Vitals

Burt Reynolds as Paul “Wrecking” Crewe, washed-up ex-pro football quarterback

Palm Beach, Florida, Fall 1973

Film: The Longest Yard
Release Date: August 21, 1974
Director: Robert Aldrich
Wardrobe Credit: Charles E. James

Background

You take your football down here real serious, don’t you?

What do you do when you’re a style writer facing a Super Bowl aligns with Burt Reynolds’ birthday? Why, you focus on the super-seventies duds that Reynolds wears at the beginning of his sports comedy classic, The Longest Yard, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year!

Born February 11, 1936, Reynolds had played high school football and continued his passion with a football scholarship to Florida State University where, like me, he was a brother of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Reynolds began acting in the late 1950s, beginning with TV appearances until he gained traction as a star in the early ’70s through Southern-set movies like Deliverance, White Lightning, and The Longest Yard. (Though entirely set in Florida, The Longest Yard was actually set in Georgia, including on location at Georgia State Prison, as facilitated by then-Governor Jimmy Carter.)

Eight years removed from his pro career after a point-shaving scandal, Paul “Wrecking” Crewe begins the story as an alcoholic has-been whose vapid girlfriend Melissa (Anitra Ford) trades financing his lifestyle with treating him like her kept man. “You split when I tell you to split, you all-American son-of-a-bitch!” she screams at him as he dresses to leave after a boozy afternoon spent watching back-to-back football games from her bed.

Understandably fed up with this life, Crewe walks out on Melissa—or, more accurately, drives out—stealing her Citroën SM sports car and leading the police on a drunken and destructive chase through West Palm Beach, scored by Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Saturday Night Special” (and Burt’s signature giggle) and coordinated by Burt’s longtime collaborative partner, stunt legend Hal Needham. The chase ends when Crewe dumps the Citroën in the bay and goes to drink away his troubles in a local watering hole, where he only escalates them by assaulting the two Florida Highway Patrol officers who corner him.

Crewe’s misadventure results in an 18-month sentence at Citrus State Prison, where the inmates resent his stardom and corruption: “All I’m sayin’ is, you could’ve robbed banks, sold dope, stole your grandmother’s pension checks, and none of us woulda minded… but shaving points off a football game? Man, that’s un-American.”

Coerced by the prison’s warden (Eddie Albert) into helping the prison guards’ semi-pro football team find their competitive edge, Crewe seizes the opportunity to organize a “Mean Machine” team of his fellow inmates that allow them the opportunity to strike back against Citrus State’s sadistic guards.

“I’m just trying to give you a football team, warden,” Crewe explains. “And along the way, maybe give the men some pride and some dignity… of course, only for a little while.”

What’d He Wear?

Speaking of dignity, Paul Crewe dresses for the first act of The Longest Yard in a western-yoked leisure suit, presumably among the clothes that Melissa purchased for him. Now reviled as a tacky low in style history, leisure suits maintained a chokehold on men’s fashion through the 1970s—having considerably devolved from their sporty origins in safari-wear.

Rather than the traditional safari-inspired jackets associated with ’70s leisure suits, Crewe’s set includes a straight-zip shirt-jacket and trousers, both made of a matching stone-colored polyester and detailed with rust-colored suede western yokes. The hip-length shirt-jacket’s straight front-zip closes up to mid-chest, with the top intentionally worn open. The extra-wide collar is faced with a rust suede to match the pointed shoulder yokes that droop over the front and back of the garment. The set-in sleeves are plain at the cuffs.

The stone-colored flat-front low-rise trousers have a matching rust suede yoke that curves around the waist, pointing down on each side and with a short, wide matching self-belt across the front that closes through a tall gold-toned buckle. On trend for the disco era, the trousers have a close fit through Reynolds’ thighs, dramatically flaring out below the knees to the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Neither the jacket nor trousers have visible pockets, making it a wonder where Crewe was able to produce his wallet from when the police later ask for his driver’s license.

Subdued footwear would be incongruous with such a flashy outfit, so Crewe steps into a set of white calf leather loafers. These slip-on shoes have swelled moc-toe seams, brown leather outsoles, and a white leather self-strap across each instep—detailed at each end with a gold-finished bit ring.

On his left pinky, Crewe wears a large gold signet ring with a long black ovular stone. His gold digital watch appears to be a Hamilton Pulsar P2, the innovative quartz-powered timepiece considered the world’s first successful mass-produced digital watch after it was launched in the early ’70s. (The Pulsar would be familiar to fans of James Bond, as Roger Moore wore a stainless model during his first scene as 007 in the 1973 film Live and Let Die.)

Despite its futuristic appearance, the original Pulsar P2’s functionality was limited to displaying the time on its black LED display—and even that was only achieved at the press of a button. The 39mm watch case was mated to a three-piece link bracelet and clasp, which enclosed the magnet used to set the time. Hamilton has since relaunched the style with models like the PSR Digital Quartz that pay tribute to the original.

After this sequence, Crewe briefly wears a dark-blue leisure suit while he’s being processed into prison, after which he spends the entirety of The Longest Yard cycling between his prison whites, workout gear, and his Mean Machine football uniform.

What to Imbibe

While Melissa berates Paul for being a “whore”, he pours himself a glass of her Wolfschmidit vodka on the rocks, downing one for the road before stealing her car.

I haven’t been able to find much documentation contextualizing Wolfschmidt’s 19th century origins as “purveyors to Czars Alexander III and Nicholas II” to its current budget-priced position on the bottom shelves of most liquor stores, but the Wolfschmidt name appears to have originated in a Latvian distillery that supplied vodka to Russian royals.

Wolfschmidt may have been the first vodka supplied to the United States, with contradictory claims saying this was either in 1847 (the founding date on Wolfschmidt’s label) or around the turn of the 20th century. Production eventually moved to the Netherlands—possibly after the Russian revolution in 1917 when it would have been no longer welcome due to its connections to the Russian monarchy, though this is purely speculation. While being produced in Holland, the Wolfschmidt name was also applied to kümmel—a caraway-flavored Dutch digestif.

Wolfschmidt vodka enjoyed a period of global popularity through the mid-20th century, even featured by the epicurean author Ian Fleming in his third James Bond novel, Moonraker, featuring a scene where 007 introduces M to his habit of adding a dash of black pepper to his chilled vodka:

When M poured him three fingers from the frosted carafe Bond took a pinch of black pepper and dropped it on the surface of the vodka. The pepper slowly settled to the bottom fo the glass leaving a few grains on the surface which Bond dabbed up with the tip of a finger. Then he tossed the cold liquor well to the back of his throat and put his glass, with the dregs of the pepper at the bottom, back on the table.

M gave him a glance of rather ironical inquiry.

“It’s a trick the Russians taught me that time you attached me to the Embassy in Moscow,” apologized Bond. “There’s often quite a lot of fusel oil on the surface of this stuff—at least there used to be when it was badly distilled. Poisonous. In Russia, where you get a lot of bath-tub liquor, it’s an understood thing to sprinkle a little pepper in your glass. It takes the fusel oil to the bottom. I got to like the taste and now it’s a habit. But I shouldn’t have insulted the club Wolfschmidt,” he added with a grin.

The gesture may have been an insult when M orders “real pre-war Wolfschmidt from Riga” with Bond, but it would likely only be an improvement to the vodka manufactured today. By the 1950s (and possibly earlier), Wolfschmidt was now an American-made product, manufactured by Seagram but still marketed as a genuine vodka that continued “the spirit of the Czar.”

The Car

Paul Crewe “borrows” Melissa’s gray 1972 Citroën SM, drops his vodka in the cup holder, turns up the Lynyrd Skynyrd on the radio, and eventually leads the police on a chase through Palm Beach—coordinated by Hal Needham.

Wait, a Citroën? But Melissa clearly warns Crewe not to take her “Maserati”?

The SM was the result of French automaker Citroën’s nearly decade-long development of a sports coupe, bolstered by Citroën’s 1968 purchase of Maserati to gain access to the Italian automaker’s performance engine technology. The resulting Citroën SM debuted during the Geneva Motor Show in March 1970, becoming the first luxury-oriented car produced in France since before World War II. There are multiple explanations for what “SM” could stand for, though most theories agree that the “M” stands for Maserati.

The SM’s nimble engines were made from aluminum, keeping them lightweight, and mounted behind the front axle. The standard engine was a 2.7-liter V6, mated to a five-speed manual transmission (though 675 were produced for the North American market with a three-speed automatic transmission). The triple-carbureted 2.7 V6 produced 168 horsepower for the first two years of production, superseded by a fuel-injected 2.7 V6 that produced 176 horsepower and pushed the SM to a top speed of 142 mph. A triple-carbureted 3.0-liter V6 was introduced in 1973, producing 178 horsepower and mated either to a three-speed automatic transmission or—for 1973 only—a five-speed manual transmission that increased the top speed.

The innovative Citroën SM was well-received for its blend of comfort, handling, and unprecedented performance for a front-wheel-drive car. After its popularity in Europe, Citroën began exporting the SM to the United States in 1972, when it became the rare non-American vehicle to win Motor Trend‘s “Car of the Year” award. Unfortunately, its U.S. success was halted after the 1973 model year when the SM’s integral variable height suspension made it impossible to pass or be exempt from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association’s new bumper regulations.

Citroën’s bankruptcy in 1974 resulted in Peugeot taking ownership and divesting from Maserati in 1975, resulting in discontinuing the SM after 12,920 were produced across its 1970 to 1975 timeline. Of these, 2,400 were exported for the North American market in 1972 and ’73.

How to Get the Look

Paul Crewe’s brash and flashy duds mirror his attitude at the start of The Longest Yard, dressed in a variation of a leisure suit with western style influences that telegraph his cowboy demeanor.

• Stone-colored polyester zip-up leisure shirt-jacket with rust suede western-pointed shoulder yokes, wide rust suede-faced collar, and set-in sleeves with plain cuffs
• Stone-colored polyester flat-front trousers with rust suede western-yoked waist, rust-suede front self-belt (with gold-toned single-prong buckle), and flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• White calf leather self-strap loafers
• Gold pinky ring with elongated black stone
• Hamilton Pulsar P2 gold-plated digital watch on gold three-piece link bracelet

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie… and stick it in your trophy case.

The Longest Yard has been remade three times, including a 2005 adaptation of the same name starring Adam Sandler as the incarcerated ex-pro and Reynolds in a supporting role as an older former pro also in prison.

The Quote

I think the love has gone out of our relationship.