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Rosalind Russell (actress): “Norma [Shearer] and I had a scene in a dressing room and I'm talking a mile a

minute. There's a woman down on the floor fiddling with a hem. There I am buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. ‘Just think
of it like a beef [George] Cukor had told me. ‘Get into her ear, and it she turns away, get into her other ear.’

”In the midst of my buzzing, Norma left the set. When she came back she was wearing a dress lett over from
Marie Antoinette. It had never been worn; it was black velvet and it had an enormous hoop skirt. ‘I just hated that
other dress, George,’ she said. He studied her, he studied the dress, and then he said, ‘Take a Few minutes.' The
set was a tiny dressing room with a platform, and once Norma was in the gown with the hoops, I wasn't going to

be able to get anywhere near her ears.
”‘Posalind,’ Cukor said, ‘I want you to stand on that plattorm. Now pull those tull»length mirrors around her,’
he told the prop men. ‘Now, Norma,’ he said, ‘you go stand next to her as close as you can get,’ Norma came up

beside me, and Cukor surveyed his handiwork. ‘Light that, tellows,’ he said."

THE WOMEN (1939) - ADRIAN, COSTUME DESIGNER