Jean Muir

Jean Elizabeth Muir, CBE, FCSD (17 July 1928 – 28 May 1995) was a British fashion designer (though she herself preferred to be called a dressmaker).

Early life and career

Jean Muir was born in London, the daughter of Cyril Muir, a draper's floor superintendent, and his wife, Phyllis Coy. Her father was an Aberdonian, and Muir would attribute her creative pragmatism and self-discipline to this Scottish ancestry. Her parents separated while she was still a child, and she and her brother Christopher were brought up in Bedford by their mother.

She was educated at the Bedford Girls' Modern School (subsequently renamed Dame Alice Harpur School, and as of 2010, merged into the Bedford Girls' School). While she was not academically outstanding, she showed a precocious talent for needlework, claiming to have been able to knit, embroider, and sew by the age of six.

At the age of seventeen, she left school and went to work at an electoral registration office at Bedford Town Hall. She then moved to London, where she worked briefly in a solicitor's office before taking a stockroom job at Liberty & Co in 1950. She worked her way upwards to selling over the counter, and then despite her lack of formal art college training, was given the opportunity to sketch in Liberty's ready to wear department. This would serve as her apprenticeship, and led to her gaining a job as designer for Jaeger in 1956. While there, she helped develop the Young Jaeger fashion label.

Jean Muir (actress)

Jean Muir (February 13, 1911 – July 23, 1996) was an American stage and film actress and educator. She was the first performer to be blacklisted after her name appeared in the infamous anti-Communist 1950 pamphlet Red Channels.

Career

Born in Suffern, New York, as Jean Muir Fullarton, she first appeared on Broadway in 1930, and was signed by Warner Bros. three years later. She played opposite several famous actors including Warren William, Paul Muni, Richard Barthelmess and Franchot Tone, but she returned to Broadway in 1937 because she was unsatisfied with the roles. She appeared occasionally in films through 1943. She was also one of the candidates for the role of Melanie in Gone with the Wind.

In 1950 Muir was named as a Communist sympathizer by the notorious pamphlet Red Channels, and immediately removed from the cast of the television sitcom The Aldrich Family, in which she had been cast as Mrs. Aldrich. NBC had received between 20 and 30 phone calls protesting her being in the show. General Foods, the sponsor, said that it would not sponsor programs in which "controversial persons" were featured. Though the company later received thousands of calls protesting the decision, it was not reversed. Muir was the first performer to be deprived of employment because of a listing in Red Channels.In the mid-1950s she reportedly suffered from alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver.