Tagged: CPO Shirt
The Way We Were: Robert Redford’s Navy CPO Shirt
Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardiner in The Way We Were (1973)
Vitals
Robert Redford as Hubbell Gardiner, Hollywood screenwriter and Navy veteran
Malibu, California, Fall 1947 through Spring 1948
Film: The Way We Were
Release Date: October 19, 1973
Director: Sydney Pollack
Costume Design: Dorothy Jeakins & Moss Mabry
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
This week marks the 50th anniversary of The Way We Were, released October 19, 1973. Adapted by Arthur Laurents from his own novel of the same name, the story follows the privileged and carefree Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford) and politically driven Katie Morosky (Barbra Streisand) through a decade of their on-and-off romance.
After a contentious and unrequited flirtation while at the same college in the late 1930s, Hubbell and Katie reunite by chance during the latter years of World War II, when Hubbell is serving in the U.S. Navy. Despite some early tumultuousness, the two gently compromise their differing personalities and enter a relationship that continues after the war and through the Red Scare of the late ’40s. The growing paranoia of McCarthyism—and Katie’s reignited activism in response—threatens their livelihood as Hubbell is working as a Hollywood screenwriter. Continue reading
Tom Hanks in Greyhound
Tom Hanks as CDR Ernest Krause in Greyhound (2020)
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Tom Hanks as CDR Ernest Krause, USN, commanding officer of USS Keeling
North Atlantic Ocean, February 1942
Film: Greyhound
Release Date: July 10, 2020
Director: Aaron Schneider
Costume Designer: Julie Weiss
Military Costume Consultant: Steve McColgan
Background
…the goods will be delivered by this nation, whose Navy believes in the tradition of “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, October 27, 1941
Greyhound begins just over three months after the United States entered World War II and nearly five months after FDR’s address for Navy and Total Defense Day, in which he reinforced with the above words the protection that the U.S. Navy would offer merchant ships carrying supplies to support the Allied war effort. The eponymous “Greyhound” is the codename for USS Keeling, one of the American destroyers assigned to protect a 37-ship convoy on its way to Liverpool.
We join up with the multi-national convoy HX-25 as it enters its first of two days traveling through the “Black Pit”, the area of the North Atlantic considered most vulnerable as it was beyond the range of air cover. Leading the convoy’s military escort from the bridge of USS Keeling is straight-laced Commander Ernest Krause, played by Tom Hanks. Continue reading