Tagged: 1960s
Farewell, Friend: Alain Delon’s Casual Jacket and Turtleneck
Alain Delon in Farewell, Friend (1968)
Vitals
Alain Delon as Dino Barran, discharged French Army doctor
Marseilles, France, December 1963
Film: Farewell, Friend
(French title: Adieu l’ami)
Release Date: August 14, 1968
Director: Jean Herman
Costume Designer: Tanine Autré
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Last year, the world said adieu to French screen and style icon Alain Delon, who was born 90 years ago tomorrow on November 8, 1935. Among his prolific filmography that includes Plein Soleil (1960), L’Eclisse (1962), The Leopard (1963), Le Samouraï (1967), and La Piscine (1969), one of Delon’s less-remembered films is the 1968 French-Italian heist caper Adieu l’ami—which translates to Farewell, Friend (also re-released as Honor Among Thieves). The film established Charles Bronson’s stardom in Europe, though it wouldn’t be released in the United States for another five years. Continue reading
Dustin Hoffman in Double Denim as Lenny Bruce
Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in Lenny (1974)
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Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce, controversial comedian
New York, Spring 1964
Film: Lenny
Release Date: November 10, 1974
Director: Bob Fosse
Costume Designer: Albert Wolsky
Background
Did you know that Eleanor Roosevelt gave Lou Gehrig the clap?
Groundbreaking stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce was born 100 years ago, on October 13, 1925, in Long Island. His first steps into comedy were fittingly unconventional; while serving in the Navy during World War II, he dressed in drag to entertain his shipmates, eventually leading to his discharge. After struggling through the New York comedy circuit in the 1950s, Bruce began to find his footing toward the end of the decade, releasing his first solo record The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce in 1959 and delivering his now-legendary Carnegie Hall set during a snowstorm in February 1961.
Legal battles soon became inseparable from the outspoken Bruce’s act and reputation. His October 1961 arrest for obscenity put him squarely in the crosshairs of law enforcement, and over the next five years his performances were increasingly shadowed by surveillance, arrests, and prosecutions for obscenity and drug possession, while he became a living symbol of the struggle for free speech.
On August 3, 1966, the 40-year-old Bruce was found dead of an apparent morphine overdose at his home in the Hollywood Hills. Reflecting on the irony of a man persecuted for words, journalist Dick Schaap concluded his Playboy eulogy with a bitter epitaph: “One last four-letter word for Lenny: Dead. At forty. That’s obscene.”
Decades before he was reintroduced to modern audiences through Luke Kirby’s Emmy-winning performance in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Lenny Bruce was the focus of Bob Fosse’s 1974 biographical film Lenny starring Dustin Hoffman as the titular comedian. The movie received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Hoffman, though it won zero. Continue reading
The Dreamers: Michael Pitt’s Suede Jacket, Jeans, and Chuck Taylors
Michael Pitt in The Dreamers (2003)
Vitals
Michael Pitt as Matthew, expatriate student and self-professed cinephile
Paris, Spring 1968
Film: The Dreamers
Release Date: October 10, 2003
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Costume Designer: Louise Stjernsward
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Much discourse around Bertolucci’s 2003 erotic drama The Dreamers (which premiered in Italy 22 years ago today) centers around what the characters aren’t wearing, so I’ll flip the script by focusing on Louise Stjernsward’s evocative costume design that brings to life Parisian culture against the backdrop of the 1968 student protests.
Hailing from San Diego and studying in Paris, Matthew encounters sibling activists Isabelle (Eva Green) and Théo Fontaine (Louis Garrel) among his “freemasonry of cinephiles”—introduced during the very French situation of Isabelle asking Matthew to take her cigarette during a police demonstration at the storied Cinémathèque française. He’s quickly drawn into the siblings’ strange dynamic of deeply incestuous overtones littered with cinematic references epitomized by Isabelle’s insistence on leading the trio on a run through the Louve as seen in Bande à part. Continue reading
Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove
Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Vitals
Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove (né Merkwürdigliebe), ex-Nazi nuclear war expert
Washington, D.C., September 1963
Film: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Release Date: January 29, 1964
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Costume Designer: Bridget Sellers
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Comedy icon Peter Sellers was born 100 years ago today on September 8, 1925, making today an ideal opportunity to celebrate Stanley Kubrick’s political satire that featured Sellers in one three of his most memorable roles. Continue reading
Pierrot le Fou: Belmondo’s Navy Ribbed Seaside Shirt and Jeep Cap
Jean-Paul Belmondo as Ferdinand Griffon in Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Vitals
Jean-Paul Belmondo as Ferdinand Griffon, runaway husband and itinerant yacht-hand
French Riviera, Summer 1965
Film: Pierrot le Fou
Release Date: November 5, 1965
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Jean-Luc Godard’s tenth feature, Pierrot le Fou, premiered 60 years ago this week during at the 26th Venice International Film Festival, more than two months before its wider release in November 1965.
The film stars Godard’s frequent collaborators, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina (who was also the director’s wife), as the doomed Ferdinand and Marianne fleeing OAS gangsters from Paris to the Mediterranean. Continue reading
Bob Dylan’s Black Leather Jacket at Newport 1965: Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown
Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown (2024). Photo by Macall Polay.
Vitals
Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, folk singer-songwriter
Newport, Rhode Island, Summer 1965
Film: A Complete Unknown
Release Date: December 25, 2024
Director: James Mangold
Costume Designer: Arianne Phillips
Jacket Maker: Jimmy McBride
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Sixty years ago tonight, Bob Dylan closed out his third consecutive appearance at the annual Newport Folk Festival by taking the stage with a backing band, signaling a seismic shift in music that stunned and polarized the attendees.
The controversial Sunday night set became the climactic scene in James Mangold’s acclaimed A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet as Dylan alongside Ed Norton as Pete Seeger and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. Continue reading
La Collectionneuse: Patrick Bauchau’s Slate Sweater and Swimwear
Patrick Bauchau and Haydée Politoff in La Collectionneuse (1967)
Vitals
Patrick Bauchau as Adrien, art gallery owner
French Riviera, Summer 1966
Film: The Collector
(French title: La Collectionneuse)
Release Date: March 2, 1967
Director: Éric Rohmer
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Bastille Day feels like a fitting occasion to celebrate French director Éric Rohmer’s first color film, the 1967 drama La Collectionneuse, which has recently resurfaced across summer mood boards. No surprise, given its sun-drenched palette courtesy of cinematographer Néstor Almendros, a frequent Rohmer collaborator who also shot aesthetically satisfying masterpieces like Days of Heaven.
Considered the fourth entry in Rohmer’s “Six Moral Tales”, La Collectionneuse was made with extreme efficiency while the director waited for Jean-Louis Trintignant’s availability to shoot My Night at Maud’s. Rohmer and Almendros worked with a minimal crew, relying on natural light and long takes to ground the characters in their idyllic—and quietly volatile—setting.
La Collectionneuse was also the first starring role for Belgian actor Patrick Bauchau, who had appeared uncredited in Rohmer’s La Carrière de Suzanne four years earlier and would later be known to 007 fans as the henchman Scarpine in Roger Moore’s final James Bond film, A View to a Kill. Here, he plays the narcissistic gallery owner Adrien, who intends to take advantage of the monastic conditions at his rich friend Rodolphe’s rented villa near Saint-Tropez to enjoy “a real vacation” in peace and solitude:
I even tried not to think. I was face-to-face alone with the sea, far from cruises and beaches, fulfilling a childhood dream put off year after year. I lost myself completely in the play of shadow and light, sinking into a lethargy heightened by the water. That state of passivity, of complete availability, promised to last much longer than the euphoria of one’s first summer dip into the ocean. I could easily see myself spending a whole month this summer this way.
However, this peace and solitude are threatened by the feisty young Haydée (Haydée Politoff), unexpectedly staying at the villa. Adrien and his friend Daniel (Daniel Pommereulle) are initially distrustful of the girl who brings a different lover to the villa every night, but he gradually comes to appreciate her company when she joins him on his early morning swims. Continue reading
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: Dick Shawn’s Red Dodge Dart and Beach Duds
Dick Shawn as Sylvester Marcus in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Vitals
Dick Shawn as Sylvester Marcus, impulsive lifeguard
Southern California, Summer 1962
Film: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Release Date: November 7, 1963
Director: Stanley Kramer
Costume Designer: Bill Thomas
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
I like to spend a week every summer exploring the intersection of costumes and cars as they define characters on screen. For this year’s first Car Week post, I’m revisiting a sentimental favorite: the 1963 slapstick comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with its sprawling cast of the era’s most recognizable comic actors from Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Buddy Hackett to Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, and Dick Shawn.
The latter is introduced later in the daylong pursuit of $350,000 stashed under a “big W” by the late Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), portraying beach lifeguard Sylvester Marcus, described by his brother-in-law J. Russell Finch (Berle) as “an irresponsible, unreliable, big loudmouth, no-good bum who, if he isn’t a crook, it’s only because he hasn’t got the brains or ambition to even become a crook.”
Finch and his wife Emeline (Dorothy Provine) are traveling with her overbearing mother, Mrs. Marcus (Ethel Merman), whose relentless nagging during their search for the buried loot finally pushes Finch over the edge. The resulting blow-up leaves Emeline and her mother to fend for themselves, but—knowing she can count on her hopelessly devoted son—Mrs. Marcus calls Sylvester to send him ahead of them to Santa Rosita to find the loot.
Unfortunately for her quick payday, Sylvester’s sole brain cell is distracted somewhere between a beer and a bikini-clad brunette. Distracted by his mother’s description of Finch’s “assault”, Sylvester leaps into action and into the brunette’s shining red Dodge Dart convertible, tearfully determined to rescue his mother and sister without actually having listened to why they called him in the first place. Continue reading
Thunderball: Rik Van Nutter’s Tropical Shirts as Felix Leiter
Rik Van Nutter as Felix Leiter in Thunderball (1965)
Vitals
Rik Van Nutter as Felix Leiter, CIA agent
Nassau, The Bahamas, Summer 1965
Film: Thunderball
Release Date: December 29, 1965
Director: Terence Young
Wardrobe Designer: Anthony Mendleson
Background
Just as I ended last summer by looking at one of James Bond’s aloha-wearing allies in Thunderball, let’s kick off the first weekend of summer during Thunderball‘s 60th anniversary year with Bond’s “brother from Langley” dripped out for days in the tropics. Continue reading
Don Draper’s Gray Jacket and Striped Tie for a “Zou Bisou” Birthday Surprise
Jon Hamm and Jessica Paré on Mad Men, Episode 5.01: “A Little Kiss, Part 1”. Photo by Ron Jaffe/AMC.
Vitals
Jon Hamm as Don Draper, 40-year-old remarried ad man
New York City, June 1966
Series: Mad Men
Episode: “A Little Kiss, Part 1” (Episode 5.01)
Air Date: March 25, 2012
Director: Jennifer Getzinger
Creator: Matthew Weiner
Costume Designer: Janie Bryant
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Mad Men‘s fifth season double-episode premiere “A Little Kiss” begins on Memorial Day 1966 and follows through the next weekend, when Don Draper’s new wife Megan (Jessica Paré) curiously decides to throw her husband a surprise 40th birthday party… despite knowing literally anything about him. Continue reading
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