Vitals

Hugh O’Brian as Hugh Lombard, romantic adventurer

Austrian Alps, Winter 1965

Film: Ten Little Indians
Release Date: September 10, 1965
Director: George Pollock
Wardrobe Credit: John McCorry

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

American movie and TV actor Hugh O’Brian was born 100 years ago today on April 19, 1925.

During World War II, the teenage Hugh Krampe followed his father’s footsteps and joined the U.S. Marine Corps, becoming the youngest drill instructor in the branch’s history. While a young recruit at Camp Pendleton, Hugh participated in a boxing match refereed by none other than John Wayne, who was shooting a film nearby. More than three decades later, the two actors’ paths would cross again when Hugh appeared in Duke’s final film, The Shootist (1976), portraying the last character that John Wayne would shoot on screen.

After his discharge from the Marines, Sgt. Krampe embarked on an acting career initially marred by misspellings. When a program incorrectly spelled his name as “Hugh Krape”, the young actor decided to avoid even more embarrassing clerical errors and took his mother’s maiden name O’Brien as his last name; when even this was misspelled as “O’Brian”, the re-christened actor shrugged and stuck with it. It was thus as Hugh O’Brian that he rose to fame portraying the title character in 229 episodes of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp on ABC, establishing himself as a strapping and charismatic leading man.

O’Brian was a substantial enough star by the mid-1960s to command the “Tony Danza treatment” when he was cast in British filmmaker Harry Alan Towers’ first of three increasingly ill-advised adaptations of Agatha Christie’s classic mystery novel And Then There Were None; Christie had named one of the ten strangers Philip Lombard, though O’Brian’s casting evidently prompted someone to rechristen the character as Hugh Lombard.

(Perhaps after the Krape/O’Brien fiascos, it was the actor’s way of reaffirming his identity! Or maybe Harry Alan Towers just preferred the name “Hugh” to “Philip”, as this renaming would remain in place for Oliver Reed’s subsequent portrayal of Lombard in 1974. Lombard became “Philip” again when Frank Stallone assumed the role in 1989.)

Arguably the strongest of Towers’ three versions, the 1965 movie reverted to Christie’s second original title, Ten Little Indians, and updated the setting from a secluded island off the English coast on the eve of World War II to the present day at an isolated mansion high in the snowy Alps. (While exteriors were indeed photographed in Austria’s Ziller Valley, the mansion interiors were filmed at Kenure House in Rush, Ireland.)

All of Towers’ adaptations would retain the “happy ending” of the 1943 play and 1945 film, playing up a romance between the adventurous Mr. Lombard and the young woman hired to be the mysterious Mr. Owen’s secretary, Vera Claythorne—shortened to the two-syllable Ann Clyde for Shirley Eaton’s characterization opposite O’Brian in Ten Little Indians.

---

What’d He Wear?

On the first night that the eight strangers and two married staff gather for dinner at the invitation of the absent U.N. Owen, all of the gentlemen—save for the butler—dress in stylish black tie ensembles. Hugh Lombard wears a three-piece tuxedo that likely belonged to Hugh O’Brian in real life, as the distinctive details align with evening-wear he was often photographed wearing off-screen through the early 1960s.

Though O’Brian was often photographed wearing the tuxedo off screen, I’ve yet to find color photography confirming whether the suiting was black or the midnight-blue often reserved for men’s evening-wear, appearing “darker than black” under artificial light.

The single-breasted dinner jacket features the requisite silk facing on its peak lapels, though these buck convention by covering both the collar and revers, while leaving the lapel edges in the self-fabric—an inversion of earlier dinner jackets that piped just the edges in silk. (For another example of creative black tie with fully silk-covered lapels, see my last post about William Holden’s red moiré silk dinner jacket in The Towering Inferno.)

Silk-trimmed detail continues through the rest of the jacket, including straight silk welting over the hip pockets and the elegantly bound edges following the sides and top of the welted breast pocket, where Lombard wears a white pocket square. The sleeves are each finished with a single button and a narrow silk-faced turnback cuff—a neo-Edwardian flourish that made a comeback in the early ’60s, as seen on some of the dinner jackets that Anthony Sinclair tailored for Sean Connery to wear as James Bond.

The lapels roll to a low single-button front which Lombard wears open, showing the matching single-breasted waistcoat (vest). Unlike the matching waistcoat of a conventional business suit, this waistcoat follows the low-fastening style preferred with formalwear, as it mostly serves the purpose to elegantly cover his waistband and the top of his trousers. The silk trim around the edges of the waistcoat continues the spirit of his dinner jacket with its contrast-edged lapels and silk-cuffed sleeves. The three closely spaced buttons are also covered in silk, echoed the by pocket jettings, and the full back is lined in a lighter-colored satin silk.

The matching flat-front trousers have the usual galon along the sides, split into two silk lines following the seams in front of the side pockets down to the plain-hemmed bottoms. The trouser waistband is appropriately fitted to be worn without a belt, though Lombard keeps his waistcoat on so we can’t clearly determine if they’re self-suspended or supported by suspenders (braces). Lombard’s well-shined black leather lace-up shoes are likely patent leather oxfords, the most conventional choice for black tie.

Lombard’s white shirt has a narrow tonal textured stripe, a fashionable detail through the ’60s also occasionally modeled by Connery’s 007. The shirt has a front placket with conventional buttons rather than studs which, in addition to the lack of pleats or flourish, suggests a dress shirt that could also be worn with suits or blazers rather than the evening shirts reserved specifically for black tie. Lombard fastens the double (French) cuffs with dark squared links, and the spread collar frames his small black satin silk butterfly-shaped bow tie.

---

The Gun

After Mike Raven (Fabian) dies by poisoning on the guests’ first night together, Lombard recognizes the potential danger and pulls the Webley .38 Mk IV revolver from his suitcase to hide in his nightstand. Though this iteration of Lombard is clearly American like Hugh O’Brian himself, this World War II-era British service revolver nods to the story and character’s English origins.

The revolver emerged during the interwar era as a scaled-down version of the venerated top-break .455 Webley revolvers, redesigned to accommodate 200-grain .38 S&W ammunition after British government trials determined that sidearms could be equally as effective with a smaller cartridge. (One would be forgiven for being confused by the nomenclature, as the original run of .455 Webley revolvers followed a Mk I through Mk VI naming system though the .38/200 variant was only introduced as the “.38 Mk IV”.)

When RSAF Enfield’s similar No. 2 Mk I revolver was swiftly adopted by the military in 1932, Webley & Scott responded by suing the British government. Enfield contested the suit by claiming that the design originated with their designer Captain Henry C. Boys, but Webley had the last laugh when they were contracted during World War II to produce enough .38/200 revolvers when Enfield manufacturing capabilities could not match the British Army’s wartime demands.

---

How to Get the Look

Echoing his stylish portrayer Hugh O’Brian, Lombard blends old-fashioned black-tie decorum with hip 1960s sensibilities that includes unique details like silk trim along his narrow-lapeled dinner jacket and its matching waistcoat and trousers.

• Black or midnight-blue wool three-piece tuxedo:
  • Single-button dinner jacket with silk-faced collar and peak lapels, silk-edged welted breast pocket, silk-welted straight hip pockets, and single-button silk-faced turnback cuffs
  • Single-breasted silk-edged waistcoat with silk-covered three-button front, silk-jetted side pockets, and light satin-finished full back
  • Flat-front trousers with fitted waistband, on-seam side pockets, double silk side galon, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• White tonal-striped shirt with spread collar, button-up front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Dark squared cuff links
• Black satin silk butterfly-shaped bow tie
• Black patent leather oxford shoes
• Black dress socks
• White pocket square

---

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.