Tagged: Fedora
Indiana Jones
Harrison Ford as Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Vitals
Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, adventurer and archaeology professor
Around the world, late 1930s
Film: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Release Date: June 12, 1981
Director: Steven Spielberg
Costume Designer: Deborah Nadoolman
Film: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Release Date: May 23, 1984
Director: Steven Spielberg
Costume Designer: Anthony Powell
Film: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Release Date: May 24, 1989
Director: Steven Spielberg
Costume Design: Joanna Johnston & Anthony Powell
WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Continue reading
Jimmy Darmody’s Gray Peak-Lapel Suit
Michael Pitt as Jimmy Darmody on Boardwalk Empire (Episode 2.09: “Battle of the Century”).
Vitals
Michael Pitt as Jimmy Darmody, troubled Atlantic City bootlegger
Atlantic City, July 1921
Series: Boardwalk Empire
Episodes:
– “Battle of the Century” (Episode 2.09, aired November 20, 2011, dir: Brad Anderson)
– “Under God’s Power She Flourishes” (Episode 2.11, aired December 4, 2011, dir: Allen Coulter)
Creator: Terence Winter
Costume Designer: John A. Dunn
Tailor: Martin Greenfield
WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Continue reading
Clyde Barrow’s Blue Hairline Windowpane Suit (2013 Version)
Emile Hirsch and Holliday Grainger wielding a BAR and a Tommy gun as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde (2013).
Vitals
Emile Hirsch as Clyde Barrow, bank robber with “second sight”
Northeast Texas, Spring 1932
Series Title: Bonnie and Clyde
Air Date: December 8, 2013
Director: Bruce Beresford
Costume Designer: Marilyn Vance
Background
As an amateur criminal historian with a special interest in Depression-era desperadoes, I’d be remiss to let a year go by without commemorating the end of Bonnie and Clyde’s crime streak on May 23, 1934 when the now-famous duo was gunned down by a squad of expert lawmen on a rural road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Continue reading
Chinatown – J.J. Gittes’ Glen Plaid Suit
Jack Nicholson as private eye J.J. Gittes in Chinatown (1974)
Vitals
Jack Nicholson as J.J. Gittes, private investigator and ex-policeman
Los Angeles, September 1937
Film: Chinatown
Release Date: June 20, 1974
Director: Roman Polanski
Costume Designer: Anthea Sylbert
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Chinatown begins in the spirit of the best of film noir, with a private eye getting a case promised to be filled with sex and violence and fueled with countless cigarettes and potent whiskey. Gittes, resplendent in a creamy white three-piece suit, accepts the case from Mrs. Mulwray to follow her husband Hollis to determine if he is having an affair.
Hollis Mulwray is the head of L.A.’s Department of Water and Power, so Gittes first tracks him down to a public hearing where Mulwray is at the center of the controversial construction of a dam that would supposedly bring more water to L.A. Gittes is able to learn next to nothing about the man’s sexual proclivities from the meeting, but he does seem surprised that his subject is a mousy, conservative public servant and not a swaggering lothario. Continue reading
Lee Marvin’s Gray Silk Suit in The Killers
Lee Marvin as Charlie Strom in The Killers (1964).
Vitals
Lee Marvin as Charlie Strom, professional mob hitman
Miami, Fall 1963
Film: The Killers
Release Date: July 7, 1964
Director: Don Siegel
Costume Designer: Helen Colvig
Background
Tomorrow would have been the birthday of Lee Marvin, who was born in New York on February 19, 1924. After his WWII service with the Marine Corps, Marvin spent a few decades acting before lighting up the screen as introspective assassin Charlie Strom in Don Siegel’s adaptation of The Killers. In addition to his first top-billed film role, The Killers also led to Marvin winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor (in addition to his role in Cat Ballou). Continue reading
Gene Hackman’s Tweed Suit as Buck Barrow
Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons as Buck and Blanche Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Vitals
Gene Hackman as “Buck” Barrow, bank robber, ex-convict, and family man
Texas, May 1933
Film: Bonnie & Clyde
Release Date: August 13, 1967
Director: Arthur Penn
Costume Designer: Theadora Van Runkle
Background
Happy birthday to Gene Hackman, who turns 86 years old today!
Bonnie and Clyde marked the first major role for Hackman, who had spent much of the ’60s as a struggling actor who shared rooms with fellow struggling actors Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall. 1967 turned out to be a banner year for the friends and roommates, earning Hackman and Hoffman their first Academy Award nominations.
Hackman brings an easygoing charm to the role of the more famous Clyde’s older brother Buck, and the film gets many of the “on paper” details right about Buck. As Clyde’s older brother, he had more experience tangling with the law and spent the first few months of Clyde’s criminal career in the Texas state prison. He had escaped once, but—as Hackman tells Warren Beatty’s Clyde—it was his new wife Blanche that talked him into returning to prison to serve out the rest of his sentence, and he would be pardoned 15 months later. Buck and Blanche journeyed to visit Bonnie and Clyde, ostensibly for a reunion and possibly for Buck to try and talk Clyde into following his good example. Of course, the murder of two Joplin policemen during this reunion meant Buck would be wanted again as well, and the brothers led the motley “Barrow Gang” in a string of small-town stickups and kidnappings over the next three months. Continue reading
Sidney Reilly’s Hunting Jacket
Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly in “Dreadnaughts and Crosses”, Episode 5 of Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983).
Vitals
Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly, Russian-born adventurer and British secret agent
Russia, Spring 1910
Series: Reilly: Ace of Spies
Episode: “Dreadnoughts and Crosses” (Episode 5)
Air Date: September 28, 1983
Director: Jim Goddard
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Waller
Background
St. Petersburg is a hotbed of intrigue in the years leading up to World War I and the Russian Revolution. The English and the Germans are among those vying for inevitably valuable warship contracts from the Russian Ministry of Marine.
Ever the shrewd opportunist, Sidney Reilly finds himself in the right place at the right time and decides to forego the usual channels of submitting battleship plans. Instead, he slyly gambles against a brutish shipping executive who finds himself indebted to Reilly, thus handing a controlling stake in his firm to our hero. At the same time, Reilly has busied himself in a romance with the Minister of Marine’s lovely wife Nadia (Celia Gregory).
The events of the spring culminate in a pig hunting trip where Reilly joins the Minister, Nadia, and his cheeky pal Sasha Gramaticoff for an afternoon of angry swine and loaded revolvers. Continue reading
Sidney Reilly’s Glen Plaid Double-Breasted Suit
Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly on Reilly: Ace of Spies, Episode 10: “The Trust”.
Vitals
Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly, Russian-born British Secret Service agent and anti-Bolshevik
New York City to Berlin, Fall 1924
Series: Reilly: Ace of Spies
Episode: “The Trust” (Episode 10)
Air Date: November 2, 1983
Director: Martin Campbell
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Waller
Background
Ninety years ago today, Sidney Reilly was executed in a forest outside Moscow by a Soviet firing squad overseen by OGPU officer Grigory Feduleev. Reilly had been earlier tried to death in absentia after a failed coup of the Bolshevik government in 1918. Seven years later, he was lured back into the Soviet Union by undercover OGPU agents who had formed The Trust, ostensibly a secret organization raising funds to remove the Bolsheviks from power. Reilly was arrested as soon as he had crossed the Finnish border in late September 1925. Although he would be questioned for more than a month before his execution on November 5, the Soviets almost immediately issued a statement that he had been killed during a border skirmish. Continue reading
Jimmy Darmody’s Brown Striped Suit
Michael Pitt pours some brandy as Jimmy Darmody on Boardwalk Empire.
(Episode 1.12: “A Return to Normalcy)
Vitals
Michael Pitt as Jimmy Darmody, Atlantic City bootlegger and gangster
Atlantic City, Spring/Summer 1921
Series: Boardwalk Empire
Episodes:
– “A Return to Normalcy” (Episode 1.12, aired December 5, 2010, dir. Tim Van Patten)
– “21” (Episode 2.01, aired September 25, 2011, dir. Tim Van Patten)
– “A Dangerous Maid” (Episode 2.03, aired October 9, 2011, dir. Susanna White)
– “Two Boats and a Lifeguard” (Episode 2.08, aired November 13, 2011, dir. Tim Van Patten)
– “Georgia Peaches” (Episode 2.10, aired November 27, 2011, dir. Jeremy Podeswa)
– “To the Lost” (Episode 2.12, aired December 11, 2011, dir. Tim Van Patten)
Creator: Terence Winter
Costume Designer: John A. Dunn
Tailor: Martin Greenfield
WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Continue reading
Bogart in The Big Sleep: Gray Birdseye Wool Suit
Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1946).
Vitals
Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe, archetypal hard-boiled private detective
Los Angeles, Fall 1945
Film: The Big Sleep
Release Date: August 23, 1946
Director: Howard Hawks
Wardrobe Credit: Leah Rhodes
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The Big Sleep is often considered the apex of American film noir. Plot becomes secondary (and often disregarded) in favor of colorful characters made of private eyes, floozy femme fatales, and pornographers spitting snappy dialogue at each other against the backdrop of both the glamorous and seamy sides of the city. The same plot and characters from Raymond Chandler’s 1939 source novel are here, with the anti-Code elements like pornography and homosexuality all but removed. Continue reading
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