Initiated in 1998 in honor of costume designer Ruth Morley, one of our profession's leading designers in theatre and in film, this award is given at the final League luncheon in June. Ruth served on the League's Board of Directors. Her costumes for Annie Hall, Inherit the Wind and Deathtrap are memorable.
Past recipients:
Jane Greenwood, Carrie Robbins, Willa Kim –Costume Designers
Natasha Katz, Jennifer Tipton, Tharon Musser - Lighting Designers
Marjorie Bradley Kellogg, Heidi Ettinger - Set Designers
Wendall K. Harrington - Video, Film & Projection Designer
2007 RECIPIENT:
WENDALL HARRINGTON,VIDEO, FILM & PROJECTION DESIGNER
Wendall Harrington has received the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and American Theatre Wing awards for "The Who's Tommy". Broadway credits include "The Good Body, "Drowning Crow", "Amy's View", "Putting It Together", "Civil War", "The Capeman", "Ragtime","Freak", "Company","Racing Demon", "The Will Rogers Follies", "The Heidi Chronicles", "My One and Only", and "They're Playing our Song".
Opera productions include "Nixon in China", "A View from the Bridge", "The Photographer", "The Magic Flute", "Transatlantic and Orpheo". Ballet: "Othello" (ABT), "Ballet Mecanique" and "Anna Karenina" (Royal Danish Ballet). Off-Broadway: "Hapgood", "As Thousands Cheer", "Night and Her Stars", "Merrily We Roll Along" and "Whistle Down the Wind:. Concert: Stop Making Sense (Talking Heads), Old Friends (Simon and Garfunkel), Blind Ambition (Chris Rock). She created the player introductions for the New York Knicks, Liberty and Rangers. She directed the premiere of "Snapshots" with the Elements Quartet and "Arjuna's Dilemma" a new opera based on the Bhagavad Gita.
RUTH MORLEY DESIGNING WOMAN AWARD LUNCHEON is held each June at a date and time to be announced.
RUTH MORLEY
came to America at the age of fourteen, having escaped Vienna and the Holocaust one year earlier on a British bound Kindertransport in 1939. With limited English language skills, Morley survived school by drawing biology assignments for her classmates in exchange for help with homework. As a teenager that prodigal artistic talent helped Morley support her family by creating greeting cards and cell animation. Later, she studied painting with the great abstract impressionist Hans Hoffman while posing part-time as an artist's model. When she found a position as a set painter in New York she could no longer continue night school at Cooper Union.
Though Morley had focused on painting in the theater, costume designer Rose Bogdonoff became her mentor and champion. After several seasons designing costumes at the Tamiment Theater and the New York City Opera, Ms Morley designed costumes for thirty-five Broadway shows between 1950 and 1988. These include: The Miracle Worker, (1959), Toys in the Attic (1960), Wait Until Dark (1966), Deathtrap (1978), Death of a Salesman (revival 1984) and Spoils of War (1988). Ruth Morley's intuition and intelligence blend theatrical artistry and character analysis. Her witty and knowing costumes grace forty-two memorable films which include: The Miracle Worker (1962) for which she won an Academy Award nomination, The Hustler (1961) Taxi Driver (1976), Annie Hall (1977), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Ghost (1990) and The Prince of Tides (1991).
For Annie Hall, Ruth Morley layered Diane Keaton in frumpy vintage men's wear and defined that era. This quirky look fueled a world-wide phenomenon and a trend in cross-dressing that continued to influence women's wardrobes into the 1980's. Morley's sixth sense for creating memorable characters contributed immeasurably to each remarkable film of her long career. Despite her impressive credits Ruth Morley was a very modest individual, although she did express that she would have loved to work with Fellini. She relished every opportunity to design period costumes and especially loved to create a fictional world from "nothing".
In 1998, The League of Professional Theatre Women created The Ruth Morley Designing Woman Award in her honor. Morley served on the League's Board of Directors. This award " recognizes, celebrates and remembers those artists who have pioneered the art of costume design setting the standard for years to come." Also in 1998, Ruth Morley's daughter, Melissa Hacker, directed the celebrated documentary My Knees Were Jumping; Remembering the Kindertransports, which told the story of this massive rescue operation of 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazi's. We are grateful that Ruth Morley was one.
