Anna Hill Johnstone


Anna Hill Johnstone was an American costume designer who was born in Greenville, South Carolina on April 7, 1913, and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. Johnstone designed costumes for more than sixty films and received two Academy Award nominations for her work on The Godfather and Ragtime. In 2006, she was posthumously awarded the Costume Designers Guild "Hall of Fame" award. Johnstone, whose married name was Robinson, chose to be credited under her maiden name, and was often referred to as "Johnnie." Johnstone worked with some of the most respected and idiosyncratic American film directors such as Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, Frank Perry, Miloš Forman, and Francis Ford Coppola. Some of Johnstone's film credits included Serpico, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, Baby Doll, Dog Day Afternoon, A Face in the Crowd, The Swimmer and The Godfather.

Career

Anna Hill Johnstone worked for over forty years in the film business on more than sixty films and was a frequent collaborator with Elia Kazan and Sidney Lumet. She got her start working on student productions at Barnard College, later becoming a seamstress for summer stock stage shows. She graduated from Barnard in 1934 and forty years later, received another honorary degree there. Her first full credit for costume design was for the 1937 Broadway hit Having Wonderful Time. Other stage productions would follow, including Bell, Book and Candle and A Streetcar Named Desire. In 1948, Johnstone made the move to working in films, obtaining her first costume design credit on Portrait of Jennie. In 1953, Johnstone began her long association with noted film director Elia Kazan on his Academy Award-winning film, On the Waterfront. Other Kazan films that she worked on include, East of Eden, Baby Doll, A Face in the Crowd, Wild River, Splendor in the Grass and America America. She worked on more than a half dozen pictures with director Sidney Lumet including Fail Safe, Serpico, The Verdict and Dog Day Afternoon. In addition to her work with Lumet and Kazan, Johnstone was also a frequent collaborator with The Perrys, Frank and Eleanor, on films such as David and Lisa and The Swimmer.

Personal life

For more than fifty years, Anna Hill Johnstone was married to Curville Jones Robinson, a mechanical engineer who died in 1989. Johnstone died in October 1992 after a long illness at the Kimball Farms nursing home in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Selected filmography

Awards and nominations