Frank Thompson

Frank L. Thompson (August 19, 1920, Shawnee, Oklahoma - June 4, 1977, Los Angeles, California) was an American costume designer for the stage and screen. Active as a designer on Broadway from 1947 to 1972, he designed costumes for the original productions of plays by Noël Coward, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and Tennessee Williams among other prominent writers. He also designed costumes for several Broadway musicals, including works by Irving Berlin, Lorenz Hart, and Richard Rodgers. He is best remembered for his costume designs for the American Ballet Theatre's celebrated 1976 production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker starring Mikhail Baryshnikov which became an American television classic, and for his designs for the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass.

Life and career Frank Leath Thompson, born part Cherokee in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to Frank W. and Carrie Thompson. He was a 1938 graduate of Shawnee High School and attended the University of Oklahoma one year before entering the navy. At his discharge after the war he stayed in California and attended of the University of California. Beginning his career on Broadway in 1946 as a wardrobe assistant, his first work as lead costume designer was for the short lived Monte Carlo and Alma Sanders musical Louisiana Lady (1947) and the short lived original Broadway production of J.B. Priestley's The Linden Tree (1948). He also worked as assistant costume designer on several prominent productions of the 1940s and 1950s, including High Button Shoes (1947), Where's Charley? (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949), Out of This World (1950), Seventeen (1951), My Darlin' Aida (1952), Kismet (1953), and The Pajama Game (1954). That same year he designed the costumes for the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein Mass which was commissioned in honor of John F. Kennedy by Jacqueline Kennedy after the president's assassination.