Vitals

Marjoe Gortner as Lyle Wheeler, wannabe outlaw

New Mexico, Summer 1975

Film: Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw
Release Date: April 28, 1976
Director: Mark L. Lester
Costume Designer: Cornelia McNamara

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

People typically cite two major reasons to watch the low-budget ’70s crime flick Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw… neither of which are Marjoe Gortner’s wardrobe. Is that going to stop me from writing about it for the film’s 50th anniversary? No, of course not.

Released in Los Angeles on April 28, 1976, this was also Lynda Carter’s big-screen debut, finally hitting screens nearly six months after she became an instant sensation when Wonder Woman premiered on ABC. Made with the same exploitative “guilty pleasure” watchability that defined so much of American Independent Pictures’ contemporary output, Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw is known to many for Carter’s sole (but frequent) nude screen appearance—often in varying states of undress playing the, uh, titular Bobbie Jo Baker, who abandons her dead-end job and alcoholic mother to join the charismatic car thief Lyle Wheeler on a crime spree through the southwest. Prior to his Rocky fame, Sylvester Stallone was producers’ first choice to play Lyle until ex-child preacher Marjoe Gortner was cast.

Yep, you read that right.

Christened Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner—”Marjoe” being a portmanteau for Mary and Joseph, if you wanted insight into his evangelical parents who pushed him into claiming he had a vision from God during a bath and had him delivering sermons and performing marriages by the age of four. He made millions for his family as a preacher until he turned 16, when his father Vernon ran off with the earnings. Disillusioned, Gortner eventually transferred his knack for performing from sermons to the screen.

After blowing the lid off of American evangelicalism’s deceptive underbelly as the subject of the Academy Award-winning 1972 documentary Marjoe, Gortner continued his persona’s 180 by playing a slew of wild criminals; the breastacular Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw feels like a particularly blasphemous response to Gortner’s forcibly devout early life. Vernon Zimmerman originally titled it “Desperado” as a loose update of Western legend Billy the Kid’s story, though the story perhaps more closely follows the Bonnie and Clyde template, centered around a young and irresponsible criminal couple recruiting one of their siblings into a scrappy gang that terrorizes the southwest with its arsenal of army rifles and parade of stolen cars until it all reaches its inevitably violent end.

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What’d He Wear?

Our eponymous outlaw Lyle Wheeler rotates through a simple wardrobe on the road: a pair of T-shirts (one black, one dark blue) and a pair of snap-front shirts with cut off sleeves. The most frequently seen of the latter is a classic Wrangler 27MW western work shirt in a light blue denim cotton. Though the black brand patch has been removed from the left pocket flap, Wrangler’s characteristic “W”-shaped stitch is still visible over both chest pockets—each of which close with a single-snap pointed flap.

The shirt has five white enamel-filled nickel snap buttons up the front placket, plus a functional clear plastic sew-through button at the neck, with a long-pointed collar that was a product of its time. Whether to beat the heat or build his rebellious image, the shirt’s sleeves have been intentionally removed at the shoulder seams where the subtle fraying remains.

Lyle doubles down on the denim, tucking his cutoff shirt into the same light-blue wash Lee 101Z Rider jeans that he also wears with a blue T-shirt during his old-fashioned duel with Joe Grant (Virgil Frye). These can be clearly identified as Lee by the “lazy S” stitching over the two rear pockets as well as the black Lee-branded patch sewn along the top of his back-right pocket. The front otherwise reflects traditional jeans design with two curved front pockets and a watch pocket inset through the right-hand pocket.

His brown tooled leather belt has an oversized etched silver buckle with a matching keeper and end, reinforcing his western outlaw image. If the tooled belt is Dodge City, he goes full Tombstone with his russet leather gun-belt, detailed with cartridge loops extending around the back and onto the right side just before the ranger-style front strap that closes through a tarnished brass single-prong buckle. He carries his single-action revolver in a low-slung buscadero holster looped onto his left thigh, where he laces it around his leg with a rawhide cord.

With a pair of western belts like that clanging around his waist, Lyle Wheeler ain’t gonna wear black cap-toe oxfords. His two-tone cowboy boots are a constant in his wardrobe, built with light-brown leather stylized toes, heels, and shaft inlays against olive-drab leather vamps. The boots have pointed toes and raised leather riding heels.

Lyle’s only other pants are beige jeans, typically made in a twill blend of polyester and cotton that outfitters like Levi’s marketed as “Sta-Prest”. These flat-front trousers also have belt loops, curved front pockets, and patch-style back pockets, cut straight and narrow through the legs until flaring out over the plain-hemmed bottoms.

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The Guns

More than one hundred years after its 1873 launch, Lyle Wheeler disregards the myriad modern sidearms introduced in that century and arms himself with a Single Action Army revolver. Immortalized as the “Peacemaker”, the Colt Single Action Army (SAA) remains an iconic handgun of the Wild West. It has been made for more than thirty different calibers in addition to the traditional .45 Long Colt cartridge, and the original trio of barrel lengths ranged from the Army-issued 7½” Cavalry standard to the 4¾” Civilian or Gunfighter model, with the intermediate 5½”-barreled model carried by Lyle Wheeler known as the Artillery model.

The SAA presents an old-fashioned counter to the M16 rifles obtained by the gang as their crimes intensify. The gang’s automatic rifles are generally seen from the left side, but our limited views of the more feature-laden right sides appear to show Lyle’s rifle with a forward assist, no brass deflector, and a full raised “fence” around the magazine release. In addition to the full 20-inch barrel and improved “birdcage” flash hider, these details indicate the likelihood of the M16A1 variant that the U.S. military officially adopted in 1969.

Contrast this with his fellow gang member Slick (Jesse Vint) carrying an older pattern rifle with a simplified “slickside” receiver and duckbill flash hider, suggesting an original Colt Model 601 AR-15. Both Slick’s AR-15 and Lyle’s M16A1 feed from 20-round STANAG magazines loaded with 5.56x45mm NATO ammunition.

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The Car

Lyle Wheeler kicks the action into high gear by stealing a 1970 Ford Mustang “Grabber” fastback equipped with Mohawk Super Mac 70 tires. The Grabber trim package was a spring special for the 1970 model year that essentially added sporty side stripes to SportsRoof Mustangs, with only 818 painted in this gold and black-striped “Grabber Orange” color scheme.

The aftermarket side pipes route exhaust from the engine erroneously described by its owner as a “454 Cobra”—an error so grievous to serious car guys that it’s hard not to root for Lyle stealing it! (Only GM offered a 454 cubic-inch engine; the top-end Mustang engine in 1970 was a 428 Cobra Jet.)

As the “Grabber” was merely an appearance package, it could be ordered with any of the 1970 Mustang’s engine lineup. We don’t actually see what’s under the hood of Lyle’s new Mustang, but we can assume it’s at least meant to be the 428 Cobra Jet or Super Cobra Jet, although even the small-block 302 cubic-inch Windsor V8 was no slouch.

1970 Ford Mustang Grabber

Body Style: 2-door SportsRoof fastback

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 428 cu. in. (7.0 L) Ford FE-series “Cobra” V8 with 4-barrel Holley carburetor

Power: 335 hp (250 kW; 340 PS) @ 5200 RPM

Torque: 440 lb·ft (597 N·m) @ 3400 RPM

Transmission: 4-speed manual

Wheelbase: 108 inches (2743 mm)

Length: 187.4 inches (4760 mm)

Width: 71.3 inches (1811 mm)

Height: 51.3 inches (1303 mm)

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What to Imbibe

As the action is set entirely west of the Mississippi River, this outlaw doesn’t need to send a bandit for his regular intake of Coors Banquet, a 5% ABV lager that has been the Golden, Colorado brewery’s flagship beer since it was founded in 1873. (Other than its regional ubiquity, there may be some significance to Lyle favoring a beer introduced the same year as his go-to sidearm.)

Lyle enjoys Coors in both the stubby 12-ounce “grenade” bottles that were eventually discontinued (as customers felt that they were getting less than a 12-oz. long-necked bottle) until their nostalgic return in 2013 and from cans, which the gang also use for target practice.

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What to Read

In one of the few scenes where Marjoe Gortner actually wears a shirt with sleeves, Lyle thumbs through a hardback copy of Jay Robert Nash’s seminal 1973 outlaw volume Bloodletters and Badmen over the makeshift grave of a fallen comrade-in-arms. According to IMDB, director Mark L. Lester was unpleasantly surprised to learn that Nash was suing him after the film’s release: “It turns out I wasn’t allowed to use the book in the movie. I had to pay the author for the rights to the Billy the Kid story. I thought it was public domain at the time!”

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How to Get the Look

While I’d hate to see such harm come to an original ’70s Wrangler shirt, let all who have the arms for it make this the summer of boldly Marjoemaxxing by trimming off the sleeves of your denim western shirt and tucking it into your jeans. (As I do not have the arms for it, I’ll be keeping my sleeves intact.)

• Light-blue denim western snap-front shirt with long-pointed collar, two chest pockets with single-snap pointed flaps, and cut-off sleeves
  • Wrangler 27MW
• Light-blue denim jeans with belt loops, five-pocket layout, and zip fly
  • Lee 101Z Rider
• Brown tooled leather belt with large engraved silver single-prong western buckle with matching keeper and end
• Russet brown leather gun-belt with ranger-style brass single-prong buckle, cartridge loops, and buscadero left-hand holster for Single Action Army revolver
• Olive-and-brown leather cowboy boots

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.