Looking for Mabel Normand

Irene Lentz was born in Brookings, South Dakota around 1902. It is said that she started as a silent film actress in 1921 at Keystone or was a student at Wolfe School of Design in Los Angeles and that first she had wanted to make a career in music. The 1920 census indecates that she was 18 years old living in Los Angeles with her 10 year old brother, Kline and her mother, Maud.  Maud was working as a hotel maid and Irene was a salesgirl at a drugstore.   

There are reports that Irene appears as an extra in Mabel Normand's Molly O' and was part of the crew of Suzanna helping Dick with set design and the general look of the 1922 film. 

One story is that Dick Jones directed her first film at Keystone in 1921 and encouraged her to open a dress shop.  During this period girls were taught to sew and Irene had a gift for design.  They married in 1922 by all the evidence were very happy with each other. Her shop was a success with the silent film stars like the beautiful Lupe Velez. 

With the death of her husband, F. Richard Jones in 1930, Irene went to Paris and when she returned in 1933, she reopened her store, she was a huge success and when Bullocks Wilshire saw her windows displays; they gave her a contract to open a designer solon within their store catering to Bullocks wealthy customers and film stars of the 1930s.  She started making clothes that were being seen in a number of films, she became known by her first name as a costume designer “Irene”. 

In 1937 Irene created the Ginger Rogers marvelous costumes for the Fred Astaire film, Shall We Dance.  Paramount, RKO, Columbia, United Artists, Hal Roach Studios, etc all used Irene costumes. 

Irene married Eliot Gibbons writer and brother of the fabulous art direction Cedric Gibbons.  She became the leading costume supervisor at MGM, known for her soufflé creations and her wonderful avant-garde wardrobe for Lana Turner in The Postman always Rings Twice (1946) and Doris Day wore Irene’s design in Midnight Lace (1960)

Sadly, in 1962 Irene took her own life at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel by jumping from the window after cutting her wrists. Her suicide note read: "II'm sorry. This is the best way. Get someone very good to design and be happy. I love you all. Irene."  She requested to be interred next to Dick Jones at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Irene Lentz received 2 Oscar nominations and is in the Costume Designers Guild Hall of Fame. There is a great deal of material on Irene in Special Collection at the Margaret Herrick Library http://www.oscars.org/mhl/sc/irene_215.html