Vitals

George Kennedy as Andrew Pennington, crooked American lawyer

Egypt, September 1937

Film: Death on the Nile
Release Date: September 29, 1978
Director: John Guillermin
Costume Designer: Anthony Powell

Background

It seems like just yesterday that George Kennedy died at age 91 rocked my corner of Twitter for how so many obituaries eulogized him as a “beefy character actor,” and yet it’s been ten years since the Oscar winner’s death on February 28, 2016.

Kennedy rose to fame after his Academy Award-winning performance in Cool Hand Luke (1967) and was a mainstay of American cinema for decades, often playing tough guys or cops in movies like the Airport and Naked Gun franchises, though the first time I first saw the actor was in John Guillerman’s lavish, star-studded 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Egyptian-set murder mystery Death on the Nile.

Kennedy appears among the ensemble cast as Andrew Pennington, a charismatic but ultimately shady attorney who becomes a top suspect in the murder of his client, Linnet Ridgeway (Lois Chiles), after our detectives Hercule Poirot (Peter Ustinov) and Colonel Race (David Niven) determine that Pennington was attempting to swindle the savvy heiress.

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What’d He Wear?

There’s something appropriately amiss about seeing the burly George Kennedy seemingly stuffed into Andrew Pennington’s dandy-ish wardrobe, as though he’s doing too much to try to sell his honesty from the overly detailed kit of a half-belted sport jacket, pinned contrast collar, double-breasted waistcoat, and spectator shoes. This foppish apparel works for the fussy Hercule Poirot, but it merely raises red flags on Pennington, further underscoring his dishonesty.

Patterned with darker taupe-brown chalk-stripes against the light-brown wool ground, Pennington’s “half-Norfolk” sport jacket is characterized as such by the sporty half-belted back and symmetrical pair of button-through patch pockets over the chest—echoed by the larger button-through patch pockets over his hips. The wide notch lapels and lower two-button stance are consistent with the decade’s “’70s-does-’30s” costume design, which was nonetheless impressive enough to win Anthony Powell the Academy Award for Best Costume Design. Pennington’s jacket features a horizontal yoke across the upper back and four-button cuffs.

Pennington always wears a pale-blue cotton poplin shirt with self-finished double (French) cuffs and a presumably detachable white club collar that he fastens under his four-in-hand tie knot with a silver barbell-style pin.

His first tie (worn at the temple where, uh, someone attempts to kill Linnet) is a black-and-gold cross-hatched glen plaid silk. Aboard the Karnak after Linnet’s murder, his broken twill woven silk tie is patterned in balanced uphill bar stripes in dark-brown, muted slate, cornflower-blue, dark-brown again, then cream, then cornflower-blue again, repeating but with the twill changing direction anytime a cream stripe appears.

Pennington’s waistcoat and trousers may be a matching light stone-colored gabardine. The double-breasted waistcoat has eight white-finished buttons in two parallel columns of four buttons each, styled with no lapels, a straight-cut bottom, and set-in pockets where he keeps the gold pocket-watch strung on a gold “double Albert”-style chain across his midsection.

All that is seen of the trousers are the turn-ups (cuffs) which break over the tops of his spectator brogues. These black-and-white wingtip shoes present a dramatic contrast against the warmer tones of his outfit, reinforcing Pennington’s untrustworthiness via their contemporary reputation as “correspondent shoes” due to these two-toned shoes’ lingering association with third-party co-respondents in English divorce cases.

Pennington appropriately tops his look with a Panama hat, the straw favorite for gents through the early 20th century. Made from a tightly woven beige natural straw, Pennington’s hat is styled like the semi-formal homburg—with its center-ridged crown and curled brim. The hat is finished with a plain black grosgrain band.

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The Gun

Andrew Pennington makes no secret of the fact that he always travels armed (“I always carry a gun with me in my travels abroad!”), though Poirot and Colonel Race are reasonably sure that the fatal .22-caliber wound in Linnet’s temple was far too small to have come from the hefty Colt Official Police revolver they discover while searching Pennington’s cabin.

Colt introduced the Official Police in 1927 as an improvement upon its earlier Army Special, shifting its marketing focus to law enforcement as military organizations were increasingly adopting semi-automatic pistols like the M1911A1. This medium-framed revolver maintains the classic configuration of a double-/single-action (DA/SA) design and a swing-out cylinder for six rounds of .38 Special, established in the early 20th century as a police standard. Though the Official Police did have limited use among the U.S. military, it emerged as intended as a dominant law enforcement service revolver with more than one million produced until production ceased in 1969.

George Kennedy never actually handles his character’s revolver on screen. Instead, Colonel Race pulls it from its hiding place, where it’s later discovered by the film’s murderer when they take careful aim to eliminate a witness in the middle of an interrogation and leave the literal smoking gun on the Karnak‘s deck.

While undoubtedly an early 20th century Colt revolver, I had initially identified this as the larger-framed Colt New Service when I created the IMFDB page for it, but—based on how nearly it fits in David Niven’s hand, I believe it’s simply a classic Official Police.

The screen-used handgun perfectly suits Agatha Christie’s description of the “big Colt revolver” that Pennington keeps in his stateroom in the source novel. The 2022 adaptation would replace this revolver with an M1911A1 service pistol, which Kenneth Branagh’s Poirot would dramatically flourishes during the climactic reveal sequence. The 2004 adaptation as an extended episode of the series Agatha Christie’s Poirot downsized Pennington’s handgun to a more concealable Remington .41-caliber double-barreled derringer with an ornately carved gold frame.

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How to Get the Look

When not dressed for dinner in his off-white dinner jacket and matching burgundy bow tie and pocket square, unscrupulous American attorney Andrew Pennington spends his days touring Egypt in the overstuffed fussiness of a striped four-pocket half-Norfolk jacket, a contrasting double-breasted waistcoat with matching trousers and gold pocket-watch chain, flashy two-tone spectator brogues, pale-blue shirt with a contrasting club collar, and a seasonally appropriate Panama hat.

• Light-brown and brown-striped wool single-breasted 2-button “half-Norfolk” sport jacket with wide notch lapels, two button-through patch chest pockets, two button-through patch hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and half-belted back
• Pale-blue cotton poplin shirt with contrasting white club collar and self-faced double/French cuffs
• Brown, cream, and blue multi-striped uphill bar-striped silk twill tie
• Silver barbell-style collar pin
• Stone-colored gabardine double-breasted 8×4-button waistcoat with set-in pockets and straight-cut bottom
• Stone-colored gabardine trousers with turn-ups/cuffs
• Black-and-white leather wingtip/full-brogue spectator shoes
• Beige tightly woven natural straw homburg with black grosgrain band
• Gold pocketwatch on gold “double Albert”-style chain

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Agatha Christie’s original novel!