The Godfather: Moe Greene’s Golden Las Vegas Tailoring

Alex Rocco as Moe Greene in The Godfather (1972)

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Alex Rocco as Moe Greene, brash mob-connected casino operator

Las Vegas, Summer 1954

Film: The Godfather
Release Date: March 14, 1972
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Anna Hill Johnstone

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Do you know who I am? I’m Moe Greene! I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!

Despite his inflated opinion of himself and his importance to the city, Moe Greene actually had little to do with Las Vegas being founded 121 years ago tomorrow on May 15, 1905.

Portrayed by Alex Rocco in The Godfather, the fictional character Moe Greene was inspired by the real-life gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who was born nine months later on the last day of February 1906. Something of a celebrity gangster, Siegel’s profligate control over the fledgling Flamingo casino during its first months of operation convinced his Mafia Commission partners that he was likely responsible for skimming millions from the mob, resulting in Bugsy’s assassination.

Siegel was sitting in his girlfriend Virginia Hill’s Beverly Hills living room when he was peppered with .30-caliber rounds from an M1 Carbine, including one that launched his left eye several feet from his socket. This would be reflected in The Godfather when an anonymous hitman corners Greene during a massage and fatally shoots him through the eye—an execution method immortalized as “the Moe Greene special” during the first season of The Sopranos. Continue reading →

Bonnie and Clyde: Michael J. Pollard’s Type I Denim Jacket as C.W. Moss

Michael J. Pollard as C.W. Moss in Bonnie & Clyde (1967)

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Michael J. Pollard as C.W. Moss, slow-witted mechanic-turned-bank robber

Texas to Missouri, Spring 1933

Film: Bonnie & Clyde
Release Date: August 13, 1967
Director: Arthur Penn
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

My last post centered around one of the many quick-and-dirty Depression-set crime films released in the wake of Bonnie & Clyde‘s popularity, so let’s refocus today’s sartorial attention back on the groundbreaking 1967 drama that started it all. Starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty (who also produced the film), Bonnie & Clyde fictionalized the exploits of real-life Texas outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, whose two-year crime spree of mostly unprofitable robberies left a trail of at least twelve dead lawmen and civilians until they were ultimately killed by law enforcement in May 1934.

Robert Benton and David Newman’s Academy Award-nominated screenplay emphasized the twenty-something couple’s youth, capitalizing on the prevailing countercultural sentiment of the late 1960s in the stylized spirit of French New Wave cinema. Presumably even younger than Bonnie or Clyde is their first on-screen accomplice: small-town gas station attendant C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard), whose simplicity often suggests excessive exposure to fuel fumes. Moss served as a composite for several real-life associates of the gang, specifically eventual turncoat Henry Methvin and Dallas teenager W.D. “Deacon” Jones.

Born 110 years ago today on May 12, 1916, Jones was only 16 years old when the 23-year-old Clyde and 22-year-old Bonnie recruited him into their scrappy band on Christmas Eve 1932. After a car theft gone wrong resulted in the murder of Temple, Texas family man Doyle Johnson the next day, Jones became inextricably linked with the Barrow gang for more than a year until his eventual arrest in November 1933, six months before his more famous friends were gunned down in Louisiana. Continue reading →

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 →