Lee Marvin’s Plaid Tweed Sport Jacket in Point Blank
Lee Marvin as Walker in Point Blank (1967)
Vitals
Lee Marvin as Walker, revenge-driven armed robber
Santa Monica, Summer 1967
Film: Point Blank
Release Date: August 30, 1967
Director: John Boorman
Costume Designer: Margo Weintz
Background
With the first day of autumn only a day away, we’re looking ahead to fall fashion from a tough guy. In John Boorman’s 1967 neo-noir Point Blank, Lee Marvin starred as Walker, the unsmiling thief out for revenge after he was left for dead on Alcatraz Island by his one-time partner Mal Reese (John Vernon).
Having patched up his wounds, Walker seeks out the help of his sister-in-law Chris (Angie Dickinson), who agrees to lend her own particular brand of charm to assist Walker in retrieving the $93,000 he believes he is rightfully owed.
What’d He Wear?
Walker goes after Mal Reese in a brown plaid tweed wool single-breasted sport jacket with unique details like a flapped set-in breast pocket and flared cuffs with a single button on each.
Walker’s sport jacket has notch lapels that gently roll over the top of three buttons. In addition to the flapped breast pocket, the hip pockets also have flaps. The double vents allow Walker greater access to draw his .44 Magnum from under his jacket.
Supposedly, Lee Marvin had hit John Vernon so hard during rehearsal for this scene that he made the actor cry. (Source)
Walker wears an amber-colored shirt in a shade closer to orange than yellow, though not as orange as the bold shirt he wears with his rust-colored sport jacket. The shirt has a narrow semi-spread collar and large plastic buttons with a mother-of-pearl effect on the front placket and on each cuff. The texture appears to be a soft microfiber polyester, a synthetic fabric that was gaining considerable traction in the late 1960s before it became the inexplicable fabric of choice for many during the disco era.
Yellow seems to be the color of choice for bonding over a mutual dislike of Mal Reese.
He stays consistent with his carotenoid-inspired color palette by wearing a slim gold micro-textured silk tie.
Walker’s mid-brown flannel trousers appear to be shaped with darts rather than pleats or a traditional flat front. They have a fitted waistband with no belt, braces, or adjusters required, and they taper slightly toward the plain-hemmed bottoms.
Walker plans his next move.
Whether wearing his gray or blue business suits or a fall-friendly sport jacket like this, Lee Marvin wears the same set of brown cordovan brogues throughout Point Blank. Currently in the collection of the British Film Institute, these Bally derby shoes have full longwing broguing with a perforated medallion toe-cap and four lace eyelets for his black laces. He wears them here with either black or dark brown dress socks.
His own Smith & Wesson Model 29 in hand, Walker tosses away the gats he grabbed from Mal’s bodyguards from “The Organization”.
How to Get the Look
Lee Marvin as Walker in Point Blank (1967)
You don’t need to cut the color from your wardrobe to look tough. In fact, Lee Marvin’s Walker embraces color for many of his creative outfits as he ass-kicks his way up the California coast.
- Brown plaid tweed single-breasted 3-button sport jacket with notch lapels, flapped set-in breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, single-button flared cuffs, and double vents
- Amber polyester microfiber dress shirt with narrow semi-spread collar, front placket, and button cuffs
- Gold textured silk skinny tie
- Brown darted-front trousers with fitted waistband, side pockets, and tapered plain-hemmed bottoms
- Brown cordovan leather medallion-toe 4-eyelet longwing derby brogues
- Black socks
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
Footnote
The Hunter was the first of Donald E. Westlake’s series of crime novels featuring the Parker character, who was renamed Walker for this adaptation and again renamed Porter for the 1999 adaptation Payback starring Mel Gibson. Neither adaptation was permitted to use the actual title or character name unless the filmmakers were planning to adapt the character into a series.
I bought this movie after reading this post, and I watched it last night. It has been on my ‘To Watch’ list for a long long time, ever since I found out that the Mel Gibson movie Payback (1999) was a remake of this, so this post–and the other posts about Lee Marvin’s garb in this movie–finally pushed me over the edge.
It was everything I was hoping it would be. The plot is fairly color-by-numbers, but Lee Marvin is fantastic as Walker the Irresistible Force AND the Immovable Object (and Angie Dickinson is smoking hot). So I second the recommendation.
A word about the Gibson adaptation, which I also really like, is there is a substantial difference between cuts. I can’t remember off the top of my head (I would have to go back and look at my VHS copy to check–yeah, VHS), but I think the theatrical cut is a hot mess, but the director’s cut hits all the right notes, and I think the ‘director’s’ cut is actually not the director’s cut but Mel Gibson’s cut of the movie–there is something weird about the credits between these. So if you have seen this movie and did not like it, chances are you saw the shit version. I would go back and find the other one. That version and this 1967 version with Lee Marvin are a good match. (In the context of this blog, though, I don’t think the clothes are nearly as interesting in the 1999 version. If memory serves, it is mostly a bunch of over-sized late-’90s suits. There may be some some throwback clothing that might be of interest, and the cars and guns were pretty cool, but for the most part the clothes didn’t seem all that remarkable–other than being a good example of the late-’90s sartorial badness).