Travilla Trailers
Valley of the Dolls: A World Premiere Voyage Trailer
The man who draped a fringed Idaho potato sack on Marilyn Monroe for a famous snapshot - proving that she looked good in anything - was born on Catalina Island off the California coast on March 22 1920. He studied at the Chouinard School of Art in L.A., showing a precocious talent for drawing fashion design from an early age. By the time he was sixteen, he made money by selling sketches of costume designs for showgirls he had studied at burlesque houses.
Found unfit for wartime duties due to flat feet, William Travilla made his way to Hollywood and signed his first contract as costume designer at Columbia in 1941. However, during his two-year tenure he received rather few assignments and left disillusioned. Little work came his way during the next few years, until, in 1946, he was spotted in a nightclub (selling travel sketches of the South Pacific) by the actress Ann Sheridan, who became an instant admirer of his work. Sheridan persuaded Travilla to become her personal costume designer at Warner Brothers. This didn't quite come to pass, though he did design her gowns for Nora Prentiss (1947). More importantly, he notched up his first major success by winning the Academy Award for the lavish and colourful costumes of Adventures of Don Juan (1948) in conjunction with Leah Rhodes and Marjorie Best. After his three year contract was up, Travilla went on to 20th Century Fox, for what would become the most productive period of his career in the film business. At the same time, he set up his own high end fashion salon, Travilla Inc., in Los Angeles, creating several collections of elegant, award-winning designs.
Travilla dressed many established stars, from Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford, to Loretta Young. However, he is chiefly remembered for the iconic gowns, designed for Marilyn Monroe's famous hourglass shape in eight of her most popular films. These include her sexy satin number from How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), the gold lame dress with the sun ray pleats glimpsed in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and, subsequently, at the 1953 Photoplay Awards (over Travilla's objections); and, of course, the white cocktail dress famously uplifted above the subway grate in The Seven Year Itch (1955). One of three versions of the latter sold at auction for $ 4.6 million in 2011. Despite their close working relationship, Travilla later went on record describing Marilyn on a personal level as 'childlike' and plagued by feelings of inadequacy.
After his contract with Fox expired in 1956, Travilla tended to his own exclusive label, designing a collection of ready-to-wear 'California' fashion. In the 1960's, he continued to freelance, working primarily for television. He showed off a young Connie Sellecca to great effect in a murder mystery revolving around the fashion industry, fittingly titled She's Dressed to Kill (1979). Ever synonymous with a bygone era of glamour, he went on to win two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Costume Design for The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980) and for Dallas (1978). An exhibition of his personal collection, under the auspices of his longtime collaborator William Sarris, went on a world tour in 2008.
Most Popular Travilla Trailers
Total trailers found: 80
09 July 1954
A trio of American adventurers marooned in rural Mexico are recruited by a beautiful woman to rescue her husband from Apaches.
29 September 1950
The Skipper is a charming old man loved by all his neighbors. What they don't know is that he is also Mr.
20 April 1951
In this fast-paced remake of the Maurice Chevalier vehicle Folies Bergère, talented Danny Kaye plays both a performer and a heroic French military pilot.
15 May 1956
Robert Ryan plays an aging sheriff responsible for law and order in a frontier cattle town. Virginia Mayo plays his fiancee.
25 September 1954
Cattle baron Matt Devereaux raids a copper smelter that is polluting his water, then divides his property among his sons.
27 July 1950
A medical examiner discovers that an innocent shooting victim in a robbery died of bubonic plague. With only 48 hours to find the killer, who is now a ticking time bomb threatening the entire city, a grisly manhunt through the seamy underworld of the New Orleans Waterfront is underway.
17 February 1950
When Willie leaves home to join the war effort he is all ready to become a hero, but he is only frustrated when his posting ends up to be in his home town, and he is recruited into training, keeping him from the action.
30 April 1949
A stranded carnival dancer takes on a corrupt political boss when she marries into small-town society.
08 February 1947
Locals in an Italian village believe evil has taken over the estate of a recently deceased pianist where murder has taken place.
30 July 1949
After getting her start in her parents' vaudeville act, Marilyn Miller is taken under the wing of dance sensation Jack Donahue.
04 August 1954
A group of confederate prisoners escape to Canada and plan to rob the banks and set fire to the small town of Saint Albans in Vermont.
15 July 1960
Alfred Eaton, an ambitious young executive, climbs to the top of New York's financial world as his marriage crumbles.
18 May 1956
Philip Hannon, a blind playwright living in London, overhears part of a conversation , that leads him into a desperate race, to find a kidnapped child.
23 December 1953
Freshly arrived Sandhurst-trained Captain Alan King, better versed in Pashtun then any of the veterans and born locally as army brat, survives an attack on his escort to his Northwest Frontier province garrison near the Khyber pass because of Ahmed, a native Afridi deserter from the Muslim fanatic rebel Karram Khan's forces.
02 September 1955
A man in priestly robes, seemingly the long-awaited Father O'Shea, arrives at a little-frequented Catholic mission in 1947 China.
11 May 1956
In the early ’40s, a San Francisco prostitute is run out of town just as World War II has begun to intensify.
25 March 1951
At a desolate relay station in the west, a stagecoach attendant and a stranded woman traveller are held captive by a band of escaped convicts.
20 May 1948
Unjustly booted out of the cavalry, Mike McComb strikes out for Nevada, and deciding never to be used again, ruthlessly works his way up to becoming one of the most powerful silver magnates in the west.
16 August 1950
Two hoodlum brothers are brought into a hospital for gunshot wounds, and when one of them dies the other accuses their black doctor of murder.
08 November 1950
American soldiers stranded in the Philippines after the Japanese invasion form guerrilla bands to fight back.
13 November 1963
After reluctantly packing up his daughter, Mollie, and sending her away to study art at a Paris college, Frank Michaelson gives new meaning to the term "concerned parent.
14 October 1981
Biography of the former first lady, focusing on her years as a photojournalist and leading up to her marriage to John F.
06 February 1954
A privately-financed scientist and his colleagues hire an ex-Navy officer to conduct an Alaskan submarine expedition in order to prevent a Red Chinese anti-American plot that may lead to World War III.
16 February 1955
The story of the peace mission from the US cavalry to the Cheyenne Indians in Wyoming during the 1870s.
22 July 1955
Two strippers on the run hide out in a college fraternity. Director Nunnally Johnson's 1955 musical comedy stars Betty Grable, Sheree North, Robert Cummings, Charles Coburn, Tommy Noonan, Orson Bean, Fred Clark, Alice Pearce, Rhys Williams, Willard Waterman, Leslie Parrish and Jesslyn Fax.
01 July 1954
Shalimar, an Egyptian princess, striving to rid her country of its Bedouin conquerors, forms an alliance with Prince Haidi, son of the Caliph of Bagdad.
15 August 1951
A Broadway star devises a scheme to win back her husband when she suspects he's being unfaithful.
28 September 1951
An alien and a robot land on Earth after World War II and tell mankind to be peaceful or face destruction.
07 November 1947
A penniless composer marries a young widow with a baby—even though he is in love with his brother's fiancée.
16 December 1954
Molly and Terry Donahue, plus their three children, are The Five Donahues. Youngest son Tim meets hat-check girl Vicky and the family act begins to fall apart.
19 August 1947
A woman uncovers deadly secrets when she visits her late husband's family.
14 March 1951
Andre Laurence accompanies his college roommate, Tenga, back to Tenga's Polynesian island home. There, Andre becomes attracted to the native life and his friend's sister, Kalua.
18 May 1980
First he seduced her. Then he made her a star. He was Johnny Hyde, 52-year-old agent, friend, lover. She was an unemployed starlet — destined to be America's greatest sex goddess.
02 October 1950
I'll Get By is an updated remake of the 1940 20th Century-Fox musical Tin Pan Alley. William Lundigan and Dennis Day play William Spencer and Freddie Lee respectively, successful song publishers who make hits out of such numbers as "I Got a Gal in Kalamazoo", "Deep in the Heart of Texas", "You Make Me Feel So Young", "There Will Never Be Another You", and other favorites (the rights to all of these songs were conveniently held by 20th Century-Fox).
27 August 1948
Two vaudevillians on the run from crooks try to pass themselves off as cowboys.
25 November 1954
A Texan robs a train in an effort to prevent his father from committing the crime. A young girl attempts to help him after learning about the theft.
27 May 1953
In New York City, an insolent pickpocket, Skip McCoy, inadvertently sets off a chain of events when he targets ex-prostitute Candy and steals her wallet.
16 October 1953
On a tramp steamer off Central America are Mr. and Mrs. Sheppard, five prisoners en route to a Nicaraguan prison, and Corbett, an American carrying money for a Honduran counter-revolution.
19 June 1963
An aging former movie starlet whose Hollywood career went nowhere, now reduced to dancing with a third-rate touring show, finds herself stranded in a small town where she's courted by an infatuated and naive local teenager.
25 June 1968
A bored housewife poses as a call girl for a movie star sex-symbol, hoping she can prove to her husband, the star's agent, that she is still desirable to other men and thereby, rekindle the spark in their marriage.
02 December 1949
Emery Slade was one of the brightest stars in Hollywood in 1932, but by 1949 his career has hit the skids.
14 July 1953
Lorelei Lee is a beautiful showgirl engaged to be married to the wealthy Gus Esmond, much to the disapproval of Gus' rich father, Esmond Sr.
17 June 1953
Ex-marshal Chino Bull has hung up his guns until his prospecting partner is shot dead. Chino then takes over as the law in town, forming a friendship with gun-man Mitch Hardin and making enemies of the Logan brothers.
08 October 1968
Boston is being terrorized by a series of seemingly random murders of women. Based on the true story, the film follows the investigators path through several leads before introducing the Strangler as a character.
13 May 1953
Stage-and-night club star Jeannie Laird buys her first home, and everyone who is anyone comes to her first garden party only to be blinded by smoke from next door.
20 May 1980
The story of the ill-fated romance between Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.
01 February 1956
An alcoholic escaped convict asks his Arizona lawyer brother to help him cross the Mexican border.
31 December 1943
Bat Masterson, who after failing to secure a job as a newspaper reporter becomes marshal of Dodge City.
24 December 1947
Musical biography of Irish 19th century tenor Chauncey Olcott.
23 June 1950
The fastest gun in the West tries to escape his reputation.
18 July 1952
An airline pilot pursues a live-in babysitter at his hotel and gradually realizes she is not as stable as perhaps she should be.
10 December 1979
A fashion designer gives a private showing at her mansion over a weekend, but someone starts killing off the models.
30 April 1954
An itinerant farmer and his young son help a heart-of-gold saloon singer search for her estranged husband.
28 October 1954
A young stage hopeful is murdered and suspicion falls on her mentor, a Broadway producer.
24 October 1963
Sparks fly when a recently-divorced couple is forced back into proximity to sort out a tax matter.
31 December 1949
An illiterate stooge in a traveling medicine show wanders into a strange town and is picked up on a vagrancy charge.
11 January 1956
TV writer Greg Whitcomb did his military service heroically but now has settled into everyday life with a young wife, Katy.
03 March 1950
Jane Morgan (Dorothy McGuire) marries handsome doctor William Wright (William Lundigan), despite warnings from a host of other doctor's wives that she will be neglected and lonely, thanks to his career.
28 November 1941
Cholita, after a long absence in Mexico City, is returning home to take up her duties as head of the rancho and, as everyone expects, to marry her childhood sweetheart José.
03 June 1955
With his family away for their annual summer holiday, a publishing executive decides to live a bachelor's life.
