Irene Maud Lentz (December 8, 1901 – November 15, 1962),[1] also known mononymously and professionally as Irene, was an American actress turned fashion designer and costume designer. Her work as a clothing designer in Los Angeles led to her career as a costume designer for films in the 1930s. Lentz also worked under the name Irene Gibbons.[2]
Early life
Born in Baker, Montana to Emil Lents and Maud Walters, Lentz started out as an actress under her birth name, appearing in secondary roles in silent films beginning with Mack Sennett in 1921. She played ingénue parts opposite Sennett's leading comedians, Ben Turpin and Billy Bevan. Lentz was directed in her first film by Sennett's production chief, F. Richard Jones; their professional relationship matured into a personal one. They had been married for less than a year when Jones succumbed to tuberculosis in 1930.
Lentz had been taught sewing as a child and with a flair for style, she decided to open a small dress shop. The success of her designs in her tiny store eventually led to an offer from the Bullocks Wilshireluxurydepartment store to design for their Ladies Custom Salon which catered to a wealthy clientele including a number of Hollywood stars.
Through her work, Lentz met and married short story author and screenwriter Eliot Gibbons, brother of multi-Academy Award winning Cedric Gibbons, head of art direction at MGM Studios. Despite her success, working under the powerful set designer Cedric while being married to his brother Eliot was not easy.[citation needed] Irene confided to her close friend Doris Day that the marriage to Eliot was not a happy one.[a] Generally regarded as the most important and influential production designer in the history of American films, Cedric Gibbons hired Lentz when gown designer Adrian left MGM in 1941 to open his own fashion house. By 1943 she was a leading costume supervisor at MGM, earning international recognition for her "soufflé creations" and is remembered for her avant-garde wardrobe for Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
In 1950, Lentz left MGM to open her own fashion house. After Lentz was out of the film industry for nearly ten years, Doris Day requested her services for the production Midnight Lace (Universal, 1960). The following year she did the costume design for another Day film, Lover Come Back (1961), and during 1962 worked on her last production, A Gathering of Eagles (released in 1963).
In 1962, after Doris Day noticed that Lentz seemed upset and nervous, Lentz confided in her that she was in love with actor Gary Cooper and that he was the only man that she had ever loved.[3][b] Cooper had died in 1961.
On November 15, 1962, three weeks before her sixty-first birthday, Lentz took room 1129 at the Knickerbocker Hotel, Los Angeles, checking in under an assumed name. She jumped to her death from her bathroom window.
^ ab"Irene", in Suicide in the Entertainment Industry: An Encyclopedia of 840 Twentieth Century Cases, by David K. Frasier (McFarland, 2005) pp. 156-157
^In Doris Day's autobiography, she wrote that in 1962, Irene "had an unhappy marriage to a man who lived out of the state and only occasionally came to visit her."
^Day also wrote that she got the feeling that she was the first person to whom Irene had confided this information about Gary Cooper. "Thinking about it now, I cannot honestly say whether Irene's love was one-sided or whether she and Cooper had actually had or were having an affair."[3]
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