Edith Head Movies

Edith Head was nominated for 35 Oscars....winning EIGHT times.
Edith Head was nominated for 35 Oscars….winning EIGHT times.

Want to know the best Edith Head movies?  How about the worst Edith Head movies?  Curious about Edith Head box office grosses or which Edith Head movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Edith Head movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Ever heard of Ray Guy?  No?  That’s ok….we know this is a movie page not a sports page. Ray Guy was probably the best punter ever to play professional American football.  Despite his greatness it took him almost 25 years for him to be elected into the football Hall of Fame.  His lengthy delay was due to a bias that punters only had one talent (kicking the ball) and they were not real football players.  Well….we think  Edith Head (1897-1981)  was the Ray Guy of movies.    Her talent was behind the camera. Edith Head’s talent was costume design.  Like Guy’s punting….costume design is not the most glamorous job in movies.   Like Guy, she was the best in her field of expertise …..costume design. Sadly most movie fans probably have never heard of Edith Head. Her movie career lasted for 57 years. She earned 35 Oscar® nominations and won 8 times!  Her IMDb page shows over 560 credits from 1925-1982. This page will rank 50 Edith Head movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.

Drivel part of the page:  As if the Ray Guy stuff was not enough drivel.  If you would have told us when we started doing these pages that we would write a page on Edith Head we probably would not have believed you.  But we received a request from Dan to do a Edith Head page.  A quick look showed over 560 Head movies.  That put the page on the back burner for sure.  Fast forward a few months….while driving the other day, Wife of Cogerson (how she likes to be called) asked if I knew that Edith Head had received 35 Oscar® nominations.  I told her I knew she had many …but not that many.  Well the 35 stuck in my head….I thought I could do her page on just her 35 nominated movies.  Then I thought….50 would be a much better number.  So I checked out our movie database and pulled out 15 more of her highly rated movies that she did not get nominated for.  So Dan….here is your Edith Head page.  Granted it is not 564 movies but it is 50 of her greatest movies.

Some of the Edith Head movie dresses.
Some of the Edith Head movie dresses.

Edith Head Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Edith Head movies by stars of her movies
  • Sort Edith Head movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Edith Head movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Edith Head movies by how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Edith Head movie received.
  • Sort Edith Head movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Edith Head Table

  1. Twenty-eight Edith Head movie crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark.  That is a percentage of 56.00% of her movies listed. The Ten Commandments (1956) was her biggest box office hit.
  2. An average Edith Head movie grosses $201.60 million in adjusted box office gross.
  3. Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter.  43 of Edith Head’s movies are rated as good movies…or 86.00% of her movies.  Rear Window (1954) is her highest rated movie while Airport ’77 (1977) is her lowest rated movie.
  4. Forty-nine Edith Head movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 98.00% of her movies.
  5. Twenty-one Edith Head movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 42.00% of her movies.
  6. An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 39.86. 43 Edith Head movie scored higher that average….or 86.00% of her movies. The Sting (1973) got the the highest UMR Score while The Oscar (1966) got the lowest UMR Score.
Edith Head and The Incredibles' Edna Mode
Edith Head and The Incredibles’ Edna Mode

Possibly Interesting Facts About Edith Head

1.  Edith Claire Posener was born in San Bernardino, California in 1897.  In 1923 she married Charles Head…..thus became Edith Head.

2.  Edith Head got a costume sketch artist job at Paramount Pictures in 1924.  The really amazing thing about this fact is that Head lacked any art, design, or costume design experience.

3.  The costume designer Edna Mode in the 2004’s The Incredibles was largely based on Edith Head.

4.  Edith Head is tied with composer Alan Menken for third most Academy Awards® won. Each of them have eight.

5.  Edith Head was nominated for an Oscar® every year from 1948’s The Emperor Waltz to 1966’s The Oscar.  That is a record.

6.  Edith Head worked with Alfred Hitchcock on 11 different movies.

7.  Edith Head was married two times. She was married to Charles Head from 1923 to 1938 and to Wiard Ihnen from 1940 to his death in 1979.  She did not have any children.

8.  In the late 1979s, Edith Head, designed a woman’s uniform for the United States Coast Guard, in response to growing number of women in the service. She received the Meritorious Public Service Award for her efforts.

9.  Edith Head wrote two books, The Dress Doctor (1959) and How To Dress For Success (1967), describing her career and design philosophy.  Both are still in print.

10. Edith Head worked many times with Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Shirley MacLaine, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor.

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6 thoughts on “Edith Head Movies

  1. Well this does make a change from your usual movie pages, legendary costume designer Edith Head. Lots of facts here I didn’t know about Edith, 35 Oscar nominations wow! hey Edna Mode does look a bit like her. 🙂

    You and Flora are ahead of me on movies watched, just 27 out of 50 for me. Favorites include The Ten Commandments, Butch Cassidy, Gunfight at OK Corral and all the Hitchcock films.

    I still haven’t watched Going My Way or The Bells of St Mary’s.

    Now that you’ve done a famous costume designer, how about a famous movie titles designer – Saul Bass. Voted Up!

    1. Hey Steve….I will add Saul Bass to the request hotline. So far I have one writer (Goldman) and one costume designer (Head)….I am sure I can include movie title designer and John Williams. Might do the same think with Williams….just do his Oscar nominated movies….which I think it close to or over 50.

      Tally count….Flora is at 41…me at 33 and you at 27….well at least combined….me have Flora easily beat 60 to 41….lol.

      She got Oscar nominations every time she worked with Heston….maybe he was her good luck charm.

      As always thanks for stopping by and commenting.

  2. Edith was awesome! Actually had the pleasure of meeting her a few times. She was a lovely kind lady. Nice to see somebody still talking about her.

    1. Hey Franny the Granny. Very cool. Glad you got to meet her a few times. Her Oscar records means she will be talked about for a very long time. thanks for stopping by.

  3. Bruce:

    I have seen 41 of these movies. Of course, being the era lover that I am I know all about Edith Head.

    She sometimes played herself in cameo appearances.

    I am sure that I have seen a high percentage of her over 500 movies.

    Cheers,

    Flora

    1. Hey Flora…thanks for stopping by. 41….let me see…I am at 33. Actually pretty pleased that I am so close to your tally count. I think she played herself in 4 different projects. I have no doubt that you have seen a high % of her 564 movies. Thanks for the comment.

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