Film review: Aussie designer Orry-Kelly dazzles once more in Gillian Armstrong’s Hollywood doco

REVIEW: The way director Gillian Armstrong sees it, the name Orry-Kelly has been lost to obscurity for far too long.

Women He’s Undressed (PG)

Director: Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career)

Starring: Darren Gilshenan, Deborah Kennedy, Catherine Martin, Ann Roth, Kym Barrett.

Rating: ***1/2

“He called himself a hem-stitcher, yet he was really a Hollywood star ... but no one has ever heard of him”

From this attention-grabbing title card at the opening of the fascinating new documentary Women He’s Undressed, decorated Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong is a woman on a mission.

The way Armstrong sees it, the name Orry-Kelly has been lost to obscurity for far too long.

Now is the time for one of this country’s most vital and intriguing cinematic talents to be rightly recognised and celebrated.

By the time Women He’s Undressed is over, it is more than likely you will feel the exact same way.

Dramatic recreation ... actor Darren Gilshenan plays Orry-Kelly in Women He's Undressed.

A cursory scan of the record books reveals Orry-Kelly to be one of Australia’s most prolific Academy Award winners.

On three occasions across an eight-year period in the 1950s, Orry-Kelly took out the Best Costume Design Oscar (for An American In Paris, Les Girls and the classic screwball comedy Some Like It Hot).

Furthermore, had the category existed before its belated inception in 1948, the prolific Australian clothier would have won several more (simply check out his sublime work in Casablanca if you have any doubts).

Unsung hero ... Orry-Kelly worked on some of Hollywood’s biggest movies.

Just why Orry-Kelly (born Orry George Kelly in the coastal NSW town of Kiama in 1897) has never loomed large in his homeland’s filmic folklore is merely the start point of Armstrong’s lively investigation here.

Turns out that this remarkable man lived just as colourful a life off-camera as his vividly inspired creations on the silver screen.

Having landed in Hollywood without a cent to his name in the 1920s, Orry-Kelly initially scraped by with a little luck and a lot of energy.

Stunning ... Orry-Kelly dresses screen legend Ava Gardner on the set of One Touch of Venus in 1948.

After eventually finding a contractual home (and for the era, a surprising amount of creative freedom) at Warner Bros. Studios, Orry-Kelly’s innate talent as a designer continued to evolve across the decades that followed.

However, a love of the drink, a reputation for speaking his mind at all times, the wearying need to hide his homosexuality and many complicated friendships with some of the biggest stars in Tinseltown often made Orry-Kelly his own worst enemy.

One fractious relationship in particular — with former housemate Cary Grant — is used by Armstrong as a provocative narrative through-line for the doco.

A pronounced lack of actual footage of Orry-Kelly means that he is largely represented here via series of staged interludes featuring actor Darren Gilshenan.

The archly (tragi)comic nature of these sequences sometimes work against the better intentions of the film, putting forward soft speculation as hard facts.