Vitals

Nicolas Cage as H.I. McDunnough, small-time crook and new dad

Tempe, Arizona, Spring 1986

Film: Raising Arizona
Release Date: March 13, 1987
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Costume Designer: Richard Hornung

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

In addition to tomorrow being the official start of summer, it’s also my first Father’s Day since becoming a dad last year! So the stars feel aligned for me to write about Nicolas Cage’s Hawaiian shirt-centric style as another new dad: ex-con Herbert I. McDunnough in the Coen brothers’ sophomore film, Raising Arizona (1987).

My name is H.I. McDunnough. Call me “Hi”.

Raising Arizona begins with Hi continually being arrested for small-time robberies and brought to the lockup in Tempe, Arizona, where he gradually falls for the police photographer Edwina “Ed” Hucket (Holly Hunter) over the course of his mugshots during each arrest. Rejecting the parole board’s description of him as a repeat offender, Hi pledges himself to an honest future and marries Ed—setting up a starter home in suburban Tempe, where he works a blue-collar job punching holes in sheet metal.

Hi has seemingly left the lawless life behind… until the couple discovers that Ed—despite looking “as fertile as the Tennessee Valley”—is unable to conceive a critter. The news aligns with local unpainted-furniture-and-bathroom-fixture-outlet magnate Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) publicly joking that his new quintuplets are “more than we can handle,” reawakening Hi’s criminal instincts when Ed instead conceives a plan for them to kidnap one of the family’s five new babies and raise as their own. “With the benefit of hindsight, maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea,” Hi narrates, “but at the time, Ed’s little plan seemed like the solution to all our problems… and the answer to all our prayers.”

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What’d He Wear?

While Tom Selleck was keeping aloha shirts fashionable through the ’80s as a Hawaii-based private eye on Magnum, P.I., H.I. McDunnough was doing his part to counter that image by reinforcing the tackier end of the tropical-printed spectrum in his rotation of Hawaiian shirts in Raising Arizona. At least you could argue that Hi comes by his taste honestly, as most of his wedding guests are also sporting tropical shirts as do his old prison pals Gale (John Goodman) and Evelle Snoats (William Forsythe) during the final act.

Ed (and the audience) meet Hi during his first on-screen arrest, dressed in a bright red floral-printed shirt over a distressed white ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt. The rayon twill shirt has a bright coral-red ground, scattered with tiny cream wishbones and overlaid by irregular cream-colored square panels printed with large pink- and yellow-petaled tropical hibiscus blossoms and olive-gold foliage. The floating floral panels are arranged at varying angles across the shirt, creating a collage-like effect that blends classic mid-century aloha style with fashion trends of the ’80s.

Styled with a narrow camp collar, plain button-up front, and elbow-length sleeves, this shirt reappears for the climactic final act, torn apart and destroyed during his fight—if you would give Hi the credit of calling it a fight and not just a beatdown—against Leonard Smalls (Randall “Tex” Cobb) in La Grange.

Hi’s characteristic base layer is an off-white waffle-knit thermal long-sleeved T-shirt, its crew neck crudely ripped away to create a wide boat-like neckline. He presumably wears these over his usual white ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirts, heavily distressed.

Hi tucks his undershirt into baggy mid-gray flannel flat-front trousers, styled with straight, on-seam side pockets and narrowly welted back pockets—one with a button-through closure. These have a straight, roomy fit through the legs down to plain-hemmed bottoms, held up by a black tooled leather belt pulled through the trousers’ tall loops and closed with a silver-plate rectangular buckle.

When not forcing himself into those hated gray woven leather loafers, Hi prefers wearing heavily scuffed black leather plain-toe ankle boots, pulled on over plain white ribbed cotton-blend tube socks.

Both Hi and Ed wear black digital watches, with Hi specifically wearing an all-black Casio Databank. Also known as “calculator watches” for their full numeric keypad, the Databank debuted in 1983 as a robust series of wrist-worn personal organizers with a range of capabilities including data storage and a calculator beyond merely displaying the date and time. Though their functionality pales in comparison to modern Apple watches, the Casio Databank could be argued as the first true smartwatch with features including password-protected data storage, touchscreen controls, and the world’s first phone-dialer function on a watch. (But don’t get too excited, Dick Tracy—these watches didn’t actually function as phones.)

Hi’s Casio Databank CA-53W boasts an eight-digital calculator, dual time, stopwatch, alarm, and calendar. He wears it on a black resin band over his left wrist, joined by the gold wedding band on his same hand.

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The Guns

After the Snoats brothers kidnap Nathan Jr. from the McDunnoughs, Hi first arms himself with the same battered Smith & Wesson Model 36 snub-nosed revolver that he used to rob a convenience store the previous night. This classic “belly gun” was introduced at the 1950 International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) convention, where they voted on the initial name “Chiefs Special”. With its five-round cylinder, the double-action Model 36 (as it was renamed when Smith & Wesson started numbering its models later that decade) sacrificed a round of .38 Special in exchange for a flatter profile that concealed more easily than six-shot competitors like the Colt Detective Special.

As he did for the store robbery, Hi carries his blued steel Model 36 in the front of his trouser waistband—but this time supplemented with Ed’s Smith & Wesson Model 10 service revolver next to it and a M1911A1 semi-automatic pistol in the back of his waistband. Despite the trio of handguns shoved in his waistband during this scene, he evidently only has the Model 36 in his belt by the time he confronts the Snoats brothers—and then the vicious Leonard Smalls—in the fictional hayseed town of La Grange.

Hi punctuates his dramatic loadout to retrieve Nathan Jr. by racking a shell into the chamber of his Remington Model 870 pump-action shotgun, which appears to be the same pump-action shotgun briefly seen during the earlier vignette of him preparing to rob another convenience store. Given that it also follows law enforcement specifications with its 18.5″-inch riot-length barrel, this 12-gauge shotgun could also be a police-issued riot gun from Ed’s cruiser.

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The Car

The McDunnough family car, used for late-night diaper runs and impromptu heists, is a bronze 1972 Chevrolet Impala four-door hardtop sedan. Introduced as a top-of-the-line trim for the ’58 Bel Air, the Impala had risen to Chevy’s best-selling model by the time its fifth generation was introduced for the 1971 model year.

Though 250 cubic-inch straight-six engines were still standard, the ’72 Impala features a range of V8 drivetrains including a 350 Turbo-Fire, a trio of 400 Turbo-Jets, and a big-block 454 Turbo-Jet rated at 270 horsepower. While six-cylinder Impalas were offered with either a three-speed manual or two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission, the V8 Impalas for ’72 were exclusively mated to GM’s three-speed Turbo Hydra-matic automatic.

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How to Get the Look

Few things are as closely associated with “dad style” than Hawaiian shirts, so at least H.I. McDunnough’s closet is ready for parenthood—even if he isn’t.

• Bright coral-red tropical hibiscus-printed rayon twill aloha shirt with narrow camp collar, plain button-up front, and elbow-length short sleeves
• Off-white waffle-knit thermal long-sleeved T-shirt
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt
• Mid-gray flannel flat-front trousers with belt loops, on-seam side pockets, narrow-welted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black tooled leather belt with silver-plate rectangular buckle
• Black leather plain-toe ankle boots
• White ribbed cotton-blend tube socks
• Black resin Casio Databank CA-53W multi-function digital “calculator watch” on black resin band
• Gold wedding band

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

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The Quote

I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn’t easy with that son-of-a-bitch Reagan in the White House.