Hollywood: Style Center of the World

Oliver Garver
1940-05-29


5.5
11 min

This short promotes the premise that movies often create a demand for the fashions seen in them. It starts with a vignette in rural America. A mother and daughter go to town to buy a new dress. In the dress shop window is a designer dress worn by Joan Crawford in a recent movie. We then go to Hollywood and visit Adrian, MGM's chief of costume design, and see how multiple copies of a single clothing pattern are produced. The film ends with short segments of several MGM features.

Cast

Name Character Team
Ann Morriss Mary Unowned
Naomi Childers Mary's Mother Unowned
George Lessey Mary's Father Unowned
May McAvoy Saleslady Unowned
Adrian Self Unowned
Lew Ayres Self Unowned
Lionel Barrymore Self Unowned
Wallace Beery Self Unowned
Bruce Cabot Self Unowned
Claudette Colbert Self Unowned
Joan Crawford Self Unowned
Nelson Eddy Self Unowned
Clark Gable Self Unowned
Greta Garbo Self Unowned
Judy Garland Self Unowned
Fay Holden Self Unowned
Marsha Hunt Self Unowned
Hedy Lamarr Self Unowned
Vivien Leigh Self Unowned
Myrna Loy Self Unowned
Jeanette MacDonald Self Unowned
Fredric March Self Unowned
Chico Marx Self Unowned
Groucho Marx Self Unowned
Harpo Marx Self Unowned
Ilona Massey Self Unowned
Frank Morgan Self Unowned
Maureen O'Sullivan Self Unowned
Laurence Olivier Self Unowned
Cecilia Parker Self Unowned
Eleanor Powell Self Unowned
William Powell Self Unowned
Mickey Rooney Self Unowned
Rosalind Russell Self Unowned
Ann Rutherford Self Unowned
Norma Shearer Self Unowned
Ann Sothern Self Unowned
James Stewart Self Unowned
Lewis Stone Self Unowned
Robert Taylor Self Unowned
Spencer Tracy Self Unowned
Johnny Weissmüller Self Unowned
Robert Young Self Unowned
Frank Whitbeck Narrator Unowned
Greer Garson Self Unowned
Margaret Sullivan Self (archive footage) Unowned