AustLit

'Dear Orry, 
You don't know me. I was only fourteen and still at Vermont High School in Melbourne when you died, too young, of liver cancer, in February 1964, at Cedars-Sinai, Beverly Hills, with your bestie Ann Warner by your side. ' (Introduction)

'Women He's Undressed is a cinema length documentary that explores the life of Australia's most prolific costume designer. Until now Orry-Kelly has been unacknowledged in his country of birth and pretty well forgotten in the adopted country of his greatest success. During the boom years of Hollywood he was the costume designer on an astonishing 282 motion pictures. He designed for the stars like Marilyn Munroe, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Rosalind Russell, Errol Flynn and many more of the immortals. His films included Some Like It Hot, Casablanca, An American in Paris and Now, Voyager. Orry-Kelly (Jack to his friends) won three Academy Awards and was nominated for a fourth. Orry-Kelly was Head of Warner Brothers Costume Department during the richest period of American film, the establishment of the dream factory and its effect on mass culture. He was outrageous, witty, outspoken, a drinker and uncompromising but he survived partially protected by his friendship with Jack and Ann ... Written by Damien Parer' (Publication summary)

This film reveals the many lives of one larger-than-life woman: flamboyant design pioneer Florence Broadhurst. Born in outback Australia in 1899, Florence was a singer and dancer in Shanghai in the '20s and ran her own fashion boutique in London in the '30s, before sweeping into Sydney society as a painter and charity queen. But it was in her last incarnation that she really made her mark, shaking up conservative Australia with her bold, exotic wallpaper designs. Now, with her prints in huge demand internationally, the times have finally caught up with this glamorous, complicated, unconventional woman, whose brutal murder in 1977 has never been solved.

In England during the early 1800s, Oscar, a young but good-hearted misfit, believes that God has given him a sign to leave his father and his faith and join the Church of England while Lucinda, a teenaged Australian heiress, has a strong desire to liberate her sex from the confines of male-dominated culture. She buys a glass factory, and dreams of building a church made almost entirely of glass and then transporting it to the Australian outback. Oscar and Lucinda meet on a ship going to Australia; once there, they are each ostracised from society for different reasons, and join forces. Since both are passionate gamblers, Lucinda bets Oscar her entire inheritance that he cannot transport the glass church to the outback safely. Oscar accepts her wager, and this leads to the events that change both their lives forever.

Beth, a successful writer of great energy and humour, lives with her French husband, her daughter by a first marriage, and a lodger, in her inner-city home known as Chez Nous. Everyone gets along, despite some occasional tension, until Beth's much younger sister returns from overseas.

'After losing her job and being stranded when her car breaks down, Lilli rents a trailer by the sea. There she meets a lonely young girl who lives with her grand-mother. It transpires that the girl is Lilli's own daughter.'

Source: BFI (http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/232569). (Sighted: 6/3/2014)

Based on the book by Miles Franklin, this feature film tells the story of an Australian country girl who, at the end of the nineteenth century, wants to make her own way in the outside world.

Rejecting an offer of marriage from a wealthy suitor (who is also her childhood friend), she instead finds herself obligated to work off her father's debt to a neighbouring family, for whom she works as governess and housekeeper. Returning home, she again rejects her suitor's proposal, this time in favour of writing a novel based on her experiences.

In the country, an old woman recounts her bitter memories to her younger friend, who is herself struggling with an insecure relationship with her boyfriend.