Remembering Phyllis Dalton, ‘The Princess Bride’ Designer (1925-2026)

Phyllis Dalton, MBE, was born on October 16, 1925. Much lauded for her multi-decade career, she collected two Academy Awards, for “Doctor Zhivago” (195) and “Henry V” (1985); two BAFTAs, “The Hireling” (1973) and a “Special Craft Award” in 1993; a Primetime Emmy, “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (1983); and a Saturn Award for “The Princess Bride” (1987).

During the early years of WWII, Phyllis Dalton attended the Ealing School of art. She worked on Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film, Henry V, before leaving to train as a Wren for Bletchley Circle, the now infamous British World War Two code-breaking facility. But it seems she found this work dull, and this piece of trivia has always fascinated me. As has much of the designer’s personal story, her own history.

In an interview of Dalton, from the program for her 2012 BAFTA tribute, the designer explained how she found her way back to costume design after WWII finally ended.

“When we were demobbed in 1946, I entered a contest through my godmother- Vogue ran a fashion journalism competition in those days. I didn’t win a prize, but I came quite high up, and they offered to help me find a job. The Vogue editor at the time, Audrey Withers, gave me an introduction to the queen bee costume designer at the old Gainsborough Studios and I started as an assistant at the Ilsington studios.”

One of the films Dalton assisted on was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), costumes designed by Edith Head, which could not be considered a bad start. Dalton’s first credit as costume designer was for the 1953 film, Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue, starring Richard Todd and Glynis Johns.

Dalton worked with actor Kenneth Branagh three times; on Henry V (1989), the neo-noir thriller Dead Again (1991) and the romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing (1993), which also serves as Dalton’s final screen credit. Over the span of her career, Dalton worked on more than 40 feature films, over more than half a century.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) required both precision military uniforms and a diverse range of ethnocentric costume design. The film was nominated for, and won, 10 Academy Awards, but Phyllis Dalton was not nominated. In the book he wrote about making the film, director David Lean wrote, “I blame Columbia and Sam for not somehow getting you nominated for your wonderful job. You did it so beautifully that I think they failed to realize every costume was an original by you.”

Military uniforms as costumes are a subject my regular readers will know I am very interested in. Dalton designed more of them than almost anyone, they were listed like a litany at her 2012 tribute. “The Red Army, the British Army, the U.S. Army, the Cossacks, the Nazis, the Afghans, the Knights of the Round Table — twice — the Jacobites and the Jacobins …”

Dalton received massive praise for the swashbuckling costumes in Rob Reiner‘s The Princess Bride (1987). Based on a 1973 novel by William Goldman, which itself is based on a fake historical novel, this film was an intrinsic part of being a teenager in America for multiple generations.

Though I never had the privilege to speak with Dalton, I feel connected to her regardless. Her work taught me about costumes, why they matter and how deftly they can be used. When I was a child, my mother was a librarian at the children’s department at the Beverly Hills Public Library. I spent a lot of time there as a child, and to me it was very close to heaven. I’ve always read a lot, and that definitely comes from my childhood. But so does my love of film as a media for storytelling.

The BGPL of my youth, the 1990s, had in its children’s department a small auditorium. It was a room sectioned off, for story time and other kid’s events, and it had a projector attached to a VCR, to project tapes on the wall-sized screen on the back wall. I spent many hours there with stacks of classic films I’d borrowed from that section.

I will always remember watching Doctor Zhivago that way, and the same is true for The Princess Bride. And outside of the library, one of my dearest friends, a woman I’ve known since we were theater nerds in middle school, we spent the late 1990s watching The Princess Bride on VHS so many times that I still have most of the dialogue memorized.

To this day, The Man in Black and his beloved Buttercup, Inigo Montoya, Fezzick, Vizzini, Miracle Max and Valerie his wife (not a witch), even the awful Prince Humperdinck and his stooge Count Rugen, the characters and their costumes are one and the same. They are inseparable. Phyllis Dalton taught me that such a thing was possible.

If you’re interested in more of her story, are some lovely photos of the designer and her work, also from the BAFTA tribute held to honor Phyllis Dalton on November 23, 2012.

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