Magpies & Peacocks, QFest Community Partners

We were thrilled to be invited to be community partners for the QFest premier screening of Women he's Undressed at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston – a vivacious and rollicking documentary on the life of three time academy award winning Hollywood Costume Designer Orry-Kelly. 

Orry-Kelly was a Hollywood legend, his extraordinary costume designs adored by cinema’s greatest leading ladies – but in his home country of Australia his achievements remained unknown. Now acclaimed director Gillian Armstrong is bringing the legend home and celebrating the life of this extraordinary Aussie in her new film, Women He’s Undressed. Orry-Kelly was known for his ability to "design for distraction" to compensate for difficult figure shapes. He also had the job of creating clothes for the cross-dressing characters played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot. Orry-Kelly worked on many films now considered classics, including 42nd Street, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, Harvey, Oklahoma!, Auntie Mame, and Some Like It Hot. He designed for all the great actresses of the day, including Bette Davis, Kay Francis, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn, Dolores del Río, Ava Gardner, Ann Sheridan, Barbara Stanwyck, and Merle Oberon.

'Women he's Undressed' Director: Gillian Armstrong Writer: Katherine Thomson

QFest is dedicated to promoting the arts as a powerful tool for communication and cooperation among diverse communities by presenting programs by, about, and of interest to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer community. Executive Director Kristian Salinas serves on the Advisory Committee for Magpies & Peacocks.

QFest is a sponsored project of The Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP), a 501c3 dedicated to promoting the creation and appreciation of film, video, and new media as art forms of a multicultural community.