Dressing dolls as a child at her parents’ Wisconsin farm, future costume designer Betty Pecha Madden created stories using clothes. By age 17, her interest in costuming having grown serious via high school plays, she left home upon graduation and went to Chicago to find work in the industry.
Madden clothed rock groups and college nightclub acts to pay the rent, but her sights were set higher, and in 1969 she headed to Las Vegas. There she toiled day and night — days as a host at the Hilton International Hotel, nights designing tuxedos for lounge singers and outfits for showgirls. But it was the functional changes to Hilton’s service uniforms that signaled her future direction: costume design.
Moving to Los Angeles in 1972, Madden got her first Hollywood jobs a few years later and, in 1976, scored a gig for producer Mike Wuergler for “The New Mickey Mouse Club.” The videotaped series allowed...
Madden clothed rock groups and college nightclub acts to pay the rent, but her sights were set higher, and in 1969 she headed to Las Vegas. There she toiled day and night — days as a host at the Hilton International Hotel, nights designing tuxedos for lounge singers and outfits for showgirls. But it was the functional changes to Hilton’s service uniforms that signaled her future direction: costume design.
Moving to Los Angeles in 1972, Madden got her first Hollywood jobs a few years later and, in 1976, scored a gig for producer Mike Wuergler for “The New Mickey Mouse Club.” The videotaped series allowed...
- 3/8/2019
- by James C. Udel
- Variety Film + TV
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