Sean Connery in Meteor (1979)
Vitals
Sean Connery as Dr. Paul Bradley, orbital satellite designer-turned-MIT professor
Houston, Texas, Washington, D.C., and New York City, December 1978
Film: Meteor
Release Date: October 19, 1979
Director: Ronald Neame
Costume Designer: Albert Wolsky
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
June 30th is National Meteor Watch Day and, while those of limited imagination may think this exclusively means looking up at the stars, some of us with a more cinematic mindset expand the meaning to include watching stars like Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden, and Martin Landau in Ronald Neame’s poorly regarded 1979 sci-fi flick Meteor.
Released the same year that Moonraker sent the incumbent James Bond to space, the erstwhile 007 stars in Meteor as ex-NASA scientist Dr. Paul Bradley, hastily summoned back to Houston by his old colleague Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden) after a comet collided with the asteroid Orpheus, sending dozens of deadly asteroid fragments hurtling toward Earth—including a five-mile-wide meteor that itself threatens an extinction-level event within a week. Now that he’s an MIT professor spending his free time as a competitive sailor, what can Dr. Bradley do about this, you ask?
(He asks that tool.)
Well, he had designed a satellite called Hercules designed to defend against things like this… until the U.S. military commandeered it into a weapon with fourteen nuclear warheads aimed at the Soviet Union. Because of course they did.
Turns out the Russkies had a similar satellite up their own sleeve, named Peter the Great. Without such pressing matters as a $600-million ballroom to worry about, the President (Henry Fonda) publicly asks the USSR to collab on a counter-effort that would joint slay these Earth-threatening asteroid fragments. In the spirit of détente, Russian scientist Alexei Dubov (Brian Keith) and his baddie astrophysicist interpreter Tatiana (Natalie Wood) meet our NASA heroes to pitch a few hypothetical solutions should they happen to have a similar missile system that could help save the world. Will Connery and Wood’s chemistry be powerful enough to resolve the Ku-band Missile Crisis?
Meteor actually had a cool premiere, first shown to the press inside the Barringer Crater outside Winslow, Arizona, with Connery, Wood, and Landau in attendance. Perhaps the American International Pictures brass thought things couldn’t get any lower if they premiered on the floor of an actual impact crater, but critics and audiences set out to prove them wrong. Meteor only recouped about half of its $16 million budget, ultimately prompting AIP’s sale to Filmways in 1980. Despite its many failures, Meteor still has the distinction of an Academy Award nomination—for Best Sound, which it appropriately lost to Apocalypse Now.
Nearly fifty years after its release, the consensus around Rotten Tomatoes’ 5% rating rings true: “too much boring dialogue and not enough destruction”. Maybe it should have leaned more heavily into the fact that it was about an existence-threatening meteor, or maybe the Stanley Mann’s rewritten screenplay was ahead of its time by depicting the scariest fate any of us can imagine: endless meetings.
What’d He Wear?
Dr. Bradley’s sheepskin coat, tweed leisure suit, and turtleneck would typically be toasty for his first stop in Houston on Monday morning, but at least the action is set during the first week of December when it would be chilly enough for such warm duds.
The thigh-length car coat is finished with shearling sheepskin’s natural tan suede shell, presenting a plush darker taupe-brown fur lining that extends onto the broad collar, over the cuffs, and along the edges of the coat’s front, hem, and slanted-entry patch pockets at hand level. Rather than cleaner “turned” seams, Dr. Bradley’s three-button coat also has fur-out seams that show lines of fleece where the leather panels have been stitched together across the front and back; in addition to contributing to a rugged aesthetic, these fur-out seams act as built-in welts that cushion the seams from abrasion.
This being the late 1970s, Dr. Bradley wears a leisure suit even when not at leisure. The jacket particularly reflects the then-fashionable safari-informed styling with its quartet of box-pleated pockets, even though the tweed woolen fabric would be far from ideal on safari! The mid-weight tweed is uniquely woven in a brown-and-cream broken twill that creates a tessellation of small wavy chevrons across the cloth.
The jacket has three small taupe-brown buttons up the front between the waist and mid-chest, barely contrasting against the fabric and in a small size as though poached from a shirt. The sleeves are bloused with triple pleats at the squared cuffs, which each close with a single button. A swelled yoke slightly arcs across the upper back, and the sides are split with vents extending up to Sean Connery’s natural waistline. The four box-pleated pockets—two on the chest and two larger ones over the hips—are covered with single-pointed flaps that hang free without a button closure.
The matching flat-front trousers rise to Connery’s waist, where he holds them up with a smooth brown leather belt that closes through a gold-toned single-prong buckle. The front pockets have gently slanted entries positioned just below the belt-line, and the back pockets are jetted.
Consistent with ’70s menswear trends, the leisure suit trousers are slightly flared below the knees down to the plain-hemmed bottoms which break over the tops of his dark-brown leather derby shoes, worn with plain black socks.
The only time that Dr. Bradley wears the leisure suit with both matching jacket and trousers, he sports it with the same navy-blue turtleneck that he’d been wearing on his sailboat. The way the lightweight cloth clings to Connery’s torso suggests merino wool or possibly even a jersey-knit cotton.
Dr. Dubov and Tatiana arrive in New York city on Thursday to meet Dr. Bradley, again dressed in his tweed leisure suit jacket, now orphaned with olive corduroy trousers held up with the same brown leather belt. Instead of the navy turtleneck, he wears one in a soft cream merino wool.
By Friday morning and at least seven on-screen meetings, Dr. Bradley finally realized This Isn’t That Kind of Disaster Movie and abandoned the tactile-necks for a navy-blue cotton-knit long-sleeved polo shirt. This has a structured collar and three navy buttons, initially worn with the top button undone until he wears it fully fastened while witnessing Hercules’ and Peter the Great’s respective realignments toward the asteroids. He again orphans the leisure suit jacket, this time with mid-gray gabardine flat-front slacks, held up by his usual brown leather belt.
With the potentially world-destroying asteroid fragment collision two days away, Dr. Bradley and Tatiana take a beat over coffee to get to know each other better. Immediately after she explains that her husband of three days recently died, his reaction is equivalent to asking “okay, so you’re single now, right?” This has nothing to do with his wardrobe in the scene, I just think it’s funny.
Unlike his prominently featured Rolex watches during his tenure as 007, we only get a few glimpses at the sports watch Connery wears on his left wrist in Meteor. The case is clearly stainless steel, with a darker dial that could be black or blue, attached to a matching steel link bracelet that gradually tapers back from the case. A few angles suggest a chronograph, perhaps the Omega Speedmaster “Moonwatch” authorized for NASA astronauts that would make sense given Dr. Bradley’s former NASA credentials.
Live shot of Sean Connery reading the updating script pages for Meteor‘s final act.
Harry contacted Dr. Bradley’s ex-wife Helen (Bibi Besch) to pack some clothing for him into a duffel that extends into a garment bag, where she packs a light-gray flannel suit and striped tie that he can wear to the emergency NASA meeting convened in Washington D.C. Whether it’s the estranged Helen’s revenge or merely 1979 rearing its sartorial head, she only packs a dark shirt that makes Dr. Bradley look more like a racketeer than a researcher.
“I told you what’s gonna happen when that meteor hits. But if you think you can prevent it by burying your heads under a blanket of shit, fine!”
Meteor‘s costumes were designed by the late Albert Wolsky, who won his first of two Academy Awards the same year for his work with regular collaborator Bob Fosse on All That Jazz. Wolsky died last month in his Hollywood Hills home at age 95.
What to Imbibe
Harry Sherwood: Why don’t you put that down and let me fix you a small Scotch?
Dr. Bradley: A large one.
At that, Harry prepares a round of Teacher’s Highland Cream blended whisky over ice for Dr. Bradley and those in attendance. Evidently, Teacher’s is one of Dr. Bradley’s favorites, as he also keeps a bottle in his Washington hotel room.
This Scotch is named for William Teacher, who began selling whisky from his wife’s Glasgow grocery in 1830. His sons took charge of the company after his death, and the Teacher’s Highland Cream brand was officially established in 1884. More than a decade later, they opened the Ardmore distillery that produces Teacher’s fully peated “fingerprint whisky”, joined by approximately thirty other single malts to create Teacher’s signature smoky taste profile.
By Friday, Dr. Bradley, Harry, and their new Russian colleagues Dr. Dubov and Tatiana toast to “Peter the Great… and to the Russian scissors for the cutting of the red tape” with shots of Stolichnaya vodka. Originating in the Moscow State Wine Warehouse No. 1 after the turn of the 20th century, Stolichnaya was trademarked in 1938 with its now-famous label likely designed by V.G. Svirida during World War II. For decades, legal consumption was limited to the Soviet Union until the June 1972 barter agreement between PepsiCo and the Soviet government that traded marketing and import rights of their respective products—namely allowing Pepsi to officially introduce Stoli to the West.
Surely vodka shots will help ensure that their world-saving calculations are correct!
How to Get the Look
Sean Connery in Meteor (1979)
As former NASA satellite designer Dr. Paul Bradley, Sean Connery dresses for super-’70s masculinity in his sheepskin coat, tweed leisure suit, tool watch, and a parade of turtlenecks.
- Tan shearling sheepskin car coat with brown plush fleece reverse side and fur-out seams, three-button front, and slanted-entry patch pockets
- Brown-and-cream broken twill woolen tweed leisure suit:
- Three-button leisure jacket with shirt-style point collar, four box-pleated patch pockets with pointed flaps, and single-button cuffs
- Flat-front trousers with belt loops, slanted front pockets, jetted back pockets, and slightly flared plain-hemmed bottoms
- Navy or cream merino wool turtleneck
- Brown smooth leather belt with gold-toned single-prong buckle
- Dark-brown leather derby shoes
- Black socks
- Stainless steel chronograph watch with dark dial on steel link bracelet
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
Or don’t! That may be the real favor.
The Quote
Why don’t you stick a broom up my ass? I could sweep the carpet on my way out.