
costumes for me. Dick [Rodgers] and Oscar [Hammerstein] hated
Mainbocher designs so much . . . Mary was dressed by the nuns, and the
first headdress, I'll never forget Dick getting up and shouting, "She looks
like she just had a lobotomy, not like she's going to be married!" So I
had to make some changes to the veil and the dress. (Davis 1985, 111)

Sketch for dancer Pearl Primus from the 1946 Broadway
revival of Showboat. All costume sketches by Lucinda
Ballard courtesy the Ballard family archives.
After a period of crafting ballet costumes in her thirties, by her fortieth birthday she was designing the 1946 Broadway revival of the Kern and
Hammerstein musical Show Boat, for which she had a record $125,000
budget to create 560 period costumes (Zolotow 1948, 137).
That same year she was chosen by producers Rodgers and Hammerstein to design Annie Get Your Gun, with Ethel Merman cast in the title
role. Finding the original Annie Oakley far less colorful than the boisterous Merman, Ballard had to improvise:
Naturally, I did research on Annie Oakley, and she always wore
the most boring shirtwaists and long skirts . . . I had to invent
Annie's costumes . . . Her first costume was the one she [Annie]
had made herself-the character had made the costume. I tried to
think of something which would be striking and also believable . .
. she was a backwoods girl . . . I decided that there were two things
that would be available. One was red flannel and the other was
cured skins. So I made her a red flannel costume that had beige
sort of homemade looking fringe on it. (Davis 1985, 90, 103)

Tennessee was very intensely attached to his early childhood, and
of course he adored New Orleans. He and I got to be great friends .
. . Once he felt that you were kin to him . . . [We] talked endlessly
about the South we both knew . . . we discussed a side of it that
very few people really . . . well, I suppose it was only important
to the people who were living it. (Davis 1985, 138,139)

The $100,000 costume budget also allowed for the creation of a stunning outfit of fringed white leather, trimmed in black velvet, and matching

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Ballard's final Broadway show in 1961, The Gay Life, now had an
even smaller budget than her productions from the 1940s. According to
an article in Ballard's hometown newspaper, the New Orleans TimesPicayune (Jan. 28, 1962), the $70,000 costume budget had to cover 330
period costumes, which Ballard accomplished by making basic costumes
and switching around the trimmings, winning a Tony Award in the process.
These major musicals alone would have been enough to cement Lucinda Ballard's reputation as a designer, were it not for her work with a
fellow Southerner, Tennessee Williams. It was in this relationship that her
childhood in New Orleans would become an essential element in her most
noted designs. The experiences she held in common with the playwright
would prove to be invaluable in defining his characters onstage.

2012

Her initial effort for Williams proved to be more of a salvage
operation than a design assignment. In an attempt to control costs

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