Robert De Niro’s Sweater Vest in Bloody Mama

Robert De Niro as Lloyd Barker in Bloody Mama (1970)

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Robert De Niro as Lloyd Barker, slow-witted bandit and junkie

Kentucky, Summer 1933

Film: Bloody Mama
Release Date: March 24, 1970
Director: Roger Corman
Wardrobe Credit: Thomas Costich

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Happy Mother’s Day! One of the more infamous mothers in criminal and cinematic history was Kate “Ma” Barker, whom FBI director J. Edgar Hoover posthumously bestowed with the reputation as the ruthless ruler of her sons’ Depression-era gang of killers and kidnappers… though the boys’ associate Harvey Bailey later scoffed that Ma “couldn’t plan breakfast,” let alone a criminal enterprise.

Still, Hoover’s PR smear persisted through decades with productions like an episode of The Untouchables starring Claire Trevor, Ma Barker’s Killer Brood (1960) starring Lurene Tuttle, Bloody Mama (1970) starring Shelley Winters, and Public Enemies (1996) starring Theresa Russell. (Note that the latter was a 1996 drama and not Michael Mann’s 2009 film of the same name which focused on John Dillinger’s gang, though it did feature Giovanni Ribisi in a limited role as Barker gang member Alvin “Creepy” Karpis.)

One of Robert De Niro’s earliest roles was among the ensemble cast of Bloody Mama, one of several 1930s-set exploitation movies produced by American International Pictures to cash in on the groundbreaking popularity of Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Interestingly, Bloody Mama flips the usual disclaimer by outwardly stating “Any similar to Kate Barker and her sons is intentional,” when—in fact—the movie shares very little in common with its real-life counterparts. Continue reading →

Gary Cooper’s Patterned Sport Jacket and White Bucks in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife

Gary Cooper photographed by William Richard Walling Jr. in 1937, dressed in the same costume he would wear in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938).

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Gary Cooper as Michael Brandon, millionaire industrialist

French Riviera, Summer 1937

Film: Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
Release Date: March 23, 1938
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Costume Designer: Travis Banton

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Born 125 years ago today on May 7, 1901, Gary Cooper established a screen legacy through Oscar-winning performances in Sergeant York (1941) and High Noon (1952) in addition to being a well-regarded style icon throughout his career. The modern #menswear community frequently looks to Coop for inspiration, including the frequently shared portraits taken by William Richard Walling Jr., in 1937, dressed in the same uniquely patterned sport jacket, deco swirl tie, and rakish belt holding up pleated trousers that he wore as a costume in Ernst Lubitsch’s 1938 screwball comedy Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife. Continue reading →

Gregory Peck’s Herringbone Tweed Huntsman-Tailored Suit in Arabesque

Gregory Peck with Sophia Loren on the set of Arabesque (1966)

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Gregory Peck as David Pollock, American hieroglyphics professor

London, June 1965

Film: Arabesque
Release Date: May 5, 1966
Director: Stanley Donen
Tailor: H. Huntsman & Sons, London

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The stylish espionage-themed romantic comedy thriller Arabesque was released sixty years ago tomorrow on May 5, 1966. Producer and director Stanley Donen had hoped to replicate Charade‘s success with Cary Grant in the lead, but the now-retired Grant wasn’t thrilled enough with the script to make this his return to the silver screen. Donen himself wasn’t impressed with the script either, adapted from Gordon Cotler’s 1961 novel The Cipher (published under his pseudonym Alex Gordon.)

With Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren contracted as the leads, the script was constantly being rewritten, but cinematographer recalled that “the more the script was rewritten, the worse it got,” and that Donen told him their “only hope was to make it so visually exciting the audience will never have time to work out what the hell is going on.” Continue reading →

Glenn Ford’s Tanker Jacket in Human Desire

Glenn Ford in Human Desire (1954)

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Glenn Ford as Jeff Warren, railroad engineer and Army veteran

El Reno, Oklahoma, Fall 1953

Film: Human Desire
Release Date: August 6, 1954
Director: Fritz Lang
Costume Designer: Jean Louis (gowns)

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Glenn Ford was born 110 years ago on May 1, 1916. The Quebec-born actor specialized as everymen with a tough side, making him the ideal star in classic film noir like Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953) as well as westerns like 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and the school-set social drama Blackboard Jungle (1955) that featured both “Rock Around the Clock” and a young Sidney Poitier. In addition to being one of the most popular and bankable stars in the United States for a decade, Ford also enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War II and returned to service with a Navy Reserve commission in 1958.

While I always liked Ford’s screen presence which reminds me of my grandfather, the Golden Globe-winning actor’s complicated personal life as a serial womanizer included four marriages that all ended in divorce and—according to his son Peter’s biography—affairs with at least 140 Hollywood actresses, including an on-and-off romance with Gilda co-star Rita Hayworth that lasted four decades. He also recorded all of his home’s phone calls (resulting from a paranoid belief that his first wife Eleanor Powell would discover his frequent infidelity), supported candidates on both sides of the political arena, and was busted for illegally raising 140 white leghorn chickens.

Hardly the best-known from either its stars or director, the solid 1954 film noir Human Desire reteamed Ford with director Fritz Lang and co-star Gloria Grahame one year after their previous collaboration in The Big Heat. Continue reading →

When Harry Met Sally: Harry’s Post-College Hoodie and Jeans

Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally (1989)

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Billy Crystal as Harry Burns, recent college graduate

Chicago to New York City, Spring 1977

Film: When Harry Met Sally…
Release Date: July 14, 1989
Director: Rob Reiner
Costume Designer: Gloria Gresham

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

I graduated from college fifteen years ago this week, and I’m still (slightly) younger than 40-year-old Billy Crystal was when he played recent University of Chicago graduate Harry Burns in the opening scenes of When Harry Met Sally. Directed by the late Rob Reiner (a qualifier which still hurts to say), When Harry Met Sally is considered by many—including yours truly—to be one of the best romantic comedies of all time.

Ironically scored to Louis Armstrong crooning “Our Love is Here to Stay”, the movie begins with Harry kissing a girlfriend whose name he wouldn’t even remember five years later. Amanda (Michelle Nicastro) introduces Harry to her friend Sally Albright (Meg Ryan), who has agreed to drive the stranger across the country to New York, which Sally has calculated should be “an 18-hour trip with six shifts of three hours each.” Continue reading →

Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw: Marjoe Gortner’s Blue Cutoff Western Shirt

Marjoe Gortner and Lynda Carter in Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976)

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Marjoe Gortner as Lyle Wheeler, wannabe outlaw

New Mexico, Summer 1975

Film: Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw
Release Date: April 28, 1976
Director: Mark L. Lester
Costume Designer: Cornelia McNamara

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

People typically cite two major reasons to watch the low-budget ’70s crime flick Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw… neither of which are Marjoe Gortner’s wardrobe. Is that going to stop me from writing about it for the film’s 50th anniversary? No, of course not.

Released in Los Angeles on April 28, 1976, this was also Lynda Carter’s big-screen debut, finally hitting screens nearly six months after she became an instant sensation when Wonder Woman premiered on ABC. Made with the same exploitative “guilty pleasure” watchability that defined so much of American Independent Pictures’ contemporary output, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw is known to many for Carter’s sole (but frequent) nude screen appearance—often in varying states of undress playing the, uh, titular Bobbie Jo Baker, who abandons her dead-end job and alcoholic mother to join the charismatic car thief Lyle Wheeler on a crime spree through the southwest. Prior to his Rocky fame, Sylvester Stallone was producers’ first choice to play Lyle until ex-child preacher Marjoe Gortner was cast.

Yep, you read that right. Continue reading →

Romeo + Juliet: Leo’s Blue Aloha Shirts

Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet (1996)

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Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo Montague, moody romantic mob heir

Verona Beach, Summer 1996

Film: Romeo + Juliet
Release Date: November 1, 1996
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Costume Designer: Kym Barrett

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Baz Luhrmann’s brash update of Romeo + Juliet remains the highest-grossing live-action William Shakespeare adaptation nearly thirty years after its release. While his tendency toward spectacle isn’t my preferred cinematic style, I appreciate Luhrmann embracing the challenge of retaining the Bard’s original dialogue in a contemporary American setting that includes custom handguns, flashy Hawaiian shirts, and “Lovefool”. Continue reading →

Eddie Albert’s Casual Attire in Roman Holiday

Eddie Albert in Roman Holiday (1953)

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Eddie Albert as Irving Radovich, expatriate newspaper photographer

Rome, Summer 1952

Film: Roman Holiday
Release Date: August 27, 1953
Director: William Wyler
Costume Designer: Edith Head

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

It’s not easy to command attention when sharing the screen with icons like Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, but Eddie Albert shined so brightly alongside them in Roman Holiday that the actor’s supporting performance received one of the film’s ten Academy Award nominations! Continue reading →

Ryan O’Neal’s Seersucker Suit in What’s Up, Doc?

Ryan O’Neal in What’s Up, Doc? (1972)

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Ryan O’Neal as Dr. Howard Bannister, awkward musicologist

San Francisco, Summer 1972

Film: What’s Up, Doc?
Release Date: March 9, 1972
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Costume Designer: Polly Platt (uncredited)

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The late Ryan O’Neal was born 85 years ago today on April 20, 1941. Though perhaps best known for his roles in Love Story (1970), Paper Moon (1973), Barry Lyndon (1975), or The Driver (1978), the first O’Neal performance that I ever watched was Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 comedy What’s Up, Doc?, which Maureen Lee Lenker posited for Entertainment Weekly after his death as the actor’s strongest performance. Continue reading →

Breezy: William Holden’s Shawl-Collar Cardigan

William Holden and Kay Lenz in Breezy (1973)

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William Holden as Frank Harmon, cynical realtor and “nobody’s fool”

Los Angeles, Fall 1972

Film: Breezy
Release Date: November 18, 1973
Director: Clint Eastwood
Men’s Costumer: Glenn Wright

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Born 108 years ago on April 17, 1918, William Holden was one of the most bankable stars of the 1950s with an Oscar-winning performance in Stalag 17 (1953) as well as roles in enduring classics like Sunset Blvd. (1950), Sabrina (1954), and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). After his career struggled through the ’60s, Holden embarked on a comeback as grizzled outlaw leader Pike Bishop in Sam Peckinpah’s violent 1969 western The Wild Bunch, though this didn’t generate as much momentum as the now middle-aged actor had hoped as new stars like Clint Eastwood dominated the scene.

The two actors’ paths would cross by 1972, when Holden was so grateful to be approached for the lead in Eastwood’s upcoming film Breezy that he agreed to star at no salary—accepting only a cut of the profits. (When there turned out to be no profits, even against Breezy‘s modest budget under a million dollars, SAG compelled Eastwood to pay Holden $4,000.)

Eastwood’s friend and frequent collaborator Jo Heims penned Breezy as an age-gap romance with equal parts tenderness and wit. This may strike viewers as a surprisingly sensitive story for Eastwood to direct at this stage in his career, at the time best known for acting in Westerns, war films, and hard-boiled crime stories like Dirty Harry (1971), and with only two directorial credits before it. It’s to Clint’s credit that he not only accepted the assignment to challenge his contemporary screen image but also willingly stepped off screen—save for a brief cameo at Fisherman’s Village—and cast the more age-appropriate Holden in the leading role of the disillusioned divorcee Frank Harmon.

“You know, I’ve been that guy,” Holden reportedly told Eastwood after he was cast. “Yeah, I thought so,” Eastwood replied. Continue reading →