Tagged: Slouch Hat
Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger in The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid
Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger in The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid (1972)
Vitals
Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger, infamous bandit gang co-leader and ex-Confederate guerrilla
Northfield, Minnesota, September 1876
Film: The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid
Release Date: June 14, 1972
Director: Philip Kaufman
Costume Designer: Helen Colvig
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
150 years ago today, the James-Younger Gang further bloodied its infamous history when eight bandits outfitted with matching beige dusters and Winchester rifles rode into Northfield, Minnesota, intending to rob the First National Bank… but the small farm town fought back, arming themselves from hardware stores and sending the six surviving—and badly wounded—bandits fleeing with far more lead in their bodies than loot in their sacks. Two weeks later, only Frank and Jesse James remained at large after the three wounded Younger brothers were captured and another gang member killed.
The gang’s violent failure in Northfield marked the beginning of Jesse James’ downfall as the wild west’s arguably first outlaw king. Six years later, Jesse was betrayed and killed by his youngest recruit, Bob Ford, prompting his weary older brother Frank to ultimately surrender. Cole Younger and his brothers Bob and Jim would continue to languish in prison, though only Cole and Jim survived to be paroled in July 1901 as Bob died of tuberculosis more than a decade earlier. Jim committed suicide fifteen months after gaining his freedom, leaving Cole the lone surviving Younger. Continue reading
Oscar Isaac’s Byronic Black Frock Coat and Red Kerchief as Victor Frankenstein
Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein (2025)
Vitals
Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, baron and budding mad scientist
Edinburgh, Scotland, Fall 1855
Film: Frankenstein
Release Date: October 17, 2025
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Costume Designer: Kate Hawley
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
“I feel like, if I were around in the 1850s, this is how I would have dressed,” I commented to my wife, who just nodded with her characteristic patience when I say insane things. While she didn’t respond by telling me how much I look like Oscar Isaac (but was definitely thinking it, right? Right??), I was nonetheless intrigued by Kate Hawley’s deservedly Academy Award-nominated costume design in Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 retelling of Frankenstein, adapted from the famous 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, who died 175 years ago this week on February 1, 1851.
Director and screenwriter del Toro updated Shelley’s Romantic era setting to the 1850s, incorporating the medical advancements during the Crimean War into the context around Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments. We are introduced to the adult Frankenstein as he vehemently defends himself to a disciplinary tribunal for the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh:
If we are to behave as immodestly as gods, we must—at the very least—deliver miracles, wouldn’t you say? Ignite a divine spark in these young students’ minds: teach them defiance rather than obedience!
Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider
Dennis Hopper as Billy in Easy Rider (1969)
Vitals
Dennis Hopper as Billy, cowboy-styled biker and cocaine smuggler
Across the southern United States from Los Angeles through Louisiana, February 1968
Film: Easy Rider
Release Date: July 14, 1969
Director: Dennis Hopper
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The late Dennis Hopper was born 86 years ago today on May 17, 1936. The iconoclastic filmmaker had been acting on screen since the ’50s before he made his directorial debut with the groundbreaking Easy Rider.
Filmed early in 1968 but not released until the tumultuous summer of ’69, Easy Rider had been conceptualized by Hopper with screenwriter Terry Southern and fellow actor Peter Fonda, who would join Hopper on screen as the pair of freedom-loving bikers we follow across the country following a lucrative cocaine sale. There’s plenty more drug use along the way, from a few LSD tabs scored from a fellow traveler to introducing the wild-eyed lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) to marijuana, but the substances are secondary as Easy Rider allegorizes the death—or, perhaps, the contemporary redefinition—of the American dream. Continue reading
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