“Nuns don’t work on Sunday…” — One of Magnum’s Striped Band-Collar Shirts
Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum on Magnum, P.I. (Episode 2.13: “The Jororo Kill”)
Vitals
Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, private investigator and former Navy SEAL
Honolulu, Hawaii, Fall 1981
Series: Magnum, P.I.
Episode: “The Jororo Kill” (Episode 2.13)
Air Date: January 7, 1982
Director: Alan J. Levi
Created by: Donald P. Bellisario & Glen Larson
Costume Supervisors: Denita Del Signore & James Gilmore
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Nuns don’t work on Sunday…
Though perhaps not as iconic of a line to Magnum, P.I. fans as Thomas asking Ivan if he saw the sunrise, this brief moment from the series’ second season—followed by Tom Selleck’s heel turn to shoot a figure dressed in full habit—has found renewed life in meme format, often paired with captions like “80s detective shows rocked” or “the best scene in movie[sic] history”.
80s detective shows rocked 🤣 pic.twitter.com/Tq4HGZMMNN
— I❤️80s𝕏 (@IL0VEthe80s) September 30, 2021
Of course, the context of the scene helps audiences realize that Thomas Magnum doesn’t have a trigger-happy reaction to monastics who divert from his expectations of their schedule.
The episode featuring this moment, “The Jororo Kill”, first aired 42 years ago today on January 7, 1982. Magnum’s long-time friend, journalist Kate Sullivan (Tyne Daly) is seeking the Hawaii-dwelling private investigator’s help in tracking down international assassin David Banister (Christopher Morley), a former MI6 agent who has a habit for wearing a habit.
Magnum tracks Banister down to the convent at “Our Lady of the Holy Veil”—in fact the Kaumakapili Church on North King Street in Honolulu—where Banister’s target Prime Minister Santos (Ed Fernandez) is attending a private mass.
What’d He Wear?
Thomas Magnum is often associated with his bright aloha shirts, but his actual on-screen wardrobe was considerably more varied, running the gamut of early ’80s prep style from polo and rugby shirts to cable-knit sweaters and bush shirts. During the second season, he debuted the band-collar shirts that would quickly become another favorite of his through the series run.
As their name implies, band-collar shirts are structured like any typical button-up shirt but with a rounded neckband in lieu of a traditional collar. In Magnum’s case, these shirts almost always had a striped or colorful body and a contrasting plain white standing neckband that could be closed with a single button. (It’s likely coincidence that the “neckband shirt” nomenclature can also be associated with clerical collars, given the scene in question.)
The third act of “The Jororo Kill” (Episode 2.13) begins on a Sunday morning, when Magnum welcomes Kate at a TV station to review footage. Here, he’s wearing a band-collar shirt with an alternating slate-and-pink stripe, tucked into dark four-pocket dungaree-style jeans and worn with beige boat shoes.
In a subtle continuity error (but the kind I’m insufferable enough to notice), he seems to have totally changed his shirt, jeans, and shoes by the time he arrives at Our Lady of the Holy Veil—though it’s unlikely that he would have had the opportunity—or reason—to do so.
Upon arriving at the church, Magnum steps out of the Ferrari in yet another white cotton band-collar shirt, this one patterned with blue pencil stripes, likely the same shirt he had first worn two episodes earlier in “The Sixth Position” (Episode 2.11). Like the rest of his band-collar shirts, the shirt has a front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs—which he wears undone and rolled up over his elbows.
His lighter blue denim Levi’s jeans are styled with a standard five-pocket configuration of two back pockets and two curved front pockets with a smaller coin/watch pocket set into the front-right pocket. The orange tab sewn along the back-right pocket was used by Levi Strauss from the 1960s through the late ’90s to signify “non-basic” styles like these boot-cut jeans.
With both sets of jeans, Magnum wears his usual khaki cotton web belt, a military style that he would have worn with his Navy service khaki uniform, personalized with a silver-finished box-frame buckle detailed with a gold U.S. Navy Surface Warfare badge above his name “MAGNUM” in relief.
Well-suited for the action-packed sequence, Magnum wears his blue-trimmed white nylon PUMA Easy Rider sneakers. Puma launched the Easy Rider running shoe in 1977, designed with stable uppers and shock-absorbing lugged outsoles intended for comfortable distance running.
Notice Puma’s distinctive blue leather side trim and the lugged outsoles as Magnum hits the ground.
Magnum continues to wear his usual gold team ring and dive watch. Shining from the ring finger of his right hand, the large gold-finished signet ring features a Croix de Lorraine patriarchal cross that had emerged as a symbol of resistance in WWII-era France, with the rest of the surface filled in black enamel.
Across the first three seasons of Magnum, P.I., Magnum wears a stainless steel Chronosport Sea Quartz 30 dive watch, before it would be replaced with a “Pepsi bezel” Rolex GMT Master in the fourth-season premiere episode “Home from the Sea”. The original Sea Quartz 30 was launched in 1977 by Chronosport, recently revived by the Momentum brand in mid-2023, paying tribute to the original Magnum, P.I. watch.
Worn on a black tropic rubber strap, Magnum’s Chronosport has a slim black tick-marked rotating bezel, a black dial with luminescent markers and numerals for 12, 6, and 9 o’clock with a black day-date window at 3:00. Episodes that show close-ups of the watch reveal it to be a pre-1982 model that just says “Quartz” on the dial before Chronosport added the full “Sea Quartz 30” designation on the dial.
The Gun
Instead of his traditional 1911-style Colt 9mm pistol, Magnum dispatches the “nun” with a Beretta M1951 that he picked up from a fallen agent. This 9x19mm Parabellum semi-automatic pistol was Beretta’s first locked-breech handgun when it was introduced to replace the smaller and lower-caliber Beretta M1934 and M1935 pistols that the Italian military had used during World War II. The pistol feeds from an eight-round box magazine, released through a push-button on the lower-right side of the left grip.
Magnum, on the hunt for nuns working on Sunday.
The appearance of the Beretta M1951 would influence Beretta’s iconic Model 92 series developed in the mid-1970s and improved through the ’80s with the development of the Beretta 92FS, a pistol popularized by screen action heroes like John McClane (Bruce Willis) in Die Hard and Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) in Lethal Weapon.
Though the earlier M1951 and the 92 pistol series share cosmetic similarities, the Beretta wielded by Tom Selleck in this episode of Magnum, P.I. can be identified as the M1951 by its single-action trigger rather than the traditional double-action (DA/SA) operation of the Beretta 92 series.
Note the single-action trigger that visually differentiates the Beretta M1951 from later Model 92-series pistols.
This Beretta appeared several times throughout Magnum, P.I., including three episodes later when handled by Rick (Larry Manetti) in “Italian Ice” (Episode 2.16).
How to Get the Look
Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum on Magnum, P.I. (Episode 2.13: “The Jororo Kill”)
Want to channel Thomas Magnum’s style without looking like you’re on a tropical vacation? Band-collar shirts aren’t for everyone, but Magnum smoothly incorporated them among the regular pieces of his wardrobe as a dressier alternative to aloha shirts and ruggers.
- White (with blue pencil stripes) cotton band-collar shirt with white neckband, front placket, breast pocket, box-pleated back, and button cuffs
- Light-blue denim Levi’s jeans
- Khaki web belt with silver-toned belt buckle (with gold U.S. Navy Surface Warfare badge and “MAGNUM” in relief)
- Available via Amazon
- White (with blue leather trim) nylon Puma Easy Rider sneakers with black lugged rubber outsoles
- Gold Croix de Lorraine team ring
- Replicas available via Amazon
- Chronosport Sea Quartz 30 stainless dive watch with black dial and black tropic rubber strap
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the entire series, and peruse the extensively researched fan site Magnum Mania!
The Quote
Sorry, Sister.
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I wonder if both Thomas Magnum and Sonny Crockett made band collar shirts trendy in the 80s.