Robert DeMora dies at 85; Helped make Bette Midler look divine

The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, March 29, 2024


Robert DeMora dies at 85; Helped make Bette Midler look divine
A photo provided by Bette Midler, of Robert DeMora, a witty costume designer and art director whose fantastical, mischievous creations embellished Midler on stage and screen, as well as the casts of “Risky Business” and “Marathon Man” among other films, died on Sept. 21, 2020, at his home in Jeffersonville, N.Y., in upstate Sullivan County. He was 85. The cause was heart failure, said Rick Miller, a technical producer and concert road manager who was a longtime friend and collaborator. Bette Midler via The New York Times.

by Penelope Green



NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- Robert DeMora, a witty costume designer and art director whose fantastical, mischievous creations embellished Bette Midler on stage and screen, as well as the casts of “Risky Business” and “Marathon Man” among other films, died Sept. 21 at his home in Jeffersonville, New York, in upstate Sullivan County. He was 85.

The cause was heart failure, said Rick Miller, a technical producer and concert road manager who was a longtime friend and collaborator.

For more than four decades, DeMora amplified and often art directed Midler’s ever more elaborate stage extravaganzas with rigor, scholarship and a Dadaist’s sense of the absurd. That included the ruched pink sequin gown of her “Divine Miss M” days, as well as the sparkly spangled tail and sheathe of Delores DeLago, Midler’s bawdy, wheelchair-riding mermaid, and the many iterations of her backup singers, the Harlettes.

“She wears costumes that Busby Berkeley would have found excessive,” Roger Ebert once wrote about her 1980 concert film, “Divine Madness.” (He meant it in a good way.)

DeMora and Midler met in the early 1970s, when she was just starting out and “he was already part of a certain coterie of people all living in the Village and trying to have a big effect for very little money,” Midler said in a phone interview.

“The first thing he did that really knocked me out were these waitress costumes that opened up and became the American flag,” she said. “Every bead had a meaning and a history behind it. His eye was impeccable, and he was a genius at doing things on a shoestring.”

Midler described a volcano, part of the set of her 1999-2000 “Divine Miss Millennium” tour, that was made from stretch velvet and a RibbonLift, a sort of stage crane. Instead of fancy pyrotechnics, a production manager hid behind the volcano with a fire extinguisher that he sprayed to simulate the eruption. “It was great,” she said, “until one day it got away from him and sprayed everyone onstage.”

DeMora explained it this way to Entertainment Design magazine in 2000: “We don’t need effects; we have her. She is the effect!”

DeMora also worked with many other performers. For Joel Grey’s “Borscht Capades ’94: A Vaudeville Gone Mishuga,” a live music revue that honored his father, Mickey Katz, and his life as a vaudevillian, DeMora dressed Grey in an outlandish cowboy outfit — oversized chaps with fringes and a cowboy hat that threatened to swallow him.

For another bit, he turned Grey into a duck, hot-gluing feathers to a yellow shirt for a number called. “Geschray of the Vild Katschke” (in English, that would be “Call of the Wild Duck” — the song was a parody of Frankie Laine’s 1950 hit “The Cry of the Wild Goose”).

“He was outrageous and unafraid,” Grey said in an interview. “He had his own style and vivaciousness in putting together costumes. And a real sense of humor.”

The theater being what it is, DeMora’s work was not without its share of dramas. Midler recounted the prelude to a “Divine Madness” show that ended up on Broadway in 1979. One number was an homage to punk. Toni Basil, the early-’80s pop star (“Mickey”) who was a choreographer on the production, declared that DeMora’s costumes just weren’t punk enough.




“She considered herself in the vanguard of the punk scene, and she took a pair of scissors to the costumes, to punkify them,” Midler said. “Of course, Bob had a fit, and they didn’t speak for years.

“Oh, to see these two over-the-top professionals go at it hammer and tongs! I guess it was vandalism, but it was also hilarious.”

Robert Schuler DeMora Jr. was born Oct. 22, 1934, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. His father was a machinist; his mother, Winifred (Snyder) DeMora, was a homemaker.

DeMora discovered theater at McCaskey High School, where he designed, directed and produced several student plays. He attended the Whitney School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut, and then the Cooper Union in Manhattan.

When Midler became involved in urban philanthropy, like the New York Restoration Project, which supports open spaces in underserved communities, and lesser-known projects like a theater for Washington Irving High School in Manhattan, DeMora was an unofficial project manager.

“He could take anything on a low budget and turn it into brilliance,” said Brian Fassett, a lighting designer who worked with DeMora at Washington Irving.

In addition to his work for Midler, DeMora designed costumes and sets for children’s and regional theater and ballet, and costumes for music videos and films including “Risky Business,” “Marathon Man” and “The Birdcage.”

In 1997, DeMora was nominated for two Emmys, for art direction and costume design, for “Diva Las Vegas,” a documentary about Midler’s tour of the same name.

DeMora is survived by a sister, Michelle Dorsey. Another sister, Audrey Caldwell, died in 2015. His partner, Marc Paul Henri, died in 1989.

DeMora, who for years worked out of a studio on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village, moved to a house in Sullivan County a while ago. He filled it with his “trash and treasures,” as he called his collections.

“The place was packed with books and prints and clippings,” Fassett said. “The garage was like a museum. There was the leather jacket from ‘Cruising,’ a sketch from ‘The Birdcage,’ the set of Ray-Bans from ‘Risky Business,’ and he’d pick something up, blow off the dust and tell you a story about it.”

In recent years, however, it became harder and hard to extract DeMora from his house, his friend Miller said. If you phoned or emailed to propose a trip to Manhattan, or even the grocery store, he would reply with his trademark rebuttal: “Dream on, Louise.”

© 2020 The New York Times Company










Today's News

October 23, 2020

An artist is still telling her deep truths

Marian Goodman Gallery to close London venue, transitioning to new exhibition strategy

US customs seize ancient carved stones from Cameroon

David Hockney's Portrait of Sir David Webster achieves £12,865,000 at auction

Richard Avedon's wall-size ambitions

Deana Lawson awarded Hugo Boss Prize 2020

Discover the art of chairs at the Georgia Museum of Art

The little-known women behind some well-known landscapes

Alison Jacques Gallery announces representation of Nicola L.

From 2 artists, 2 ways to tell stories of Black America

At the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum, all athletes are equal

Christie's announces 'The Golden Twenties: Berlin through the Eyes of Modern Artists'

Piotr Uklański presents a new body of figurative paintings at Massimo De Carlo

The MIT List Visual Arts Center opens "No Wrong Holes: Thirty Years of Nayland Blake"

'Dalva Brothers: Parisian Taste in New York' totals $5,885,500 at Christie's New York

BRAFA 2021 will go ahead modelled on a new concept: 'BRAFA @ HOME in the galleries'

Seven artists records for Travel Posters at Swann

Rare Posters Auction #82 presents 500 rare and iconic works

Sèvres Enamel masterpiece joins distinguished decorative arts collection at the Snite Museum

Chanel by Warhol brings $225,000; Applause by Banksy sells for seven times the estimate for $57,500

Robert DeMora dies at 85; Helped make Bette Midler look divine

Museum of Arts and Design names Interim Director and elects two new Trustees to Board

Freeman's announces latest Modern & Contemporary Art auction with fresh-to-market works

Eric Firestone Gallery announces new space and representation of FUTURA2000

The role of colour in making a sale

Sights in the Silver State: Discovering Contemporary Exhibits at the Las Vegas Palms Casino

When Renting is Better Than Buying

Why organic CBD oils are considered highly safe

Some of the Most Famous Paintings that Explore the Motif of Gambling




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez

sa gaming free credit
Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful