Luster Bayless, the legendary Hollywood costumer and costume designer who outfitted John Wayne for more than a dozen features, from McLintock! and True Grit to Rooster Cogburn and The Shootist, has died. He was 84.
Bayless died Friday of natural causes brought on by dementia at his home in Canyon Country, California, his daughter, Diana Foster, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Bayless’ résumé included John Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Robert Stevenson’s Mary Poppins (1964) and That Darn Cat! (1965), Hal Needham’s Smokey & the Bandit (1977), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) and the 1987 HBO movie The Quick and the Dead, starring one of his biggest admirers, Sam Elliott.
Known for his incredible work ethic, the principled Mississippi native also was a costume designer on Norwood (1970), starring Glen Campbell; Don Siegel’s Telefon (1977), featuring Charles Bronson; and Alan J. Pakula’s Comes a Horseman (1978), starring James Caan and Jane Fonda.
Plus, Bayless was the guy who picked out the iconic Stetson that Robert Duvall (hat size 7 3/8) wore as Augustus “Gus” McCrae on the fabled 1989 CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove.
In 1977, Bayless launched American Costume Co. (now known as United*American Costume) in North Hollywood as the first independent, non-studio outfit to furnish all the wardrobe and wardrobe crew for a set budget.
“He was the first one to break away from the studios,” his daughter noted.
Bayless started out with The Sacketts, the 1979 NBC miniseries that starred Elliott, Tom Selleck and Jeff Osterhage. That established American Costume in the world of Western filmmaking and paved the way for its first feature, Warner Bros.’ Tom Horn (1980), produced by and starring Steve McQueen.
The company went on to supply the wardrobe on everything from the The Thorn Birds and Little House on the Prairie to The Natural (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Hoffa (1992), Unforgiven (1992), Titanic (1997), Seabiscuit (2003), Django Unchained (2012) and the new Perry Mason series.
The son of a sharecropper, Bayless was born on Oct. 26, 1937, in Ruleville, Mississippi. He was the captain of his high school football team, then spent two years in the U.S. Navy.
Bayless hitchhiked to Los Angeles when a friend arranged a job interview for him at Western Costume, and he was immediately hired in 1959. He served as a staff costumer there through 1961 while picking up extra cash tending bar at The Playboy, next to the Paramount lot, and parking cars for another L.A. pub, Tom Bergin’s.
After he worked on several Disney films and with Wayne for the first time in McLintock! (1963), the Duke made him an offer. “He said, ‘Look, I want you to do all my movies,’” Bayless recalled in 2013. “I said, ‘OK, let’s go for it.’ He said, ‘I’ve got six of them lined up right now.’”
Their collaborations would include True Grit (1969), The Undefeated (1969), Chisum (1970), Howard Hawks’ Rio Lobo (1970), Big Jake (1971), The Cowboys (1972), Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973), The Train Robbers (1973), McQ (1974), Rooster Cogburn (1975), Brannigan (1975) and Wayne’s final film, The Shootist (1976).
Once asked about how he selected a hat for Wayne to wear, he replied, “I just threw a bunch of them down on the floor, and he picked up the one that he liked.” He also said he really didn’t “dress” Wayne, “he dressed himself.”
A member of Motion Picture Costumers Local 705 and the Costume Designers Guild Local 892, Bayless received a lifetime achievement award from the Motion Picture Costumers group in 2013 and the Costume Designers Guild’s Legacy Award in 2018.
He also operated the Hollywood Movie Costume Museum in his hometown of Ruleville for years.
Survivors include his daughters, Christy and Diana — now CEO of United*American Costume — and his sister, Reta.
He was married to Patricia Voght, whom he first met at Disney when she was a studio tour guide, from 1965 until their divorce in the mid-’80s. They wed on his lunch hour, and then he went back to work.
Source: Hollywood
