Ramsey costumes Comanche Moon mini series movie
By BURLON PARSONS bparsons@journal-spectator.com

Linda Cardelini plays the younger version of Clara Forsythe. Her dress takes up to 22 yards of material to make. Ramsey's team made hundreds of them.

When Larry McMurtry's Comanche Moon airs as a mini series this Sunday evening on CBS there will be a strong Wharton connection.

Van Broughton Ramsey, son of Wharton resident Dorothy Hite and 1969 graduate of Wharton High School, headed up all of the costuming for its more than 300-member cast.

Ramsey won an Emmy Award for his costumes created for the original Lonesome Dove mini series which aired in 1989. That cast featured Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae, Tommy Lee Jones as Woodrow Call, Danny Glover as Deets, Diane Lane as Lorena Wood, Robert Urich as Jake Spoon, Rick Schroder as Newt Dobbs and Angelica Houston as Clara Forsythe.

Lonesome Dove garnished two Golden Globe awards, 14 other winning categories and 17 nominations. It is called by some "the finest Western every made."

Cast in Comanche Moon are Val Kilmer as Inish Scull, Linda Cardellini as Clara Forsythe, Rachel Griffiths as Inez Scull, West Studi as Buffalo Hump, Karl Urban as Woodrow Call and Steve Zahn as Gus McCrae.

Some of the cast members of the Comanche Moon mini series, which airs this Sunday are, from left, Carl Urban as Woodrow F. Call, Val Kilmer as Inish Scull, Rachel Griffiths as Inez Scull and Steve Zahn as a young Gus McCrae. All are wearing costumes designed by Wharton's Van Broughton Ramsey.

He spoke about his involvement in the mini series during a telephone interview from his home in Los Angeles last week.

The prequel is set in the 1850s, which Ramsey says is a time period where there are not many costumes to rent. They have to be made and fitted to the actors and actresses. Later in the production the clothing changed to the 1865 time period which required new sets of clothing.

Ramsey got the call for the production two years next month. He was working on a film project already in production when he got a call from Lonesome Dove producer Dyson Lovell, who was in London at the time.

Wes Studi plays Buffalo Hump in Comanche Moon. All leather used was brain-tanned in Montana before used for clothing construction by Ramsey's team.

Filming was to start that May and Ramsey would have a budget of $475,000 to work with. He says that turned out not to be enough.

The first step for Ramsey was to read the script and come up with 300 costume sketches for all the principle characters in two weeks. Once they were approved by the writers and production staff, construction could begin.

He then had to get his staff together finding materials, constructing clothing and even aging them.

"We had one person making Anglo men's clothing, one making Anglo women's clothing and one making Indian clothing," Ramsey said. "Then there were two people who did nothing but wash and age the clothes all day long."

Ramsey had built his own inventory for period cloth over the years. It was all used on this production.

"Each dress required 22 yards of material," he said. "The four principle characters had 15 to 22 changes of each set of clothing. Then there were sets for the photo doubles and stunt doubles to make."

Shooting was done in New Mexico at Santa Fe, Taos, Ghost Ranch and Las Vegas. All the hats for the mini series were made in California and shipped to Santa Fe. The costume department had to follow the shooting sites.

Fitting clothing to the cast members was another nightmare. Actors were on a 12-hour shooting contract and could only be fitted on their own time. Some came in at midnight to be fitted. Others on Saturday and Sunday, when they were off. It took just over three months to

"The costume department did not sleep much," he said. "We were averaging about four to five hours of sleep each night. We were kind of grumpy by the second month of shooting. While everyone was off on the weekend, we used it to catch up on making costumes."

Throughout the production Ramsey was constantly shopping for more materials. He said all the military uniforms were rented because it was easier to do that than make them.

All of the leather for the Comanches had to be brain-tanned in Montana. It took hundreds of hides for the production.

The costume department wound up with five 60-foot trailers filled with costumes. One was filled with the ladies hoop skirts and underwear - enough for 300 women.

Another had all men's clothes, another all women's clothing and two trailers were used for Indian costumes.

Women in the cast would arrive at 3 a.m. and required an army of helpers to dress them.

Ramsey says he has seen the director's cut of the first part of the series.

"It will be a while before I'll watch the whole thing," he said. "When you work on a project like that, you want to wait before you view it or you won't enjoy it as much."

The first part of Comanche Moon airs at 7 p.m. Sunday followed by parts two and three on Tuesday and Wednesday locally on CBS Channel 11.