Florence Klotz

Florence Klotz (October 28, 1920 – November 1, 2006) was an American costume designer on Broadway and on film.

Biography Born in Brooklyn, New York, to parents who owned a millinery store, she graduated from Parsons School of Design, and went to work painting fabrics for Brooks Costumes, one of the best known theatre costume companies. In 1951, while working there she was approached by famed designer Irene Sharaff to assist her with the costumes for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's The King and I. She subsequently worked for other leading designers including Lucinda Ballard and Raoul Pene Du Bois before embarking on designing for plays on her own in the 1960s.

Klotz won the first of her six Tony Awards for costume design for the 1971 Stephen Sondheim musical Follies. In her Broadway career she worked on 58 Broadway shows, as an assistant on 26 and the designer on 32.

Costume design Klotz designed costumes for many Broadway productions, including: Kiss of the Spider Woman City of Angels Jerry's Girls On the Twentieth Century Side by Side by Sondheim Pacific Overtures A Little Night Music Follies It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman The Best Laid Plans The Owl and the Pussycat (see "Background" re stage version of film) Nobody Loves an Albatross Never Too Late Take Her, She's Mine

Death Klotz died at her Manhattan home of cardiac arrest, four days after her 86th birthday. Her only immediate survivor was her niece, Suzanne DeMarco. Klotz's partner, producer and stage manager Ruth Mitchell, died in 2000.

Awards

All of the Tony Awards Klotz won were for musicals directed by Hal Prince, with whom she had a long association. Her sixth award, for the 1994 revival of Show Boat, gave her more Tonys than any previous costume designer.

1995: Show Boat 1993: Kiss of the Spider Woman: The Musical 1985: Grind 1976: Pacific Overtures 1973: A Little Night Music 1972: Follies

She won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design five times, three L.A. Critic Circle Awards, and two Outer Critics Circle Awards. In 2002, she received the Patricia Zipprodt Award from the Fashion Institute of Technology; and in 2005, she won the Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award.