She Designed Movie Outfits That The Killer Calls ‘Just Like Mine’

Goodness gracious: leopard lapels and shiny suits! Stepping out as Jerry Lee Lewis in “Great Balls of Fire,” Dennis Quaid’s clothes are the perfect fit for the role of The Killer, thanks to Los Angeles designer Mary Kay Stolz.

After looking at hours of videos, Stolz re-created Lewis’ 1950s wardrobe, shiny suits and all. “It was a fine line to get the clothes recognizable without overdoing it,” she said in her Hollywood Hills studio.

The biggest help, Stolz said, was a video of Elvis Presley footage. “That’s what Jerry Lee was aspiring to.”

Stolz’s job in “Great Balls of Fire” was similar to what she did for Quaid in “The Big Easy,” designing the clothes of one character.

In “The Big Easy,” Quaid played a New Orleans cop on the take with a wardrobe that a police officer would be hard-pressed to afford. “He had all his clothes made,” Stolz said. “We were giving a character a look.”

In some ways, the look of Quaid’s clothes in “Great Balls of Fire” is similar to “The Big Easy,” said Tracy Tynan, “Great Balls” costume designer. “They were the same ‘40s and ‘50s style,” she said. “They weren’t that radically different.”

Stolz, who had also done concert clothes for Eddie Murphy, Prince, Sheila E. and Kim Carnes, views movie costumes as part of the nonverbal narrative. “They must tell something about the character and make the story proceed the way it should.”

After watching the ‘50s footage, Stolz said she noticed that the clothes entertainers like Lewis and Elvis wore made them stand out from the band. The styles were not that much different, she said, “but they hung differently, they were drapier.” In addition, the singers pushed the norm a little further. “They were a little more theatrical.”

Tynan said Lewis and Elvis used to buy clothes at a Memphis store called Lansky’s. “Black entertainers got their clothes there,” Tynan said. “They had a much more interesting sense of style.” The bands dressed more conservatively, with plaid coats and string ties, she said. Lansky’s, still owned by Bernard Lansky, is now a big and tall men’s shop--with nine locations in Greater Memphis--and an Elvis Presley gift shop. “We had real sharp, way-out clothes. People thought we were crazy, but we had the sharpest clothes,” Lansky said. “We were the outfitters to the King. Jerry Lee started coming in right after Elvis.”

For “Great Balls of Fire,” Stolz and Tynan had to take some liberties because much of the ‘50s footage was in black-and-white and some fabrics weren’t available. “We didn’t know what the colors or the fabrics were,” Tynan said.

Stolz did find some ‘50s fabrics, though, from stores in Beverly Hills and in St. Louis.

“There’s still lots of stuff left over from the ‘50s in St. Louis,” she said.

While Stolz, who is also a senior design instructor at Otis/Parsons, is building a reputation for performance clothes and flashy movie costumes, she doesn’t like to see out-of-character clothes in films. “I don’t like it when terrorists look like GQ models,” she says.

She did the opposite of fancy dress while working as costume designer for “Weeds,” which starred Nick Nolte as a convict who goes straight by writing a play.

“People told me: ‘You can’t do real clothes,’ ” Stolz said. “I finally got to prove that I could in ‘Weeds.’ ”

She wanted unstylish clothes that looked as though they belonged to ex-cons. To get that effect, she did such things as having clothes run over with a car and pants pockets abused to the point where they looked as if a guy had been “sticking his hands in them every day for five years.”

Stolz started out in manufacturing but doesn’t plan to head back into street wear any time soon. “I’m trying to do mostly movies,” she said. “I’d much rather do that than try to think of what women in the Midwest want to wear to work next year.”

Besides, she said, in the movies, “when you make people look good, they like you and everyone’s happy.”

And how about The Killer himself, who had an active role in the production of the film and has been promoting the movie in everything from Esquire and Rolling Stone spreads with Quaid to the unveiling of a Jerry Lee Lewis star on Hollywood Boulevard?

Well, he ended up wearing one of Stolz’s suits for a promotional photo, Tynan said. And, Stolz said, the best compliment for her was when Lewis said, “These clothes look just like mine.”