Tagged: 3-Piece Suit
Mel Brooks’ Bird-Attracting Charcoal Flannel Suit in High Anxiety
Mel Brooks in High Anxiety (1977)
Vitals
Mel Brooks as Dr. Richard Harpo Thorndyke, anxious psychologist
Los Angeles to San Francisco, Spring 1977
Film: High Anxiety
Release Date: December 25, 1977
Director: Mel Brooks
Costume Designer: Patricia Norris
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The 2,000-Year-Old Man turns 100! Born Melvin James Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, prolific writer, director, producer, actor, and comedian Mel Brooks is one of less than two dozen entertainers to date to have attained EGOT status over a career that delivered iconic stage and screen comedies like The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), and Spaceballs (1987).
One of his most prominent (and stylish) on-screen performances was in High Anxiety, Brooks’ affectionate satire of Alfred Hitchcock’s films—crafted with the Master of Suspense’s own endorsement. (Following a private screening, Hitchcock’s only criticism was that Brooks used three too many shower rings in a parody of Psycho‘s famous “shower scene”; the director later sent a congratulatory case of wine to Brooks, noting that the movie itself was “splendid!”)
The Omen: Gregory Peck’s Charcoal Pinstripe Suit
Gregory Peck in The Omen (1976)
Vitals
Gregory Peck as Robert Thorn, American diplomat
Rome, June 6, 1970 and London, June 1975
Film: The Omen
Release Date: June 6, 1976
Director: Richard Donner
Wardrobe Supervisor: Tiny Nicholls
Tailor: H. Huntsman & Sons, London
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The Omen was released fifty years ago today on June 6, 1976—a date intentionally selected to mirror the film’s opening on June 6th at 6 a.m., when American ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) rushes through Rome to reach his wife Katherine (Lee Remick). Robert arrives to learn that the child Katherine has just delivered died moments after birth, but hospital chaplain Father Spiletto (Martin Benson) convinces him to secretly adopt a newborn orphan and raise the boy as their own without Katherine’s knowledge.
Unfortunately for Robert, Katherine, and the world at large, that boy is Damien—the Antichrist—but I suppose you’ll have that when someone’s birth is the infamous 6-6-6: the “Number of the Beast” described in the Book of Revelation.
Wake Up Dead Man: Daniel Craig’s Tweed Suits as Benoit Blanc
Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc in Wake Up Dead Man (2025). Photo by John Wilson.
Vitals
Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, Southern private detective and “proud heretic”
Upstate New York, Spring 2025
Film: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Release Date: November 26, 2025
Director: Rian Johnson
Costume Designer: Jenny Eagan
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy 58th birthday to Daniel Craig! Born March 2, 1968, the actor followed his five-film tenure as James Bond with the recurring role of Southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc in three Knives Out movies to date including his latest release, Wake Up Dead Man, which premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival two months before its limited release in American theaters the week of Thanksgiving 2025. Continue reading
Leslie Nielsen’s Pinstripe Suit as Dr. Rumack in Airplane!
Leslie Nielsen as Dr. Rumack in Airplane! (1980)
Vitals
Leslie Nielsen as Dr. Rumack, serious physician
In the air between Los Angeles and Chicago, Spring 1980
Film: Airplane!
Release Date: July 2, 1980
Directed by: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker
Costume Designer: Rosanna Norton
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Born 100 years ago today on February 11, 1926, the legendary Leslie Nielsen finally found the role that unlocked his straight-faced superpower, launching his beloved comedic second act in Hollywood history in Airplane! as Dr. Rumack, a man so serious that irony simply bounces off him.
Dr. Rumack: Can you fly this plane and land it?
Ted: Surely you can’t be serious.
Dr. Rumack: I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
Aside from a lighthearted guest spot on the first season of M*A*S*H, the Canadian-born Nielsen’s comic potential generally sat idle on the runway until the madcap ZAZ crew cast him as the deadpan Dr. Rumack, followed by his enduring role as the bumbling detective Frank Drebin—first in the short-lived TV series Police Squad!, followed by its far more successful film continuation The Naked Gun and its two sequels.
Adapted nearly word-for-word (no, really) from the 1957 drama Zero Hour, Airplane! primarily parodies the disaster subgenre that dominated ’70s cinema like Airport, though it found fodder in everything from From Here to Eternity to Saturday Night Fever. Star-crossed ex-lovers Ted Striker (Robert Hays) and Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty) are our leads, but Nielsen hijacks the movie the moment he’s introduced as the doctor tapped with treating any of the passengers and crew aboard Trans American Flight 209 from LAX to Chicago who made the sorry decision of choosing fish for dinner, prompting a food poisoning epidemic rivaling even the revulsion of an Anita Bryant concert. Continue reading
Hoodlum: Tim Roth’s Gray Checked Suit as Dutch Schultz
Tim Roth as Dutch Schultz in Hoodlum (1997)
Vitals
Tim Roth as Dutch Schultz, volatile gangster
New York City and Newark, New Jersey, Spring 1934 through Fall 1935
Film: Hoodlum
Release Date: August 27, 1997
Director: Bill Duke
Costume Designer: Richard Bruno
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Ninety years ago today on October 23, 1935, notorious New York gangster Dutch Schultz was fatally shot along with his accountant Otto Berman, his lieutenant Abe Landau, and his bodyguard Bernard “Lulu” Rosencrantz at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey. Transferred to Newark City Hospital, Schultz lingered for nearly a day, with his fevered final ramblings about dot-dash systems and French-Canadian bean soup meticulously recorded by police stenographer F.J. Lang before the 34-year-old criminal finally died of peritonitis.
The famous gangland slaying was fictionalized for the denouement of Hoodlum, Bill Duke’s chronicle of Schultz’s war against underworld rivals Stephanie “Madame Queen” St. Clair (Cicely Tyson), Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson (Laurence Fishburne), and Charles “Lucky” Luciano (Andy Garcia) as the Harlem numbers racket became increasingly lucrative following the repeal of Prohibition. Though the 1997 drama isn’t without its flaws, one of its strongest elements may be Tim Roth’s performance as Schultz—perhaps the best on-screen representation of the actual gangster’s appearance and temperament. Continue reading
Sinners: Michael B. Jordan’s Suits as the Smokestack Twins
Michael B. Jordan as Elias and Elijah Moore in Sinners (2025)
Vitals
Michael B. Jordan as the Smokestack Twins: Elias “Stack” Moore and Elijah “Smoke” Moore
Clarksdale, Mississippi, October 1932
Film: Sinners
Release Date: April 18, 2025
Director: Ryan Coogler
Costume Designer: Ruth E. Carter
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Sinners has been one of the biggest movies of 2025, with the highest opening weekend box office for an original film since Nope in 2022 and, as of January 2026, the most-nominated film in Academy Awards history with 16 nominations, including Best Picture.
Produced, written, and directed by Ryan Coogler, Sinners is set 93 years ago tonight from October 15 to 16, 1932 as the snappily dressed twin Moore brothers—recently returned from Chicago, where they were gunmen for the mob—have returned to their Mississippi Delta hometown to open a juke joint.
Smoke: Chicago ain’t shit but Mississippi with tall buildings instead of plantations.
Stack: And that’s why we came back home. Figure we might as well deal with the devil we know.
Dead End: Humphrey Bogart’s Dandy Gangster Suit
Humphrey Bogart in Dead End (1937)
Vitals
Humphrey Bogart as Hugh “Baby Face” Martin, gangster
New York City, Summer 1937
Film: Dead End
Release Date: August 27, 1937
Director: William Wyler
Costume Designer: Omar Kiam
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
After his breakthrough screen role as the menacing Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), Humphrey Bogart followed it up the next year as another swaggering gangster in Dead End (1937), adapted from Sidney Kingsley’s hit play—which had premiered 90 years ago today, on October 2, 1935.
The play had run for 687 performances on Broadway, so bringing it to the screen became a passion project for producer Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler. Goldwyn spent a then-staggering $165,000 for the rights, bracing himself for battles with the Hays Office to keep the play’s thematic grit intact. He even hired the “Dead End Kids”, the scrappy young actors from the stage version, though their chaotic behavior on set soon had Goldwyn regretting it and he later sold their contract to Warner Brothers, where—under names like the East Side Kids and Bowery Boys—they made more than 60 films across the next two decades. Despite his dedication to replicating the realism that made the play a success, the famously fastidious Goldwyn also clashed with Wyler, who had the set decorated with actual garbage to recreate an actual slum atmosphere.
Goldwyn first hoped to cast James Cagney or George Raft as the central gangster “Baby Face” Martin, but the role ultimately went to Humphrey Bogart—already 37 years old at the time, though it still feels like watching a “young” Bogie. Continue reading
Robert Redford’s Blue Bank Robbery Suit in The Old Man & the Gun
Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek in The Old Man & the Gun (2018). Photo credit: Eric Zachanowich.
Vitals
Robert Redford as Forrest Tucker, aging and amiable bank robber and escape artist
Texas, Summer to Fall 1981
Film: The Old Man & the Gun
Release Date: September 28, 2018
Director: David Lowery
Costume Designer: Annell Brodeur
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
After screen legend Robert Redford’s death earlier this month at age 89, I revisited his final leading role in David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun—a project Redford chose for his feel-good farewell film because he wanted his “last acting job to be fun.” Lighthearted yet elegiac, this crime caper premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival before its wider release seven years ago tomorrow. Continue reading
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”
Vitals
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 Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter
Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Vitals
Robert Mitchum as Harry Powell, self-described preacher and serial-killing swindler
West Virginia, Summer 1930
Film: The Night of the Hunter
Release Date: July 26, 1955
Director: Charles Laughton
Wardrobe Credit: Jerry Bos
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Born 108 years ago today on August 6, 1917, Robert Mitchum delivered arguably the greatest performance of his prolific career in Charles Laughton’s 1955 gothic horror masterpiece The Night of the Hunter, which premiered 70 years ago last month in Des Moines, Iowa. Laughton’s first and only directorial effort was negatively received upon its release, though decades of reassessment have elevated its reputation and it’s now included on lists among the best movies ever made. Continue reading
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