AllMovie

Chicagoan Charles LeMaire started out as a vaudeville performer in an act with actor/singer Walter Woolf King. LeMaire forsook performing to become a Broadway costume designer in 1921; he gained fame for dressing (or rather, undressing) the "glorified" American girls in The Ziegfeld Follies, and also worked on the productions of such Ziegfeld imitators as George White and Earl Carroll. In movies sporadically since 1925, LeMaire was instrumental in convincing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to set up an Oscar category for costume design; he eventually earned several statuettes for his own work. For 17 years (1943-1960), Charles LeMaire was in charge of 20th Century-Fox's wardrobe department, servicing everything from the Betty Grable musicals to the Biblical epic The Robe (1953).