Joan Bridge

Joan Alice Bridge (13 March 1909 – 8 December 2009)

Career

Colour consultant In 1939, Joan Bridge was a colour adviser on the only feature film to be made in Dufaycolor, Sons of the Sea. During World War Two, Natalie Kalmus, Technicolor’s head of colour control was absent from Great Britain and Joan Bridge was the colour adviser on British wartime Technicolor productions. Natalie Kalmus returned in November 1945. Notwithstanding, Kalmus enjoys a credit on these wartime films as part of her contract with Technicolor. The two women shared British Technicolor production credits until 1949 after which Joan Bride had sole credit. Film historian Sarah Street has commented on the different experiences of the two women: Bridge's work was admired by cinematographers such as Oswald Morris who had not "accorded Kalmus the same courtesy", in fact she was met with hostility; it is likely that Bridge's personality and nationality helped to avoid the criticism experienced by her colleague in British studios. Street concludes "there is no doubt that the combination of Kalmus and Bridge assisted Technicolor in Britain, a record that has won begrudging recognition over the years".

Bridge's role drew her into a large number of productions, and she worked on up to six films per year in the late 1940s. Cecil Beaton, who worked with Joan Bridge on An Ideal Husband (1947), somewhat dismissively described her as "a color expert, run[ning] about with odd microscopic pieces of material and a lot of shop talk". Nevertheless, the costume designer did change a yellow dress planned for a pink boudoir scene when Bridge questioned the harmonisation of colours.

Frequent collaborators in this period were directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which whom Bridge worked six times: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943-uncredited), Altogether, she is credited in over 100 three-strip Technicolor movies, including the last to be filmed using this technique: The Feminine Touch (1956). She is credited as a colour consultant in a handful of films in the late 1950s including Richard III (1955) and Ben Hur (1959). In the latter, she collaborated with the costume designer Elizabeth Haffenden.

Costume designer Joan Bridge had first met Elizabeth Haffenden while working at Gainsborough Studios in the 1940s. They had a successful partnership in costume design throughout the 1960s and 70s. Between 1958 and her retirement, Bridge is credited with creating the costumes for more than 20 different productions.

Interviewed for The Scotsman during the production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1968, Bridge explained the importance of colour in costume work, stating that the camera did lie, and that the hue of clothes changed once seen on films. She described the "wonderful greyness" of the city's "grey buildings under grey skies" had been used in the checked tweeds of Miss Brodie's cape and the girls' school uniforms. Bridge and Haffenden explained their joint work as "developing the characters by subtle ways, with the clothes they wear... it's not just a case of finding pretty outfits for everyone".

On her retirement from the film industry in 1980, Bridge moved to Totteridge and became a member of South Herts Golf Club where she was an active player into her nineties.

The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders

A Man for All Seasons

Half a Sixpence

Best Costume Design Julia