he filed suit on the company. Independence From August 1931 through August 1932, Stevenson worked independently, costuming five films for Columbia Pictures, as well as Hotel Continental for Tiffany Pictures. Three of the five Columbia movies were Frank Capra films and included Platinum Blonde (1931) with Jean Harlow and Loretta Young. Stevenson was also brought in to Hal Roach Studios to design clothes for Thelma Todd, whom he had likely met while designing for Broadminded (1931) at Warner Bros./First National. During this period, Stevenson established his own design salon, Blakely House, creating personal wardrobes for many of Hollywood's stars and social elite, as well as costumes for studios without their own designers. The RKO Years 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