Edith Head - The Costume Designer With A Difference

Edith Head, the prominent costume designer of Hollywood had worked on 1,131 motion pictures.During her long career,she was nominated for  35 Academy Awards and won  8 Oscars , the maximum number of Oscars for any woman in history.

She was known for her modest working style, and in contrast to many of her male contemporaries typically consulted extensively with the female stars she worked with. Due to this, she was a favorite designer for many of the leading female stars of the 1940s and 1950s including Ginger Rogers, Shirley MacLaine, Anne Baxter, Barbara Stanwyck, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor.

Edith Head was responsible for some of the popular Hollywood fashion images of her day, with her costumes being worn by the most stunning and famous actresses in films. Head's influence on world fashion was across-the-board, especially in the 1950s when she started appearing on Art Linkletter's television program and writing books on fashion.

In addition to her film career, she designed Vogue sewing patterns; traveled across the country staging Hollywood fashion shows ; wrote magazine and newspaper columns; wrote two books, including The Dress Doctor (with Joan Kesner Ardmore, 1959) and How to Dress for Success (with Joe Hyams,1967) and audio taped hours of interviews in preparation for her autobiography, Edith Head’s Hollywood, co-authored by Paddy Calistro, and published posthumously in 1983.

Edith Head expired in 1981 of a progressive and rare blood disease, myeloid metaplasia, two weeks after completing work on her last film, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.

One of her quotations : You can lead a horse to water and you can even make it drink, but you can't make actresses wear what they don't want to wear.

Tough Competition For Foreign Language Film Category

The Academy has obtained a record number of entries in the Foreign Language Film Category this year. 65 nations have joined the race for the 2010 Foreign Language including first-time entrants Ethiopia and Greenland.

Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew's  'The Athlete'  will represent Ethiopia, whereas 'Nuummiog'  has been selected as Greenland's official entry.

France, Finland, Hong Kong, Greece, Latvia, the Philippines, Peru, Mexico, Romania, Russia, South Africa and Spain are also represented in the primary Oscars list for 2011. 

The 83rd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on January 25, 2011. Between now and then, the Best Foreign Film nominations will be filtered down to 5. Films from Albania, Azerbaijan, Slovakia and Slovenia will vie for Oscars gold in 2011, as Academy Awards officials close the time limit for foreign film entries.

Steve Bass to be the Production Designer for 2011 Oscars

Oscar telecast producers Bruce Cohen and Don Mischer stated recently that Steve Bass will be the Production Designer for the 83rd Academy Awards presentation This will be the first time the Emmy winning production designer has worked on the Oscar telecast.Mischer stated that he had collaborated with Steve quite a few times and that he is the ideal person for the approaching Oscars.He also stated that he’s an innovative creative talent who would do justice to the tradition and glamour of the Oscars and that he was truly a master at designing sophisticated and grand-scale events.

Bass had won two Emmys, in 1997 as art director of the "Centennial Olympic Games: Opening Ceremonies " and another pairing with Mischer as well as in 2005 for his production design work on The 47th Annual Grammy Awards. He has 3 added Emmy nominations for the Grammys (in 2004, 2008 and 2009) and his most recent nomination was this year for his work on the 63rd Annual Tony Awards.