Award-Winning Costume Designer Albert Wolsky Passes Away at 95

BroadwayWorld is saddened to report that Costume Designer Albert Wolsky, whose contributions to cinema and theater earned him numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards and nominations for Drama Desk and Tony Awards, has passed away. 

The news was first reported on social media, with fellow Costume Designer Christopher Lawrence confirming that Wolsky passed away this past Saturday, May 23. He was 95 years old.

Wolsky had a prolific career across stage and screen. Born in Paris, he immigrated to the United States at age 10 and graduated from The City College of New York. He began his career in New York theatre, receiving his first solo Broadway design credit for the play Generation, starring Henry Fonda.

Wolsky’s other stage credits included Sly Fox, starring George C. Scott, The Sunshine Boys, Joseph Papp’s production of Hamlet in Central Park, and Tennessee Williams’ 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, starring Meryl Streep. In the later years of his career, he worked on revivals of Sly Fox, The Country Girl, and The Heiress, the latter of which earned him a Tony nomination for Best Costume Design. He also received three Drama Desk nominations for his stage work.

Onscreen, he collaborated multiple times with the legendary Bob Fosse, first on Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffman, and later designing the costumes for Fosse’s All That Jazz and Star 80, Fosse’s last film. Wolsky’s first project with filmmaker Paul Mazursky, Harry and Tonto, led to an 11-film relationship, including Next Stop, Greenwich Village, An Unmarried Woman, Moscow on the Hudson, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and Enemies: A Love Story.

Wolsky’s other credits include Grease, Manhattan, The Pelican Brief, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Little Murders, The Jazz Singer, The Falcon and the Snowman and Crimes of the Heart. In 1999, he was honored by the Costume Designers Guild with their first Career Achievement Award and received a TDF/Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.

He won the Academy Award for All That Jazz and Bugsy. With nearly 80 films to his name, Wolsky also received Academy Award nominations for Sophie’s Choice, Toys, The Journey of Natty Gann, Across the Universe and Revolutionary Road. Other notable titles include Charlie Wilson’s War, The Manchurian Candidate, Road to Perdition, Maid in Manhattan, Runaway Bride, Galaxy Quest, You’ve Got Mail, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Ad Astra, and Amsterdam, which marked his final screen credit.