GM’s expansive archives contain all manner of riches, from countless design sketches, colour swatches and models of all scales, to plans for show stands and presentation renders. In all, the GM Archive houses over eight million photos and a quarter of a million films, along with all manner of physical and digital media.
Costume design by Winn Morton for Cadillac, 1970
There’s also an unusual subset of material, as explained by GM archivist and curator Natalie Morath. ‘Someone recently rang us up and said, “I think I have something,”’ says Morath. The items came from the estate of the late John ‘Winn’ Winniford Morton (1928-2022), a Texas-born theatrical designer whose career spanned an impressive eight decades, creating costumes for the likes of Oklahoma! as well as Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey circuses.
Not only did Winn Morton work in television and the theatre, both on and off-Broadway, he also created the costumes for the ‘Ice-Travaganza’, a monumental performance held at the 1964 New York World's Fair and overseen by champion figure skater Dick Button.
Costume design by Winn Morton for Chevrolet, 1966
Morton’s love of the big spectacle and grand gesture made him the perfect costume designer for a very particular type of live show, the ‘Industrial Musical’. The newly discovered drawings, some 400 of them, relate to Morton’s work in this sphere for GM. Created to dress the participants in these unique – and largely lost to time – live shows, Morton turned his pen to idealised characters that represented the perfect buyers for the GM brands of the era, including Cadillac and Chevrolet.
Costume design by Winn Morton for Chevrolet, 1966
‘Morton was connected to GM via his work on Broadway,’ Morath explains. ‘He was a member of the Costume Designers Guild and we used him for several years for multiple brands.’ GM had a longstanding connection with writers, technicians and performers, both for live events, auto shows and TV segments, with actresses like Florence Henderson (1934-2016), best known as Carol Brady in The Brady Bunch, appearing regularly as the ‘Oldsmobile Girl’ early in her career.
Costume design by Winn Morton for Cadillac
‘As far as we can tell, these sketches were all done for these shows, which were high-production, Broadway-scale narrative musicals, maybe half an hour in length, that were put on for dealers, not the public,’ says Morath. Rarely, if ever filmed, these live shows introduced dealers and company employees to the next year’s products, with actors, singers and dancers appearing alongside full-size cars, often dressed to match the paintwork and trim. Sometimes the songs were issued on vinyl, creating sought-after future collectables (click to listen to 'Diesel Dazzle', from the 1966 show Detroit Diesel).
Costume design by Winn Morton for Chevrolet, 1966
Often, established composers and lyricists would work on these shows, such as Kander and Ebb (Cabaret and Chicago), Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick (Fiddler on the Roof) and Michael Reno, musical director of the original production of The Rocky Horror Show, among others. ‘We don’t have any surviving scripts,’ says Morath, ‘so it’s fun to imagine in your head what the story was and who these characters were. These are the only fashion items in our collection,’ she adds, ‘they’re unique.’
Costume design by Winn Morton for Chevrolet, 1966
GM’s Archive is housed in the original GM Design Center building in Warren, Michigan, part of the company’s treasured and recently restored Global Technical Center and expanded design studio complex. ‘Part of the job here is to find ways to share these materials to our audience, who are primarily the GM design community,’ says Morath. ‘We stage exhibitions in our gallery space, helping them find connections between past and present. It’s a good time to take a pause and look back at the company history.’
