Award Winning Designers of
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| The Lovers, Illustration by Olga Lehmann for Tom Thumb Opening Credits |
One of my favourites has to be the wonderful, fun and family friendly Tom Thumb movie (1958) for which Olga created the wonderful artwork to accompany the credits as well as being the Costume Designer. The designs she created for the costumes in the fairground scenes are particularly vibrant and exciting.
Watch out for these 2 dodgy geezers?
Cor blimey, it's only those comedy actors Terry Thomas and Peter Sellers - looking quite villain-ish in these fun illustrations by Olga Lehmann for the opening credits of Tom Thumb (1958)
Olga Lehmann has a unique artistic style of her own when it comes to her designs for costumes. It is really worth making an appointment to visit the archive at the British Film Institue (BFI) to view the portfolio of wonderful original artworks in real life. With the white gloves on of course, to protect these images forever!
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| A costume design by Olga Lehmann for Angela Lansbury in The First Modern Olympics, Athens 1896 |
Olga Lehmann didn't always work on her own as Costume Designer, she would be with wardrobe managers, including Brenda and Daryl and fortunately would sometimes have a fully-fledged Costume Design Assistant. In 1983 when she was working on the TV movie adaptation of JM Barrie's Master of Ballantrae, she discovered that it would be filmed back to back with another movie, The First Modern Olympics: Athens 1896 starring some big names, including actresses Angela Lansbury and Bond Girl, Honor Blackman. Whenever I think of Honor Blackman, I always think of the 1960s song "Kinky Boots' from The Avengers - a song with lyrics that it would probably be impossible to get away with these days.
Now, where was I. Oh yes, I was mentioning that Olga didn't always work on her own creating her designs. Filming two big movies back to back, in various locations, was to be a fair amount of work for Olga and luckily she was able to enlist Robert Worley as her assistant. Robert was talented and had a degree in Costume and Theatre design. He and Olga had met a couple of years before, when she 'discovered' him while they were working on A Tale of Two Cities (1980 TV movie), for which Olga received credit as the Costume Designer and has described Robert as being worth his weight in gold. The two of them became lifelong friends as well as work colleagues.
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| Costume Designs by Olga Lehmann for A Tale of Two Cities (1980) |
Robert Worley has himself carved a very successful career as a Costume Designer, receiving Emmy nominations for his work and becoming winner of the British Independent Film Award, The British Independent Film Award and the Hollywood Critics Association Award for his costume designs for The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019). A hat-trick of awards that he shared with another renowned Costume Designer Suzie Harman. I wonder if they designed many hats to achieve this hat-trick! Fabulous!
The teleplay for the 1984 movie made for TV, The Master of Ballantrae was written by William Bast the author and screenplay writer. Bast was co-developer of The Colbys TV series, with his partner of 49 years Paul Huson. Paul Huson is the son of Olga Lehmann and has worked extensively in the film industry as well as being a writer of many books on witchcraft, Tarot and the occult. Olga Lehmann adored her son Paul and his partner Bill 'her two boys' and until late in her life, she would spend many months of the year creating art at their beautiful home in California, where she would enjoy painting scenes of the garden and surrounding panoramas.
The Master of Ballantrae, based on the 1889 novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson was filmed near Bath, in country landscapes that doubled for Scotland. St.Catherine's Court, the stunning manor house, set in fourteen acres of land, owned by former Bond Girl, the actress Jane Seymour was also used as a set location. Olga Lehmann spent much of her life 'on set' rubbing shoulders with the stars. The film starred such legends as Sir John Gielgud and Brian Blessed and the costumes were such a success that Olga Lehmann won her fourth Emmy Nomination the following year. Not bad going!
When Olga Lehmann and Robert Worley were teamed up creating costumes in Greece while shooting was going on for the First Modern Olympics 1896, it was continuously raining and the film had to be digitally enhanced to remove the rain and bring in the Greek sunshine. Olga was grateful to be back home in England in time for Christmas, a season for which she would design her own greeting cards to send to family and friends.
Robert Worley as well as being an award winning Costume Designer for the movies, became an art dealer, co-creating an art gallery in Yoxford, Suffolk, with business partners, Bob Ringwood and Michael Stennett. Three very talented and renowned creatives, who have achieved great success with illustrious careers as artists and designers. Some of Michael's artworks are held in the Royal Collection and BAFTA winning British Designer, Bob Ringwood has to his name, a list of Hollywood films he designed costumes for that is longer than the longest arms you can imagine and includes such epics as the Batman series of movies, Troy (2004), Star Trek. Nemisis (2002), Empire of the Sun (1988) and Santa Claus, the movie (1985).
These established artists were not only passionate about art and design, they were very fond of Olga Lehmann and her work and organised a retrospective of her paintings, that took place at Barnsdale Gallery in June 2001. The exhibition was a sell-out success and Olga sold £5,000 worth of her artwork to a variety of art buyers.
Michael Stennett of The Barnsdale Gallery, passed away on June 11th, 2020 at the age of 74. He was very active in the village of Yoxford and had been a prolific designer for opera and ballet, having in his portfolio the achievements of designing costumes for New Zealand opera singer Dame Kiri De Tanawa and for the famed ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev. Recently, in February 2022, around 300 pieces of Michael's own paintings and drawings were sold at auction, fetching around £52,000 for charity. There are some insightful articles about him and his life on the East Anglia Times website, should you be interested in learning more about this fascinating character (I've put them in the link at the end of this blog).
At the time of her retrospective at the Barnsdale Gallery, Olga Lehmann was in her late 80s and had become quite frail. I'm not surprised after being on her feet for so many years, producing such an enormous body of work that covered so many genres. Her great friend Robert Worley picked her up from her home in Saffron Walden, Essex and took her to the Private View in her wheelchair.
Olga looked very glamorous in a 1980s Jaeger jacket, with her hair beautifully coiffed, bright lipstick on and her nails painted. Her son Paul Huson was there, proudly joining in the celebrations of his mother's career as a successful artist who had worked tirelessly in the world of art and film. Sadly, Olga was to die four months after her retrospective exhibition launched.
On 26th October, 2001 at the ripe old age of 89 Olga left this world having achieved more than many of us could imagine in a career that spanned 72 very busy, talented and creative years.
Words:
Mandie Stone BA(Hons) Creative Arts, HND Fine Art, PGCE Art & Design.
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| Olga Lehmann's Costume Designs for the TV movie Ivanhoe (1982) Characters: Ivanhoe and Front De Boeuf |
Selected sources:
www.imbd.com Film Industry Database
East Anglian Daily Times:
Michael Stennett
https://www.eadt.co.uk/things-to-do/leading-opera-designer-and-yoxford-resident-michael-stennett-dies-2694416
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/michael-stennett-art-auctioned-8715536
Robert Worley
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0941512/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6439020/mediaviewer/rm982813185/?ref_=tt_ov_i
Bob Ringwood
https://www.ballet.org.uk/blog-detail/bob-ringwood-designing-le-corsaire/
Tom Thumb Movie - a must watch, whatever your age!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3DZHXawRDY
Photos: Courtesy of: Paul Huson
Note: From June 2022, the Olga Lehmann collection of original designs for costumes and storyboards that is held by the BFI should be available to view digitally - as they are currently updating their resources section on the website.
