Bob Mackie: 60+ Years of Iconic Costumes, From Cher to Miley

LGBTQ&A

Jeffrey Masters

Society & Culture

4.7 • 703 Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Throughout his decades-long career, Bob Mackie has designed costumes and gowns for some of the most legendary names in entertainment history: Cher, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Whitney Houston, Carol Burnett, and Elton John, among many others. He joins LGBTQ&A to talk about his longtime (and still ongoing) collaboration with Cher, the infamous Gone With The Wind curtain dress from The Carol Burnett Show, and gay life in Hollywood in the 1960s and 70s.

His new documentary, Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion is now streaming on Prime Video.

This is a part of our special series, The LGBTQ+ Elders Project. ⁠Click here⁠ to listen to our recent interview with Martha Shelly, activist and co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front.

LGBTQ&A is an independent, listener-supported podcast. Please consider joining our ⁠Substack⁠ to help support our work

LGBTQ&A is hosted and produced by Jeffrey Masters. ⁠@jeffmasters1

Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, what does Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Streisand, share, and also younger stars like
0:09.5	Miley Cyrus and Zendaya, what do all of them have in common? Well, as you probably guessed
0:16.2	by the episode title, they've all worn gowns designed by one of the all-time great designers, Bob
0:22.6	Mackey.
0:23.6	Over the course of his 60-plus year career, Bob Mackey has helped to craft the visual identity
0:31.6	of some of the greatest entertainers who ever lived.
0:34.6	I'm thinking about Whitney Houston, Elton John, I already mentioned Cher.
0:39.2	There's almost too much to list here, to be completely honest. But the ones you'll hear us
0:43.5	focus the most on in our interview today with Bob is to begin with Carol Burnett and the famous
0:49.3	curtain dress. That's the one from the Carol Burnett show Spoof of Gone with the Wind,
0:56.4	with the curtain rod that extends across the shoulders.
0:59.0	That dress now lives at the Smithsonian.
1:06.3	And then secondly, perhaps the most fruitful and exciting collaboration of his life has been with Cher.
1:12.1	Bob started designing for her when she was just 19, and he really wasn't that much older. Bob designed all of her gowns for the Sunny and Cher show, for her tours, music videos, and of course, that show-stopping look from the 1986 Oscars, where Cher came out on stage in that huge feathered Mohawk headdress.
1:26.6	As you can see, I did receive my Academy booklet on how to dress like a serious actress.
1:35.0	All these many, many, would have become really historic designs,
1:39.3	are documented really beautifully in the new documentary called Bob Mackie, Naked Illusion, and that is now streaming on Amazon Prime video.
1:49.4	So without further ado, I'm Jeffrey Masters, and this is LGBTQ&A with Bob Mackey.
2:02.6	So you've dressed some of the most iconic and famous entertainers in history.
2:07.9	I have, but it just kind of happened.
2:09.5	I don't know.
2:09.9	I mean, I didn't work for, you know, years to get to that point.
	...

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