Dolly Tree

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Dolly Tree (17 March 1899–17 May 1962) was an English illustrator, actress and costume designer who during the 1930s and 1940s designed dresses for Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell, Maureen O'Sullivan and Judy Garland among others in addition to costuming historical dramas such as David Copperfield (1935) and A Tale of Two Cities (1935). Born in Westbury-on-Trym in Bristol in 1899 as Dorothy Marian Isbell, the daughter of Charles Edwin Isbell (1863-1942) , a solicitor, and Bertha Marian (née Keith-Williams) at an early age she discovered an aptitude for drawing before being drawn towards a career on the stage. In 1912 her family relocated to London and she began her career as an artist after seeing the play Vanity Fair at the Palace Theatre in 1916. Of the play she later wrote, ‘I was fascinated by the wonderful dancing and art of Regine Flory and admired her so much that I started to design a special poster of her, really to amuse myself, based on my recollections of this vivid artist seen across the footlights.’ A friend took her drawing to Sir Alfred Butt who bought it and gave her a two-year contract (c1917-1918) to design posters and programme covers for of all his shows including The Boy (1917), The Beauty Spot (1918), Going Up (1918), Telling the Tale (1918), The Latest Craze (1919), The Kiss Call (1919), Very Good Eddie (1919) and Hello America (1919). Her comic illustrations also appeared in various British newspapers and magazines.

Between 1915 and 1918 Dolly Tree appeared in five British silent films as an actress. In the United Kingdom her career as a costume designer began in the 1920s on various cabaret shows in London in particular; in 1923 she collaborated on her first film, Woman to Woman, directed by Graham Cutts and with Alfred Hitchcock as the co-screenwriter, artistic director and assistant director. Her work became popular in Paris where she became the first English person and the first woman to design for the Folies Bergère.