(2 of 3)
Tall, twittering Gilbert Adrian began to draw shortly after he was born 37 years ago, the son of a Naugatuck, Conn, milliner. His first success, a costume designed for his companion at a Paris ball, caught the eye of guest Irving Berlin, got Adrian a job dressing the Second Music Box Revue. Rudolph Valentino's wife, Natacha Rambova, took him from Broadway to Hollywood to make her husband's clothes, and Adrian has been dressing movie folk ever since. At M. G. M. he inhabits an oyster-white office, works furiously chewing gum, deep in an over stuffed chair which is disconcertingly set on a dais to keep him from dropping paint on the oyster-white carpet. In the groove, he can turn out a sketch in 20 minutes. Dresses like those in Susan and God cost M. G. M. between $150 and $350 apiece, but when Adrian spits on his hands and lets go in a costume piece, his creations may cost the studio as much as $4,000 to execute. Somewhat frustrated by having to work without color, Adrian compensates himself by taking a high hand with his temperamental charges. He forbade Norma Shearer the frills she liked, had the idea of turning Joan Crawford from Judy O'Grady into Colonel's lady, overcame a troublesome Garbo trait by observing: "It is difficult to have an evening gown fit properly with the right lines when the person wears low heels." At parties Adrian keeps a keen eye peeled for signs of dowdiness, can be convulsing about it afterwards. Of Tallulah Bankhead he once remarked: "She can wear one more silver fox than any other woman and still look underdressed." Adrian affects not to know the difference between one Paris couturier and another, to dislike ordinary women who copy movie styles. He recommends that the average woman should limit herself to the costumes worn by the heroines of light comedies laid in moderate-sized towns.
Adrian sleeps in one of the biggest beds in Hollywood under a vaulting canopy, has 12-ft. divans in his house, coffee tables sizable enough for billiards, gives his friends as many as a dozen Christmas presents, keeps three pet monkeys and a macaw. Last year he married tiny Janet Gaynor, having previously styled her with bright carrot-colored hair (and her mother with blue hair). He recently popped a surprise by announcing that he was designing maternity clothes for his wife, a nursery wing for his sprawling Spanish house.
The Mortal Storm (M. G. M.). More than a year ago, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought Phyllis Bottome's The Mortal Storm, a straight-talking best-seller about Jewish persecution in the Third Reich.