screenwriter Eliot Gibbons, brother of multi-Academy Award winning Cedric Gibbons, head of art direction at MGM Studios. Despite her success, working under the powerful set designer Cedric while being married to his brother Eliot was not easy. Irene confided to her close friend Doris Day that the marriage to Eliot was not a happy one. Generally regarded as the most important and influential production designer in the history of American films, Cedric Gibbons hired Lentz when gown designer Adrian left MGM in 1941 to open his own fashion house. By 1943 she was a leading costume supervisor at MGM, earning international recognition for her "soufflé creations" and is remembered for her avant-garde wardrobe for Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). In 1950, Lentz left MGM to open her own fashion house. After Lentz was out of the film industry for nearly ten years, Doris Day requested her services for the production Midnight Lace (Universal, 1960). The following year she did the costume design for another Day film, Lover Come Back (1961), and during 1962 worked on her last production, A Gathering of Eagles (released in 1963). In 1962, after Doris Day noticed that Lentz seemed upset and nervous, Lentz confided in her that she was in love with actor Gary Cooper and that he was the only man that she had ever loved. Cooper had died in 1961. Awards and nominations Nomination for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White for B.F.'s Daughter (1948) Nomination for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design, Color for Midnight Lace (1960) Death On November 15, 1962, three weeks before her sixty-first birthday, Lentz took room 1129 at the Knickerbocker Hotel, Los Angeles, checking in under an assumed name. She jumped to her death from her bathroom window. She had left suicide notes for friends and family, for her ailing husband, and for the hotel residents, apologizing for any inconvenience her death might cause. Per her wishes, she is interred next to her first husband, director F. Richard Jones, at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Legacy In 2005, Irene Lentz was inducted into the Costume Designers Guild's Anne Cole Hall of Fame. Selected filmography References Informational notes External links Irene Lentz – pioneer of an American luxury fashion brand at aenigma American costume designers Women costume designers American fashion designers California people in fashion 1901 births