August 1 - Chuck Keehne

On this day, in 1914, Charles Keehne was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Chuck was the middle child of five children born to a telegraph operator for a railroad. He spent most of his formative years in southwest Missouri, graduating from high school in 1932. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Southern California to try his luck at the movie business. He found steady work as a carpenter building movie sets for various studios. At some point he was hired by the Western Costume Company as a costumer. He made it his business to become an expert in historically accurate costumes and by 1940 had left Western to strike out on his own. He found freelancing success on pictures like Knute Rockne, All American, with Ronald Reagan, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, with James Cagney.

World War II brought an interruption to Chuck's costuming career. He joined the Army Air Corps and became a combat cameraman in the Pacific. When the war was over, he remained stationed in Japan until receiving an honorable discharge in 1946. He returned to Hollywood, resumed working as a costumer and married his childhood sweetheart. Over the next several years, Chuck created the clothing for classic films like Fort Apache with John Wayne and A Bullet for Joey with Edward G. Robinson. Then, in early 1955, he stopped being a freelancer and created one of the most iconic wardrobe pieces in television history.

Image copyright Disney

The Walt Disney Studio found itself with a problem in the mid Fifties. They had done several live action films by that point and were poised to get heavily into television, but they lacked something that all the other studios already had: a wardrobe department. Animated characters didn't require a costumer but real people needed something to wear. Bill Anderson, the studio's production manager, needed to hire someone on full time to fix this dilemma. When Bill interviewed Chuck in April 1955, one of Chuck's first questions was Where is the Wardrobe Department? Bill's answer was Wherever you build it. Luckily for Disney, Chuck not only didn't shy away from the challenge of creating Costuming for a major studio, he was able to bring along two highly capable people to help him. He put Ted Tooey in charge of Men's Wardrobe, Gertie Casey in charge of Women's and took over part of the building that housed the Shorts Department (which would be closing down soon anyways, although most people weren't aware of that).

Image copyright Disney

Chuck's first task was outfitting the cast of Disney's new television show, The Mickey Mouse Club. Creating the look of the costumes the Mousketeers would be wearing was a piece of cake compared to actually keeping the cast in properly fitting clothes. Over the course of the shows three seasons, it would seem like every single cast member had several growth spurts. And then there was their headgear. Everyone agreed that some kind of mouse ears was definitely the way to go, but turning that great idea into a practical reality was a daunting task that fell to the newly hired costumer, Chuck. Working closely with Roy Williams, who had the original idea, several prototypes were designed and discarded. Some just looked too big, others were too heavy and ones that did actually look good wouldn't stay on the kids heads when they danced (or even just moved around).

Image copyright Disney

Chuck and Roy finally devised small hand crafted ears, tailor fitted to each individual Mousketeer, complete with rubber band chin straps to keep them from falling off all the time. The problem with the ears was the price: it cost $25 a piece to make them (about $240 each in today's money). Multiply that times dozens of cast members, add in the fact that the kids kept losing or crushing sets of them, and you begin to see Chuck's headache. Because mouse ears were actually just a small part of the wardrobe required for The Mickey Mouse Club. Distinct costumes were created for each of the individual days of the week (you couldn't possible wear the same thing for Talent Round-Up Day that you did for Anything Can Happen Day, right?) plus everything needed for the various shows-within-the-show like Spin and Marty and Annette. It really was like doing several separate shows all at once. Good thing Chuck and his crew were not only up to the task but created television history at the same time.

Image courtesy homepages.rootsweb.com

After getting The Mickey Mouse Club up and running, the next two and a half decades must have seemed like something of an extended vacation, even as Chuck would oversee wardrobe for every single live action production the Walt Disney Studio did whether it was on the big screen or the small. He costumed Zorro and all the Wonderful World of Disney shows. He created Mrs. Banks' suffragette look in Mary Poppins, Haley Mills' California chicness in The Parent Trap and clothed Jodie Foster's teenage angst in Freaky Friday. Chuck was also Walt's personal dresser for all of his television introductions and public appearances. When he retired in 1979, he was personally responsible for the look of over 70 feature films and hundreds of television episodes. He then lived quietly with his wife, enjoying his two daughters and his grandchildren until his death on February 24, 2001 in Los Angeles, California. He was 86.