What Raquel Welch Wore in “A House Is Not A Home” (1964)

A few years before Raquel Welch became the poster girl for bikinis, she could not have been in better hands, costume-wise, for her movie debut in this picture. Costumier extraordinaire and multiple Oscar-winner Edith Head, was in chare of the outfits, in particular the lingerie, which, given the subject matter, was often all that was required.

Here, Head was recycling famous movie costumes of old. Whether Ms. Welch’s figure was perhaps too bountiful for the kind of outfits worn by stars in the 1920s and 1930s where bosom size was less of a priority is unknown. You can probably spot her second from the right in the photo above.

The movie paraded famous fashions of the period in more ways than one. Head’s idea was to have the girls sporting lingerie that had been seen in movies from the 1920s to the 1950s when worn by famous female stars. Whether the clothes were the actual pieces worn in previous films, and adjusted to suit, or the designs were based on the previous movies is unclear. An article in Variety asserted that Head had not actually designed costumes for the film but that the producer had simply raided the Paramount costume department, where Head had worked since 1924, for outfits she had designed.

The “nightgown museum” was drawn from films made between 1925 and 1953. The earliest nightgown, worn by Gloria Swanson in The Duchess and the Waiter (1925), was assigned to Gigi Galligan. Meri Wells worn an item previously made famous by Clara Bow in It (1927), Leona Gage used a number from famed clothes-horse Kay Francis in Behind the Make Up (1930), Amede Charbot was adorned with the eye-popping flimsy piece that Carole Lombard paraded in Bolero (1933). Patricia Thomas was given Nancy Carroll’s trousseau from Abie’s Irish Rose (1928) and Lisa Seagram was the second wearer of Grace Kelly’s powder blue chiffon in To Catch a Thief (1955).

However, there were more costumes worn than merely those which had acquired a classic status, all the male outfits for a start plus clothes reflecting the period worn by Shelley Winters and the other stars so it is likely that Head adapted her own previous outfits and augmented those with new costumes for the other players. Head had, of course, been working for Paramount during the 1920s and 1930s so she had firsthand experience of the types of clothes that would be worn.

Edith Head won eight Oscars from a total of 35 nominations. She won each year in 1950, 1951 (twice), 1952, 1954 and 1955 and again in 1961 and 1978 (for The Sting). Even where a film was not a commercial or critical success, there was every chance Edith Head would snag a nomination. Such was the case during the 1960s, up to A House Is Not A Home. In that half-decade she was nominated eleven times. In those days designers were nominated in two categories, films made in color and those made in black-and-white, thus accounting for the double award in 1951.

She won for Bob Hope-Lucille Ball comedy The Facts of Life (1960) and was nominated for John Ford western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). In the same year as A House Is Not A Home, she was also nominated for the star-studded What A Way To Go! and the previous year three of her films were up for Oscar honors – A New Kind of Love starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Wives and Lovers with Janet Leigh and Natalie Wood-Steve McQueen drama Love with the Proper Stranger.  

SOURCES: Pressbook for A House Is Not A Home, p3; “Shelley Winters on Polly Adler: Bad & Ends Sad,” Variety, April 8, 1964, p5.