A Second Beginning 1935 marked Stevenson's return to employment with a major Hollywood studio, though it meant he had to return to sketching the ideas of other designers.
Walter Plunkett, who later went on to design the costumes for
Gone With the Wind (1939), had been creating costumes and managing wardrobe at
RKO and its predecessor,
FBO Pictures, since the mid-1920s. During his ten years there, RKO had sometimes assigned screen credit to designer Max Ree for work Plunkett had done. They had also brought
Bernard Newman over from
Bergdorf Goodman department store in
New York to dress
Ginger Rogers, one of their biggest stars. Plunkett and Newman did not get along. After failing to obtain a contract from RKO that guaranteed him screen credit for the films on which he worked, Plunkett decided to go elsewhere. When Plunkett departed, Newman was required to deal with the more mundane costuming chores in addition to his exclusive designing assignments and he hired Stevenson to sketch out his ideas. However, Newman soon proved unable to work as quickly as was needed and he decided to return to the retail world. On his way out, Newman convinced the RKO executives that Stevenson should be his replacement and in September 1936, Stevenson inked his first contract as an exclusive designer with RKO.
The House Designer Stevenson toiled as the nominal head of RKO's costume and wardrobe department from late 1936 to early 1949, enduring the same difficult conditions that Plunkett had before him. Although he was considered RKO's house designer, he was frequently passed over for high-profile assignments to satisfy a star performer's reliance on or preference for a particular designer. For instance, Walter Plunkett's special relationship with
Katharine Hepburn ensured his return to RKO as a guest designer for all three of her films shot in 1936. Ginger Rogers also routinely requested outside designers. Stevenson's fortune wasn't all bad. It was during this time that he forged deeply respectful relationships with budding stars
Marueen O'Hara and Lucille Ball, relationships that would prove crucial to his later career. He also dressed the
Metropolitan Opera's star coloratura soprano
Lily Pons in the final two of her three films for RKO. Additionally, he was assigned to films destined to become classics, films such as
Gunga Din (1939),
Love Affair (1939), and Alfred Hitchcock's
Suspicion (1941). In August 1939, RKO signed 24 year-old
Orson Welles to write, direct, and star in three projects, the first films he would ever make.
Citizen Kane and
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), two highly influential and respected movies in classic American cinema, were the eventual results of his efforts. Welles chose Stevenson to costume the films. Both pictures required thorough research to accurately represent the periods depicted, though Stevenson faced many difficulties in carrying out his original intentions. In
Citizen Kane, he was required to hide
Dorothy Comingore’s pregnancy which became increasingly difficult as the pregnancy and filming progressed. He coped by supplying her with a muff to carry and by letting out many of her waistline seams, though both of these solutions compromised the integrity of his designs. Wartime fabric shortages hampered Stevenson’s design efforts for
The Magnificent Ambersons, and he was also asked to make modifications to some to make them more glamorous.
A New York Minute By 1942, RKO was on the brink of total financial collapse. Stevenson had weathered RKO’s volatile leadership culture for six years and was hungry for something different and potentially more stable. He had learned from his predecessors that the ready-to-wear market could provide more security and money so like Plunkett and Newman before him, he left RKO to try his fortunes elsewhere, staying until his contract ended with the completion of filming on
Journey Into Fear (1943) in March of 1942. Stevenson was in New York in May, 1942 to participate in Bernard Waldman’s fashion show, an event that adumbrated the first
New York fashion "Press Week" a year later. That effort didn't bear the fruit Stevenson had hoped for and by January 1943, he was back at RKO.
Homecoming Stevenson resumed his duties as head of RKO's costume and wardrobe at a time of both relative stability and dynamic creativity. These were the years of
Val Lewton’s famous “horror” unit,
Shirley Temple’s attempt to transition from child star to ingénue roles, heavy borrowing of star performers from other studios, and the rise of
film noir. Stevenson was involved in all of this, costuming
The Curse of the Cat People (1944),
The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947),
Government Girl (1944), and
Out of the Past (1947), among others. Stevenson also costumed
The Spanish Main (1945) with Maureen O’Hara, RKO's first all-
Technicolor film since
Becky Sharp (1935). ==Oscar Nominations==