Jeakins was unusual in that she freelanced, never signing a long-term contract with any one studio. She worked steadily for the next fifty years, winning another two Oscars, for "Samson and Delilah" (1950, shared with Edith Head and others), and "Night of the Iguana" (1964), and another 12 nominations. She was perhaps best-known for her period costumes, in such films as "The Ten Commandments" (1956), "The Music Man" (1962), "The Sound of Music" (1965), "Little Big Man" (1970), "The Way We Were" (1973), "Young Frankenstein" (1974) and "The Dead" (1988). Her modern-dress excursions included "Niagara" (1952), "Three Coins in the Fountain" (1954), "South Pacific" (1958) and "On Golden Pond" (1981).

Jeakins also worked on stage productions, including "South Pacific", "King Lear", "Winesburg, Ohio" and "The World of Suzie Wong", and such TV-movies as "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Mayerling". For ten years beginning in 1953, she served as designer for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company, and was curator of that city's textile and costume collection at the County Museum of Art. Jeakins, who retired in 1990, once summed up her designing: "I can put my world down to two words: Make beauty. It's my cue and my private passion."