Vitals

Sam Elliott as Rick Carlson, charismatic 32-year-old beach lifeguard

Southern California, Summer 1975

Film: Lifeguard
Release Date: July 23, 1976
Director: Daniel Petrie
Wardrobe Credit: Margo Baxley

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Before his magnificent mustache and gravely voice made him a mainstay of Westerns, Sam Elliott’s breakthrough performance was in the romantic drama Lifeguard, released fifty years ago today on July 23, 1976.

In the half-century since its release, Lifeguard continues to polarize audiences as some praise it as a thoughtful character stufy of American masculinity in crisis while others disregard it as a vapid endorsement of statutory rape. While my own response falls somewhere in between, I do agree with even the film’s detractors that Sam Elliott’s undeniable charisma can’t help but to shine through even the more problematic elements of Ron Koslow’s screenplay. As the filmmakers cycled through potential leads like Beau Bridges and Adam Roarke, Elliott was considered after director Dan Petrie and his wife Dorothea noticed the actor’s masculine yet mustache-less performance opposite Roarke in the 1972 eco-horror film Frogs.

A former lifeguard himself, Elliott stars as a career lifeguard Rick Carlson working the beaches of Los Angeles County, where his easy-go-lucky barefoot life picking up chicks is washed into an identity crisis after he receives an invitation to his 15-year high school reunion while also countering his father (George D. Wallace) constantly criticizing his vocation: “You know what’s crazy? I still wonder what you’re gonna be when you grow up!” Although swayed by the promise of more “acceptable” success selling Porsches in the Valley, Rick ultimately decides to continue his sun-baked career as a professional lifeguard, having honed his abilities to the point where the only drowning allowed on his beach is drowning in tail.

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What’d He Wear?

Sam Elliott may spend approximately fifteen minutes of Lifeguard‘s 96-minute runtime fully dressed, with only a fraction of that time spent in this pre-Magnum, P.I. look that naturally appealed to my taste: pairing his flavor saver with a floral shirt and jeans. He exclusively wears this shirt when returning home to visit his parents, not doing much to dissuade his father from believing his oldest son to be nothing more than a beach bum.

The print reflects Rick’s easygoing lifestyle, with tanned figures sailing against a coral-red watery ground patterned with palm trees (in teal and olive shades of green), blue- and gold-shaded flower petals, and “ALOHA HAWAII” inscribed in black. This distinctive design allows easy identification of the shirt even a half-century later as a Hawaiian-designed, Japanese-made product from the now-defunct Island Fashions label. The brand produced this same print in multiple colorways, including bright green. Vintage examples of Rick’s coral-forward aloha shirt can still be found from resellers at eBay and Etsy.

This 100% rayon shirt follows the typical aloha shirt design with a flat camp collar, non-matching breast pocket, elbow-length short sleeves, and a plain front—in this case comprised of four widely spaced two-hole buttons in a tribal-embossed gold-toned lightweight metal.

Rick wears his usual Levi’s 517™ jeans in faded dark indigo denim. Despite the typical five-pocket arrangement of curved front pockets, right inset watch/coin pocket, and two back pockets, these jeans have an orange tab (rather than the 501’s traditional red tab) sewn against the back-right pocket, established in 1969 to signify an “irregular” cut—in this case, the 517™’s characteristic slim fit through the thighs and legs down to flared boot-cut bottoms in accordance with 1970s trends.

For as little as we see Rick fully dressed in a shirt and pants, he wears shoes even less! This scene at his parents’ home is one of the few times he clearly wears shoes, which appear to be crepe-soled sneakers with light taupe-brown napped leather uppers.

Though he doesn’t wear them in this scene, it’s worth noting that Rick’s preferred sunglasses are the oversized gold-framed Ray-Ban “Shooter”-style aviators that fellow mustachioed icon Tom Selleck would later wear as Thomas Magnum. Bausch & Lomb developed this style in 1938 as an evolution of the contemporary Aviator frame, adding a circular device just below the reinforced brow bar. This small circle has been described as a cigarette holder, suggesting that wearers could place their smoldering heater in their sunglasses while taking aim. As Rick Carlson neither smokes nor shoots (at least on screen), it must simply be fashion that informed his decision to wear Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite shades.

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The Car

Rick drives a 1969 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible, painted in dark “Fathom Green” (poly code 983). This was the second year of the third generation (C3) of Chevy’s iconic two-seater sports car that had debuted in 1953. The C3 initially continued the same engines and chassis components of the previous Sting Ray generation but the low, sleek restyled body followed Larry Shinoda’s Mako Shark II concept. It was still available as a two-door convertible or coupe, though the latter now featured removable T-top roof panels.

The 1969 model year increased the standard small-block V8 engine displacement from 327 cubic inches (5.4) L) to 350 “Turbo-Fire” (5.7 L), with output ranging from 300 to 350 horsepower. The all-aluminum big-block 427 “Turbo-Jet” ZL-1 (7.0 L) output ranged, based on carburetor and tuning, from 390 horsepower up to a rated 435 horsepower—suggested to be closer to 560. All engine options could be mated to either a four-speed manual transmission or GM’s three-speed Turbo Hydra-Matic automatic, plus an additional three-speed manual offered for the base 3oo-horsepower 350 V8.

1969 was also the first model year to feature “Stingray” as one word, as opposed to “Sting Ray” as rendered across the C2 generation and the ’68 Corvette. The C3 generation was produced through the 1982 model year.

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What to Imbibe

Rick Carlson’s beer of choice is Coors Banquet, evident from the cans scattered across his bachelor pad. Distinctive for its yellow-labeled bottles and cans, Coors Banquet was the original lager brewed with 100% Rocky Mountain water when German immigrant Adolph Coors founded his brewery in Golden, Colorado. It was officially rebranded as “Coors Banquet” when brewing operations resumed after Prohibition was repealed, paying tribute to the 19th century miners who drank it during celebratory banquets.

Through most of the 20th century, Coors was only available across eleven states of the American West (including California), creating a cultural mystique that prompted Big Enos and Little Enos to send Burt Reynolds’ fast-driving “Bandit” across state lines to bring a truckload of Coors back to Georgia in Smokey and the Bandit (1977).

In the decade following its prominence in films like Lifeguard and Smokey and the Bandit, Coors continued to grow its profile by introducing the lower-ABV Coors Light in “Silver Bullet” cans and gradually expand its western distribution until ultimately establishing its presence across the United States in 1986.

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How to Get the Look

Nearly five years before Thomas Magnum became the poster boy for this style, Sam Elliott’s conflicted lifeguard modeled a well-cut Hawaiian shirt, orange-tab Levi’s, and an epic mustache for a brief but significant family dinner scene.

• Coral-red tropical flower, palm tree, and sailboat-printed rayon short-sleeved aloha shirt with breast pocket and four metal buttons
  • Island Fashions
• Dark-blue denim five-pocket jeans with flared boot-cut bottoms
  • Levi’s 517 (“orange tab”)
• Light taupe-brown suede sneakers with crepe soles
• Gold-framed Ray-Ban Shooter

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. (Please note that this is an entirely different movie from Liz W. Garcia’s 2013 drama The Lifeguard starring Kristen Bell!)

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The Quote

Who said the world’s gotta be fair?