Media Release: Thursday February 11, 2016
Foxtel presents the worldwide television premiere of
Women He’s Undressed
Sunday February 28 at 8.30pm (AEDST)
The facscinating life of Orry Kelly, a little known Australian costume designer who received three Academy Awards®, is brought to life in the documentary WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED, premiering on Foxtel’s showcase channel Sunday, February 28 at 8.30pm (AEDST)
Highly acclaimed Australian director Gillian Armstrong traces the life Orry Kelly, the young boy from the coastal town of Kiama, NSW who made the daring escape out of subrubia and headed to the anything goes world of 1920’s New York, to eventually become Hollywoods most sort after costume designer during the golden age of film.
Orry-Kelly won three Academy Awards® and was nominated for a fourth when he worked as the head of Warner Bros costume department during the richest period of American film history, and was a key influence on mass culture through his costume patents between1930-1960.
Throughout his career Kelly worked on an astonishing 285 motion pictures and designed for legends like Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Rosalind Russell, Errol Flynn, Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and many more luminaries of the silver screen. His films included classics like Some Like It Hot, Casablanca, Oklahoma, An American in Paris, The Maltese Falcon, Gypsy, 42nd Street and Now, Voyager.
Through re-created scenes and extensive interviews with some of the movie industry’s key players including actresses Jane Fonda and Angela Lansbury both of whom worked with Orry, and costume designers Catherine Martin and Ann Roth it is revealed he was an outrageous and incredibly witty designer whose extraordinary and unparalleled talent created some of Hollywood’s most iconic looks in film with stars like Bette Davis whom he counted as close friends along with a complicated lifetime friendship with actor Cary Grant.
When WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED screened in cinemas last July critics hailed it a massive success:
. “..Terrifically entertaining and revealing ..“ ABC Radio,
“ 4 stars” Time Out Magazine
“Women He's Undressed has a spritzy and celebratory feel, as if the audience have popped the cork on an old bottle of fine champagne and are seated front row at the world's most fabulous wake” The Guardian,
“Armstrong has created a ripper of a film, filled with energy, passion and a keen sense of this non-conformist rebel and artist, who lived his life in glorious colour, according to his own code of integrity”, Urban Cineffile
Respected Australian actor Darren Gilshenan stars as Orry Kelly who narrates the documentary and appears in recreated flashback scenes alongside actress Deborah Kennedy. Women He’s Undressed is directed by Gillian Armstrong with a screenplay by Katherine Thomson, and is produced by Damien Parer.