# Beatrice Dawson

Beatrice Dawson (26 January 1908 – 16 April 1976) was a British costume designer. In a career spanning over three decades, she is recognized for her prolific work across stage and screen. She was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Costume Design for the film The Pickwick Papers (1952).
Dawson trained at the Slade School of Art in London, and Chelsea Polytechnic. She started her career designing for stage, with her first professional job being The Duchess of Malfi at the Haymarket Theatre in 1945.
After a brief career in theatre in the mid-1940s, Dawson moved into the British film industry in 1947. Her first film credit was the noir thriller Night Beat (1947). Her designs from this period were described as ‘audacious and expressive’ with her design work on Trottie True (1948) taking ‘real risks with colour and historical verisimilitude’. Dawson worked for a range of British film companies including Two Cities, and many of the industry’s leading stars of the 1950s including Dirk Bogarde, Jean Kent and Laurence Harvey.
Dawson worked extensively in the 1950s and 1960s. Her generic range as a designer was impressive and her ’fluent, meticulous designs’ showed her versatility as a designer. Her screen credits include costume design for the teen drama Expresso Bongo (1959), the British social realism drama, The L-Shaped Room (1962), and stylish ensembles for Monica Vitti in Modesty Blaise (1966, uncredited).
Dawson worked with the actor Dirk Bogarde on a number of films including A Tale of Two Cities (1958), The Wind Cannot Read (1958), The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967).Dirk Bogarde credits Dawson with the success of the outfits he wore in The Servant, describing her ‘simple, brilliant designs for the clothes’ his character Barrett would wear and live in. The key outfit consisted of a ‘tight shiny blue serge suit, black shoes which squeaked a little … pork pie hat with a jay feather, a Fair Isle sweater, shrunken, darned at the elbows, a nylon scarf with a horses’ heads and stirrups. A mean, shabby outfit for a mean and shabby man’.$^2$ The designs have been described as ‘an intelligent interpretation of Losey’s definitions of class’ (Harper, 2000, p. 216).
In The Beauty Jungle (1957), a film made in vivid Eastmancolor, Dawson’s design work for the female lead effectively signalled the character Shirley Freeman’s (Janette Scott) narrative arc from bored typist in an office job to successful beauty contestant. Initially costumed in ‘cream-coloured knee-length full skirts’ Dawson’s designs for a smartly-tailored suit in candy pink, with the skirt’s hem-length just above the knee, denoted the character’s increasing power and autonomy in the narrative.
Dawson was responsible for women’s costumes in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) which included designs for leading star Marilyn Monroe.
Dawson also designed costumes for television. She created costumes for Guns in the Heather (1969), part of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color anthology, as well as a few episodes of the television serial Sir Francis Drake. In 1975 she designed costumes for Sophia Loren's ITC 'Brief Encounter' in which she starred with Richard Burton and Jack Hedley.

## Awards and nominations

| Award | Year | Category | Work | Result |
| Academy Awards | 1955 | Best Costume Design – Black and White | The Pickwick Papers | Nominated |
| British Academy Film Awards | 1964 | Best British Costume Design – Black and White | Of Human Bondage | Nominated |
| British Academy Film Awards | 1964 | Best British Costume Design – Colour | Woman of Straw | Nominated |
| British Academy Film Awards | 1973 | Best Costume Design | A Doll's House | Nominated |