Tagged: Brown Suit
Leslie Nielsen’s Pinstripe Suit as Dr. Rumack in Airplane!
Leslie Nielsen as Dr. Rumack in Airplane! (1980)
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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
Sean Connery’s Sheepskin Coat and Plaid Suit in The Offence
Sean Connery in The Offence (1973)
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Sean Connery as Detective Sergeant “Johnny” Johnson, jaded police detective
Berkshire, England, Spring 1972
Film: The Offence
Release Date: January 11, 1973
Director: Sidney Lumet
Costume Designer: Evangeline Harrison
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Sean Connery and director Sidney Lumet’s third of five cinematic collaborations, The Offence, was released on this day in 1973. Adapted by John Hopkins from his own stage play This Story of Yours, the film was the first of two projects that United Artists agreed to finance through Connery’s production company Tantallon Films in exchange for the star returning to play James Bond in Diamonds are Forever.
As his first post-Bond film, Big Tam specifically chose The Offence to demonstrate his range and expand his screen image beyond the 007 persona, resulting in perhaps one of his greatest performances. 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.
The Conversation: Gene Hackman’s Puppytooth Suit and Raincoat
Gene Hackman as Harry Caul in The Conversation (1974)
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Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, anxious audio surveillance expert and saxophonist
San Francisco, December 1972
Film: The Conversation
Release Date: April 7, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Aggie Guerard Rodgers
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Released today in 1974, The Conversation featured a characteristically great starring performance from the late Gene Hackman. Hackman stars as San Francisco surveillance specialist Harry Caul, a paranoid loner described by one of his few pals as “the best bugger on the West Coast.”
Director Francis Ford Coppola later shared that, though Hackman initially struggled to connect with the repressed and introspective Caul due to their contrasting personalities, he ultimately came to regard the role as one of his personal favorites. Continue reading
Christmas Eve in The Holdovers: Paul’s Corduroy Three-Piece Suit and Duffel Coat
Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers (2023)
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Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham, cantankerous boarding school professor
Massachusetts, Christmas Eve 1970
Film: The Holdovers
Release Date: October 27, 2023
Director: Alexander Payne
Costume Designer: Wendy Chuck
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The release of The Holdovers last year filled a long-needed gap in theatrically released holiday canon, offering a fresh yet timeless addition to the roster of rewatchable Christmas movies. Directed by Alexander Payne, the movie is set during Christmas 1970 at the fictional Barton Academy boarding school in New England, where a group of students not going home for the holidays are chaperoned by a skeleton crew of the school’s staff.
After all but one are given the opportunity to leave before Christmas, the remaining student—the bright but troubled Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa)—remains behind under the watchful lazy eye of resentful classics professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti). Paul’s few friends on staff include the cheerful administrator Lydia Crane (Carrie Preston) and the cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who is mourning her son’s recent death in Vietnam.
Lydia invites them to spend Christmas Eve at her home, but Paul’s reluctance frustrates both Angus and Mary, who confronts him:
Mr. Hunham, if you are too chickenshit to go to this party, then just say that. But don’t fuck it up for the little asshole! What’s wrong with you? It’s just a party… what are you afraid of?
Murder on the Orient Express: Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot
Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
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Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, meticulous Belgian detective
The Orient Express, December 1935
Film: Murder on the Orient Express
Release Date: November 21, 1974
Director: Sidney Lumet
Costume Designer: Tony Walton
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Ladies and gentlemen, you are all aware that a repulsive murderer has himself been repulsively, and, perhaps deservedly, murdered…
The first prominent—and arguably still definitive—adaptation of Agatha Christie’s mystery Murder on the Orient Express premiered 50 years ago today on November 21, 1974. The star-studded cast was led by a nearly unrecognizable Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, the fastidious Belgian detective tasked with solving the baffling murder of a gangster on a luxury train stuck in a snow drift. Continue reading
Anthropoid: Cillian Murphy’s Brown Striped Suit and Raincoat as Jozef Gabčík
Cillian Murphy in Anthropoid (2016)
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Cillian Murphy as Jozef Gabčík, Czechoslovak Army soldier and SOE agent
Prague, Spring 1942
Film: Anthropoid
Release Date: September 9, 2016
Director: Sean Ellis
Costume Designer: Josef Cechota
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
This week in 1942, one of the most evil officials of the Third Reich (and that’s saying something!) finally succumbed to injuries received after he was ambushed by two Czechoslovak Army soldiers operating on behalf of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
The SOE had collaborated with Czechoslovak intelligence to plan “Operation Anthropoid”—the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi security chief who helped organize Kristallnacht and was considered a principal architect of the Holocaust. As Deputy Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich’s brutality earned him nicknames like the “Butcher of Prague”, making him a strategic target for the exiled Czechoslovak government. From among nearly 2,000 Czechoslovak Army personnel now exiled to England, Czechoslovak intelligence chief František Moravec selected two dozen—including paratroopers Jozef Gabčík, Jan Kubiš, and Karel Svoboda—to be trained by the SOE in Scotland for the dangerous mission to remove Heydrich. Continue reading
Oppenheimer: Cillian Murphy’s Brown Suits at Los Alamos
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer (2023). Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon.
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Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, theoretical physicist and “father of the atomic bomb”
Los Alamos, New Mexico, Spring 1943 through Summer 1945
Film: Oppenheimer
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Director: Christopher Nolan
Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Released last summer (on my 34th birthday!), Oppenheimer has been deservedly sweeping accolades this year, including seven BAFTAs, five Golden Globes, and 13 Academy Award nominations ahead of the ceremony this Sunday, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Christopher Nolan, a trio of acting nominations, and Best Costume Design for Ellen Mirojnick.
Adapted by Nolan from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography American Prometheus, this epic cinematic portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer chronicles the prolific physicist’s career from his 1920s studies in Europe through his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II and the ultimate revocation of his security clearance in the 1950s, depicted as the result of Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss’ petty resentment. Continue reading
A Goodfellas Christmas: Jimmy’s Brown Party Suit
Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas (1990)
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Robert De Niro as Jimmy Conway, feared mob associate
Queens, New York, December 1978
Film: Goodfellas
Release Date: September 19, 1990
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Designer: Richard Bruno
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Nobody knows for sure just how much was taken in a daring pre-dawn raid at the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy airport. The FBI says two million dollars, Port Authority Police say four million dollars… it looks like a big one, maybe the biggest this town has ever seen!
Forty-five years ago today on Monday, December 11, 1978, more than $5.8 million in cash and jewelry was stolen from a cargo building at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Considered the most lucrative cash robbery on American soil to date, the heist was orchestrated by James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, a ruthless associate of the Lucchese crime family, one of the New York City Mafia’s infamous “Five Families”.
The Lufthansa heist and its violent aftermath drive much of the final act of Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese’s chronicle of street-level mob life across three decades from the perspective of Burke’s associate, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), who relayed much of the background information essential to the heist’s execution. The robbery itself isn’t depicted on screen, but a radio announcement assures a showering Henry—and the audience—that the job was a success for the mobsters, celebrated that evening with a Christmas party where Jimmy (Robert De Niro)—renamed “Jimmy Conway” for the movie—welcomes Henry with open arms.
The Wicker Man: Christopher Lee’s Tweed Suit
Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle in The Wicker Man (1973)
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Christopher Lee as Lord Summerisle, charismatic pagan cult leader
The Hebrides, Scotland, Spring 1973
Film: The Wicker Man
Release Date: December 6, 1973
Director: Robin Hardy
Costume Designer: Sue Yelland
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy Halloween! This year marks the 50th anniversary of The Wicker Man, Robin Hardy’s Scottish-set drama that helped define the folk horror subgenre.
After more than a decade portraying the debonair yet dangerous Count Dracula in a half-dozen Hammer films, Christopher Lee met with screenwriter Anthony Shaffer in 1971 to discuss collaborating on a more unique type of horror. Shaffer’s subsequent conversations with director Robin Hardy centered their focus on old religion, like the practices depicted in David Pinner’s 1967 novel Ritual, which Shaffer set out to adapting into what would become The Wicker Man.
The Wicker Man follows the devout and unimaginative police sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) to the remote island of Summerisle in the Hebrides, facing polite but firm resistance as he investigates a young girl’s disappearance leading up to the island’s annual May Day celebrations. Howie’s investigations direct him to the island’s much-discussed leader, the mannered Lord Summerisle who describes himself to Howie as “a heathen, conceivably, but not—I hope—an unenlightened one.” Continue reading
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