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