Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2012 - 35

The younger of the two, Irene Sharaff, would become the more prolific,
designing more than fifty Broadway shows, forty Hollywood movies, seventeen ballets, and garnering fifteen Academy Award nominations, five Oscars,
and one Tony Award. She would publish her memoirs in 1976 and continue
to design into the 1980s. Lucinda Ballard would also design more than fifty
Broadway plays, as well as seven ballets, yet only two Hollywood films. She
would win two Tony Awards and receive one Academy Award nomination.
The voluminous hoop-skirted ball gown of lavender silk from The
King and I became Irene Sharaff's masterpiece, while a pair of weathered
tight-fitting blue jeans worn by Stanley Kowalski would become the calling
card of Lucinda Ballard. Because so many of Sharaff's designs have been
recorded on film, her work has been seen by a vastly wider audience;
because Ballard preferred to design for the Broadway stage, fewer people
are aware of her significant contributions to the field.
Being a true Southerner, Lucinda Ballard loved to tell stories. She did
it most effectively in her insightful designs, believing that it was her job to
fill in details not always delineated by the playwright in the pages of the
script. She could also recount some delicious tales about the many people
with whom she worked. A mentor to younger designers, she passed along
her wisdom to Alvin Colt, Florence Klotz, and Anna Hill Johnstone.
A narrative of Ballard's life experience exists today because of the persistence of Professor Ronald L. Davis, who traveled to New York five times
between 1985 and 1987 to interview her. Since she tended to ramble, it was
not until the fourth and fifth sessions that she finally recounted her experi-

ences designing A Streetcar Named Desire. With amazing foresight, Davis
preserved these oral history interviews in Southern Methodist University's
library. What follows, in her own words, are some lessons from Lucinda.
Lucinda Ballard was born in New Orleans and lived in the spacious family home on the corner of St. Charles and Jackson Avenues, at the intersection
of two streetcar lines. This imposing mansion in the Garden District had an
L-shaped back porch, which served as an improvised stage for the then tenyear-old designer. She recalled having tried to recreate chain mail by gluing
to a knit sweater some fifty overlapping tin can lids. "The chain mail collapsed . . . and littered the floor with tin-can tops, many of which stuck to the
wood and had to be pried up one by one" (Zolotow 1948, 140).
In her early twenties, she took a break from her mural painting
studies in Paris to accept the commission offered by a family friend to
decorate the interior of the newly-built Congregational Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her imaginative designs included depictions of the virtues
as personified by historical figures: Joan of Arc (courage), Clara Barton
(love), St. Francis of Assisi (charity), Isaac Newton (sincerity), and George
Washington (devotion). The six-month project almost ended when she fell
from the ceiling-high scaffolding, hitting a steam pipe on the way down.
I was a mass of bruises from top to bottom and in a corset of tape in bed.
Once I recovered from the shock, I realized that if I stayed in bed I would
get weak and not get the murals finished. So I did. Tears were streaming
down my face and I was terrified, but I did it. (Peppel 1988, C2)

Carol Bruce (Julie) watches
Seldon Bennett (Pete) and
Robert Allen (Steve) fight while
being restrained by Ralph Demke
(Captain Andy) in the1946 revival
of Show Boat. © Eileen Darby
Images, Inc.

2012

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