Tagged: 1910s
Kenneth Branagh’s Antarctic Exploration Gear as Ernest Shackleton
Kenneth Branagh in Shackleton (2002)
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Kenneth Branagh as Sir Ernest Shackleton, prolific polar explorer
Antarctica, December 1914 to August 1916
Series: Shackleton
Air Dates: January 2-3, 2002
Director: Charles Sturridge
Costume Designer: Shirley Russell
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The Channel 4 series Shackleton aired in two parts during the first week of January 2002, winning Emmy Awards in two of the seven categories for which it was nominated among nods from the BAFTA Awards and Golden Globes. Kenneth Branagh stars as the titular Sir Ernest Shackleton, specifically depicting his leadership of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition toward the end of what many call the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration”. Though the specific expedition failed in its scientific objective, his leadership and the resourceful group’s survival have become legendary as a feat of, well, endurance. Despite this, Shackleton wisely avoids hagiography as it presents the titular adventurer with virtues and flaws intact.
After securing funding and approval from the British Admiralty despite looming war across Europe, Shackleton’s crew departed from Plymouth in August 1914 aboard the Endurance. Shackleton had purchased this Norwegian-built three-masted schooner, which was originally christened Polaris before he renamed it from his family motto (“By endurance, we conquer”), thus its journey from England through the South Atlantic was its maiden voyage. Following stops in Buenos Aires and South Georgia Island, Shackleton and his crew of 28 men—and 69 dogs—finally departed for the Antarctic on December 5th.
The real Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922), photographed aboard the Endurance by Frank Hurley, circa 1914-1915.
Shackleton commanded the Endurance through the Weddell Sea, while Aeneas Mackintosh helmed a supporting party aboard the Aurora through the Ross Sea. Hoping to make landfall by Christmas, the seagoing expedition stretched into January 1915 when the Endurance became beset in pack ice. To conserve fuel for a potential return to South Georgia, Shackleton cut the engines and began drifting in the ice… for nine months.
110 years ago today on October 27, 1915—one year and a day after the Endurance left Buenos Aires—Shackleton finally gave his crew the orders to abandon ship, establishing a camp on the ice after—aside from Frank Hurley’s photographs and Leonard Hussey’s banjo—each man was instructed to dump all but two pounds of personal possessions from aboard the ship. Endurance finally sank just over three weeks later on November 21, 1915, starting a new chapter as the crew realized their mission shifted from science to survival.
My job now is to make sure you all live: every single one of you. To do that, I cannot afford to be sentimental. If I am, you will die—die starving, die frozen, die mad. I’ve seen it before, I do not intend to see it again.
David Suchet’s Herringbone Suit as Hercule Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in the 1990 episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot: “The Mysterious Affair at Styles”
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David Suchet as Hercule Poirot, fastidious Belgian refugee and former detective
Essex, England, Summer 1917
Series: Agatha Christie’s Poirot
Episode: “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” (Episode 3.01)
Air Date: September 16, 1990
Director: Ross Devenish
Costume Designer: Linda Mattock
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
“Queen of Crime” Agatha Christie was born 135 years ago today on September 15, 1890. Among her most prolific creations was the character of Hercule Poirot, a fussy Belgian detective whom she included in more than three dozen novels and short stories despite her own eventual exhaustion with the character she decried as “insufferable.” Poirot first appeared in Christie’s debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, first published 105 years ago next month in October 1920.
Recommended by Christie’s own family for the role, David Suchet crafted the definitive portrayal of the detective throughout 13 seasons of the ITV series Agatha Christie’s Poirot, originated by writer Clive Exton in 1989. To commemorate the centenary of Christie’s birth, ITV aired the feature-length episode “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” between the second and third seasons which, to date, remains the only major English-language adaptation of Christie’s novel. Continue reading
Robert Ryan in The Wild Bunch
Robert Ryan as Deke Thornton in The Wild Bunch (1969)
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Robert Ryan as Deke Thornton, conflicted bounty hunter and ex-bandit
Texas to Mexico, Spring 1913
Film: The Wild Bunch
Release Date: June 18, 1969
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Costume Designer: James R. Silke
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Released today in 1969, The Wild Bunch reimagined the American frontier on screen. The New Hollywood movement ushered in a new level of brutality with films like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which—along with his frustration over the Vietnam War and the lack of realism in earlier depictions of the Old West—inspired director Sam Peckinpah to return behind the lens.
Based on a screenplay co-written by Peckinpah, Walon Green, and Roy N. Sickner, The Wild Bunch follows an aging gang led by the grizzled Pike Bishop (William Holden), pursued into Mexico by a posse of ragtag bounty hunters led by Pike’s former partner, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), against the backdrop of the nation’s decade-long revolution. Continue reading
John Hannah’s Norfolk Suits as Lusitania Passenger Ian Holbourn
John Hannah in Sinking of the Lusitania: Terror at Sea (2007)
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John Hannah as Ian Holbourn, English-born professor, writer, and Scottish laird
RMS Lusitania in the North Atlantic Ocean, off the Irish coast, May 1915
Film: Sinking of the Lusitania: Terror at Sea
(Original title: Lusitania: Murder on the Atlantic)
Air Date: May 12, 2007
Director: Christopher Spencer
Costume Designer: Diana Cilliers
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
110 years ago today on the afternoon of Friday, May 7, 1915, the RMS Lusitania was steaming east toward its destination port of Liverpool when a German U-boat fired a torpedo that struck the Cunard ship on its starboard side. Less than 20 minutes later, the grand 787-foot-long ship was on its way to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in a disaster that would claim the lives of nearly 1,200 of its 1,960 passengers and crew.
Although the Lusitania was indeed a passenger liner, the Imperial German Embassy had just issued an official warning that any ship flying the flag of England or her allies was subject to a German attack. This open statement of aggression from the German government has resulted in lingering conspiracies that the British government had intentionally sailed the Lusitania through dangerous waters to provoke a German attack and lure the United States into war. Though these theories have been generally discredited, the deaths of 128 Americans who were aboard the liner has been cited as a significant factor in the U.S. ultimately entering World War I against Germany.
Unlike the famous sinking of the RMS Titanic three years earlier, the Lusitania victims were less determined by chance than a mix of luck and “survival of the fittest”, with the odds favoring able-bodied swimmers who were either on deck or able to quickly reach it during the 18 minutes that it took the liner to founder.
Despite the drama, scale, and significance of its sinking that took 1,197 lives, the Lusitania disaster has yet to be prominently portrayed on screen, save for a docudrama that first aired on the Discovery Channel in May 2007. Originally titled Lusitania: Murder on the Atlantic, the 90-minute production’s recognizable cast includes Kenneth Cranham as the ship’s captain William Turner and John Hannah as Ian Holbourn, an Anglo-Scotsman professor who was returning to his home on the remote Shetland island of Foula after a lecture tour of the United States. Missing his own sons who were at home with his wife, Holbourn befriended the homesick 12-year-old Avis Dolphin (Madeleine Garrood), a fellow second-class passenger.
The real John Bernard Stoughton “Ian” Holbourn (1872-1935), pictured as he would have looked shortly before the Lusitania disaster.
Killers of the Flower Moon: Leo’s Indigo Suit as Ernest Burkhart
Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon.
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Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart, opportunistic jitney driver and World War I veteran
Osage County, Oklahoma, Spring 1919
Film: Killers of the Flower Moon
Release Date: October 20, 2023
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Jacqueline West
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today is Leonardo DiCaprio’s 50th birthday! Born November 11, 1974, the actor’s birthday always coincides with the November 11th observance of Veterans Day in the United States, though the real-life war veteran he portrays in Martin Scorsese’s historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon is far from honorable.
Ernest Burkhart may be Leo’s greatest “dumb guy” role to date as he plays just that, an easily manipulated sap with neither the brains nor the backbone to stand up to the murderous plot spun by his avaricious uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro), who poses as a benefactor to the oil-rich Osage. After serving as an infantry cook during World War I, Ernest returns home to his uncle’s Oklahoma ranch, where King recruits him into his nefarious schemes. Continue reading
The Godfather Part II: Don Fanucci’s White Suit
Gastone Moschin as Don Fanucci in The Godfather Part II (1974)
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Gastone Moschin as Don Fanucci, ruthless Black Hand extortionist
New York City, Summer 1917
Film: The Godfather Part II
Release Date: December 12, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Born 95 years ago today on June 8, 1929, Italian actor Gastone Moschin may be most recognizable to audiences around the world for his portrayal of the sinister Don Fanucci in The Godfather, Part II (1974), celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Genco Abbandando (Frank Sivero) introduces the young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro)—and we the audience—to the sneering white-suited gangster as an enforcer for the “Black Hand”, the real-life extortion racket which preyed upon Italian-American immigrants in communities along the eastern seaboard from Boston to New Orleans, where it was linked to the 1890 assassination of police chief David Hennessy.
The Black Hand operated primarily within the United States around the turn of the 20th century, violently threatening victims who ranged from simple shopkeepers to celebrities like tenor Enrico Caruso, who enlisted the help of crusading NYPD Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino. Though Petrosino arrested two men connected with the Caruso threats, he himself would become a victim of Mano Nera when he was fatally shot in March 1909 while undercover in Sicily, investigating the history of brutal criminals he hoped to banish from the United States. The Petrosino murder increased pressure from law enforcement that all but dissolved the Black Hand’s influence by the 1920s, around the time that Prohibition provided the opportunity for younger and more ambitious crooks like “Lucky” Luciano to organize the former Black Hand threads into a structure known alternately as La Cosa Nostra (“Our Thing”) or simply Mafia.
One of the most prominent Black Hand gangsters of this era was the Sicilian-born Ignazio Lupo, known as “Lupo the Wolf” among the neighborhoods he terrorized in New York City’s Little Italy. Lupo was reportedly a direct inspiration for Mario Puzo to craft the character of Don Fanucci who first appeared in the 1969 novel The Godfather before he would be brought to life by Gastone Moschin in the cinematic sequel. Continue reading
Titanic: David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy
David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy in Titanic (1997)
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David Warner as Spicer Lovejoy, sinister bodyguard and ex-policeman
North Atlantic Ocean, April 1912
Film: Titanic
Release Date: December 19, 1997
Director: James Cameron
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott
Tailor: Dominic Gherardi
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
112 years ago tonight on the night of Sunday, April 14, 1912, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the north Atlantic Ocean. The grand ship making its maiden voyage was under the waves less than three hours later, en route the ocean floor as the disaster claimed the lives of more than 1,500 passengers and crew, leaving around 700 survivors scattered in small open boats awaiting rescue.
From the moment headlines broke across the world the following morning through more than a century later, the Titanic disaster has all from historians and experts to the public at large, its legacy kept alive by scores of books and film productions, including a silent film starring real-life survivor Dorothy Gibson filmed just weeks after the sinking, a handful of Hollywood melodramas, a Nazi propaganda film, and the 1958 drama A Night to Remember, still considered by many the definitive fact-based retelling of the disaster.
The first major color production depicting the Titanic sinking aired on ABC in 1979. Through the Queen Mary standing in for the Titanic bore little resemblance to the actual ship, S.O.S. Titanic is remarkable for almost exclusively featuring dramatis personae representing actual passengers and crew, rather than fictionalized characters or composites. One of these was the sharply observant English schoolteacher Lawrence Beesley, who traveled in second class and survived the sinking to pen one of the first written accounts of the disaster which remains a valuable resource among historians and enthusiasts today. Beesley was portrayed in S.O.S. Titanic by David Warner, a talented and prolific stage and screen actor who died in July 2022 at the age of 80—you can read more in my 2023 post about Warner’s tweed Norfolk suit as Mr. Beesley.
The late, great Mr. Warner didn’t restrict his Titanic screen credits to the late ’70s, as he was cast nearly 20 years later in James Cameron’s epic 1997 blockbuster Titanic, which won a record-tying 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
David Warner starred as the real-life passenger Lawrence Beesley in S.O.S. Titanic (1979) and the fictional Spicer Lovejoy in Titanic (1997).
Warren Beatty’s White Suit in Reds
Warren Beatty as Jack Reed in Reds (1981)
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Warren Beatty as John Silas “Jack” Reed, radical journalist and activist
Provincetown, Massachusetts, Summer 1916
Film: Reds
Release Date: December 4, 1981
Director: Warren Beatty
Costume Designer: Shirley Ann Russell
Background
Whether it’s because Labor Day is considered by some sartorial purists to be the last acceptable day for wearing summer whites or because the holiday originated to recognize the American labor movement, it feels appropriate for today’s post to explore Warren Beatty’s off-white summer suit as labor activist Jack Reed in his 1981 historical epic Reds.
Reds won three of the 12 Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including Beatty for Best Director, Maureen Stapleton for Best Supporting Actress, and Vittorio Storaro for Best Cinematography, though it had also been nominated for Best Picture and—of significant interest for this blog’s focus—Best Costume Design. Continue reading
The Godfather, Part II: De Niro’s Blue Two-Toned Shirt as Young Vito
Robert De Niro as Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II (1974)
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Robert De Niro as Vito Corleone, née Andolini, Sicilian-born immigrant-turned-gangster
New York City, Summer 1917 to Spring 1920
Film: The Godfather Part II
Release Date: December 12, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
On screen legend Robert De Niro’s 80th birthday, today’s post revisits his star-making, Oscar-winning role as the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Part II.
Born August 17, 1943, De Niro’s birthday falls the day after the traditional August 16th observance of the Feast of San Rocco—the backdrop of the young Vito’s 1917 assassination of Black Hand extortionist Don Fanucci (Gastone Moschin) that propels his gangland ascension. Continue reading
A Night to Remember: Titanic Passenger Major Peuchen
Robert Ayres as Major Arthur Peuchen in A Night to Remember (1958)
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Robert Ayres as Arthur Godfrey Peuchen, resourceful Canadian industrialist and yachtsman
North Atlantic Ocean, April 1912
Film: A Night to Remember
Release Date: July 3, 1958
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Costume Designer: Yvonne Caffin
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
111 years ago tonight, around 11:40 PM on Sunday, April 12, 1912, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. The ship would sink in less than three hours, taking more than 1,500 to their death and leaving just over 700 survivors in open boats scattered across the sea, waiting for rescue.
“Women and children first” had the been the standing order of survival as lifeboats were loaded and lowered, first cautiously and then with increasing alarm as those aboard realized the ship’s desperate condition. Unfortunately, there was only room in the lifeboats for about half of those aboard and a fatal combination of initial trepidation among the passengers and restrictive attitudes by some officers responsible loading the boats resulted in most not being filled to capacity.
Nearly half of the survivors were men, though this still translated to only about 20% of the male passengers and crew that had been aboard the liner. One of these men was Arthur Godfrey Peuchen, a chemical manufacturer and militia major from Toronto who was three days shy of his 53rd birthday as he sat shivering in lifeboat number 6. Continue reading