Tagged: Plaid Hunting Coat
Avalanche: Rock Hudson’s Plaid Jacket
Rock Hudson in Avalanche (1978)
Vitals
Rock Hudson as David Shelby, stubborn ski resort developer
Colorado, Winter 1978
Film: Avalanche
Release Date: August 30, 1978
Director: Corey Allen
Wardrobe Credit: Jane Ruhm
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
In the spirit of another snowy weekend, today’s post focuses on one of the lesser-discussed (and for good reason!) disaster movies of the 1970s. After the disaster genre conquered air (Airport), water (The Poseidon Adventure), and fire (The Towering Inferno), what was left but… snow?
Thus, Corey Allen—no relation to “Master of Disaster” Irwin Allen—took it upon himself to direct and co-write Avalanche, a harrowing tale of a ski resort built on hubris and soft-focus shots of Mia Farrow. Farrow stars as Caroline Brace, invited to the grand opening of a ski resort owned by her ex-husband David Shelby (Rock Hudson). While there, she finds herself drawn to earnest environmental photographer Nick Thorne (Robert Forster), who repeatedly tries to warn David about the threat that heavy snowfall would pose to his resort.
Of course, Nick’s premonitions are tragically realized when a rogue plane crash triggers the titular avalanche that threatens not only Mia’s burgeoning romances but also the lives of everyone at the resort—including a chef who dies covered in his own soup. Who else will perish during the avalanche? Will it be soup or snow that claims additional victims? And, most importantly, which man will Mia choose?? Continue reading
Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story
Richard Farnsworth as Alvin Straight in The Straight Story (1999)
Vitals
Richard Farnsworth as Alvin Straight, septuagenarian retiree
Across the Midwest from Iowa to Wisconsin, Fall 1994
Film: The Straight Story
Release Date: October 15, 1999
Director: David Lynch
Costume Designer: Patricia Norris
Background
Perhaps the most accessible and mainstream entry in David Lynch’s electric filmography (and the only one to be rated G), The Straight Story was released 25 years ago this week on October 15, 1999. The film depicts the real-life journey undertaken by Alvin Straight, a retired laborer who rode a lawn mower for 240 miles from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin to visit and make amends with his ailing older brother after the latter’s stroke.
Born 104 years ago today on October 17, 1920, Alvin Straight had served in the U.S. Army during World War II and the Korean War, but diabetes and emphysema had taken their toll on his health over the following decades to the point where he couldn’t see well enough to receive a driver’s license. Undeterred, the 73-year-old widower set out eastward in July 1994 on an old John Deere riding mower with a homemade trailer in tow, sticking to highway shoulders and side roads at a top speed of five miles per hour. Continue reading
On the Waterfront: Marlon Brando’s Buffalo Plaid Jacket
Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront (1954)
Vitals
Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, dockworker and former prize fighter
Hoboken, New Jersey, Fall 1953
Film: On the Waterfront
Release Date: July 28, 1954
Director: Elia Kazan
Wardrobe Supervisor: Anna Hill Johnstone
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Screen legend Marlon Brando was born 100 years ago today on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. After studying under Stella Adler in the 1940s, Brando shot to stardom with his iconic performances in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and The Wild Ones (1953) before receiving his first Academy Award for his powerful portrayal of longshoreman Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954), released 70 years ago this summer.
Including Brando’s recognition, On the Waterfront won in eight of its 12 nominated Oscar categories, including Best Picture, Best Story and Screenplay, and Best Director for Elia Kazan, who would later write of Brando’s work as Terry: “If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don’t know what it is.” Continue reading
Humphrey Bogart in The Desperate Hours
Humphrey Bogart in The Desperate Hours (1955)
Vitals
Humphrey Bogart as Glenn Griffin, menacing fugitive
Indianapolis, Fall 1955
Film: The Desperate Hours
Release Date: October 5, 1955
Director: William Wyler
Costume Designer: Edith Head
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Noirvember continues with The Desperate Hours, a 1955 drama that was Humphrey Bogart’s penultimate silver screen performance. Bogie remains significantly associated with film noir, thanks to genre-defining movies like High Sierra (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Big Sleep (1946), Key Largo (1948), and In a Lonely Place (1950).
The New York-born actor rose to prominence playing villains, perhaps most notably his breakthrough role of snarling Dillinger-esque gangster Duke Mantee in the stage and screen productions of The Petrified Forest. As exemplified by his masterful but hardly glamorous performance in movies like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Bogart never let his popularity get in the way of darker roles—even after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for The African Queen (1951).
Adapted by Joseph Hayes from his own novel and play of the same name (itself loosely based on true events), The Desperate Hours cast Bogart as the dangerous Glenn Griffin, the leader of a trio of three escaped convicts who seek refuge by forcing their way into the suburban Indiana home of Daniel (Frederic March) and Ellie Hilliard (Martha Scott). Continue reading
Once Upon a Time in the West: Charles Bronson as Harmonica
Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Vitals
Charles Bronson as “Harmonica”, vengeful drifter
Arizona, circa 1875
Film: Once Upon a Time in the West
(Italian title: C’era una volta il West)
Release Date: December 21, 1968
Director: Sergio Leone
Costume Designer: Carlo Simi
Background
After establishing the spaghetti Western with the popular “Dollars trilogy”, Sergio Leone had intended to move away from the genre until Paramount Pictures compelled him to follow up his success with another Western. With Paramount’s substantial budget in his coffers, Leone reteamed with iconic composer Ennio Morricone and cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, working with Dario Argento and Bernardo Bertolucci (and, once production began, also Sergio Donati) to conceptualize the vengeance-driven epic that would become Once Upon a Time in the West.
Unlike the Dollars trilogy, which invariably starred Clint Eastwood among a mostly Italian and Spanish cast (with the rare exception for Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach), Once Upon a Time in the West featured a cast well-known to Americans, led by Henry Fonda playing one of the few villains of his career. The cast also included Claudia Cardinale (who was a Tunisian-born Italian actress but known to Americans thanks to films like The Pink Panther), Jason Robards, Keenan Wynn, American Western regulars like Jack Elam and Woody Strode, and Charles Bronson, who was recruited after Eastwood turned down the role. Continue reading
Carol: Jake Lacy’s Plaid Coat
Jake Lacy as Richard Semco in Carol (2015)
Vitals
Jake Lacy as Richard Semco, affable painter and Navy veteran
New York City, December 1952
Film: Carol
Release Date: November 20, 2015
Director: Todd Haynes
Costume Designer: Sandy Powell
Background
It takes a lot for new movies to break through the cinematic ice to enter people’s Christmas viewing rotations. For decades, there were the classics like It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and White Christmas, then a boom through the late ’80s and ’90s with newer entries like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, and—yes—Die Hard. After Elf and Love Actually were released in 2003, it seemed like the proliferation of Hallmark holiday movies so saturated the market that it would be nearly impossible for a modern movie to make its yuletide impression… let alone an adaptation of a book published more than a half-century earlier about a fictional lesbian romance. Enter Carol.
Seventy years ago, suspense writer Patricia Highsmith followed up her debut novel—the smash-hit Strangers on a Train that had already been adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock—with The Price of Salt, chronicling the relationship between aspiring set designer Therese Belivet and housewife Carol Aird, whom Therese meets working at a Manhattan toy store in the days leading up to Christmas, inspired by a brief encounter that Highsmith experienced while working in Bloomingdale’s toy department during the 1948 holiday season. Due to the impact that the novel’s sapphic content may have had on her career, Highsmith was credited under the alias “Claire Morgan” when The Price of Salt was first published in 1952.
Surprisingly, there was an attempt to adapt The Price of Salt for the screen not long after it was published, but the tight restrictions of the Production Code immediately enervated the script, which was renamed Winter Journey and centered around Therese’s romance with a man named… Carl. Luckily, wiser minds evidently prevailed and allowed for the first major screen adaptation to be Todd Haynes’ thoughtful Carol in 2015 starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as Carol and Therese, respectively.
We meet Therese while she’s working at the fictional Frankenberg’s department store in Manhattan, casually dating her cordial co-worker Richard Semco (Jake Lacy). A Navy veteran with artistic aspirations, Richard has grand plans for his future with Therese, even if she doesn’t outwardly share his enthusiasm. Unfortunately for Richard, his dreams of marriage, shared holidays, and European travels with “Terry” are increasingly dashed after she meets the elegant and enigmatic Carol while working at the toy counter.
After a pair of misplaced gloves and some creamed spinach over poached eggs, Therese makes a plan to visit Carol at her home in the country, scheduling it in her calendar for Sunday, December 21, 1952, seventy years ago today, and—in the years since the movie’s release—December 21 has become an unofficial celebration for fans celebrating “Carol Day”. Continue reading
Titanic – Jack Dawson’s Steerage Style
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic (1997)
Vitals
Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, charismatic American artist
North Atlantic Ocean, April 1912
Film: Titanic
Release Date: December 19, 1997
Director: James Cameron
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott
Tailor: Dominic Gherardi
Background
110 years ago today, the sinking of the RMS Titanic resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. The global mourning and focus on transportation safety in the tragedy’s aftermath was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, so to speak, as the disaster and those involved have continued to be mythologized in countless books, movies, plays, songs, and more.
On the Road: Sam Riley Channels Kerouac in Dark Blue Flannel Plaid
Sam Riley as Sal Paradise, Jack Kerouac’s alter ego, in On the Road (2012)
Vitals
Sam Riley as Sal Paradise, aspiring writer based on future Beat icon Jack Kerouac
Queens, New York, Winter 1947
Film: On the Road
Release Date: October 12, 2012
Director: Walter Salles
Costume Designer: Danny Glicker
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Jack Kerouac was born 100 years ago today on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts. His 1957 roman à clef On the Road became a defining work of what would be called the Beat Generation, chronicling the author’s wanderings in the late 1940s with contemporaries like William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Allen Ginsberg, all thinly disguised in the novel with pseudonyms.
Kerouac had started work on the novel almost immediately upon returning from his travels, the original draft being a continuous, single-spaced 120-page “scroll” that he typed across three weeks in April 1951. This free-flowing stream of consciousness has been called the ideal medium that captured the mad impulses that drove his adventures with Cassady, represented by the larger-than-life character Dean Moriarty. Continue reading
Nightmare Alley: Bradley Cooper’s Plaid Mackinaw Jacket
Bradley Cooper as Stanton “Stan” Carlisle in Nightmare Alley (2021)
Vitals
Bradley Cooper as Stanton “Stan” Carlisle, opportunistic drifter-turned-carny
Rural Kentucky, Summer into fall 1939
Film: Nightmare Alley
Release Date: December 17, 2021
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Costume Designer: Luis Sequeira
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
William Lindsay Gresham’s novel Nightmare Alley was first adapted to the screen in 1947, just a year after its initial publication, via Edmund Goulding’s classic noir starring Tyrone Power. Guillermo del Toro’s newly released version is a less a remake of Goulding’s movie and more a reimagining of the source material from a screenplay he co-wrote with Kim Morgan, presented as a vividly stylish Gothic quasi-horror that landed a quartet of worthy Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, and Best Costume Design.
Dennis Haysbert’s Brown Plaid Jacket in Far From Heaven
Dennis Haysbert as Raymond Deagan in Far From Heaven (2002)
Vitals
Dennis Haysbert as Raymond Deagan, affable gardener and widowed father
Suburban Connecticut, Fall 1957 into Winter 1958
Film: Far From Heaven
Release Date: November 8, 2002
Director: Todd Haynes
Costume Designer: Sandy Powell
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Todd Haynes’ 1950s-set Far From Heaven paid homage to Douglas Sirk’s visually stunning mid-century melodramas like All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, and Written on the Wind, addressing themes of love, class, and race, often against stunningly idyllic autumnal backdrops that belie the intense personal dramas beyond those white picket fences and manicured lawns.
After years of semi-satisfied suburban life, well-to-do housewife Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) finds herself in a maelstrom of conflict after discovering her husband’s homosexuality as well as her own feelings for Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), the son of her family’s late gardener whose race has her “friends” and neighbors clutching their proverbial pearls in reaction to the developing relationship between the two. Continue reading