Tagged: Pulsar watch
Three Days of the Condor: Cliff Robertson’s Fur-collared Coat and Tweeds as Higgins
Cliff Robertson in Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Vitals
Cliff Robertson as Higgins, pragmatic CIA deputy director and Korean War veteran
New York City and Washington, D.C., Winter 1975
Film: Three Days of the Condor
Release Date: September 24, 1975
Director: Sydney Pollack
Costume Designer: Joseph G. Aulisi
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
This month marks the 50th anniversary of Sydney Pollack’s Christmas-set political thriller Three Days of the Condor. While Robert Redford’s rugged casual-wear as the bookish CIA analyst Joe Turner (codename “Condor”) has commanded considerable sartorial attention—including one of my very first blog posts!—the men pursuing him from the shadows are also stylish dressers, from Max Von Sydow as the professional European hitman Joubert to the workaholic CIA deputy director Higgins played by Cliff Robertson, who died fourteen years ago today on September 10, 2011. Continue reading
Heaven Can Wait: Warren Beatty’s Gray Sweats
Warren Beatty as Joe Pendleton in Heaven Can Wait (1978)
Vitals
Warren Beatty as Joe Pendleton, ill-fated quarterback
Los Angeles, Fall 1977
Film: Heaven Can Wait
Release Date: June 28, 1978
Directed by: Warren Beatty & Buck Henry
Costume Designer: Richard Bruno
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Warren Beatty and Elaine May collaborated on the screenplay for this cool and charming retelling of Harry Segall’s original play Heaven Can Wait, which was first adapted for the screen in the 1940s as Here Comes Mr. Jordan. The 1978 film retains Segall’s original title, re-imagining our hero Joe Pendleton as a football player, specifically a skilled backup quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams who looks forward to leading his team to the Super Bowl. Despite taking great care of his physique through exercise and meals like his liver-and-whey shake, Joe can’t avoid catastrophe when a reckless van driver crashes into his bicycle.
Joe wakes up in the clouds with his soprano sax in hand, escorted by a bespectacled guardian angel (Buck Henry) into the afterlife. Believing he’s merely dreaming, Joe performs a coin trick (“the only trick I know!”) and some impromptu push-ups while the escort’s supervisor, the urbane Mr. Jordan (James Mason), intervenes to try to urge Joe’s cooperation—until he determines that the overzealous escort fumbled his first assignment by extracting Joe from his earthly body too soon, as the late Mr. Pendleton wasn’t scheduled to die for another half-century, surviving until 10:17 a.m. PDT on March 20, 2025.
R.I.P., Joe! Continue reading
The Longest Yard: Burt Reynolds’ 1970s Flashy Football Star Style
Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard (1974)
Vitals
Burt Reynolds as Paul “Wrecking” Crewe, washed-up ex-pro football quarterback
Palm Beach, Florida, Fall 1973
Film: The Longest Yard
Release Date: August 21, 1974
Director: Robert Aldrich
Wardrobe Credit: Charles E. James
Background
You take your football down here real serious, don’t you?
What do you do when you’re a style writer facing a Super Bowl aligns with Burt Reynolds’ birthday? Why, you focus on the super-seventies duds that Reynolds wears at the beginning of his sports comedy classic, The Longest Yard, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year! Continue reading
Dirty Mary Crazy Larry: Peter Fonda’s Double Denim and 1969 Charger
Peter Fonda and Susan George on the poster for Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) as their ’69 Charger blazes away in the background. People who have actually seen the film know how misleading this poster is, and that’s all I’ll say.
Vitals
Peter Fonda as Larry Rayder, wannabe NASCAR driver and small-time robber
San Joaquin County, California, Fall 1973
Film: Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
Release Date: May 17, 1974
Director: John Hough
Wardrobe Master: Phyllis Garr
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Unload!
Kiss off!
While few would place Dirty Mary Crazy Larry‘s script in the same echelon with Casablanca or The Godfather, there’s no doubting that it has its place among the classic European-influenced but all-American car chase flicks that kicked off with Bullitt and tapered off somewhere in the mid-’70s as more over-the-top fare like Smokey and the Bandit took over as the gearheads’ cinematic servings. It was that brief semi-decade where the sub-genre blossomed with ennui and nihilism driving the motoring protagonists of Vanishing Point, Two-Lane Blacktop, and those of its ilk.
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry was a transition between the earlier nihilist cult films and the more marketable, humor-laced movies. Larry, Mary, and Deke aren’t necessarily driving without a defined purpose, but one could argue they were just as doomed as Kowalski when they slipped into that lime green ’69 Charger. And it is with that ’69 Charger—which BAMF Style loyalists know by now is my favorite car of all time—that I’m concluding this run of Car Week. Continue reading
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