David Niven and Claudia Cardinale in The Pink Panther (1963)

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David Niven as Sir Charles Lytton, urbane master jewel thief

Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Winter 1963

Film: The Pink Panther
Release Date: December 19, 1963
Director: Blake Edwards
Wardrobe Supervisor: Annalisa Nasalli-Rocca

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Going skiing this weekend? A surprisingly stylish look at elegant mid-century ski culture comes from The Pink Panther, the 1963 comedy crime caper starring David Niven that would spur a series of sequels focused on the bumbling Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers).

Clouseau was initially meant to be a secondary character, a foil to Niven’s suave, sophisticated jewel thief, “The Phantom”. However, Peter Sellers’ performance was a breakout hit, and a second film—A Shot in the Dark (1964)—was immediately put into production with a primary focus on Clouseau to the total abandonment of the other characters and plot points, leaving The Phantom and Clouseau’s ex-wife Simone (Capucine) free to spend a life of larceny together.

What’d He Wear?

As part of his plan to steal “The Pink Panther”, rumored to be the most valuable diamond in the world, Sir Charles Lytton travels to Cortina d’Ampezzo, the fashionable ski resort town in the Italian Alps that also served as the setting for movies like Ash Wednesday (1973) with Elizabeth Taylor and For Your Eyes Only (1981) starring Roger Moore as James Bond.

It’s on the slopes at Cortina that Sir Charles carries out the first phase of his plan to steal the diamond from its owner, the glamorous Princess Dala (Claudia Cardinale), by making her acquaintance then dramatically skiing in pursuit of the man who kidnapped her dog. For this, Sir Charles dresses in his usual ski attire of a colorful v-neck sweater layered over a fitted black lightweight turtleneck jumper.

The raglan-sleeve sweater is a bright scarlet red ribbed knit wool with red, black, gray, and white striped piping on the deep V-neck line, both cuffs, and around the waist hem.

The Phantom, looking cool and determined for an action-packed day of skiing.

Sir Charles wears plain black ski pants. Combined with his black turtleneck, it evokes the villainous look of his “cat burglar” persona that he merely covers with a brightly colored series of sweaters; if he would remove the sweater, he looks just like he does scaling rooftops and breaking into safes as The Phantom.

Seen only briefly as he takes off down the hill after Princess Dala’s dog, Sir Charles wears his ski pants tucked into a pair of black ski boots with red laces.

The heavy sweater, worn in lieu of a bulky coat, keeps Sir Charles warm while giving him greater mobility. Thus, the only additional items he needs to protect himself from the cold are his plain black headband and his red leather ski gloves with black trim.

“Leave this to me, ma’am,” Sir Charles assures Princess Dala before skiing down the hill after a dognapper.

Sir Charles’ futuristic wraparound sunglasses appear to be the fashionable Renauld “Spectacular” model that evolved from the Space Age-inspired Sol Amor sunglasses pioneered over the previous decade. Famous Renauld wearers include ’60s style icons like Jacqueline Kennedy and Elvis Presley, whose own pair from Follow That Dream (1962) was auctioned in August 2017.

These chrome-framed shades with their scratch-resistant, “bubble wrap”-style Orama IV lenses became popular as early sport sunglasses designed to “protect your eyes on the beach, the ski slopes, or behind the wheel of a car” according to a 1965 advertisement heralding Renauld International eyewear as the preferred choice for TWA pilots. (Read more about the history of Renauld sunglasses here!)

The previous day, when surveilling his the princess (and her dog), Sir Charles wears a bright yellow widely ribbed V-neck sweater over his usual black turtleneck and ski pants. We also see that he seems to coordinate his gloves to his sweaters, here wearing a pair of mustard yellow-and-black leather ski gloves that echo the layers of his top half.

Sir Charles sets his nefarious kidnapping plan in motion.

Evidently, this aesthetic would be echoed by his nephew George (Robert Wagner) when the young man attempts to seduce Simone Clouseau (Capucine) during a madcap night hopping between bed, bath, and beyond, though George’s sweater is more of a mustard yellow than the bright neon shade worn by his uncle.

George Lytton not only borrows his uncle’s layered style, he also hopes to get his hands on his mistress.

How to Get the Look

David Niven and Claudia Cardinale in The Pink Panther (1963)

The Pink Panther was made in the waning years of luxury skiwear, when jet-setters spent their winter days on the slopes before decadent après-ski evenings. Thus, Sir Charles Lytton’s ski sweaters have a colorful elegance to them, a byproduct of both the era and David Niven’s own sense of refinement.

• Red ribbed-knit wool raglan-sleeve V-neck sweater with red/black/gray/white piping
• Black lightweight knit turtleneck jumper
• Black ski pants
• Black ski boots with red laces
• Black headband
• Renauld “Spectacular” sport sunglasses with chrome wraparound frame and rounded amber Orama IV lenses
• Red leather ski gloves

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

Tom Selleck as Nick Lassiter in Lassiter (1984)

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Tom Selleck as Nick Lassiter, debonair jewel thief

London, June 1939

Film: Lassiter
Release Date: February 17, 1984
Director: Roger Young
Costume Designer: Barbara Lane

Background

Happy birthday, Tom Selleck!

On the actor’s 74th birthday, I’m responding to a frequent request from a fellow Tom who kindly brought my attention to Selleck’s pre-World War II style in the little-known 1984 caper film Lassiter, made during the actor’s Magnum P.I. heyday. Selleck starred as the title character, Nick Lassiter, a daring and debonair jewel thief in the tradition of David Niven’s “Phantom” from the Pink Panther series with a twist of Indiana Jones… perhaps to make up for the fact that Selleck had turned down Raiders of the Lost Ark before Harrison Ford made the iconic role his own.

We meet the charming Lassiter in the summer of 1939 as he’s stealing his way through London and living the high life with his English girlfriend Sara (Jane Seymour), an accessory if not all-out accomplice to his stylish crimes. Scotland Yard’s onto him, however, and entraps him into breaking into the German embassy and stealing millions of dollars worth of diamonds that would finance Nazi spy operations in South America.

After some initial resistance, Lassiter begrudgingly agrees to help the government and begins planning his heist. Part of his plans include a trip to stake out the German embassy grounds, despite the anti-fascist protests outside. We know he’s stressed because he earlier admitted that he quit smoking, but now he’s flicking his Zippo to light his Luckies as he wanders into the embassy itself. Given that his options are spending 20 years in an English prison, successfully stealing jewels from the Nazi government, or to die trying… it’s reasonable that he would be stressed!

What’d He Wear?

Tweed—the rough and rugged woolen fabric often associated with country suits and traditional sportswear—can be nicely adapted for the city, particularly in traditionally businesslike colors like blue or gray. Lassiter opts here for the latter, a light gray barleycorn tweed two-piece suit with a timeless cut.

Three-button jackets are most flattering on taller gents, so the 6’4″ Tom Selleck in this three-button single-breasted suit coat. The ventless jacket has notch lapels, patch pockets, and three buttons on the end of each sleeve.

Casing the joint.

Anyone making the argument that argyle can’t be badass need look no further than Tom Selleck in Lassiter. The bona fide badass of the ’80s not only sported argyle knitwear, but a sweater vest at that.

The argyle pattern of solid-colored diamond-shaped lozenges, often with an overlaying grid of diagonal inter-crossing lines, originated in Scotland around the 17th century but grew fashionable in the years following World War I, first in England before crossing the pond to the United States. As an American living in London, Nick Lassiter would be very familiar with the natty benefits of the pattern and his argyle sweater vest nicely supplements his suit for an interesting layered look.

Lassiter’s gray knit wool V-neck sweater vest has a cream argyle pattern on the front with thin cream lines inter-crossing across it. The V-shaped neckline, armholes, and waist hem are all ribbed in the same gray fabric as the rest of the vest.

Lassiter finds a surprising ally in the form of FBI Special Agent Peter Breeze (Joe Regalbuto, perhaps best known for his role as investigative reporter Frank Fontana on Murphy Brown.)

Lassiter wears the same shirt and tie that he wore with his gray box-checked sport jacket when he confronted Inspector Becker (Bob Hoskins) at his family’s home. The faintly light gray-and-white candy-striped shirt has a slim spread collar, front placket, and rounded single-button cuffs, and the bold burgundy silk tie jumps out against the muted shirt.

Selleck’s trademark mustache gets plenty of glorious screen time in Lassiter.

The suit’s matching trousers have double reverse pleats, side pockets positioned straight along each side seam, and jetted back pockets, and the bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs).

Though Lassiter’s sweater vest covers his waist, we can assume he’s wearing his usual brown leather belt as it would coordinate with his dark brown suede oxfords. Lassiter’s light taupe socks don’t necessarily match his gray trousers or brown shoes but provide an otherwise neutral transition between the two.

Lassiter wears his trusty tan felt fedora with a brown ribbed grosgrain silk band.

His timepiece is a subtle but elegant tank-style dress watch that was most common for men during these early decades of wristwatch popularity. The gold rectangular-cased watch has a light rectangular dial and is worn on a dark brown leather strap, though Lassiter also wears a watch with a similar-looking case on a gold expanding bracelet similar to those offered by Elgin during the era.

Lassiter’s dangerous assignment reawakens his dangerous smoking habit.

How to Get the Look

Tom Selleck with his co-stars Lauren Hutton and Jane Seymour in Lassiter (1984)

Though he’s an American, Selleck’s Nick Lassiter looks every bit the finely tailored English gentleman as he cases the German embassy in his tweed suit and argyle sweater vest.

• Gray barleycorn tweed suit
  • Single-breasted 3-button suit jacket with notch lapels, patch breast pocket, patch hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Double forward-pleated trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets
• Light gray-and-white striped shirt with slim spread collar, front placket, and 1-button rounded cuffs
• Burgundy silk tie
• Gray-and-cream argyle knit sweater vest
• Tan felt fedora with brown ribbed grosgrain band
• Dark brown suede oxford shoes
• Taupe socks
• White cotton sleeveless undershirt
• Gold tank watch on dark leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Max Hofer: Are you an admirer of German culture, Mr. Lassiter?
Lassiter: Well, where I come from, Max, we like things a little lighter, if you know what I mean.

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934)

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Clark Gable as Peter Warne, recently fired newspaper reporter

Miami to New York, Spring 1933

Film: It Happened One Night
Release Date: February 22, 1934
Director: Frank Capra
Costume Designer: Robert Kalloch
Tailor: Eddie Schmidt

Background

Today marks the birthday of Clark Gable, born 118 years ago on February 1, 1901, as William Clark Gable, though he would shave off his first name to assume the stage name of Clark Gable by 1924. Within a decade, the young actor from Cadiz, Ohio, had turned Clark Gable into a household name.

Released 85 years ago this month, It Happened One Night earned Clark Gable his only Academy Award while also racking up wins in the category of Best Picture, Best Director (for Frank Capra), Best Actress (for Claudette Colbert), and Best Adapted Screenplay (for Robert Riskin). In the decades since, only two other movies have won this “big five” quinfecta of Oscar categories: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. Esteemed company, indeed.

With Gable’s birthday today and the 91st Academy Awards just four weeks from now, let’s take a look at the dapper actor’s style in this trailblazing pre-Code comedy that’s still charming, witty, and ageless the better part of a century later. Based on Samuel Hopkins Adams’ short story “Night Bus”, published in August 1933, It Happened One Night broke ground across genres, setting an early standard for romantic comedies, screwball comedies, and the decidedly American subgenre of road movies.

Per the name of Adams’ original short story, a Greyhound bus drives the movie’s plot—as well as its two romantic leads, cheeky pipe-smoking tabloid journalist Peter Warne and runaway heiress Ellie Andrews—as they travel up the Eastern seaboard from Miami to New York. The sheltered socialite finds herself relying on the streetwise reporter for help during her incognito getaway and, within a few days, he’s teaching her everything from how to live on less than $4 a day to the proper way to dunk one’s donut in coffee:

Dunking is an art. Don’t let it soak so long. A dip and sock, into your mouth. You leave it in too long, it gets soft and falls off. It’s all a matter of timing. I’ll write a book about it.

Of course, Ellie has a thing or two to teach Peter as well. One of the film’s most famous scenes finds the two by the side of a country road, trying to hitchhike. Despite his three tried-and-true methods, Peter’s thumb isn’t getting them much luck, so Ellie strolls out to the side of the road, lifts her skirt, and a passing jalopy immediately squeals to a stop to pick them up, prompting Ellie to remark:

Well, I proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb.

What’d He Wear?

Peter Warne’s sporty tweed suit and its supplements afford us with a concrete example of ideal layering for traveling in style—whether by bus, by train, or by plane—with layers that can be removed, reinforced, or reused depending on the situation… either by you or by your lovely seat mate. Of course, there’s one layer he eschews that was almost unthinkable to abandon in the early 1930s: an undershirt!

You don’t want to join the Israelites? All right. Perhaps you’re interested in how a man undresses. There’s a funny thing about that—quite a study in psychology—no two men do it alike. I once knew a man who kept his hat on until he was completely undressed. Now he made a picture. Years later, his secret came out. He wore a toupee. I have a method all my own. If you’ll notice, the coat came first. Then the tie. Then the shirt. Now, according to Hoyle, after that the pants should be next. There’s where I’m different. I go for the shoes next. First the right. Then the left. After that, it’s every man for himself.

Though Ellie Andrews quickly follows her own instincts for self-preservation and flees onto the other side of the room, the audience was reportedly left stunned… and inspired. According to urban legend, sales of men’s undershirts plunged after Gable’s demonstration… though it has been argued that perhaps Gable was just following a Depression-era trend rather than starting one.

In an ironic twist, almost 20 years later, Gable’s insecurity regarding his bare chest that he once so proudly and famously exposed in It Happened One Night caused him to demand that any male cast and crew members appearing shirtless during the production of Mogambo have their chest shaved so as not to appear more hirsute than he.

Day 1: Peter Warne sets out from Miami clad in tweed suit with light v-neck jumper, RAMC tie, and foulard pocket square…

The Tweed Suit

When I first endeavored to write this piece, my research led me to Andrew Yamato’s “A Suit Well-Traveled: Clark Gabble’s Clobber in It Happened One Night“ and I count it among the finer pieces of men’s style writing I’ve encountered. Please enjoy this excerpt from Mr. Yamato’s sublime analysis:

The silent star of this early talkie is Gable’s traveling suit: a sporty single-breasted number cut from a supple medium-toned tweed and featuring just about every bell and whistle in the tailor’s manual… While clearly cut for ease, the suit is not inelegant. Its broad-shouldered and heavily draped silhouette is bulky, but far from shapeless. Indeed, with its bulging pockets, rolling lapels, shirred sleeveheads (perfectly echoing the yoke), and luffing trousers, it fairly ripples with an expressive energy that the waist button sometimes seems barely able to contain. It’s not as famous as that other great transcontinental sartorial icon – Cary Grant’s North By Northwest suit – but it deserves to be. Easy wearing for hard living, Gable’s rumpled tweed is more in line with the realities of travel than the polished perfection of Grant’s granite worsted. It’s perhaps not ideal for martinis in the first class lounge, but it’s perfect for catching a few winks in coach, and isn’t that where most of us tend to find ourselves?

I can hardly match Mr. Yamato’s talent for the written word when describing both context and texture of this iconic outfit, but I feel that I owe it to Mr. Gable and myself (and the hours I spent watching, taking screenshots, and researching) to approach the same outfit and offer my own unique commentary where warranted.

The color of Gable’s sporty tweed suit is likely lost to history, as contemporary promotional artwork has colored it blue, gray, brown, and likely an assortment of other shades. Given that, all we can do is take a closer look at the suiting itself, a broken twill tweed so broken in by its wearer that it’s no surprise he was able to drift to slumber so easily when crammed into the back seat of a Greyhound bus.

A gentleman named Marc Chevalier has identified Eddie Schmidt as the craftsman of this particular suit as well as Gable’s other tailored wear across the early years of his career.

Schmidt no doubt enjoyed his work dressing Peter Warne, furnishing the single-breasted jacket with three flapped bellows pockets: one on each hip, large enough for a seemingly endless supply of carrots, and an imperfect rhomboid over his left breast that leans with Gable whether he’s kicking back against a street light or thumbing back to hitchhike a ride. One could be forgiven for not noticing the flap over the breast pocket as he keeps it well-concealed with a parade of pocket squares: first a dark silk foulard handkerchief before switching to plain white linen.

…days later finding himself trying to hail a passing car, now sporting the suit with matching waistcoat, a different repp tie, and a plain white hankie buried low in his breast pocket.

The jacket has broad notch lapels that roll neatly to the top of two semi-spherical shank buttons, likely nut or a material more exotic than the traditional horn or plastic. The four smaller cuff buttons that adorn each sleeve match the two on the front of the suit coat.

A 1930s tailoring trend that has sadly failed to resurrect itself in the years since is the “action back”, an informal nomenclature for the details incorporated by early 20th century tailors onto the jackets of gents’ sportier suits and sport jackets to allow for greater mobility during life’s more action-oriented pursuits, be they hunting, shooting, or—in Peter Warne’s case—hitchhiking. An “action back” can consist of one or more of the following: “bi-swing” pleats on the shoulders, an inverted box pleat down the center, shirring at the shoulder yoke, or a half-belt that pulls in the waist.

Warne’s ventless jacket boasts the latter three of the four above; a horizontal shoulder yoke hits straight across his upper back, with shirring and a single center inverted box pleat detailing the back down to a half-belt at his waist.

No need for an action back when brooding around your old employer’s office after a seemingly failed romance, however.

Dress shirts with attached collars had only been a relatively recent phenomenon by the time Gable hit the silver screen as Peter Warne in the early 1930s, and yet it’s difficult to imagine the outfit expressing its same insouciant panache without the insolently soft leafs of his Barrymore collar refusing to restrain themselves to the confines of his waistcoat. In Dressing the Man, Alan Flusser defines the Barrymore collar as “a low-set, attached dress-shirt collar with long points, first worn by John Barrymore in the late 1920s and then adopted by Hollywood stars and others in California; it later became known as the California collar.” In addition to this large collar, Warne’s white shirts have the simple details of a front placket and single-button barrel cuffs.

Warne later cites the value of his three shirts lost along the journey at $4.50 apiece, which the math experts among us would calculate out to $1.50 per shirt, a fair price by 1930s standards and an absolute steal in the marketplace of 2019.

Were his collar points any longer, Peter Warne’s vision may have been seriously impaired when behind the wheel of an open-air tin Lizzie.

Tri-color striped repp ties are the theme of Peter Warne’s neckwear game, particularly those of British military origins, though the Tommys would be rather concerned with seeing the traditional British stripe inverted in the “downhill” American direction in Warne’s collection. All of his ties are fastened in place with a tie tack and chain just above the first button of his suit.

Warne begins his journey in a repp tie striped in three colors—light, medium, and dark—following a pattern of light, dark, medium, dark, etc. My theory that this tie was striped in the tradition of the Royal Army Medical Corps regimental design was validated upon finding the same service specifically suggested in Mr. Yamato’s 2015 article. Should Gable have truly been sporting a tie patterned after the RAMC colors, the predominant dark stripe would be navy, alternating with the lighter-toned yellow and medium-toned scarlet red stripes.

Under his suit jacket, Warne first wears a light-colored knit long-sleeve sweater with a V-shaped neckline just deep enough to show the top few inches of his tie below the knot, though the color and material of the sweater are so light that the outline of the tie can be clearly seen through it.

“Behold the walls of Jericho,” Peter Warne declares as he rigs up a blanket as a makeshift wall separating his bed from Ellie’s in their first motel room.

While a bare-chested Clark Gable (sans undershirt!) may have had a major impact on viewers in 1934, audiences of today may be more surprised to see Gable’s trousers rising so high as to conceal his belly button. Until rather recently, men’s trouser waistlines referred to exactly that: the natural human waistline. As Flusser so succinctly outlines in Dressing the Man, “suit trousers should be worn on the waist, not on the hip.”

Thus, Gable’s suit trousers with their elegant long rise, further accented by a pair of reverse pleats on each side of the fly. The waistband is clean, devoid of belt loops and fastened with a hidden hook-and-eye extended tab. Brace buttons along the inside of the waistband connect to a pair of dark suspenders with tan leather double hooks. The full-fitting trousers have straight pockets along each side seam, no back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

The scene that reportedly dealt a blow to the entire undershirt industry.

The morning after Peter first erects the “walls of Jericho”, he swaps out his repp tie for yet another regimental tie, this one bearing what appears to be the bright scarlet and navy stripes of the Staffordshire Yeomanry, each set of stripes divided by a slim white shadow stripe below the navy. He wears it with the same tie pin, affixed mid-torso just beneath the waistcoat.

What’s that? A waistcoat? Indeed, Peter showcases the versatility of his hard-wearing travel attire by packing away the light sweater he had been wearing in exchange for the suit’s matching waistcoat (vest), a single-breasted number with four welt pockets, five semi-spherical buttons, and a long notched bottom. The back is cinched with an adjustable strap just an inch or two from the bottom, as close to the waist as possible to match the profile of the jacket with its suppressed waist.

The waistcoat is cut in accordance with the decade’s high-waisted trends by buttoning high on his chest and ending just at the natural waist. His trousers rise high enough that the waistband is well-concealed under the waistcoat.

While lace-ups may be the scourge of the modern travel landscape with its TSA security checkpoints, a sensible pair of durable derbies would have been the ideal accompaniment for a tweed-suited traveler in the early 1930s, particularly one with a natty pair of two-toned argyle socks to show off when possible.

Warne’s dark calf leather longwing derby brogues have five lace eyelets and a unique squared toe box with an extended apron-toe rather than the traditional wingtip associated with brogues.

Promotional photo of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934).

Clark Gable embraced the post-World War I popularity of men’s wristwatches, amassing a collection of impressive timepieces that he wore both on- and off-screen throughout his life, including a classic Cartier Tank and a yellow-gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual that shined from the screen in Mogambo.

As Peter Warne, Gable wore a shining rectangular-cased watch and a brown leather strap on his left wrist. Gleaming from elsewhere on the same hand—the little finger, to be precise—is a gold shiner with a large dark stone, one in a series of pinky rings that Gable would wear throughout his lifetime.

Ellie and Peter celebrate a well-executed ruse.

As he was a newspaperman, you can almost see the press card sticking out of Warne’s well-traveled dark fedora with its wide ribbed grosgrain silk band and perennially downturned brim, likely the result of countless hours in the rain either in search of a story or an open bar.

Warne finally parts with the hat when he trades it to a gas station attendant outside Philadelphia in exchange for some extra fuel to gas up his “commandeered” Ford Model T, invoicing the headgear’s total at $4 in his invoice to Ellen’s father. At a time when Stetson was marketing its zippy new “Playboy” model for $5, Warne’s stated figure is likely right on the proverbial money.

Ellie shows little interest in Peter’s nutritious road snack.

Before it became the outerwear of choice for spies, detectives, and cynical gin joint proprietors, Peter Warne stepped forth from a Miami phone booth in a khaki water-resistant gabardine trench coat with massive lapels and the traditional ten-button double-breasted front. In accordance with the coat’s military origins—commissioned for British officers serving in the trenches of World War I—metal hooks and D-rings hang from the belt, which Warne rakishly wears tied sash-like despite the presence of a buckle for proper fastening.

The coat is further detailed with the usual epaulettes (shoulder straps), storm flaps, and slanted hand pockets with button-down flaps. A single-prong belted strap at each cuff tightens the sleeves around the wrists. Warne values the coat at $15 when tallying up his duties for Ellie’s father.

For a man who doesn’t know what he’ll be expecting on the road, a classic trench coat is ideal for nearly any weather situation he can expect to face.

The final—and first discarded—element of Peter Warne’s attire is a houndstooth scarf with fringed ends. He wears it around his neck only when boarding the bus in Miami, later keeping it tucked away in a pocket of his trench coat before handing it to Ellie to keep her dry after a rainy day wandering through Jacksonville.

Pajamas

If you had any doubts that Peter Warne was a man who appreciated comfort, keep in mind that he packed at least two (2) sets of silk pajamas for his coastal road trip despite seemingly only hauling along one suit. He bestows his “best” pajamas to Ellie as a sign of his good faith, then uses the privacy of the walls of Jericho to slip into his alternate pajamas, a suit of dark silk covered in white mini polka-dots with the collar, cuffs, and breast pocket all trimmed in the same dark solid color as the ground with white piping that extends down the three-button front of the pajama top. Around his waist, he wears a dark belt with white triple fringe.

One final cigarette before bed…

The Final Suit

The final ten minutes of It Happened One Night, set in New York after the road trip, find Peter Warne “mourning” his chance at a happy relationship with Ellie in a funereal three-piece suit made from a dark gabardine suiting on the black-to-midnight blue spectrum, more appropriate for the businesslike settings of the city than his baggy tweed traveling suit.

Unlike his charmingly sporty tweeds, this suit is all elegance from the graceful cut of the single-breasted suit jacket to the sophisticated broad peak lapel that rolls to a perfectly proportioned single-button closure at the waist. No foulard pocket squares for this broken-hearted Romeo either; Warne is all business with a simple white linen handkerchief in his breast pocket.

A jilted Peter Warne sizes up his one-time soulmate.

With this more formal suit, Warne sports another crisp white shirt, again with one of the grand “Barrymore collars” with substantial points that fill the entire space between his striped school tie and the suit’s high-fastening waistcoat.

Unlike the Americanized stripe direction of his regimental stripe ties, Warne wears an Old Harrovian tie with the school’s traditional “uphill” stripe direction intact. The tie is the signature neckwear of the storied Harrow School in London, consisting of twin white bar stripes on a dark navy ground. Given what we know about the character, it’s highly unlikely that Peter Warne was a pupil of the centuries-old “Old Boys” school that produced Winston Churchill, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Lord Byron.

I leave you with a passage from Alec Waugh’s 1948 novel, Unclouded Summer, as the American protagonist Francis attempts to dress for golf under the scrutinization of the English valet Parker:

“And which tie, sir, will you wear?”
“That blue one with the two thin white stripes.”
“The old Harrovian tie, sir?”
“You can call it what you like. To me, it’s a dark blue tie with two thin white stripes.”
“I know, sir, but…” The valet hesitated. He looked at the ties thoughtfully. There were a number of striped ties among them.
“You see, sir, if I may be allowed to say so, sir — you have also among your ties an old Etonian tie; you have a Guard’s tie, too, a Leander tie and, I think, one or two others might be held to indicate membership of clubs of which, possibly, sir, you are not a member. I hope you will not think it an impertinence, sir, but if you were to wear those ties, I am afraid it might cause some confusion, sir.”
Francis flushed. It was the kind of high-hatting he had been warned against. Hell’s bells, he thought, I’m an American. They’re American ties. What the hell do their old boys’ clubs mean to me?

The Car

A garrulous “road thief” who fell prey to Ellie’s now-famous hitchhike-hailing leg lift tried to break away from the two at a country convenience store, escaping with Peter’s suitcase in the back of his flivver. Unluckily for the motorist, Peter Warne was played by the athletic Clark Gable (rather than, say, Wallace Beery or Sydney Greenstreet), and Peter is actually able to run and catch up with the fleeing car with yet enough energy to engage in fisticuffs.

Ellie: How’d you get the car?
Peter: Oh, I gave him a black eye for it. I even had to tie him up to a tree!

Victorious after the off-screen altercation, Peter returns to pick up Ellie in the car, a black (of course) Ford Model T four-door convertible.

I’m no expert; the pros at IMCDB have seemingly determined that the car featured was the decade-old 1924 Model T tourer after some debate between the 1926 wooden-spoked model and the wire-wheeled Model T of 1927, the car’s final production year.

1924 was the second highest production year with 1,922,048 rolling off of Henry Ford’s famous production line, nearly 90,000 less than the record-holding 1923 production year.

1924 Ford Model T

Body Style: 4-door touring car

Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)

Engine: 177 cid (2.9 L) Ford Model T I4

Power: 20 hp (15 kW; 20 PS) @ 1600 rpm

Torque: 83 lb·ft (113 N·m) @ 900 rpm

Transmission: 2-speed planetary

Wheelbase: 100 inches (2540 mm)

Length: 134 inches (3404 mm)

Width: 66 inches (1676.4 mm)

Despite the questionable means under which Warne obtained the car, he seemingly owns it for the duration of the film as it is seen parked in the motel lot during the final scene. You’d think at least $300 of that famous Andrews family fortune could have gone to purchase Warne a car that was at least legally his!

What to Imbibe

We first meet Peter Warne while he’s drunkenly telling off his “gashouse palooka” of a boss from a Miami bus station phone booth, emboldened by the contents of a flask-bottle of Old Log Cabin and goaded by a group of admirers who are just the sort of fellas you’d expect to be hanging around a bus station.

Though the brand name has been revived by Seattle distillery Batch 206, the Old Log Cabin brand dates back to the pre-Civil War era when the enterprising and aptly named Philadelphia distiller Edmund G. Booz introduced his “Old Cabin” whiskey to American imbibers, selling his craft in log cabin-shaped bottles made next door to his Walnut Street distillery.

A bottle of Old Log Cabin, distilled in Montreal and dated 1927. (Source: DrinksPlanet.com)

As one story tells, Old Cabin was first distributed at campaign events to support Old Tippecanoe himself, presidential candidate William Henry Harrison, who would die after serving less than a month as ninth President of the United States… unfortunately, Booz would have only been 16 during the presidential contests of 1840, and it’s hardly likely that he was managing a distillery.

However, nearly a century later, the brand was actually associated with a fatal turn of events in American history when George “Bugs” Moran, a bootlegger who ran Chicago’s infamous North Side Gang in the waning years of the roaring ’20s, ordered a shipment to be delivered to his garage on St. Valentine’s Day… and I’m sure you see where the story goes from here. Four men sent by Al Capone showed up with shotguns and tommy guns, blasting seven of Moran’s men into oblivion.

Old Log Cabin bottles from the Prohibition era feature Montreal, Canada, as the point of origin, pre-dating the 1964 congressional resolution determining bourbon whiskey to be a “distinctive product of the United States” and thus allowing these Canadian-produced bottles from the ’20s and ’30s to be marketed as bourbon to thirsty Americans. After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the Old Log Cabin brand continued to eke along through the next dozen or so years, never regaining its pre-Prohibition popularity and dying a quiet death sometime in mid-century. Let’s see if Batch 206 can revive it!

How to Get the Look

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night (1934)

Clark Gable’s Peter Warne travels in layered style for an authentic look that blends English tradition with American insouciance, adding a casual, sporty twist to classic tweeds, repp ties, and argyle socks. You may not have known that you wanted to travel in a three-piece tweed suit until Gable made it look so fun.

• Medium-colored broken twill tweed suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with wide notch lapels, flapped parallelogram-shaped bellows breast pocket, flapped bellows hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless, half-belted “action back”
  • Single-breasted 5-button waistcoat with four welt pockets, notched bottom, and cinch backstrap
  • Double reverse-pleated high-rise trousers with straight/on-seam side pockets and turn-ups (cuffs)
• Light-colored knit V-neck long-sleeve sweater
• White cotton dress shirt with long pointed “Barrymore collar”, front placket, and 1-button cuffs
• Tri-color “downhill”-striped regimental repp tie
• Tie tack and chain
• Dark calf leather squared apron-toe 5-eyelet derby brogues
• Argyle socks
• Dark felt fedora with dark ribbed grosgrain band
• Khaki water-resistant gabardine trench coat with broad lapels, 10-button double-breasted front, epaulettes, storm flaps, belted waist, slanted hand pockets (with button-down flaps), and belted cuffs
• Houndstooth scarf with fringed ends
• Rectangular-cased tank watch on brown leather strap
• Pinky ring with large oval stone

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

In a pig’s eye, you will! Hey listen, monkey face—when you fired me, you fired the best newshound your filthy scandal sheet ever had… that was free verse, you gashouse palooka!

James Garner as Flight Lieutenant Hendley in The Great Escape (1963)

Vitals

James Garner as Robert Hendley, American-born RAF Flight Lieutenant and “scrounger”

Sagan-Silesia (Zagan, Poland), Spring 1944

Film: The Great Escape
Release Date: July 4, 1963
Director: John Sturges
Wardrobe Credit: Bert Henrikson

Background

Steve McQueen’s daring Captain Hilts may get all the glory of The Great Escape‘s legacy, but James Garner’s affable and resourceful “scrounger” Hendley remains one of my favorite characters from any war movie.

Fans of The Great Escape are no doubt aware of the filmmakers’ attempt to help the movie sell in the United States by emphasizing the roles played by Americans, despite the fact that none of the actual escapees from Stalag Luft III in March 1944 were American (though American POWs did help with the digging before they were transferred to another camp.) McQueen’s motorcycle-riding, moonshine-swilling Hilts is obvious, while Garner’s presence as Flight Lieutenant Hendley illustrates another type of American that saw action in the air in World War II’s European Theater: the pilots who volunteered to join the Royal Air Force (RAF) before the U.S. entered the war. These 244 pilots formed the three Eagle Squadrons, created in the tradition of the Lafayette Escadrille that fought for France during World War I.

Though activated on September 19, 1940, it was 78 years ago today—February 5, 1941—that the first Eagle Squadron (No. 71 Squadron) became operational for defensive duties, taking to the air in Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft. After the U.S. entered the war that December, the need for Eagle Squadrons was eliminated and all three squadrons were officially transferred from the RAF to the Eighth Air Force of the U.S. Army Air Forces on September 29, 1942, just over two years after their original activation. All American pilots serving in the Eagle Squadrons were thus commissioned as USAAF officers, typically as their equivalent rank (i.e. an RAF Flight Lieutenant was now a USAAF Captain.)

The fact that Hendley is still dressed in the rank and uniform of an RAF pilot adds additional unspoken details about his history. Decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) per the ribbon on his left breast, Hendley must have been shot down sometime before September 1942 when he became a prisoner of war.

What’d He Wear?

RAF Service Uniform

Despite the nature of our familiarity with Flight Lieutenant Hendley—he is a prisoner of war, after all—the aviator always looks dashing in his full Royal Air Force service uniform, complete with a cream jumper with a neatly rolled turtleneck and his peaked officer’s cap, rakishly tilted in a manner consistent with his easygoing demeanor.

In his heroic blue-gray service uniform and cap, Hendley stands out against some of the other downed airmen in their old 1937 pattern brown woolen battle dress garments.

Flight Lieutenant Hendley spends his day-to-day life in Stalag Luft III attired in his No. 1 Service Dress uniform consisting of the matching blue-gray worsted wool serge tunic and trousers that has been virtually unchanged since the dress code was first adopted by the Brits in the early 1920s. TV Tropes notes with amusement that, despite being an American officer, Hendley’s particular talent as a scrounger finds his RAF uniform in better condition than the actual British characters.

Production photo of James Garner wearing Flight Lieutenant Hendley’s RAF uniform tunic and turtleneck, though his trousers are the striped trousers that match his “escape suit”.

The service dress uniform tunic is cut like a single-breasted suit jacket, providing a much easier sample for the camp’s confidential cutters to tailor the garment into civilian wear for the escapees to wear once outside the gates. The waist is wrapped in a self-belt that fastens with a tall, gold-toned double-prong buckle in addition to a four-button front.

Hendley wears the top of the tunic’s four gold crested shank buttons undone, providing less tightness on his chest with while also adding a touch of American nonchalance in a setting where uniform regulations would be less regarded. (Of note, the very correct “SBO” Ramsey often follows the same practice, despite being the ranking British officer in camp and always sporting his service uniform with his shirt and tie.)

The tunic has four flapped external pockets, and it may also be cut with the small jetted ticket pocket on the right side, under the belt. The two chest pockets are box-pleated with scalloped flaps that each close with a single gold crested shank button and small snaps at each corner to fasten the flap into place and prevent the pointed ends from curling or folding. The two larger bellows pockets below the belt each close with a plain rectangular flap also with a single centered button. A long single vent extends up the center of Hendley’s back to the belt.

Given that this is his service uniform as an RAF flier, the tunic is bedecked with the various insignia, decorations, and badges befitting an accomplished military pilot.

Irvin flight jacket in hand, Hendley scopes out the guard towers upon his arrival at Stalag Luft III.

On his left breast, Hendley wears the signature aircrew brevet issued to qualified RAF pilots. The patch consists of the letters “RAF” embroidered in white inside a brown wreath with a white King’s crown embroidered atop it, all flanked by white embroidered swift’s wings on each side.

Also on his left breast, positioned under his wings brevet but directly above his pocket flap, is the white-and-purple striped ribbon representative of the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC), an operational gallantry award given to all ranks of British service “in recognition of exemplary gallantry during active operation against the enemy in the air.” Hendley and his fellow Stalag Luft III inmates like Roger “Big X” Bartlett and Danny Velinski all proudly wearing their DFC medal ribbons would number them among the 20,354 real-life recipients of the DFC during World War II.

On each upper sleeve, Hendley wears a gently curved navy blue patch with “U.S.A.” embroidered in white, signifying his service as an American officer in the RAF. The more commonly seen Eagle Squadron patch, however, is larger with the letters “E.S.” in white above a white eagle with a black embroidered eye.

Unlike the United States, which echoes the Army rank system for Air Force officers, the British War Office deemed that the RAF should develop its own unique ranks for officers. Like his fellow officers Blythe, Macdonald, and Velinski, Hendley carries the rank Flight Lieutenant, equivalent to the army rank of Captain in the U.K. and the U.S. The Flight Lieutenant rank is denoted on the ends of his sleeves with two narrow sky blue rings each placed on a slightly wider black band.

In their boundless sartorial wisdom, the British military has authorized for years an elegant ivory rollneck jumper. Colloquially termed the “submarine sweater”, this garment soon found favor not only by the Royal Navy crews in the depths of the sea but also the Royal Air Force officers flying far above them.

While the Royal Air Force did offer its own garment to battle the cold weather of an open cockpit—issued as “22G/63 Frock, White, Aircrew”—this is a long and loose knit sweater that has a wide, 2”-tall standing collar rather than the classic rollneck associated with the Royal Navy’s pattern. (Learn more from the intrepid investigators at The Fedora Lounge.) Thus, the garment many associate with the RAF fliers is actually a Royal Navy deck sweater, made for World War II officers by the Leicester knitwear manufacturer J. Pick & Sons.

The sweater is a soft ivory 12-ply wool with ribbed rollneck, cuffs, and hem, deeply funneled enough that the neck and cuffs can be comfortably rolled back once and the hem can be comfortably tucked into uniform trousers. Unlike the baggy RAF frock meant to be worn over a uniform, the Royal Navy sweater was designed with slimmer sleeves that could be easily worn under most uniforms from battle dress to an Irvin flight jacket without adding bulk to the arms.

Modern shoppers interested in their own off-white submarine sweaters can check out the offerings from Outdoor Knitwear, which has reportedly manufactured the Royal Navy’s wool submariners’ sweaters “for many years”. Given its popularity, many other versions are also available from Amazon, MilitaryClothing.com, Silvermans, Soldier of Fortune, and What Price Glory.

Hendley is one of the few in camp who sports a jumper rather than a collared shirt on a day-by-day basis. While the appearance of a submarine sweater with RAF service dress is historically appropriate, there’s also some narrative value to Hendley’s look as the turtleneck adds a touch of relatable rebellion—without going the full McQueen—against the buttoned-up shirts and ties of his more correct colleagues like Bartlett, Ashley-Pitt, and Ramsey. When worn with the tilted cap and the unbuttoned top button of his tunic, Hendley’s look threatens to establish a unique brand of militaresque sprezzatura.

Hendley’s double forward-pleated uniform trousers are made from the same blue-gray worsted serge as his tunic. The waistband closes with a hidden hook-and-eye on an extended tab, and there are no belt loops, adjuster tabs, or outside brace buttons for holding up his trousers. They have straight pockets placed vertically along each side seam, a jetted button-through pocket on the back right, and plain-hemmed bottoms.

British military knitwear on display. While Hendley sports the ivory Royal Navy sweater tucked into his RAF serivce uniform trousers, “Diversions” expert Haynes (Lawrence Montaigne) next to him seems to be wearing a blue-gray version of the RAF “frock” with its wide standing collar and with the long hem partially torn away for greater mobility and comfort.

Since Hendley was sent to Stalag Luft III after being shot down in mid-mission, he is still wearing his flying boots, specifically the 1936 pattern flying boots in black leather. These boots have a smooth plain toe and a strap around the top that fastens through a silver-toned single-prong buckle.

He wears them with the heavy white wool knee-high socks that were authorized by the Royal Navy at sea and by the RAF with flight boots.

Hendley keeps his boots on even when kicking back in his bunk, as can be seen behind Roger and Colin as they determine the latter’s fitness for escape.

Hendley completes his uniform with the RAF’s peaked officers’ cap with a blue-gray barathea wool cloth cover and brim. Emblazoned on the front is the gold RAF officers’ badge consisting of crown, eagle, and oak leaf embroidery.

On his right wrist, Hendley wears a gold bracelet with a long, flat disc that may have been privately acquired as an identity bracelet to supplement his standard issue iD tags. (See an example of a Royal Flying Corps identity bracelet from World War I here.)

On the opposing wrist, Hendley wears his wristwatch, a simple steel number with a black dial and plain white hour markers, worn on a drab pigskin strap. It’s likely one of the “W.W.W.” (Wrist. Watch. Waterproof.) watches contracted from the “dirty dozen” Swiss watch companies—Buren, Cyma, Eterna, Grana, Jaeger Le-Coultre, Lemania, Longines, IWC, Omega, Record, Timor, and Vertex—who each delivered their own variations of a military watch with a black dial, white Arabic numerals, and a sub-dial.

You can read more about military wristwatches of World War II here or specifically about the 12 variations of the British W.W.W. here.

Hendley arrives at Stalag Luft III with his brown sheepskin flight jacket nonchalantly thrown over his shoulder. This iconic coat was developed by Leslie Irvin, the American aviation pioneer who had invented the parachute rip-cord system in 1919 and is credited as the first man to make a premeditated free-fall jump from an airplane. As aviation technologies allowed planes to rise higher and higher over the course of the 20th century, Irvin noted that a better solution was needed to keep pilots warm and comfortable in the sub-zero temperatures of poorly insulated cockpits.

In 1931, Irvin began producing the flight jackets that would bear his name. “Made from heavyweight sheepskin, its thick natural wool provided incredible insulation,” describes the official Irvin flying jackets site. “And, while the sheepskin was considered heavyweight the jacket itself was comparatively light and remarkably comfortable. Irvin insisted on the most supple sheepskin: in a cramped cockpit movement was already restricted and no pilot or crew would want to be constrained further still. The Irvin jacket was a masterpiece of design, maximum warmth and comfort combined with maximum mobility.”

The zip-up jackets also have long zippers on the ends of each sleeve and a single-prong self-belt that fastens around the waist. There are no pockets, as the coat was originally meant solely to be worn in-flight over an aviator’s uniform when there would be no need to access one’s personal effects. The RAF’s Irvin flying jackets made quite an impression on the aerial fighting forces of the world, and the U.S. would soon develop its own B-3 sheepskin jacket for its Army Air Forces.

The closest Hendley comes to actually wearing his Irvin is slinging it over his shoulder as he scopes out the tools he can steal from a German truck.

It’s unfortunate that we never get to see the dashing Flight Lieutenant Hendley actually wearing his Irvin jacket, but Group Captain Ramsey (James Donald), the “SBO”, arrives at camp with his Irvin worn over his service uniform.

If you’re in the market for your own Irvin flying jacket, you can check out the selections from Aviation Leathercraft which promotes its wares as the genuine articles as well as the offerings from Aero Leather and What Price Glory.

These elements of the classic RAF uniform are undoubtedly familiar to fans of World War II movies like Battle of Britain (1969), where Michael Caine and Robert Shaw take to the skies in their service dress, Irvins, and sub jumpers to defend their homeland against the Luftwaffe. Even as recently as Dunkirk (2017), Tom Hardy’s RAF officer Farrier spent the duration of his screentime in the cockpit of a Spitfire, appropriately attired in an Irvin flight jacket over his service dress and ivory Royal Navy sweater.

Camp-made Civvies

For the titular escape from Stalag Luft III, Hendley is issued a gray striped civilian suit, gray tie, and a “homemade” gray felt fedora by Griffith, the de facto tailor among the imprisoned airmen.

The double-breasted suit jacket has broad peak lapels that sweep down to a six-button front, with two to close, and three smaller buttons on each cuff. The ventless jacket has a welted breast pocket and straight flapped hip pockets as well. Like his uniform trousers, the suit trouser waistband has no belt loops, adjusters, or brace buttons, though the bottoms are finished with turn-ups (cuffs).

Tally ho.

Hendley’s sky blue end-on-end cotton shirt has a spread collar, front placket, no pocket, and button cuffs, similar to the RAF service uniform shirts worn by many of his brothers-in-arms. It’s also likely the same shirt that he wore during the 4th of July celebration.

Hendley greets Group Captain Ramsey upon his return to camp with the few surviving escapees.

Hendley wears his same boots, socks, and watch while making his escape, although both his bracelet and watch are gone by the time he arrives back in camp with the rest of the recaptured airmen.

Go Big or Go Home

Bartlett: Where in God’s name did you get these?
Griffith: Hendley.
Bartlett: Well, where did he get them?
Griffith: Well, I asked him that.
Bartlett: What did he say?
Griffith: “Don’t ask.”

It’s one thing to be resourceful—scrounging everything from potatoes and a camera to an actual airplane taken during the escape—but Hendley doubles down by using his own natural charm as an asset, earning the fragile friendship and even trust of some German guards by sharing his contraband Lucky Strikes and Dutch chocolates with the young “ferret” Werner. Of course, it’s all an elaborate ruse staged for Hendley to try to force the chocolates on Werner to give him an opportunity to the lift the careless young German’s wallet for a look at the latest ID papers and travel permits that the team forger needs to copy.

Hendley isn’t above resorting to pickpocketing to get his hands on resources needed for the escape.

James Garner on the set of The Great Escape, reading William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It would have been quite a victory for Hendley to scrounge a book that wouldn’t be published until 1960, but I wouldn’t put it past him!

Hendley’s storied resourcefulness is both admirable and helpful, but the character’s greatest trait is arguably his loyalty. When the pragmatic “Big X” Bartlett deems Hendley’s near-blink bunkmate Colin Blythe (Donald Pleasance) to be too much of a liability to participate in the escape, Hendley won’t stand to see the man left behind.

Bartlett: Not Colin. He’d be an appalling hazard to the whole escape. That must be my decision.
Hendley: You want to talk about hazards? Let talk about hazards. Lets talk about you. You’re the biggest hazard we have. The Gestapo has you marked. No one has said you can’t go.

He truly embodies going big or going home, seeing it not as an either/or scenario, choosing to go big—escaping from a Nazi POW camp—in order to go home.

Hendley: Come on, Roger. We all know the score here, at least… most of us do. Your idea of this escape is to start another front, to foul up the Germans behind the lines. All right, that’s fine, that’s fine. But once we get passed that barbed wire, once we have them looking all over Germany for us, that mission is accomplished. Afterwards, we have some ideas of our own.
Bartlett: You mean getting home? Back to your family and children?
Hendley: That’s right.

The Gun

Like his fellow countryman Captain Hilts (Steve McQueen), James Garner’s Flight Lieutenant Hendley manages to briefly get his hands on a German weapon while making his escape. Hendley and Blythe (Donald Pleasance) sneak onto a Wehrmacht airfield, knocking out a German sentry and grabbing the man’s bolt-action Karabiner 98k, the issued rifle for German ground forces during World War II.

Hendley never gets the chance to use his commandeered Karabiner 98k, and it’s likely for the best as engaging in combat with the German soldiers pursuing him would have almost certainly led to his own demise.

Developed in 1935 on orders from the Heereswaffenamt, the Karabiner 98k is considered among the last development of the Mauser rifle series that includes the venerated Gewehr 98 rifle. The K98k retains the sizable 7.92x57mm Mauser cartridge of the older G98, loaded with five-round stripper clips that only carried half the capacity of the then-standard short magazine Lee-Enfield (SMLE) rifles issued by the British. The K98k was at an additional disadvantage when compared to the M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle fielded by the Americans at the time.

Despite the technical advantages of its enemies’ rifles, Germany’s decision to stick with the Karabiner 98k throughout the duration of the war is considered an extension of their military tactic of investing the majority of its firepower on squad machine guns with riflemen engaged only to support the machine gunner’s efforts.

How to Get the Look

Hendley, the dashing, determined, and devil-may-care American airman, counters the expected appearance of a prisoner of war by keeping his RAF uniform clean and unique to his own personality.

James Garner as Flight Lieutenant Hendley in The Great Escape (1963)

• Blue-gray wool serge RAF service uniform jacket with notch lapels, self-belt with double-prong tall gold buckle, four-button single-breasted front, box-pleated chest pockets with scalloped button-down flaps, bellows hip pockets with rectangular button-down flaps, and single back vent
  • RAF Flight Lieutenant sleeve insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) padded “wings” patch
  • Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) award ribbon
  • “U.S.A.” shoulder patches
• Ivory ribbed-knit wool turtleneck Royal Navy submariner’s sweater with long set-in sleeves
• Blue-gray wool serge RAF uniform trousers with fitted waistband, double forward pleats, straight/on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black RAF 1936 pattern flying boots with plain toe and buckle-tab strap around uppers
• White ribbed-knit wool knee-high socks
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt
• RAF peaked officer’s cap with blue-gray barathea wool cover and peak with gold-embroidered badge and black patent leather strap
• Gold chain-link ID bracelet
• Steel military-style “W.W.W.” watch with round black dial on drab pigskin strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and read Paul Brickhill’s 1950 book that formed the basis for the movie. Brickhill was an Australian prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III whose claustrophobia prevented him from escaping with the others. After the murder of the 50, Brickhill was determined to chronicle the details of the mass escape.

Paul Brickhill begins the fourth chapter of his written account of the real escape with the description of Johnny Travis, a resourceful and dapper Rhodesian in the RAF whose penchant for finding tools and always presenting himself in a full, complete uniform sounds somewhat reminiscent of Garner’s portrayal of Flight Lieutenant Hendley:

In a gaggle of men noted for beard stubble, shaken skulls, and general spectacular scruffiness, Travis stuck out like Beau Brummel. He’d got his RAF uniform through in a Red Cross parcel, and he pressed his pants every night under his bunk and ironed his tunic with a tin of hot water. He polished his boots, wore a silk scarf, brushed his hair and begged, borrowed, or stole enough razor blades to keep his pink face as smooth as a baby’s bottom. He had a theory that if he went around looking immaculate the ferrets would never bale him up in the compound, as they sometimes did to people, to search for things no model prisoner should have, even to the extent of looking into the embarrassing parts of the body.

The idea seemed to work because they never tackled him, which was just as well because he was in the middle of tooling up the engineer’s section and usually was a walking toolshop, with pliers and chisels and hacksaw blades stuffed in his pockets.

The Quote

Colin’s not a blind man as long as he’s with me… and he’s going with me!

Footnote

In addition to Garner’s own experiences as a “scrounger” for his U.S. Army unit during the Korean War, the character of Hendley is believed to be partly based on Charles Albert Cook Jr., an American pilot that had been assigned to No. 133 Squadron during World War II. Flight Lieutenant Cook’s Spitfire was shot down over Brest on September 26, 1942, three days before the Eagle Squadrons were officially transferred, though Cook had technically already been incorporated into the 336th Fighter Squadron of the USAAF. Cook was held at Stalag Luft III at Sagan-Silesia, the same camp portrayed in The Great Escape, though he did not actually participate in the escape.

The only Eagle Squadron pilot to participate in the escape, British-born Flight Lieutenant Gordon Brettell, was recaptured within two days and was one of the 50 that was murdered by the Gestapo in the days to follow.

Joe Pesci as Vinny Gambini in My Cousin Vinny (1992)

Vitals

Joe Pesci as Vincent LaGuardia “Vinny” Gambini, fledgling defense attorney

“Beechum County”, Alabama, January into February 1992

Film: My Cousin Vinny
Release Date: March 13, 1992
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Costume Designer: Carol Wood

Background

Happy birthday to Joe Pesci! Though the 76-year-old actor has been mostly retired from acting over the last two decades, he’s occasionally stepped back into the camera lens for a few sporadic screen appearances, most recently a Google Assistant ad that played during Super Bowl LIII and his latest collaboration with Martin Scorsese, The Irishman, scheduled to be released this fall.

Following his notable Oscar win for Goodfellas—and his short, humble acceptance speech that consisted solely of “It’s my privilege, thank you”—Pesci had some fun parodying his excitable screen persona in comedies like Home Alone, the Lethal Weapon series, and My Cousin Vinny.

The latter stars Pesci as Vincent LaGuardia Gambini, an ambitious and animated amateur attorney from Brooklyn who finds himself taking on his first murder case in Alabama. A real pesce-out-of-water story.

As well as a surprisingly accurate and entertaining portrayal of judicial procedure, My Cousin Vinny also includes one of my all-time favorite movie sight gags as Vinny and his equally Brooklynite querida, Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei, who won an Academy Award for the role), sit down to breakfast at a rural diner. They’re handed a menu and mull over the contents for a while.

“Breakfast?” asks Lisa.

“Ya think?” responds Vinny.

We then see the menu itself and its three rather limited options…

I’d get the breakfast, too.

What’d He Wear?

Judge Haller: What are you wearing?
Vinny: Huh?
Judge Haller: What are you wearing?
Vinny: Um… I’m wearin’ clothes. I…I don’t get the question.
Judge Haller: When you come into my court lookin’ like you do, you not only insult me, but you insult the integrity of this court.
Vinny: I apologize, sir, but this is how I dress.
Judge Haller: Next time you come into my courtroom, you will look lawyerly, and I mean you comb your hair and wear a suit and tie—and that suit better be made out of some kind of cloth. You understand me?

The attire that Judge Haller (Fred Gwynne) takes such passionate offense to is Vinny’s signature item, a well-worn black leather jacket cut like a ventless sport jacket with a full-bellied shawl collar.

There are worse things one could wear in a courtroom…

Despite Judge Haller’s objection to it, this black leather jacket is Vinny’s primary garment for the first half of the movie until he shows up to jury selection, and—eventually—the trial itself in a conservative gray worsted business suit.

The burgeoning online industry of questionable film jacket retailers even includes a few takes on the My Cousin Vinny jacket among its ranks (see here and here), though obviously one on the hunt for a quality leather jacket is always better advised to inquire from a trusted company and, ideally, one where you can try on the garment before purchasing it.

Vinny’s black leather jacket has wide shoulders with roped sleeveheads, a welted breast pocket, and widely jetted hip pockets placed along a horizontal yoke in line with the coat’s sole front button. Each sleeve ends with a short, reinforced vent with two functional buttons.

Vinny manages to look out of place both in a staid courtroom and at a rural rib joint.

“A little informal, aren’t we?” Haller first observed upon meeting Vinny as the latter stands before him in his office wearing a black long-sleeve T-shirt tucked into his black slacks. Indeed, Vinny is even more dressed down than usual for his meeting with Haller, though he could be forgiven as the cotton crew-neck long-sleeve T-shirt was probably more comfortable for his and Lisa’s long car ride into Alabama.

The T-shirt allows Vinny to prominently display his gold pendant, no doubt emblazoned with an embossed saint, worn on a gold rope-twist necklace.

Any idea what’s on Vinny’s pendant?

Vinny shows up in court for the arraignment at least wearing a collared shirt made from a soft, napped black cloth with a purple windowpane grid check. The shirt has a point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs.

At breakfast, Vinny wears the shirt half-open to reveal his black cotton sleeveless undershirt beneath, though he buttons up by the time he has to appear in court.

After Haller’s admonishment during the arraignment, Vinny continues trying to dress up his look by adding a tie, though the novelty black silk tie printed with large alarm clocks on it hardly makes him look like Clarence Darrow. Competing to complete Vinny’s lack of professional attire is his black-on-teal tiger-striped shirt.

Judge Haller: Now didn’t I tell you next time you appear in my courtroom that you’d dress appropriately?
Vinny: You were serious about that?

Haller made the point of expressing that he likes lawyers in his courtroom to be wearing coats and ties. Technically, Vinny gives him no reason to complain.

Vinny has no one to impress when he shows up at the Beechum County lockup, so he wears a plain gray shirt under his leather jacket. The long-sleeve shirt has a casual one-piece collar and the buttons are widely spaced out up the plain front.

Vinny seems to be sticking to this aesthetic for his trials and tribulations outside the courtroom, trading legal histories and cups of coffee in opposing counsel Jim Trotter’s office while wearing a lightweight gray-blue shirt striped in alternating double sets of black and light gray stripes. Like his other button-ups, this shirt has a pronounced point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs.

The chat leads to Vinny agreeing to accompany Trotter on a hunting trip, though the suggestion leaves Vinny somewhat befuddled about what to wear. In fact, Vinny seems more concerned with looking appropriate on the hunt than in the courtroom.

“What about these pants I got on, you think they’re okay?” he calls out to Mona Lisa, who’s shut herself into the bathroom. She takes a few moments before reentering the room: “Imagine you’re a deer. You’re prancing along, you get thirsty, you spot a little brook, you put your little deer lips down to the cool clear water… bam! A fuckin’ bullet rips off part of your head! Your brains are layin’ on the ground in little bloody pieces. Now I ax ya, would ya give a fuck the kind of pants the son-of-a-bitch who shot you was wearing?”

Her diatribe aside, Vinny sticks with the same double reverse-pleated chinos that he’s worn throughout the movie—in black, of course. The trousers have straight pockets along each side-seam and jetted back pockets that each close with a single-button.

To be consistent with his cowboy boots, Vinny wears a black leather Western style belt with matched brushed steel hardware consisting of a big curved single-prong square buckle, pointed tip, and two keepers. Decent belts like this can range from $30 to $40 on Amazon while more exotic leathers like lizard and ostrich are available for a few hundred dollars from established bootmakers like Lucchese. Vinny’s belt is so long that he is forced to tie the end around itself, where it hangs down suggestively by his fly.

At least his shirt is tucked in… though maybe that’s not doing him any favors.

The plain hems of Vinny’s trousers bottoms are rolled up once for a self-cuff over the shafts of his boots for, as he did in Goodfellas, Joe Pesci enhances his height with a pair of raised-heel cowboy boots. In fact, these boots are the first we see of Vinny when he steps out of his Cadillac upon peeling into Beechum County.

“I fit in better than you!” he responds to Mona Lisa’s criticism. “At least I’m wearin’ cowboy boots!”

“Oh, yeah, you blend,” she responds with decided sarcasm.

Vinny, blending.

Whether or not the boots help Vinny to “blend” is a matter of debate that we’ll leave to his litigation skills, so we’ll stick to the undeniable facts: the boots are black leather with decorative tonal stitching on the shaft where years of wear are evident. The boots have been further customized with pointed silver tips and heel guards.

Underneath the boots, Vinny diverts from his black clothing to sport a pair of plain white crew socks, the very type that Llewelyn Moss had so clearly specified with his own boots in No Country for Old Men.

Just a cozy night in at a motel, studying Alabama’s rules of criminal procedure.

Although his socks are white, Vinny’s underwear is typically all black, including his loose-fitting sleeveless undershirts and black cotton boxer shorts that he wears when lounging around the motel room.

A little something for the ladies.

Vinny loads up his arms with as much gold jewelry as Tony Soprano from a chain-link bracelet on his right wrist and a watch on his left to a ring on each pinky.

The right hand pinky ring appears to have a small diamond while the signet ring on his left has a flat black surface with what appears to be a gold knight’s head emerging from it.

Vinny’s the kind of guy who not only keeps a deck of cards in his pocket but also uses said cards to convince a guy to risk his life to prove that Vinny’s amateur lawyering can save him.

Following a decade where Tom Cruise famously sported Ray-Bans in three of his biggest movies (Wayfarers in Risky Business, Aviators in Top Gun, and Clubmasters in Rain Man), Joe Pesci gives the brand some extra screen time when Vinny emerges from his Cadillac in a pair of black-framed Ray-Ban sunglasses with large, round brown-tinted lenses.

Vinny sizes up his new home for the next few weeks.

Eyewear expert Preston Fassel gave me a helpful hand by noting the black metal frame that first emerged as a trend in the early ’90s, so his sunglasses were likely relatively new at the time of My Cousin Vinny‘s production. “As a result, Pesci’s frames here are distinct in that they lack a bridge. Aviators are often called ‘double bars’ in the optical world, so it’s noteworthy when metal frames lack them,” Preston informed me.

Preston further deduced that the style itself is likely Ray-Ban’s attempt to mimic the Persol 714 that Steve McQueen had made famous. Both Persol and Ray-Ban were separate entities in the early ’90s but, over the course of the decade, both would be vertically integrated into the Milan-based eyewear behemoth Luxottica Group.

The Vintage Suit

I bought a suit—you seen it—now it’s covered in mud. This town doesn’t have a one hour cleaner so I had to buy a new suit, except the only store you could buy a new suit in has got the flu. You get that? The whole store got the flu. So I had to get this in a second hand store. So it’s either wear the leather jacket, which I know you hate, or this… so, I wore this ridiculous thing for you.

Vinny makes quite an impression on Judge Haller’s courtroom when he shows up at trial wearing a fiery Gilded Age-inspired vintage three-piece suit complete with tailcoat and grosgrain piping. The color of the suit is a rusty red-brown accented with burnt orange grosgrain piping on the coat’s broad peak lapels and down the low V-shaped opening of the matching waistcoat.

The tailcoat has a decorative double-breasted front with three non-functioning buttons on each side before the coat cuts away at the waist on a sharp right angle. The coat has no external pockets and a single decorative button on each cuff.

The backless waistcoat fastens at the back of the neck and has four flat plastic sew-through buttons down the front, though Vinny correctly leaves the lowest button undone at the notched bottom. The flat front trousers have slanted pockets and a tuxedo-style side braid down each leg.

Vinny’s pink cotton shirt has a narrowly pleated bib, front placket, and button cuffs. Though it is likely meant to echo the detachable collars from shirts of yore, the white cutaway spread collar is attached to the shirt. Vinny wears a loosely pre-tied burgundy bow tie with the ensemble.

How to Get the Look

It may not be orthodox for courtroom attire, but Vinny Gambini’s all-black, leather-anchored, cowboy-influenced aesthetic differentiates him as an individualist who takes pride in the fact that he has a defined style if not in the clothes themselves.

Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny (1992)

• Black leather sport jacket with wide shawl collar, welted breast pocket, widely jetted hip pockets, functional 2-button cuff vents, and ventless back
• Black or gray patterned button-up shirt with point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
• Black chino double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, button-through jetted back pockets, and self-cuffed plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather Western belt with brushed steel single-prong curved buckle, pointed tip, and two keepers
• Black cowboy boots with decorative shaft stitching
• White crew socks
• Black sleeveless undershirt
• Gold pendant on rope-twist necklace
• Gold chain-link bracelet
• Gold wristwatch with black rectangular dial on flat gold bracelet
• Gold pinky ring with diamond
• Gold pinky ring with knight’s head on black flat surface
• Ray-Ban black metal-framed sunglasses with large brown-tinted lenses

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You like to renegotiate as you go along, don’t you? Well, here’s my counter-offer… do I have to kill you? What if I were just to kick the ever-loving shit out of you?

Clint Ritchie as “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967)

Vitals

Clint Ritchie as “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, born Vincenzo Gabaldi, Chicago mob enforcer

Chicago, Winter 1928

Film: The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Release Date: June 30, 1967
Director: Roger Corman

Background

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre is one of the few true incidents from mob lore to have expanded into mainstream pop culture. The killing of seven men affiliated with Chicago’s North Side Gang on February 14, 1929, startled and intrigued the public with its brutality, and the event became symbolic of the ugly violence that permeated through Prohibition-era America. The event was dramatized in Scarface (1932), before Prohibition was even repealed, and would eventually be so widely known that it was parodied in films like Some Like It Hot (1959) and even an episode of The Golden Girls.

Crime historians and investigators have pieced together solid theories about what really happened in that Chicago garage 90 years ago today when four armed men—two dressed in police uniforms—stormed in, opened fire, and promptly escaped, leaving only a dog named Highball surviving to tell the tale.

When the incident and Capone’s story as a whole was adapted for Roger Corman’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the story was presented in the docudrama format that had introduced audiences to the Chicago mob’s exploits in the ABC TV series The Untouchables, though it was actually an earlier CBS Playhouse 90 episode from 1958, “Seven Against the Wall”, that provided the basis for this movie. After Corman’s willing first choice Orson Welles was kicked off the production by Fox for being “unpredictable,” Jason Robards was cast for an intense—if not visually identical—performance as the infamous Al Capone while Clint Ritchie swaggered across the screen as his smooth bodyguard and enforcer Jack McGurn.

The real “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn and his “Blonde Alibi”, Louise Rolfe, after their 1931 wedding.

Born Vincenzo Gabaldi on July 2, 1902, the future mastermind of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre emigrated from Sicily with his mother when he was four years old to join his father in the United States. The teenage Vincenzo took the name “Battling” Jack McGurn during his fledgling boxing career, a career that was derailed either by the lure of a life working for Al Capone or by the call for vengeance after the murder of his stepfather, Angelo DeMora. While DeMora had been killed by Black Hand extortionists, the romanticized theory that McGurn turned to a life of crime when avenging his death doesn’t take into account the fact that McGurn was already on the Chicago Outfit’s payroll when DeMora was killed in January 1923.

Six years later, when Capone was looking to rid himself of his North Side competition once and for all, the mob boss supposedly called upon McGurn to devise a plan that would wipe out rival boss George “Bugs” Moran and his gang. The mass murder that resulted on the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929, became infamous as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, as four still unconfirmed gunmen lined up seven of Moran’s associates against a wall inside the SMC Cartage Company on North Clark Street and shot them to pieces with Thompson submachine guns and shotguns. Ironically, Moran escaped this bloody fate when he saw a decoy police car—part of McGurn’s plan—and got spooked. While the victims did include bona fide gang members like the violent Gusenberg brothers, the seven killed also included mere associates like optician Reinhardt H. Schwimmer and mechanic John May.

As Capone’s trusted triggerman, suspicion naturally fell upon McGurn, who was swiftly taken into custody. However, he was famously exonerated by the testimony of Louise Rolfe, his glamorous girlfriend, who described in detail how the couple’s amorous Valentine’s Day plans prevented McGurn from being anywhere near the SMC Cartage Company, and certainly not with a deadly weapon in his hand. Rolfe, who would marry McGurn two years later, became notorious as the “Blonde Alibi” and came to embody the classic gangster’s moll.

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre marked the beginning of the end of Capone’s rule over Chicago as the embattled boss found himself facing increasing legal pressure. In October 1931, Capone was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to eleven years in federal prison. The remnants of his gang fell into place under former enforcer Frank Nitti, but McGurn found himself increasingly alienated from the mob and returned to his passion for sports, becoming a silent partner in the Evergreen Golf Course and competing locally under his real name. On the second day of the Western Open golf championship in August 1933, police actually obeyed McGurn’s request to allow him to finish playing his second day before taking him into custody. (For the record, Macdonald Smith won the championship.)

Less than three years later, McGurn was bowling at the Avenue Recreation bowling alley on the second floor of 805 North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago when three men drew handguns and shot the ex-gangster four times, leaving him for dead on the floor in an eerie reenactment of a scene from Scarface, the pre-Code crime film made four years earlier with his famous boss inspiring the title character. McGurn died instantly that evening, February 15, 1936, seven years and one day after the bloody massacre he masterminded on behalf of the ruthless Al Capone.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

What’d He Wear?

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was released just a month before Bonnie and Clyde, a cinematic phenomenon that would give birth to a decade’s worth of low-budget Depression-era crime dramas of varying quality. Unlike some lower budget gangster movies of the late ’60s and ’70s that seemed to repurpose “period” costumes (and hairstyles) from the era they were produced rather than the intended setting, the uncredited costume team for Roger Corman’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre put in a fair effort to replicate the actual fashions of the waning years of the roaring ’20s… even if the lanky Jason Robards isn’t exactly a perfect visual recreation of the famously corpulent Al Capone.

As Capone’s loyal liquidator Jack “Machine Gun” McGurn, Clint Ritchie wore a number of period-detailed suits, anchored by a gray chalk-striped flannel business suit that he wears most frequently. The double-breasted jacket’s broad lapels are so wide as to threaten tickling his shoulders, sweeping across his torso like crossed cutlasses. The jacket has six buttons with two to close, though Clint Ritchie’s tall 6’1″ frame means that even the full wrap of the 6×2-button front shows a considerable amount of shirt and tie above the fully fastened front.

McGurn works the room in his Mafia-flavored business suit.

McGurn’s jacket has wide, padded shoulders consistent with the powerful “gangster suit” profile that emerged during the era, enhanced by a suppressed waist and ventless back that keeps the skirt straight and simple around his waist and hips, drawing all attention to the emphasized and broadened chest area. The sleeves are roped at the heads and have four buttons at the cuffs. The hip pockets are straight and jetted with no flaps to pull attention from the chest, where a white linen kerchief juts from the welted breast pocket.

McGurn wears a pale blue cotton shirt with a slim collar that fastens under the tie knot with a gold collar pin. The shirt’s double (French) cuffs are worn with a set of round silver-toned cuff links.

McGurn wears two ties with this outfit, both secured in place with a gold diamond stickpin worn just a few inches under the tie knot. His first neckwear is a red, white, and blue tie with the regimental stripe of the Royal Air Force, though the stripes follow the traditionally American “downhill” direction of right shoulder-down-to-left hip. The bold scarlet and navy stripes are divided by a narrow pale blue stripe that borders the bottom of each scarlet one.

McGurn’s constricted pinned collar and narrow tie knot counter his wide lapels that flank a half-foot in each direction.

These woven silk ties are available for purchase directly from retailers including RAF Museum Shop, The Regimental Shop, and Amazon.

The same tie shows up for a quick vignette in McGurn’s office at the Green Mill, worn with the same suit but with a white shirt that has the same pinned collar and double cuffs as his pale blue shirt. This vignette also provides the only look at his shoes, a pair of black leather lace-ups.

Thin cigars and contraband whiskey are McGurn’s idea of a quiet night in the office.

Another scene in McGurn’s office finds him counting a pile of cash in the same suit and shirt as before, though this time wearing a rich dark blue tie with white polka dots. In every scene set in his office, a gray felt fedora with a black grosgrain band rests unworn on his desk in front of him.

McGurn counts some ill-gotten dough in his office. Note that the shelf over his left shoulder conceals his personal armory of handguns, shotguns, and Thompson submachine guns.

Ritchie’s portrayal of McGurn illustrates that the tradition of Italian-American gangsters wearing pinkie rings extends back to the Prohibition era, sporting a gold shiner on the little finger of his right hand. As a younger, more fashion-oriented member of the Chicago Outfit, McGurn would characteristically eschew the traditional pocket watch in favor of the increasingly fashionable wristwatch, wearing a gold timepiece secured to his left wrist on a tan leather strap.

How to Get the Look

Clint Ritchie as “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn in The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967)

Clint Ritchie’s take on “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn brings the fashionable racketeer’s sense of style to the silver screen, combining business-appropriate dress with Mafioso flair that commands respect among his criminal peers as he presents his plan for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in the boardroom-like setting.

• Gray widely spaced chalk-stripe flannel wool suit:
  • Double-breasted 6×2-button jacket with broad peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Pleated trousers with side pockets and turn-ups/cuffs
• Pale blue cotton shirt with pinned point collar, front placket, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold collar pin
  • Round silver-toned cuff links
• Royal Air Force regimental striped repp tie with bold scarlet and navy stripes separated by a narrow pale blue tie
• Black calf leather lace-up shoes
• Black dress socks
• Gold pinky ring
• Gold wristwatch on tan leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. You can also read more about Jack McGurn’s life, career, and death at My Al Capone Museum.

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans in Pal Joey (1957)

Vitals

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans, womanizing nightclub singer

San Francisco, Spring 1957

Film: Pal Joey
Release Date: October 25, 1957
Director: George Sidney
Costume Designer: Jean Louis

Background

Joey Evans’s first night with the band finds him already complicating his romantic life, balancing his attraction to the demure singer Linda English (Kim Novak) with the vivacious ex-stripper Vera Prentice-Simpson (Rita Hayworth) when the band is hired to play a gig at Vera’s place as a fundraise for the local children’s hospital.

Speaking of which, the children’s hospital in my hometown is currently sponsoring a terrific fundraiser for sports fans. Learn more about how you can enter to win autographed gear from Steelers and Penguins and support the cancer programs at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh here!

But back to Joey, who can’t hold his tongue after sizing up the glamorous Vera…

Joey: Not a bad-looking mouse.
Ned: Yeah. Too bad you can’t afford her brand of cheese.

Sappy romantic that I am, I was inspired to draft this post in the spirit of Valentine’s Day this past week, though my work at the hospital has also informed me that February is Heart Month, an observance to raise awareness of cardiovascular diseases that kicks off with #NationalWearRedDay on the first Friday of the month.

What’d He Wear?

Red is the uniform color for Ned Galvin and his Galvinizers, from the mens’ mess jackets to Linda’s satin dress.

Per Alan Flusser in Dressing the Man: “The white mess jacket represented the first radical change in male evening wear and received such broad national acceptance that it was immediately adopted for the uniforms of bellhops and orchestra members.” The decision to dress the gents of the band in matching mess jackets was a common practice in mid-century America, though it can arguably be linked to the reduced popularity of the mess jacket as an alternative to traditional black tie due to its growing connotation implying that its wearer was among “the help”.

Joey and Linda, two galvanizing Galvinizers in red.

The red wool waist-length mess jackets worn by Joey and the boys are covered with three-color flecking in burgundy, gold, and white. The jackets are double-breasted with flat black plastic two-hole sew-through buttons in the classic six-on-two formation with a seventh button along the edge of the right side; evidently, unlike some mess jackets, this one was built with functioning buttons that could be closed, though Joey wears his open for a slightly more relaxed appearance.

A reassuring wink. Joey shows us one major benefit of mess jackets: a wearer can stick his hands in his trouser pockets without bunching up the jacket.

“While it resembled a tailcoat cut off at the waistline, the mess jacket was not flattering to many figures, particularly those that didn’t happen to resemble that of Adonis,” comments Flusser. Like the traditional mess jacket, Joey’s band uniform coat ends at the waist, gently coming to a point in the center of his back.

Befitting the semi-formal nature of mess jackets, Joey wears his with a plain white cotton shirt without the frilly lace trim or fancier pleats of the dress shirts he would later wear with more formal dinner jackets. Instead, the shirt has a plain front with mother-of-pearl sew-through buttons and double (French) cuffs fastened in place with his usual large silver-toned ridged round silver cuff links. The shirt has a large point collar where he has knotted a long, straight black silk bow tie.

Though Joey’s mess jacket was made with functional buttons to allow the wearer to close the front, he wears it open, revealing the wide black pleated silk cummerbund that elongates his waist for a considerably high rise. The cummerbund conceals the top of his black wool formal trousers, which have double reverse pleats flanking the fly, side pockets, and the usual black grosgrain silk braid down each side to the plain-hemmed bottoms.

Joey, front and center.

Joey’s shoes are black patent leather oxfords, worn with black socks.

Joey willingly withdraws to the side of the stage to spectate as Vera reverts to her days as Vera with the Vanishing Veils to perform “Zip”.

Though Joey would later wear a gold tank watch not dissimilar to Sinatra’s own, he doesn’t appear to have a visible timepiece in this sequence.

Frank Sinatra as Joey Evans in Pal Joey (1957)

How to Get the Look

By the time of Pal Joey‘s production in the mid-1950s, the role of the mess jacket had been mostly subjugated to slick bands and the service industry, with Joey and his fellow Galvinizers falling under the former category.

Yet, it’s hard to beat Frank Sinatra in formal attire and Joey still dresses to impress in the band’s issued duds.

• Red flecked wool waist-length mess jacket with shawl collar, six-button double-breasted front, and plain cuffs
• White cotton dress shirt with long point collar, plain front, and double/French cuffs
  • Round silver ridged cuff links
• Black straight bow tie
• Black pleated silk cummerbund
• Black double reverse-pleated formal trousers with satin side stripes, straight/on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black patent leather oxfords
• Black silk socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie!

Tony Sirico as “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri in “Pine Barrens”, the eleventh episode of the third season of The Sopranos.

Vitals

Tony Sirico as “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri, mob captain and Army veteran

New Jersey, January 2001

Series: The Sopranos
Episode: “Pine Barrens” (Episode 3.11)
Air Date: May 6, 2001
Director: Steve Buscemi
Creator: David Chase
Costume Designer: Juliet Polcsa

Background

This year marks the 20th anniversary since The Sopranos made its debut on HBO, and the milestone has encouraged many to revisit the series, sharing their takes on their favorite episodes, characters, and moments. One episode that receives nearly unanimous praise is “Pine Barrens”, the famous third season episode that finds Jersey Mafia soldiers “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri (Tony Sirico) and his ostensible protégé Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) stumbling through the snowy woods of south Jersey after a simple money pickup turns into a hit-gone-awry.

The concept originated from Tim Van Patten, the prolific director and writer whose CV includes Deadwood, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, and Game of Thrones. Following a discussion with co-writer and future Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter—who would write this episode teleplay—the two presented their concept to series auteur David Chase. The task of directing went to Steve Buscemi, who would go on to direct a total of four episodes of The Sopranos and co-star during the show’s fifth season.

And so, after the production team was denied a permit to film in their originally desired New Jersey location, the cast and crew found themselves at Harriman State Park in New York, where an unexpected snowfall created a natural mise-en-scène and added obstacles for our underdressed protagonists in addition to their pursuit of Valery (Vitali Baganov), the former MVD commando who won’t seem to die, allowing Paulie a rather obvious but well-timed Rasputin joke among other witticisms and malapropisms.

Paulie: You’re not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator!
Christopher: His house looked like shit.

If you hadn’t seen the show, would you believe me if I told you the guy in his pajamas had the upper hand right now?

Here in Pittsburgh, the polar vortex of 2019 was chased away by some unseasonably warm weather that lulled many back into sartorial security… until the snow returned with a vengeance this weekend and sent many scrambling back to the comfort of wool coats, mittens, and scarves. This #MafiaMonday, don’t get caught unseasonably dressed like our pal Paulie Walnuts!

What’d He Wear?

Expecting the day to consist of no more than a simple pickup from a guy’s apartment, neither Paulie nor Chris had reason to prepare for a night tramping through the snow and instead both dressed in the wiseguy’s daily favorite of a leather zip-up jacket, slacks, black leather shoes, and—of course—gold jewelry.

Paulie zips himself into one of his favorites, a tan leather jacket from the Macy’s house brand Alfani, that he wears throughout the duration of the series through the final season. In addition to being positively identified in a November 2015 auction listing (both at Julien’s Live and The Golden Closet), the “ALFANI” brand stamp can be clearly read on the silver-toned rectangular pull tab on the gold zip front.

Paulie, unraveled, with a head injury, wrinkled leather jacket, and—most egregious—his silver-winged hair out of place.

Paulie isn’t known for his subdued style, but the no-frills jacket stays refreshingly simple with just a flat, shirt-style collar and slanted hand pockets. The cuffs are plain with no buttons, snaps, tabs, or zips.

The Alfani jacket makes a few appearances throughout The Sopranos, including in the third season finale (“Army of One”), “The Strong, Silent Type” (Episode 4.10), and “The Ride” (Episode 6.09), but it’s arguably featured the most in “Pine Barrens” as his primary protection against the bitter January cold.

Chris and Paulie’s leather jackets were more than suitable for their simple mob errand. Once that errand became a burial in the snow, however, they should have reconsidered their respective attire.

Under the jacket, Paulie wears one of the lightweight knit mock-neck shirts that are popular among the gents of SopranoWorld. The black long-sleeve jumper would hardly provide the warmth and comfort of a heavier winter sweater in this context, but at least it would likely keep Paulie better insulated than the thin red silk shirt that Christopher wears under his jacket.

No matter the context, Paulie tends to prefer suspenders to belts, wearing them even under his untucked casual shirts—and, thus, over his undershirts—to keep his trousers in place.

When he draws his Glock from his trouser waistband toward the end of his and Christopher’s adventure in the woods, we briefly see the bottoms of his black suspenders, clipped onto the top of his trouser waistband with silver clips.

“Mothafuckaa!” a frustrated Paulie bellows as he pulls his Glock from his waistband and fires it into the makeshift boot he’d fashioned for himself out of rotting van carpet.

Based on the style and Paulie’s somewhat retro-minded sensibilities his black gabardine flat front trousers likely date back to the disco era. They have no belt loops, held only in place by the aforementioned trousers and the likelihood that they’ve conformed to Paulie’s hips over three decades of wear.

The waistband has a short tab on the front that fastens with a single mixed brown plastic button. The only pockets are two gently slanted frogmouth pockets on the front, and the bottoms are plain-hemmed with no cuffs.

Grateful to see Bobby—and suppressing any tempted laughter, unlike Tony—Paulie shoves his Glock back into his trouser waistband.

At one point in the chase, the guys think they’ve caught a break and spot what they believe to be Valery. Christopher takes off, blasting four shots from his .45 in the direction of the movement he saw. The two come upon Chrissy’s prey, only to find a dead deer. Chris is impressed in spite of the situation to see that one of his shots hit the deer in the neck: “If we were tryin’, we wouldn’ta come close!”

Paulie, on the other hand, is only able to lament “I lost my shoe!” and wiggles his right foot, now clad only in a thin black Gold Toe sock, to demonstrate his predicament.

Paulie’s bad day just got worse.

“I can’t stand touchin’ fuckin’ shoelaces. Ever go to tie your shoes and you notice the end of your laces are wet? From what? Why would they be wet?” Paulie posed to his colleagues in the first episode of the season. “You go to public bat’rooms? You stand at the urinal…? Even if the lace is dry and even if you don’t touch the body of the shoe, bacteria and virus migrate from the sole up… Your average men’s shit house is a fucking sewer. You look at ladies’ johns, you can eat maple walnut ice cream from the toilets. Eh! There’s exceptions. But the men’s? Heh. Piss all over the fucking floor, urinals jammed with cigarettes and moth ball cakes. And they can pour all the fuckin’ ice they want down there, my friend, it does nothin’ to kill germs. Even if you keep your shoes tied, and your laces aren’t dragging through urine…”

Paulie goes on a bit too long before his friends shut him up about the topic while they’re trying to eat, but he makes his distaste for shoelaces quite clear, and thus it’s a pair of black calf leather loafers that he’s sporting when trekking out into the treacherous Pine Barrens with Christopher and Valery.

Loafers may be convenient for being able to easily slip onto one’s foot, but the flip side of that coin means that they can easily slip off as well, particularly when taking a tumble through a snow bank. It’s in pursuit of the aforementioned deer that Paulie loses the loafer from his right foot and, from that moment on, he is the “one-shoe cocksucker” to whom Christopher refers during a tense moment.

Paulie gets acquainted with Valery.

“I’ve been wearing it for 30 years,” Tony Sirico told Ilene Rosenzweig for “Ba-Da-Bing! Thumbs Up for the Pinkie Ring,” a January 2000 article in The New York Times article that published the same night that the second episode of the second season aired in January 2000. “It’s part of my life.”

Mr. Sirico was discussing his pinkie ring, the same one he wears when playing Paulie Walnuts on The Sopranos, the HBO mob opera that started its second season last week. “They say Mafia wear pinkie rings, but men of style wear pinkie rings,” Mr. Sirico said. “So long as they’re not gaudy and the man has a nice hand — not too feminine a hand.” Mr. Sirico, who favors what he called a “sexy” black onyx look, said he was unaware that pinkie rings had gone out of style.

Tony Sirico recently explained on The TODAY Show’s 20th anniversary reunion with the cast of The Sopranos that David Chase patterned the Paulie Walnuts role on Sirico himself after the actor initially auditioned for the part of Corrado “Junior” Soprano. Thus, much of Sirico’s own mannerisms, background, and sense of style make it to the screen, including the gold pinkie ring with its mesh-like sides and black onyx stone bordered by a diamond-studded square.

(And, in case you weren’t convinced that Paulie Walnuts is just a more larcenous version of Tony Sirico himself, consider the context that Rosenzweig adds: “Mr. Sirico spoke by telephone, during an afternoon of watching the horses on television and ‘making sauce’ in his Brooklyn apartment, where he lives with his mother.”)

“Ton’, it’s me. We saw that guy, but we had a little problem…”

Paulie preferred Movado Esperanza watches, wearing both stainless and gold-finish models over the course of the series, sporting the latter for much of the third, fourth, and fifth seasons including this episode. The Movado is a perfect watch for Paulie’s character: distinctive-looking and Italian-sounding (though Swiss in origin) but ultimately inexpensive, at least when compared with the boss’ $10,000 gold Rolex.

This Movado, ref. no 0607059, has the marque’s minimalist “museum dial” in matte black with a gold-toned concave dot at 12:00 and gold hands. The case is 39mm yellow gold PVD-finished stainless steel, worn on a matching “free-falling bracelet design with signature open links and push-button deployment clasp,” according to the official web description of the Movado Esperanza.

At least Paulie manages to keep his gold-finished Movado out of the snow.

Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall included a 2017 discussion of the famous episode in their 20th anniversary book, The Soprano Sessions, featuring the following behind-the-scenes insight from Terence Winter:

That was maybe the biggest negotiation we’d ever had in the middle of our lives. Tony Sirico is standing in the middle of the woods, and his character is so well put together. By design, the episode opens with him being manicured, in his pristine state, and then we were going to take him and destroy him by the end of the episode.

So when we shot the episode, we were out in the middle of the woods and the stuntman did the tumble down the bank of snow, and he had a wig but his hair was completely askew, so that was our opportunity. We got Tony Sirico in, and he never lets you touch his hair, ever. This is completely true. He does his own hair. We said, “Tony, you’ve got to mess up your hair.” He said, “I’m not touching my hair.” “But this is the reality. Look at the stuntman. His hair is sticking out!” So, he very reluctantly went like this [mimes barely touching his hair], put a couple of hairs out of place, and Steve [Buscemi] got involved! We were like, “Tony, come on!” The one way to appeal to Tony as a performer was by saying, “It’s so funny, it’ll be so funny. We’ve never seen you like this.”

Finally, after fifteen minutes of negotiating in three feet of snow, he was like, “Fucking cocksuckers!” and he messed up his hair and we were like, “Go, go! Get it on film!” It was great, and he was such a great sport about it. He stayed like that for the rest of the episode.

Go Big or Go Home

Citing his four-year stint in the Army, Paulie clearly believes himself to be a resourceful man of the world. After all, he’s been able to rise the ranks in the north Jersey underworld despite an admittedly limited intellect, rising to the position of capo (captain). Thus, it’s hard for him to accept that he wouldn’t be able to easily lead he and Christopher out of their unfortunate situation in Pine Barrens.

Paulie: We were drivin’ south and the sun’s settin’ there.
Christopher: What good’s that do us?
Paulie: At least we know what direction we’re headed.
Christopher: Yeah but we’re still fuckin’ lost.
Paulie: We’re not lost. Stop gettin’ cunty.

Forget Bruno Magli. Enjoy this prized, one-of-a-kind footwear from The Gualtieri Collection, Winter ’01.

Paulie’s sense of leadership takes another blow after losing a shoe, but he still grasps any opportunity to be resourceful from wrapping pieces of carpet and twine around his foot for a makeshift boot (“Bruno Magli over here,” Christopher muses) to concocting the perfect recipe to sustain them overnight:

Paulie: What’s that?
Christopher: Nathan’s bag. Fuck, there’s some ketchups and shit.
Paulie: They clean?
Christopher: I don’t know. They were in the bag. They’re a little halfway frozen.
Paulie: Fuck it, gimme some… Not bad. Mix it with the relish.

Despite his initial swagger and still trying to pull rank to assert leadership even as their situation grows more desperate, it’s ultimately Paulie who has to request of Christopher to promise not to leave him behind.

Christopher: You know how fast I can run, I’ll leave you in the fuckin’ dust.
Paulie: All the shit we’ve been through, you think I’ll really kill you?
Christopher: Yeah, I do. (laughs)
Paulie: Promise me you won’t leave me here.
Christopher: I’m not gonna leave ya.

Of course, it is also Paulie’s actions that ultimately lead to his and Christopher’s salvation but purely as an accidental by-product of the wing-haired captain’s impulsive anger, firing multiple rounds from his Glock into the disappointing van rug—thus alerting Tony and Bobby Bacala of their location.

How to Get the Look

Tony Sirico as “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri in “Pine Barrens”, the eleventh episode of the third season of The Sopranos.

Paulie Walnuts’ look isn’t all tracksuits and white plimsolls, and his Macy’s-to-Movado outfit of tan leather jacket, black underpinnings, and gold jewelry would probably serve him well anywhere but a winter night in the snow-covered Pine Barrens.

• Tan leather waist-length jacket with shirt-style collar, zip front, plain cuffs, and slanted hand pockets
• Black knit mock-neck long-sleeve jumper
• Black suspenders with silver clips
• Black gabardine flat front trousers with fitted waistband, frogmouth front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather loafers
• Black Gold Toe socks
• Movado Esperanza 0607059 gold-coated stainless steel watch with black minimalist dial on gold-finished “free-falling” open-link bracelet
• Gold pinky ring with diamond-bordered black onyx stone

The Gun

“That’s no deer hunta,” observes Bobby Bacala (Steven R. Schirripa), who accompanies Tony on his rescue mission, upon hearing the trifecta of shots that Paulie fired from his Glock into what remained of the van carpet he had fashioned into a makeshift boot.

Based on its more compact size than full-size models like the Glock 17 and the fact that 9 mm rounds tend to be the industry standard for blank-firing semi-automatic pistols in movie and TV shows, it can be deduced that Paulie’s sidearm in “Pine Barrens” is a Glock 19.

To paraphrase Han Solo, Paulie Walnuts sometimes amazes even himself, notably when he downs Valery with a single headshot… only for the resilient Russian to stagger to his feet and keep running.

Paulie never showed much consistency regarding his choice of firearms, but Glocks—particularly the compact Glock 19—seem to be the most frequent handgun in the hands of the Soprano crew, carried and used by almost all of the main cast at some point.

The Glock design goes back to the early 1980s in response to the Austrian Ministry of Defense’s 17 criteria for a new safe, semi-automatic pistol chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum. Vienna-born engineer Gaston Glock had little experience with firearms but brought his experience working with polymers to develop the Glock’s frame, which would establish it as the first commercially successful line of polymer-framed pistols. By 1982, the Glock 17 was ready for production, so named as it was the manufacturer’s 17th patent… though it also carried 17 rounds of 9 mm ammunition and adhered to all 17 criteria.

After the development of the selective-fire Glock 18 four years later, the compact Glock 19 would follow in 1988 with an eye on the law enforcement market. The “compact” size comes from a half-inch reduction in barrel and pistol grip length, though it could still take the Glock 17’s factory 17-round magazines. In the years and decades to follow, Glock would follow the same template to introduce full-size and compact pistols for additional rounds including .357 SIG, .380 ACP, .40 S&W, .45 ACP, and it’s proprietary .45 GAP ammunition. A subcompact model for civilian carry was also introduced for each caliber.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series, but you can find this fantastic episode among the third season‘s offerings. Once you’re done, treat yourself to “like five of them Grand Slam breakfasts” from Denny’s. You can also read more about this landmark episode in this review from The AV Club as well as in Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall’s masterful The Soprano Sessions, which yours truly was lucky enough to receive as a Valentine’s Day gift.

The Quote

Fuck it. Lets go home.

Footnotes

Do any fans of the show have thoughts about what happened to Valery?

Should’ve taken a few lessons from Goodfellas about what to do when a live body is in your trunk…

Supposedly, David Chase begrudgingly shed some light on this…

OK, this is what happened. Some Boy Scouts found the Russian, who had the telephone number to his boss, Slava, in his pocket. They called Slava, who took him to the hospital where he had brain surgery. And then Slava sent him back to the Soviet Union.

Although, Tony Sirico also mentioned a different proposed scenario…

We had a scene this season when Chris and I are talking in the bar about whatever happened to that Russian guy. And in the script we were supposed to go outside and there he was standing on the corner. But when we went to shoot it, they took it out. I think David didn’t like it. He wanted the audience just to suffer.

Paired with the camera’s POV, looking down from a tree in a voyeuristic style as Chris and Paulie search for the wounded man, the evidence points to the theory that Valery indeed lived, despite the cold and the gunshot wound, but was probably too dazed or brain-injured to remember enough about what happened since Slava would have most certainly taken revenge on the Soprano family.

Of course, since we don’t really know what happened in the finale…

Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Vitals

Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs, Philadelphia homicide detective

Sparta, Mississippi, September 1966

Film: In the Heat of the Night
Release Date: August 2, 1967
Director: Norman Jewison
Costume Designer: Alan Levine

Background

Happy birthday to the great Sidney Poitier, born 92 years ago today on February 20, 1927. The actor’s personal favorite among his prolific filmography is In the Heat of the Night, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1967, a year that found him pulling off a peerless hat trick that included that film as well as Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? and To Sir, with Love.

In the Heat of the Night has it all: gripping—and often funny—writing, pitch-perfect acting from all, and a noirish atmosphere dripping with a Southern Gothic twist. The masterful score by Quincy Jones ranges from bluesy to soulful, kicked off by the stirring title song performed by Ray Charles, welcoming us to the sweltering burg of Sparta, Mississippi.

Heading home after a visit to his mother, Virgil Tibbs finds himself in Sparta in the wee hours of the morning, waiting for his next train. Half-asleep in the deserted station, Tibbs is accosted and arrested for murder by Sam Wood (Warren Oates), who delivers him to the Sparta police station. Tibbs calmly withstands the relentless questions from Sparta’s police chief, Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger, who won an Academy Award for this role), until the chief implies that Tibbs could have honestly come by the hundreds of dollars in his wallet. “Now what do you do up there in little old Pennsylvania to earn that kind of money?” Gillespie chides.

“I’m a police officer,” Tibbs memorably responds, pulling out his credentials as Gillespie’s aggression transforms into shock. As the misunderstanding is resolved, both Tibbs’ own chief and Gillespie himself manage to goad the detective into sticking around in Sparta to assist with the investigation.

What’d He Wear?

“You hear the talk about Cary Grant and Steve McQueen, but I don’t think anybody wore a suit better than Sidney Poitier,” observed film critic Elvis Mitchell in a February 2017 Vanity Fair article that details the actor’s marvelous trio of films that cemented him as the most prolific actor of 1967.

Laura Jacobs further illustrates the points with her notation that “in each movie he wears a gray flannel suit as if it were a form of lightweight knight’s armor,” though Virgil Tibbs’ well-cut dark gray suit that he wears throughout his time in Sparta is likely a worsted with a silky blue cast that suggests a finer material.

The single-breasted suit jacket has slim lapels with wide notches that gently curve over the lower corners, suggestive of the “half clover” notch lapels that trended during the mid-sixties. The lapels roll just over the top of three gray-blue plastic buttons that work in tandem with the darted fit to present a strong, structured silhouette that flatters Poitier’s tall, lean 6’2″ physique.

The jacket has a welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets in line with the lowest button, vestigal four-button cuffs, and a single vent.

Tibbs theorizes.

The flat front trousers rise to Poitier’s natural waist, where he suspends them with a black leather belt that closes in the front through a polished steel single-prong buckle. The trousers are plain-hemmed on the bottoms with jetted back pockets and straight side pockets where the exasperated detective often places his hands.

Tibbs greets Sam Wood’s patrol car before a long, late-night investigation.

Tibbs wears a pair of black calf cap-toe shoes with V-front three-eyelet derby lacing and black socks.

Back where it all started: Gillespie tracks Tibbs down to the train station to ask him not to leave town.

Tibbs adds an Ivy-inspired touch with his button-down collar shirts and striped repp ties. During his first few days in town, he wears an ecru button-down collar shirt with a scarlet and navy wide-striped repp tie.

The tie’s stripe formation evokes the classic Brigade of Guards tie that signals service in that formation of the British Army, though the stripes on Tibbs’ tie appear to be double the width of the traditional Guards tie stripes and follow the Americanized stripe direction of right shoulder-down-to-left hip.

Primary colors: Tibbs wears shades of red, yellow, and blue as he faces Gillespie in his office after Sam Wood brings him in for suspicion of murder.

While Sidney Poitier was a customer of Frank Foster—the venerated London shirtmaker who dressed the likes of Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, and three James Bond actors among many others—the company confirmed that they did not make his shirts for In the Heat of the Night. (To see Poitier wearing Frank Foster, check out To Sir, With Love, released the same year.)

The ecru cotton shirt has a button-down collar in more of a spread than a point shape. The shirt fastens up the plain front with four-hole sew-through mother-of-pearl buttons with a column of two identical buttons on each squared cuff.

Tibbs fields a call from his boss, who requests that the detective remain in Sparta to assist with the murder investigation. Gillespie is all ears.

After two long nights with the Sparta PD, Tibbs shows up refreshed the next morning in a new blue shirt and striped tie only to be greeted with the news that Chief Gillespie is arresting the excitable Sam Wood, the officer who discovered the dead body two nights earlier. Tibbs can’t help but to laugh (“You’re making a mistake!”) now that yet a third suspect has been wrongly accused of the murder in as many days.

Tibbs again sports a striped repp tie, this time with navy and silver stripes about an inch wide and, like the previous tie, following the Americanized “downhill” stripe direction.

The closest regimental neckwear equivalent is likely the tie of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, a line infantry regiment of the British Army that was disestablished in 1961 after eighty years.

His light blue cotton shirt is styled similarly to the previous shirt with a spread-shaped button-down collar, plain front, and two-button barrel cuffs.

A long day turns into a long night, and it ain’t over yet.

After the murderer has been caught, Tibbs oversees the confession from the doorway in his dressiest shirt yet, a beige cotton number with a classic spread collar and double (French) cuffs, worn with a plain bright red satin silk tie that’s almost identical to the train he’s about to board.

A lighter suit, a dressier shirt, and a solid tie for Tibbs’ last day in town.

Also worth noting is the fact that—while similar in style, cut, and details—Tibbs appears to be wearing a different suit, made from a lighter shade of gray wool and detailed with darker buttons.

Third time’s a charm: Tibbs finally makes it onto his train out of town.

What to Imbibe

Chief Gillespie: You know a lot of things, don’t you? Well, what do you know about insomnia?
Virgil Tibbs: Bourbon can’t cure it.

During Tibbs’ action-packed last night in Sparta, he and Chief Gillespie wile away the hours with a bottle of Wild Turkey, though the chief seems to do the lion’s share of the drinking… or at least of showing the effects of drinking.

Both reclined in their rumpled light blue shirts, dark trousers, and a bottle of bourbon between them, Tibbs and Gillespie have never been closer.

“You know, Virgil, you are among the chosen few,” offers Chief Gillespie after a long night of drinking. Indeed, Virgil Tibbs is a classic heroic figure – smart, strong, and still flawed, admitting that he allowed his investigation to divert in the wrong direction, following his own suspicions of the bigoted town big shot Endicott “for personal reasons” after the two men famously exchanged slaps.

Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night (1967)

How to Get the Look

Virgil Tibbs’ arrival in Sparta makes him easily the most fashionable man in town with his sleek, modern suit and Ivy-inspired underpinnings of light button-down collar shirts with striped repp ties.

• Dark gray worsted suit
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with slim notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Flat front trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Ecru cotton shirt with spread button-down collar, plain front, and two-button cuffs
• Scarlet-and-navy “downhill”-striped repp tie
• Black leather belt with polished steel single-prong buckle
• Black calf leather cap-toe 3-eyelet derby shoes
• Black dress socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, which was just given the Criterion Collection treatment in grand form last month.

The Quote

They call me Mister Tibbs!

James Coburn as Tex Panthollow in Charade (1963)

Vitals

James Coburn as Tex Panthollow, larcenous former OSS commando

Paris, April 1963

Film: Charade
Release Date: December 5, 1963
Director: Stanley Donen

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

As portrayed by the brilliant and versatile James Coburn, Tex Panthollow makes his dramatic introduction in the beginning of Charade as the second of three mysterious men who show up to “pay respects” at the funeral of their one-time brother-in-arms Charles Lampert, each one increasingly perplexing his widow Reggie (Audrey Hepburn) with their behavior. Par examplum: Tex draws a hand-sized mirror from his inside breast pocket and holds it directly under the deceased’s nose to ensure that he’s really passed from this world before sneering: “Arrive-derci, Charlie.”

The trio begin terrorizing Reggie in their campaign to recover $250,000 in gold that they and Charlie “liberated” from the Germans during World War II. Reggie’s companion, played by Cary Grant, manages to arouse suspicion among the three men by suggesting that one of them already has the money, though Tex finds the idea “distasteful… us bein’ veterans of the same war and all.”

What’d He Wear?

When he closes the door we can see "TEX" PENTHOLLOW, a slim, rangy man with sandy-colored hair, a weatherbeaten face, washed-out blue-eyes -- also in his forties. He wears a velvet-corduroy suit, string tie and a bright yellow flower in his lapel.  A bulldurham tag hangs from his outside breast pocket, dangling from its string.

Screenwriter Peter Stone had always envisioned the corduroy suit—complete with tobacco tag hanging from his pocket—as part of Tex’s image, though the “string tie” was lost in the adaptation in favor of a more timeless and traditional straight tie.

Tex makes his dramatic introduction at Charlie Lampert’s funeral, wearing a yellow flower in his lapel.

“A tall man in a corduroy suit,” is how Reggie remembers Tex when describing him to CIA administrator Hamilton Bartholomew, leaving out the unnecessary detail of the yellow flower in his lapel as he had left that with Charlie in the casket.

The corduroy of the suit itself has a wale so thin—often referred to as “needlecord” or “pinwale”—that it can barely be discerned, even in close-ups. The color is similar to the elusive shade of puce, a light taupe-brown with a pinkish cast.

Note the fine wale of Tex’s suiting.

Tex’s single-breasted 3/2-roll needlecord suit jacket could easily be orphaned and repurposed by a more casual modern wearer as an odd jacket with chinos or even jeans. The jacket has a single vent, three-button cuffs, and patch pockets with straight flaps. From the welted breast pocket dangles the tag of his tobacco pouch, suspended from a yellow string.

The three un-wise men: Herman Scobie (George Kennedy), Tex Panthollow, and Leopold W. Gideon (Ned Glass).

The flat front trousers sit low on Coburn’s waist, especially for 1963, but there are no suspenders, belt, or side-adjusters to hold them up; the only suspension is an extended waistband tab with a hidden hook closure. The trousers have frogmouth front pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms.

Despite his cowboy reputation, Tex foregoes the classic riding boot in favor of the more mod Chelsea boot, defined by Hardy Amies only a year later in 1964 as “the plain-fronted, elastic-sided short boot (covering the ankle) [that] is the basis of the whole boot trend in footwear today.” The Chelsea boot phenomenon is often traced back to the Beatles, who would hit their first #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 with “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, just shy of two months after Charade was released.

With his black calf leather Chelsea boots, Tex wears a pair of black cotton lisle socks.

While the venerated gingham check had long been associated with rural style and characters like Judy Garland’s Kansas farm girl in The Wizard of Oz, the pattern was emerging as a favorite among mods in the mid-’60s when James Coburn wore this navy-and-white gingham shirt in Charade. Tex’s shirt has a button-down collar, plain front, and button cuffs.

Tex confronts Reggie Lampert at her husband’s funeral.

Tex completes his look with a slim and straight dark navy knit tie, likely no wider than two inches and flat across the bottom.

The Gun

Jean-Louis: Are you a real cowboy?
Tex: Yeah, sure I am, kid.
Jean-Louis: So where’s your gun?

Tex rises to Jean-Louis’ bait, drawing a massive Colt New Service revolver from his trouser waistband, though you can tell Tex is the type just itching for people to ask to see his sidearm.

With his finger on the trigger of his Colt New Service, Tex doesn’t show much regard for gun safety. Scobie better watch out.

The Colt New Service dates back to the time of the final years of the 19th century that found the United States at war with Cuba and the Philippines. During the latter conflict in particular, American troops were finding themselves woefully undergunned with their sidearms, the Colt Model 1892 revolver chambered in .38 Long Colt and outfitted with the revolutionary swing-out cylinder that has all but replaced the previous loading gate and top-break mechanisms of earlier revolvers. The U.S. military was able to reach into its existing stores to reissue the slower-loading but powerful Colt Single Action Army revolver chambered in .45 Long Colt, but it was clear that new sidearms would be needed that combined the innovation of the new revolvers with the man-stopping ability of the old. Enter the Colt New Service.

Though Colt first introduced the large-framed New Service in 1898, it wasn’t until 1909 that the Army officially replaced the M1892 with the 5½”-barreled New Service chambered in .45 Colt, adopting it across the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. In the decades to follow, the Colt New Service would be available in most popular larger-caliber cartridges from .357 Magnum, .38 Special, and .38-40 Winchester up to .44-40 Winchester, .44 Russian, .44 Special, and .455 Webley as well as standard American military rounds .45 Colt and, in 1917, the rimless .45 ACP semi-automatic pistol cartridge with half-moon clips to hold them in position.

How to Get the Look

James Coburn as Tex Panthollow in Charade (1963)

An American in Paris, Tex Panthollow doesn’t leave his all-American sense of style—an Ivy-inspired aesthetic with a cowboy attitude—at home.

• Taupe-puce needlecord cotton suit:
  • Single-breasted 3/2-roll jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped patch pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Flat front trousers with extended waistband tab, frogmouth front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Navy-and-white gingham check cotton shirt with button-down collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Dark navy knit straight tie
• Black calf leather Chelsea boots with elastic side gussets
• Black cotton lisle socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie, and be sure to find one of the high-quality versions like the recent Criterion Collection release. The film’s decades under public domain meant an abundance of lower-quality versions opportunistically released on home video to take advantage of the film’s high profile and cast recognition.

The Quote

Oh, poor old Herman. It seems like him and good luck always was strangers. Well, maybe now he’ll meet up with his other hand some place.

Tony Musante as Eddie Hagen in The Grissom Gang (1971)

Vitals

Tony Musante as Eddie Hagan, smooth and ruthless fringe mobster

Kansas City, Summer 1931

Film: The Grissom Gang
Release Date: May 28, 1971
Director: Robert Aldrich
Costume Designer: Norma Koch

Background

The Grissom Gang had intrigued me ever since I was in eighth grade. I was flipping through a book about crime cinema from the school library when I found myself paused on a full-page photo of a man in a bloody white dinner jacket stumbled out of a roadster while Kim Darby sat in the passenger seat with her mouth agape. I had been newly introduced to Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger, and other films depicting that famous 1930s crime wave, but The Grissom Gang remained elusive.

Half a decade later, I was a college student with a considerably better budget and the vast resources of the internet at my disposal. I finally managed to track down a DVD of The Grissom Gang and, despite what the critics said, I was far from disappointed. Granted, I had no idea what to expect, so a sweaty, exploitative period crime piece from The Dirty Dozen was exactly what I was happy to get.

The Grissom Gang was the second major cinematic adaptation of James Hadley Chase’s 1939 novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish, following the poorly received British-made noir wannabe from 1948. When Robert Aldrich stepped into the wheelhouse for his adaptation, he kicked the setting back to the early 1930s when the Depression-era desperadoes reigned from powerful organized crime figures down to the lowliest highway robbers.

It’s this latter classification that best applies to the hoods of The Grissom Gang, though they all aspire to the former. The titular gang, led by the cackling and commanding “Ma” Grissom (Irene Dailey, chewing the scenery with her take on Ma Barker’s public image), are a twisted take on the Beverly Hillbillies, lent some criminal credibility by the smooth-talking Eddie Hagan (Tony Musante), the closest the characters come to an actual gangster.

Eddie remains mostly on the periphery as Darby’s haughty Miss Blandish and Scott Wilson’s dimwitted Slim Grissom take center stage.

What’d He Wear?

Eddie Hagen’s sense of style immediately differentiates him from the scrappy bandits who kidnapped Miss Blandish, though being the best dressed character in The Grissom Gang is hardly saying much. Still, the slick gangster takes obvious pride in his appearance from his excessively creamed hair to his redundant accessorizing.

The first suit that Eddie wears on screen is dark brown with a narrow tonal pencil stripe. The jacket is cut and styled to follow the trends of the early ’30s with peak lapels that roll to a high-buttoning single-breasted front. Eddie’s ventless suit jacket has three buttons on the front, three-button cuffs, a welted breast pocket, and straight flapped hip pockets.

Eddie wears a pale yellow cotton shirt, faintly striped in pale orange and baby blue, with a detachable white spread collar fastened into place with a gold stud and connected under his tie knot with a collar bar that finds itself unhooked by morning. The shirt has a front placket, breast pocket, and single-button squared cuffs.

Note the coordination of Eddie’s hat and shirt.

Eddie’s coral tie is patterned with triple sets of narrow white “uphill” stripes. In addition to the collar bar, the tie is accented with a sliding tie bar—with two “downhill”-diagonal ridges on the right side—worn low on his torso.

Smug expression, shoulder holster, and stripes galore: the Eddie Hagan guide to style.

Eddie overdoes it with both belt and braces and the latter in particular seems like a redundant addition to create more of a period look and adding yet another clashing stripe to his multi-striped outfit. The suspenders are scarlet with two white stripes, and each white stripe is bordered to the left with a thin navy shadow stripe. The suspenders connect to buttons inside the trouser waistband with black leather hooks.

On the outside of his trouser waistband, Eddie wears a dark brown leather belt with a gold-toned single-prong buckle. The belt may be the more essential trouser suspension device here, as it’s more useful in holding his shoulder holster in place… not to mention that said holster may interfere with his suspenders.

Eddie with his pal Mace (Ralph Waite), the most sympathetic of the criminals in The Grissom Gang.

Eddie wears his Colt pistol in a brown leather shoulder rig with a leather string-tie that fastens it to the left side of his belt, holding the actual holster in place under his left arm.

His reverse-pleated suit trousers have long belt loops for his wide belt in addition to straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms.

Eddie reholsters his Colt during a conversation with Johnny Hutchins (Dots Johnson).

Despite the effort he puts into his appearance, Eddie’s russet brown five-eyelet derby brogues could use a good shine. He wears them with thin brown ribbed silk socks.

By the early 1930s, the wristwatch had arguably replaced the pocket watch as the stylish young man’s timepiece of choice. Eddie wears a watch with a squared gold case, coordinating white square dial, and tan leather strap.

A fifth stripe enters the Eddie equation with the wide band his natural-colored straw fedora. The band is colorfully striped in beige, burgundy, and brown on a lavender ground.

The Gun

As opposed to his revolver-wielding colleagues, Eddie Hagan—who considers himself a more sophisticated, urban-oriented gangster—carries a Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless semi-automatic pistol as his sidearm of choice.

Eddie keeps his pistol drawn after confronting the kidnappers at Johnny Hutchins’ farm house.

As its nomenclature suggests, the pistol would have been nearly three decades old by the time of the film’s setting, yet it remained a fashionable firearm for its sleek lines, easy concealability, and reliable operation. Eddie’s Colt with its nickel finish and white ivory grips would have been a particularly flashy piece, befitting the colorfully dressed gangster.

Eddie’s flashy Colt.

Colt introduced the John Browning-designed Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless as a more compact alternative to the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammer. While the larger pistol was chambered in the now-obsolete .38 ACP, the “hammerless” model was first chambered in the more universal .32 ACP (7.65mm Browning Short) round. In 1908, Colt introduced a variant that could fire the slightly more powerful .380 ACP (9x17mm), still a popular self-defense round more than a century later.

How to Get the Look

Tony Musante as Eddie Hagen in The Grissom Gang (1971)

The Grissom Gang introduces Eddie Hagan and his colorful yet chaotic vintage-inspired style with a few too many stripes and accessories.

• Dark brown self-striped suit
  • Single-breasted 3-button suit jacket with peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
  • Double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• Pale yellow striped cotton shirt with front placket, breast pocket, and 1-button squared cuffs
  • White detachable collar with gold stud
  • Collar pin
• Coral tie with white “uphill” triple stripe sets
  • Gold diagonal-ridged tie bar
• Dark brown leather belt with gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Scarlet-and-white striped suspenders with black leather hooks
• Brown leather shoulder holster
• Russet brown calf leather five-eyelet wingtip derby brogues
• Dark brown thin ribbed silk dress socks
• Natural straw fedora with beige, burgundy, and brown-striped lavender band
• Gold square-cased wristwatch with white square dial on tan leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You run out of games, Slim, you let me know.

Ken Takakura as Ken Tanaka in The Yakuza (1974)

Vitals

Ken Takakura as Ken Tanaka, disciplined ex-Yakuza

Tokyo, Spring 1974

Film: The Yakuza
Release Date: December 28, 1974
Director: Sydney Pollack
Costume Designer: Dorothy Jeakins

Background

The Yakuza was the first screenplay credited to either Paul Schrader or Leonard Schrader, whose experiences in Japan inspired his brother to write the story. Leonard returned to the United States, where he spend the holiday season in Venice co-writing the screenplay’s first draft with Paul, who would later famously collaborate with Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver and Raging Bull among others. While the brothers watched many yakuza films for inspiration, what impressed them the most was the stoic screen presence of Ken Takakura, the Nakama-born actor who’d made his screen debut two decades earlier.

The Yakuza starred Robert Mitchum opposite Takakura, who played a former yakuza gangster now teaching kendo that finds himself called back into service to repay a decades-old debt to Mitchum’s character, Harry Kilmer.

An action-packed night begins in a dark nightclub as a band sings about the honor of a yakuza, serenading a crowd that includes Harry and Ken. Harry’s exit prompts Ken to head to the bathroom, where a handful of opportunistic “free agent” assassins attempt to corner him. Ken being Ken, he anticipated their arrival and catches them off guard when they ask him to hand Harry over to them. Even after dismissing Harry as “not family” to his face, Ken refuses to give up the American to the killers on the grounds that he’s “family”.

What’d He Wear?

The Yakuza is a splendid showcase for turtlenecks, with all three of its male leads getting plenty of mileage from a rotating selection of roll-neck sweaters.

While the Americans opt for bulkier turtlenecks, Ken Tanaka prefers lighter-weight, slimmer-fitting knitwear that flatters his lean frame. We are introduced to Ken at his kendo school in Kyoto where he wears an ivory roll-neck sweater under his Levi’s trucker jacket to meet Harry, but—once he has taken up the sword again—he almost exclusively wears a black ribbed-knit roll-neck that signifies his return to darkness.

Kings of the rollneck: Ken Tanaka and Robert Mitchum in The Yakuza.

As opposed to Harry’s warm, earthy tones of olive, tan, and taupe, Ken prefers cooler shades like this grayscale-friendly outfit anchored by a gray-and-black herringbone tweed sport jacket over his black rollneck.

Ken’s single-breasted sports coat has wide notch lapels that roll to a two-button front as well as two vestigal buttons spaced apart on each cuff. In addition to the welted breast pocket and straight flapped hip pockets, there is a flapped ticket pocket on the right side. The jacket has natural shoulders with roped sleeveheads and a single vent in the back.

Ken stays true to his monochromatic template with a pair of charcoal flat front trousers that complement the jacket’s wide lapels with its wide plain-hemmed bottoms. The lightweight turtleneck is tucked into the trousers, revealing the large curved silver-toned buckle of his wide black leather belt.

Ken’s black leather “Beatle boots” rise high over his ankles with raised heels and zippers along the inside of each boot.

Ken Tanaka takes a smoke break on the set of The Yakuza.

Ken’s stone-colored gabardine raincoat is his only divergence from his grayscale outfit, though it would hardly be called colorful. The raglan-sleeve coat has five buttons up from the waist to neck with a concealed fly. There are slanted side pockets on the front, a single vent in the back, and pointed half-tab cuffs on the sleeve ends that each fasten with a single button.

Ken is decidedly unimpressed with the three henchmen who corner him in a public bathroom.

Hardly seen under Ken’s left cuff is his steel-cased wristwatch. Its brief screen time all but obliterates any chance for identification, as opposed to the steel Rolex Datejust that Robert Mitchum wore in this movie as well as in real life.

How to Get the Look

Ken Takakura with Robert Mitchum in The Yakuza (1974)

The black turtleneck that Ken Takakura wears in The Yakuza communicates his return to the violent side of his personality, as evident with his choice to wear it here with his gray tweed jacket and later with his navy Harrington jacket during his and Harry’s assault on Yakuza boss Tono.

• Gray-and-black herringbone tweed single-breasted 2-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets with flapped ticket pocket, spaced 2-button cuffs, and single vent
• Black ribbed-knit turtleneck/rollneck sweater
• Charcoal flat front trousers with belt loops and wide plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather belt with large curved silver-toned single-prong buckle
• Black leather inside-zip “Beatle boots”
• Stone gabardine 5-button raglan-sleeve raincoat with slanted side pockets and single vent
• Steel wristwatch

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

If nothing else, this sorrow has brought us together again. I’m thankful for that.

Lee Marvin as Nick Devlin in Prime Cut (1972)

Vitals

Lee Marvin as Nick Devlin, mob enforcer

Kansas City, summer 1972

Film: Prime Cut
Release Date: June 28, 1972
Director: Michael Ritchie
Costume Designer: Patricia Norris

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Lee Marvin’s submachine gun-packing mob enforcer Nick Devlin gets plenty of opportunities for badass action in Michael Ritchie’s sophomore film, Prime Cut, but the smooth gangster also takes the chance to show a more genteel side, such as when escorting Poppy (Sissy Spacek) to a fancy dinner in a hotel restaurant.

Poppy, still in her teens though she’s endured a lifetime of trauma, has had little exposure to life outside the small-town orphanage where she was groomed for a life of prostitution and degradation. Thus, the poor young woman shows up to dinner a new sheer green dress that attracts plenty of unwanted attention for her choice to neglect wearing anything underneath it, leaving little to the imagination of the roving eyes of their fellow patrons.

The two order dinner—consommé for her, vichyssoise for him—to the appropriate tunes of the orchestra playing “A Bird in a Gilded Cage,” the turn-of-the-century ballad bemoaning the plight of a trapped kept woman à la Poppy. The sophisticated Nick offers some help by signaling which spoon to begin with, though he may have been more ultimately helpful to the young woman by purchasing undergarments for her.

By the end, once all debts have been settled with rancher-pimp Mary Ann (Gene Hackman), Nick provides Poppy with the opportunity to exact revenge—via a hard punch—of the matron of the cruel orphanage from which Poppy and her friends like Violet (Janit Baldwin) were sold into prostitution.

What’d He Wear?

Nick Devlin’s gray plaid suit makes its first appearance for his dinner with Poppy, though even the complex and colorful plaid suiting can hardly compete for attention against Poppy’s transparent green dress. The latter color in the navy, white, and orange plaid pattern coordinates with both his rust orange tie and his orange striped tie.

Nick stares down a fellow patron who can’t keep his eyes to himself.

The plaid suit jacket is cut and styled mostly like Nick’s other suits, a single-breasted two-button jacket with substantial notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and long double vents. This suit jacket’s single-button cuffs are the only differentiating point of style from his other two suits seen on screen.

Enjoying vichyssoise.

Nick wears a striped shirt, though the low contrast between the orange and lilac bengal stripes provides an overall orange effect. The shirt has a large point collar, breast pocket, and double (French) cuffs with gold links. His darker rust orange tie presents a much stronger contrast against the striped shirt.

The suit and shirt return for the finale, when Nick, Shea, Shaughnessy, Poppy, and Violet close down the orphanage/brothel before returning to Chicago, which Nick describes to Poppy as “windy, calm, and peaceful as anywhere.” Instead of the orange tie, Nick opts for a solid black tie.

Both ties, in the tradition of 1970s fashion trends, are considerably wide, coordinating with the lapels and shirt collar and doing their part to fill the open space between the lapels of his suit.

All’s well by the end of Prime Cut.

Nick steps out wearing a pair of dark cordovan leather derby shoes, probably the same textured derbies and squared apron toes that he also wore with his beige suit. He also appears to be wearing the same dark brown cotton lisle socks.

Little is seen of this suit’s trousers, but—like the jacket—they appear to be consistent in style with his other suit trousers with their medium rise, flat front, and plain-hemmed bottoms. Does he also wear the same brown leather belt with its asymmetrical gold buckle and red enamel accents? Possibly.

What to Imbibe

Nick’s post-prandial whiskey of choice is Maker’s Mark bourbon, drank neat from a glass snifter. Is this one of the first appearances of Maker’s Mark in a mainstream movie?

Though the label isn’t seen, the bottle’s shape and red wax top tells us that Nick is enjoying a glass of Maker’s Mark. The red wax top has been a signature element of Maker’s Mark’s branding since its introduction in 1958.

Despite its ubiquity today, Maker’s Mark is a relative newcomer in the bourbon world, a place where Jim Beam was introduced in 1795, Old Crow in 1835, Early Times in 1860, and countless others across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. First bottled in 1958, four years after production began at the Burks’ Distillery near Loretto, Maker’s Mark sought to differentiate itself in the bourbon marketplace over the following decades with the tagline: “It tastes expensive… and it is.”

How to Get the Look

Lee Marvin and Sissy Spacek in Prime Cut (1972)

Nick Devlin’s third of three suits in Prime Cut reinforces his unapologetically bold dressing.

• Gray plaid suit with navy, orange, and white plaid:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, slanted flapped hip pockets, single-button cuffs, and long double vents
  • Flat front trousers with tall belt loops, frogmouth front pockets, flapped set-in back pockets, and flared plain-hemmed bottoms
• Orange-and-lilac bengal-striped shirt with large point collar, breast pocket, and double/French cuffs
  • Gold cuff links
• Rust orange silk tie
• Brown leather belt with extended gold single-prong buckle with red enamel circle
• Dark cordovan textured leather squared apron-toe derby shoes
• Dark brown cotton lisle socks

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

Orphanage madam: Who do you think you are?
Nick: J. Edgar Hoover.

Daniel Craig as James Bond in Spectre (2015)

Vitals

Daniel Craig as James Bond, British government agent

Altaussee, Austria, Winter 2015

Film: Spectre
Release Date: October 25, 2015
Director: Sam Mendes
Costume Designer: Jany Temime

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

For the 00-7th of March, Daniel Craig’s birth month (the actor turned 51 on March 2), let’s explore how someone like James Bond keeps warm for a winter mission.

Spectre provided Daniel Craig’s agent 007 with his first extended sequences set during a snowy winter, excluding the abbreviated prologue in Casino Royale and epilogue in Quantum of Solace. In Spectre, Craig’s Bond dons heavy winter gear and travels to the shores of the Lake Altaussee, beneath the Loser Plateau (pronounced ˈloːzə) in Austria, in search of the elusive arch-criminal Mr. White (Jesper Christensen).

What’d He Wear?

Bond’s cold-weather outfit for his arrival in Altaussee has received much attention since the film’s release with comprehensive looks at the outfit from James Bond Lifestyle and The Suits of James Bond. It resonated with me as a practical and classic approach to dressing for the snowy climate.

The outfit is anchored by a navy blue wool/cashmere waist-length coat from Dior Homme’s fall 2012 menswear line, styled like a winter-friendly bomber jacket with a touch of battle dress inspiration that nods to Commander Bond’s military experience.

Someone call Emanuel Leutze!

The best winter jackets never skimp on keeping its wearer warm, and the Dior Homme coat doubles down with five large dark blue plastic buttons under a wide and asymmetrical concealed fly that also zips for extra insulation against the cold. Each set-in sleeve also closes with an extended zipper that adjusts the sleeve fit, accommodating Bond’s heavy gloves and keeping the tapered sleeves snug and warm over his wrists. There are also two large set-in pockets with flaps that each close with a double set of snaps.

The jacket’s shirt-style collar, which Bond wears with the black fur trim removed, has a throat latch tab; Bond’s decision to wear a turtleneck keeps his neck less vulnerable to the cold, thus he only wears the jacket semi-zipped… also allowing him access to his shoulder-holstered Walther PPK beneath it.

The Dior Homme jacket features zippers galore, from an asymmetrical zip-up front supported by five buttons to the zip-tightened sleeve ends.

My own ROYALE Filmwear “Altaussee jacket” with ivory Nautica quarter-zip, black-and-gray birdseye Banana Republic trousers, black calf Johnston & Murphy “Conard” wingtip boots, and black Aris Isotoner gloves.

As typical with Bond-worn clothing, the Dior Homme jacket found itself the subject of intense demand and existing pieces were quickly sold to 007 style enthusiasts. Luckily, the experts at ROYALE Filmwear developed the “Altaussee Jacket” that matches the style, color, and luxurious cashmere-blended fabric of the Dior Homme piece seen in Spectre for only $249! Also like Bond’s jacket, the ROYALE Filmwear piece includes a removable faux-beaver fur collar. If you’re still on the hunt for similar jackets to keep you warm in the cold, my friend at Iconic Alternatives stays on top of budget-friendly alternatives.

I purchased my own Altaussee Jacket from ROYALE Filmwear in October 2018, and it served admirably as a fashionable and insulating outerwear during the fall-to-winter transition as well as the frigid polar vortex that enveloped my region in arctic temperatures and wind chill.

James Bond kicked off the rollneck renaissance in Spectre, wearing a total of three N.Peal turtleneck sweaters in different colors across the film. The first is this light gray sweater, the warmest of the lot in a cable-knit Mongolian cashmere colored in a shade that N.Peal calls “Fumo Grey”. The sweater has a rolled polo neck and set-in sleeves.

N.Peal proudly touts this sweater’s connection to Spectre on its website, stating that it was “designed specifically for a very special customer,” and offering it to the style-conscious consumer for $430. You can also read more about this sweater from James Bond Lifestyle here.

Sam Mendes directs Daniel Craig on the set of Spectre. The open jacket gives us a better look at the cable-knit cashmere turtleneck than we get in the finished film.

Dave Evans, an experienced movie armorer whose Bond background extends back to Die Another Day in 2002, created five custom leather shoulder rigs for Daniel Craig to wear in Spectre. The holsters were designed to be free-standing—ideal for a lighter weight, compact sidearm like the Walther PPK—without any straps that would attach it to the trouser waistband like some full-size shoulder rigs.

One of the five holsters sold in for £23,750 via a Christie’s auction in February 2016, but recreations by Make It Jones are available for £95 to £115.

The brown leather shoulder holsters were treated for an aged leather look with a gunmetal-finished brass snap on a short retention strap that keeps the pistol holstered in place under the left armpit. The rig fits over Craig’s left shoulder with a thick leather strap with brass screw rivets to adjust the length, connected to a black elastic strap that fits over the right shoulder.

Craig takes more behind-the-scenes direction from Mendes, this time sans jacket, revealing both sweater and holster.

Bond’s black-and-gray tic-patterned trousers appear to be the same Neil Barrett trousers that he later wears with his dark navy John Varvatos racer jacket and charcoal N.Peal mock-neck in the London-set finale sequence, also featured on the famous Spectre teaser poster. The Neil Barrett trousers were identified by AJB007 user kadd in this thread, specifically describing them as the no longer available “BPA140 series 1213” from the autumn/winter 2014 collection.

kadd further described the trousers as a blend of 54% viscose, 26% nylon, 14% polyester, and 6% elastane, adding considerable stretch to the narrow fit. These flat front trousers have belt loops, frogmouth front pockets, jetted back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms. He appears to be wearing it with a black leather belt.

You can read more about the scenes where these trousers are featured at The Suits of James Bond and explore similar options from Iconic Alternatives.

Eagle-eyed viewers will note that Bond wears two different pairs of black boots, the waterproof Danner “Mountain Light II” lace-up hiking boots outside and the calf leather Crocket & Jones “Radnor” derby boots while inside Mr. White’s cabin.

While Crockett & Jones is the more on-brand boot for Bond, the Danner pair is the more functional choice of the the two. You can read more about the differences between these boots at The Suits of James Bond.

Though the Crockett & Jones boot does get a close-up (though hardly a glamour shot) as Bond reaches down to pick up his PPK, was it worth outfitting the agent in two different sets of boots for his outdoor and indoor scenes?

Bond wisely wears a winter hat and gloves for his travels, sporting a navy ribbed-knit wool watch cap (or “beanie”) and a pair of black quilted lambskin Agnelle gloves. The cap was made by Acne Studios, and the great @BondClothing Instagram account has identified it as possibly the “Miles Beanie” in 100% wool.

007’s gloves have been identified at James Bond Lifestyle as the “James” model that the brand still offers more than three years after the film’s release though sizes are increasingly limited. The Agnelle site touts the alpaca lining and smartphone-sensitivity on the index finger and thumbs, though Bond opts for his Walther PPK rather than his Sony Xperia Z5 during the sequence. (Whether or not the gloves could accommodate Q’s handprint-technology for Bond’s PPK/S in Skyfall is a different matter!)

Glimpsed between gloves and jacket cuff as Bond makes his way through Mr. White’s cabin is the agent’s Omega Seamaster 300, the classic chronometer whose appearance in Spectre was well-publicized leading up to the movie’s November 2015 release. The SPECTRE Limited Edition model (reference 233.32.31.21.01.001) was sold to the public in a limited release of 7,007 pieces.

Bond wears his steel Omega on a black-and-gray striped NATO strap, reintroducing this classic watch strap exactly fifty years after Sean Connery famously wore his Rolex on a striped strap in Thunderball. The Spectre Seamaster 300 has a brushed steel 41mm case, a bi-directional black ceramic bezel, and a black dial. You can read more about the watch at James Bond Lifestyle.

A NATO strap often protects the wearer from a wristwatch’s metal case transferring extreme weather to the wearer’s wrist, be it extreme heat or—in this case—winter chill.

On the third finger of his right hand, under the gloves, Bond wears the iconic Spectre ring that had previously gained him admission to the organization’s meeting in Rome.

The Gun

Daniel Craig’s Bond experimented with more technologically advanced weaponry, first the Walther P99 in Casino Royale (an extension from Pierce Brosnan’s tenure) and then a Walther PPK/S with palm-reading grips in the first half of Skyfall, but it’s his faithful classic Walther PPK that 007 carries most in Spectre.

Bond offers his own Walther PPK to Mr. White as a gesture of trust. This would have been a suitable occasion for him to be carrying a model with palm-reading grips, but Q seems to have retired that capability.

Generally unchanged in appearance and operation from its introduction in the early 1930s, the Walther PPK has been James Bond’s pistol of choice since Ian Fleming took the advice of firearms Geoffrey Boothroyd and wrote it into his novels, beginning with Dr. No in 1958.

Offered primarily in .32 ACP (7.65x17mm Browning SR) and .380 ACP (9x17mm Short), Bond’s PPK is typically chambered for the former cartridge, a smaller caliber but one that allows him to carry an additional round in the magazine.

How to Get the Look

Daniel Craig as James Bond in Spectre (2015). Note that his Walther PPK is out-of-battery with the slide pulled back.

James Bond dresses comfortably and practically in designer brands for his arrival in the snowy salt-mined resort village of Altaussee, sporting cool tones of blue, gray, and black that not only echo his wintry surroundings but also communicate the coldness of his deadly mission to Austria.

• Navy wool/cashmere-blend waist-length winter coat with shirt-style collar, 5-button/zip-fly front, zip-ended sleeves, and large set-in hip pockets with double-snapped flaps
  • Dior Homme (discontinued)
• Light gray cashmere cable-knit turtleneck sweater with set-in sleeves
  • N. Peal Cable Turtle Neck Cashmere Sweater NPG-299B in “Fumo Grey” ($430)
• Black-and-gray tic-checked flat front trousers with belt loops, frogmouth front pockets, jetted back pockets, and tapered plain-hemmed bottoms
  • Neil Barrett BPA140 (discontinued)
• Black leather belt with squared single-prong buckle
• Black leather winter boots
  • Danner “Mountain Light II” 5″ hiking boots with five-lug lacing and two speed hook sets ($380)
  • Crockett & Jones “Radnor” wax calf boots with four-eyelet derby lacing and five speed hook sets (discontinued)
• Dark brown aged leather shoulder holster with black elasticized strap, for Walther PPK pistol
• Navy ribbed-knit wool watch cap
  • Acne Studios “Miles Beanie” (discontinued)
• Black quilted lambskin gloves
  • Agnelle “James” (€112.50)
• Omega Seamaster 300 SPECTRE Limited Edition (233.32.41.21.01.001) stainless steel wristwatch with black dial (and “lollipop” seconds hand) on black-and-gray striped NATO strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

Johnny Depp as Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco, in Donnie Brasco (1997)

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Johnny Depp as Joe Pistone, aka “Donnie Brasco”, undercover FBI agent infiltrating the Mafia

New York City, Fall 1979

Film: Donnie Brasco
Release Date: February 28, 1997
Director: Mike Newell
Costume Designer: Aude Bronson-Howard & David C. Robinson

Background

#MafiaMonday has become something of an occasional tradition for BAMF Style, but there’s no reason why every celebration of mob style needs to feature an actual gangster. Take the case of Joe Pistone, a real-life FBI agent and undercover pioneer whose six years infiltrating the Bonanno family of the New York Mafia was so effective that NYPD investigations and even some FBI files had mistakenly marked the agent as a mob associate named Don Brasco. Pistone was ordered to end his operation in the summer of 1981, despite the agent hoping to at least be “made” and inducted into the ranks of the mob.

Pistone’s undercover assignment was dramatized in the 1997 film Donnie Brasco, starring Johnny Depp as the young agent and Al Pacino as Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero, the three-time loser who eagerly takes on “Don the Jeweler” as his mentee in the mob.

What’d He Wear?

Leather outerwear is practically a required uniform for the mobsters in Sonny Black’s crew, and Donnie himself wears at least three sharp leather jackets, including a saddle brown car coat, a similar coat in black, and this brown leather blazer that is prominently worn for two scenes: one of cruelty and one of compassion.

The former finds Donnie, Lefty, Sonny, and the other fellas stepping out to dine at a Japanese restaurant, where the cultural custom of removing one’s shoes endangers Donnie blowing his cover for the tape recorder he keeps in his boot. (And, reportedly, the real Pistone’s tapes of the mobsters were provided to screenwriter Paul Attanasio for an added touch of realism.)

The second finds Donnie joining Lefty in the hospital after the latter’s son Tommy is hospitalized following another overdose and his heart stopping “like a watch”. Donnie hopes to make amends for all but abandoning Lefty in favor of a role working for the more ambitious Sonny Black, but the bitter old mafioso will have none of it: “I don’t want you here, Donnie. You and Tommy is both peas in a fucking pod. You don’t listen. You got your own ideas. You do what you want to do up on your high horses. Everything’s a joke.”

An excessively proud Lefty dismisses Donnie’s olive branch.

Donnie’s brown leather sports coat dates itself to the late ’70s with its wide notch lapels that stretch the better part of a foot toward the roped sleeveheads. The jacket has a single back vent and three patch pockets: one breast pocket and one on each hip.

Though arguably meant to be a product of the disco era, the back of the jacket is styled with a half-belt and side pleats, reminiscent of the “action back” suits and sport jackets that enjoyed their greatest popularity during the 1930s.

For the group’s outing to the Japanese restaurant, Donnie wears a solid navy blue knit polo with a large collar and a four-button placket, consistent with the styling of most of his other polo shirts.

A dumbfounded Donnie finds himself in an unexpected predicament.

Donnie first wears the jacket with a pair of dark olive wool flat front trousers with full plain-hemmed bottoms that fit easily over his high-rise cowboy boots. He wears his usual belt, a slim strip of tan leather with a rounded, gold-toned buckle.

Japanese waiter: Take your shoes off.
Joe/Donnie: Take my shoes off? You take your pants off, what the fuck.

Donnie can only get away with so much demonstrative, Paulie Walnuts-type rhetoric before the waiter grows insistent on the patron removing his boots before his party can sit down to eat. As mentioned above, doing so would reveal the fact that Donnie has been recording the boys’ criminal deeds for the feds, so he reverts to more racially charged language that sadly leads to the increasingly incensed mobsters beating the poor waiter to a pulp.

The footwear that Donnie chooses to conceal his mini broadcasting studio is a pair of brown exotic leather cowboy boots with pointed toes and ornate green stitching up the shafts.

The source of Donnie’s anxiety: a wired tape recorder hidden in his boot.

Later, after Lefty’s son is hospitalized, Joe/Donnie comes to visit him wearing the brown leather blazer with an earthy polo and taupe trousers. The knit polo is forest green with a brown collar and brown piping down the half-zip placket. The zipper has a dark brass rectangular-frame pull tab.

Lefty may want to think that he and Donnie are on the outs, but their shared green palette here implies that they may be more kindred spirits than either cares to admit.

Donnie’s gold watch from other scenes doesn’t make any prominent appearances during these sequences, though he still wears his usual gold Claddagh ring on his left ring finger and almost certainly still has his gold necklace with a cross pendant.

Johnny Depp as Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco, in Donnie Brasco (1997)

How to Get the Look

Unlike some of his criminal colleagues, Donnie Brasco keeps his look fashionable but ultimately timeless by avoiding the extremes of late ’70s style… lapel width notwithstanding. After all, a brown leather jacket with a dark polo and slacks is always going to be acceptable.

• Brown leather single-breasted sport jacket with wide notch lapels, two-button front, patch breast pocket, patch hip pockets, “action back” side-pleated back with half-belt and single vent
• Navy knit polo shirt with four-button placket
• Dark olive wool flat front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Brown slim leather belt with rounded gold-toned single-prong buckle
• Gold necklace with cross pendant
• Gold Claddagh ring on left ring finger

Do Yourself a Favor And…

Check out the movie and also the real Pistone’s written account of his undercover life.

The Quote

I’m gonna stay here with you. You want to kick the shit out of me? I’m gonna be right here. All right?

James Stewart as John “Scottie” Ferguson in Vertigo (1958)

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James Stewart as John “Scottie” Ferguson, former San Francisco detective

San Francisco, Fall 1957

Film: Vertigo
Release Date: May 9, 1958
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Costume Designer: Edith Head

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

In the spirit of yesterday, March 12, being deemed Alfred Hitchcock Day, not to mention being one week away from the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, even if the weather itself can’t make up its mind…

For those whose offices call for jackets and ties, dressing for work during these transitional weather periods can be a challenge, balancing professionalism with comfort in the context of an uncertain weather forecast. As San Francisco detective “Scottie” Ferguson in Vertigo, James Stewart provides a solution.

Scottie works and lives in San Francisco, a city famous for its mild climate with little seasonal variation, thus our hero establishes for himself a rotation of flannel and serge business suits in traditional colors like blue, gray, and brown. Flannel suits are particularly fortunate assets to have in one’s closet when the morning air is still cool but hardly worthy of packing a topcoat and scarf for the day.

After spending the introductory scene with his friend Midge (Barbara Bel Geddes), Scottie is summoned to the office of his college pal Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore), a shipbuilding exec who goads the reluctant detective into agreeing to follow his wife Madeleine, setting the plot of this classic thriller in motion.

What’d He Wear?

Scottie arrives at Gavin’s office at the San Francisco shipyard wearing a spring-friendly blue-gray two-piece business suit made from a flannel cloth just weighty enough to provide comfort in the cool weather without requiring an additional layer.

The blue-gray flannel suit is tailored and styled to be consistent with his other suits with a single-breasted, three-button jacket that flatters and balances Jimmy Stewart’s height. Unlike his sportier suits with patch pockets, this suit jacket has the standard welted breast pocket and straight set-in hip pockets typically associated with business suits.

The jacket also has three-button cuffs. It is Scottie’s only suit jacket with a vented back, as both this blue-gray flannel suit jacket and his birdseye tweed sports coat have a single vent in the back.

Scottie takes an interesting job from his pal Gavin Elster.

Like Scottie’s other suits, the blue-gray trousers have single reverse pleats, a long rise, and a wide fit through the legs to the turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottoms. Per his habit of matching his belts to his suits—rather than to his shoe leather—Scottie wears a slim textured belt in dark navy leather with a long silver-toned single-prong buckle.

Under the wide turn-ups (cuffs) on the bottom of his trousers legs, Scottie also appears to be wearing his usual cordovan wingtip oxford brogues with a pair of dark navy socks. In this case, the navy socks coordinate with the color of his suit trousers, but he tends not to be very discerning in this case with his other suits as he wears the navy socks with almost everything.

Scottie’s blue-driven outfit makes him stand out against Gavin’s mahogany and burgundy office decor, though his cordovan derbies camouflage his feet into the carpet.

Despite the variance in his suits, Scottie always pulls from an army of white cotton poplin dress shirts, almost always worn—at least at first—with a gold collar pin under his tie knots. His shirts have front plackets, breast pockets, and two-button cuffs that, like his three-button suit jackets, balance his long arms.

When he’s visiting Gavin Elster’s office and getting his assignment, he wears a royal blue tie with a motif of gray diamond shapes organized in rows and columns down the tie blade. Scottie holds the tie in place with a silver tie bar at mid-torso, just above the buttoning point, and he wears it with the back slightly longer than the front blade.

Many scenes later, Vertigo climaxes with Scottie’s realization that his recent acquaintance Judy (Kim Novak) was actually Elster’s mistress posing as his own wife Madeleine to distract Scottie during their plan to kill Madeleine by faking her suicide. (The two talk about a night out at Ernie’s, but we shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t end up going as Scottie isn’t wearing his royal blue “go-to-Ernie’s” suit!)

During this segment, Scottie again wears his blue-gray flannel suit from the beginning, perhaps as a symbolic recognition that his story is starting again from scratch… just as it had when he wore it to Elster’s office and was first instructed to follow the woman he believed to be Madeleine. Instead of the blue patterned tie, though, Scottie wears a shiny gray shantung silk tie with alternating dots in black and white.

Scottie confronts Judy with his knowledge of the truth.

He may have a belt for almost every suit, but Scottie wears only one hat throughout Vertigo, a chocolate brown felt fedora that is likely the same headgear that Jimmy Stewart wore in many of his films from the decade. Discussion at the online forum The Fedora Lounge has suggested that Churchill Ltd. made Jimmy Stewart’s Vertigo hat and thus was the maker of his tried-and-true brown fedora throughout his 1950s career, though the forum also suggests Borsalino, Cavanagh, Dobbs Fifth Avenue, and Stetson among the possible brands that the actor preferred.

Hat in hand.

Scottie wears his gold dress watch on a black leather strap, fastened high on his left wrist.

Scottie’s watch peeks out from his left sleeve.

James Stewart as John “Scottie” Ferguson in Vertigo (1958)

How to Get the Look

Fight the late winter blues with a springtime business suit in blue-gray flannel that brings comfort, professionalism, and warmth to your office wear.

• Blue-gray flannel suit:
  • Single-breasted 3-button jacket with notch lapels, patch breast pocket, patch hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and single vent
  • Single reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
• White poplin dress shirt with long point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and 2-button rounded cuffs
  • Gold collar pin
• Royal blue tie with gray diamond-patterned motif
• Slim navy leather belt with wide single-prong buckle
• Cordovan leather 5-eyelet wingtip oxford brogues
• Dark navy socks
• Gold wristwatch with round case, black-ringed white dial, and black leather strap

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You shouldn’t keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn’t have been that sentimental.

Michael K. Williams as Albert “Chalky” White on Boardwalk Empire (Episode 4.12: “Farewell Daddy Blues”)

Vitals

Michael Kenneth Williams as Albert “Chalky” White, nightclub owner and bootlegger

Atlantic City, August 1924

Series: Boardwalk Empire
Episode: “Farewell Daddy Blues” (Episode 4.12)
Air Date: November 24, 2013
Director: Tim Van Patten
Creator: Terence Winter
Costume Designer: John A. Dunn

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

This weekend is St. Patrick’s Day, a time when many observe the feast day of Ireland’s foremost patron saint by donning their greenest attire and celebrating in a range of style, whether it’s the customary indulgence in classic Irish recipes like corned beef and cabbage or the more contemporary tradition of getting plastered on Jameson and taking selfies next to an artificially viridescent Chicago River.

If you’re at a loss for what to wear, you can take a page from the Chalky White playbook and borrow some green tweeds.

Poor Chalky may be drinking, but he’s hardly in the St. Patrick’s Day spirit. If you’ve seen the episode, you know why.

The fourth season finale of Boardwalk Empire finds the once-powerful gangster Chalky returning from a violently interrupted recuperation at his uncle’s homestead in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Returning to Atlantic City, Chalky confronts his former ally Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) at gunpoint and demands the politician-turned-bootlegger’s help in ridding himself of his rival, the urbane Dr. Valentin Narcisse (Jeffrey Wright).

Chalky then confronts Dr. Narcisse at the Onyx Club that he once ruled. The two enemies agree to trade “a daughter for a Daughter” as Dr. Narcisse will return Chalky’s kidnapped daughter Maybelle to him in exchange for the whereabouts of their shared paramour Daughter Maitland (Margot Bingham)… just when the ultimate tragedy strikes, sending Chalky retreating back to the relatively safe harbor of Havre de Grace, where we leave the depressed ex-gangster drinking to the tune of Ms. Bingham singing Ma Rainey’s blues classic “Farewell Daddy Blues” that lent its title to the episode.

What’d He Wear?

The only information that Chalky volunteers about his new threads is that they are borrowed, though it’s a fortuitous fit as Michael K. Williams looks sharper than many would in the secondhand suit.

Green had a rather unexplored color for Chalky up to this point, whose suits had been almost every other major color but green up to this point, though he did wear a stylish navy-and-green plaid suit in the first episode of the season while at the Onyx Club. He makes his less-than-triumphant return in the season finale wearing another man’s green tweed suit with a single-breasted, two-button suit jacket.

“You get everything,” Chalky offers to Dr. Narcisse, who smugly responds with “I already have that.”

Chalky wears a pale blue cotton shirt with a green cast that complements his suit. He wears the shirt buttoned up the wide front placket to the neck, where it has a large, soft attached point collar, a noted contrast with the starched with club collars that he had always worn with his colorful patterned shirts up to this point.

If only Chalky could also borrow a tie, he’d have a rather natty outfit to boast about.

The suit has a matching six-button waistcoat, with narrowly welted pockets and a short notched bottom, and flat front trousers with a full fit and finished on the bottoms with turn-ups (cuffs).

Chalky wears a pair of brown leather cap-toe boots with derby lacing, a timeless and sharp style that would look just as good with a business suit for a job interview, with jeans for a night out, or with a borrowed tweed suit when hoofing it hundreds of miles between Atlantic City and a small Chesapeake town in Maryland.

Under any other circumstances, this could be the good life.

Perhaps contributing most to Chalky’s appearance when he first appears at the outset of “Farewell Daddy Blues” (Episode 4.12) is a ratty beige scarf, dirty and frayed around the edges and seemingly serving no greater purpose than illustrating for Nucky just how far his former friend has fallen. Chalky wisely abandons the scarf for his meeting with Dr. Narcisse later in the episode.

Chalky also has a brown felt fedora with a brown ribbed grosgrain silk ribbon, though the hat doesn’t do him any favors as it’s hardly the quality of his prior headgear and he wears it far back on his head with the brim upturned like a porkpie.

The Gun

Chalky White’s sartorial approach may be different, but his armament certainly isn’t. He confronts Nucky with his matched set of nickel-plated M1911A1 pistols with wide bores indicating .45 ACP. This is the same pair that he first drew down on Meyer Lansky toward the end of the first season and had notably carried—and used to great effect—in the seasons to follow.

Nucky and his bodyguard find themselves facing the business ends of Chalky White’s 1911 pistols… a dangerous position for anyone to be in.

Little is seen to provide positive identification of Chalky’s 1911 pistols, but—if they are indeed from the early 1920s time period of the show—that limits the potential manufacturer not only to Colt but also to North American Arms Company, Remington-UMC, and Springfield Armory, the three manufacturers identified in Bruce Canfield’s 2011 article for American Rifleman detailing the “non-Colt” 1911s produced during the World War I era.

Of course, more than a century after the venerated pistol debuted, almost every major firearms manufacturer from SIG-Sauer and Smith & Wesson to Detonics and Kimber has taken their shot (pun not intended) at delivering their own fresh take on John Browning’s classic semi-automatic pistol design.

How to Get the Look

Michael K. Williams as Albert “Chalky” White on Boardwalk Empire (Episode 4.12: “Farewell Daddy Blues”)

Far from his bold plaid suits, colorful bow ties, and astrakhan fur-collared coats, Chalky White carries himself with his characteristic pride and dignity that gives a boost to his borrowed tweeds.

• Green tweed suit:
  • Single-breasted 2-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets
  • Single-breasted 6-button waistcoat with welted pockets and notched bottom
  • Flat front trousers with turn-ups/cuffs
• Pale blue cotton shirt with large point collar, wide front placket, and button cuffs
• Brown calf leather cap-toe derby-laced boots
• Brown felt fedora with brown ribbed grosgrain silk ribbon
• Beige scarf with frayed edges

Though not one of the character’s signature outfits, it’s certainly worth discussing for its deviance from his usual… as well as its seasonal significance.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the whole series, but explore the fourth season to watch this particular episode.

The Quote

Outside my house last night… family inside and I can’t even go in. Wearing another man’s clothes… standing here with my friend.

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano on The Sopranos (Episode 3.09: “The Telltale Moozadell”)

Vitals

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, New Jersey mob boss

New Jersey, December 2000

Series: The Sopranos
Episode: “The Telltale Moozadell” (Episode 3.09)
Air Date: April 22, 2001
Director: Dan Attias
Creator: David Chase
Costume Designer: Juliet Polcsa

Background

In a late second season episode of The Sopranos, Christopher Moltisanti warns his fellow Italian-American mobsters about his vision of hell, “an Irish bar where it’s St. Patrick’s Day everyday forever.” Thus, let’s take a look at a stylish outfit from this seminal HBO drama on the first #MafiaMonday after St. Patrick’s Day!

Penned by series regular Michael Imperioli—Christopher himself—exactly one season after Christopher’s premonition, “The Telltale Moozadell” is a tale of animal instinct and the dangerous consequences of childlike impulsivity, anchored by the central plot line of mob boss Tony Soprano in the midst of the exciting “honeymoon phase” of his affair with Mercedes-Benz sales rep Gloria Trillo (Annabella Sciorra).

The only complication? (Well, other than Tony’s marriage and career and Gloria’s unfortunate penchant for self-destructive behavior.) The two met in the waiting room of their therapist’s office, and now each have to lie to the good Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) about the source of their uncharacteristic happiness.

Melfi isn’t fooled by Tony’s weak explanations that “that’s how life is, I guess, sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad,” and presses on when she notices his attitudes suspiciously mirroring the neo-Buddhist Gloria.

Tony: You have to joyfully participate in the suffering of the world.
Dr. Melfi: Your thoughts have a kind of eastern flavor to them.
Tony: Well, I’ve lived in Jersey my whole life…
Dr. Melfi: I mean eastern in terms of Asian. Like Buddhist or Taoist.
Tony: Sun Tzu. I told you about him.
Dr. Melfi: (a beat) We have to stop now.

After an exuberant Tony tosses her a few extra bills in appreciation of “the good results”, Melfi complains to her son that she “hates them all” for lying to her… until she catches sight of her newly received benjamins that could help buy the young man some textbooks.

Tony’s glee is short-lived, however, as his next stop takes him to a mob-run gambling den where he encounters his daughter’s irresponsible boyfriend Jackie Aprile Jr. (Jason Carbone), a hotheaded young man a little too comfortable on the fringe of organized crime.

What’d He Wear?

As spring nears after a long, hard winter that brought us yet another polar vortex, you too may be tempted to be wary of expressing your happiness. Tony tries to restrain his abundant happiness by entirely wearing shades of gray in an increasingly familiar getup of a textured or patterned sport jacket with solid-colored shirt, silk tie, and pleated pants.

In this case, his jacket is the gray flannel single-breasted sports coat that he also wore in “Employee of the Month” (Episode 3.04) to Johnny Sack’s housewarming, in “Another Toothpick” (Episode 3.05) for dinner at Vesuvio, and several episodes across the fourth season, though it’s only for these scenes in “The Telltale Moozadell” (Episode 3.09) that he wears this interesting all-gray ensemble.

Tony makes the rounds of an illegal casino when he spots someone who decidedly should not be there.

Tony’s dark gray flannel sport jacket has a single-breasted, three-button front that he wears with the top two buttons fastened. As the show—and James Gandolfini’s size—progressed over the course of the show, Tony’s wardrobe would evolve from three-button suit jackets and sports coats to single-button jackets.

The ventless jacket has natural shoulders and four-button cuffs. The straight hip pockets are jetted with no flaps, and Tony dresses the welted breast pocket with a gray silk pocket square that continues the monochromatic theme.

The blissful mob boss.

Tony’s dress shirt is warm gray with a slight purple cast. The shirt has a point collar, front placket, and button cuffs.

Tony tries to convince Dr. Melfi to accept “a little extra for good results” on top of the co-pay he owes, unaware that therapy isn’t the kind of service where one tips.

Tony’s silk tie is “uphill”-striped in black and gray, though the gray section is comprised of hairline stripes that create the effect of a solid gray stripe from a distance.

Tony gives Jackie Jr. one of many unheeded warnings to “smarten up”.

Tony wears pleated wool trousers in a medium gray more achromatic than his top layers. They are  finished on the bottoms with turn-ups (cuffs) and have belt loops for his black leather belt that coordinates with his black leather derby shoes.

Given the context—the last episode featured Thanksgiving, the following episode is set at Christmas—we can deduce that “The Telltale Moozadell” is set sometime in December, a month that plunges north Jersey into wintry climates and thus calling for the outer layer of a warm topcoat as Tony is briefly seen wearing when he arrives at the gambling den.

This black wool knee-length coat also made an appearance earlier in the episode when Tony wears it for his memorable zoo trip-and-tryst with Gloria. The raglan-sleeve coat buttons to the neck where there is a turndown, shirt-style collar rather than the suit-like notch or peak lapels of a Chesterfield-style overcoat.

The kind of parking spot you only get in movies and TV shows…

Tony’s full complement of gold jewelry includes his wedding ring and the pinky ring he wears on his right hand with diamond and ruby stones. On his right wrist, he wears his usual gold chain-link bracelet.

On his left wrist, Tony wears his standard 18-karat yellow gold Rolex Day-Date ref. 18238 “President”, which takes its moniker from its distinctive link bracelet. This chronometer has Roman numerals around the “champagne” gold dial with a long display for the day of the week at the top and a date window at 3:00.

What to Imbibe

Had too much Jameson this weekend? Give your palette a rest by taking it easier with a glass of nice Tuscan red wine, perhaps the Soprano family’s preferred chianti: Ruffino Riserva Ducale.

Tony and his cohorts enjoy multiple glasses of Ruffino in “Another Toothpick” (Episode 3.05).

Per the Ruffino winery, “this wine offers complex aromas of cherry, violet, tobacco, white pepper and a touch of flint. On the palate, it is well-balanced, with velvety tannins, firm acidity and a lingering finish of rosemary.”

Ruffino transcends character on The Sopranos and, from the time it is first spotted on screen in the hands of Carmela (Edie Falco) and her sister-in-law Janice (Aida Turturro) in “Do Not Resuscitate” (Episode 2.02), the easily identifiable Riserva Ducale Chianti Classico can be seen drank by everyone from New Jersey and New York mobsters and their families to even decidedly non-OC characters like Dr. Melfi and the suburbanite Larry Arthur in “Bust Out” (Episode 2.10).

James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano on The Sopranos (Episode 3.09: “The Telltale Moozadell”)

How to Get the Look

Tony Soprano can’t hide his newfound happiness under his layers of gray, a monochromatic and quietly elegant outfit that—jewelry aside—avoids some of the excesses that befall certain gangsters on The Sopranos when dressing up in coat and tie.

• Dark gray flannel single-breasted 3-button sport jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 4-button cuffs, and ventless back
• Gray shirt with point collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Black with hairline-striped gray “uphill” diagonal stripes silk tie
• Gray wool pleated trousers with turn-ups/cuffs
• Black leather belt with squared steel single-prong buckle
• Black calf leather derby shoes
• Black dress socks
• Black wool winter topcoat
• White ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt
• Rolex President Day-Date 18238 yellow gold wristwatch
• Gold open-link chain bracelet
• Gold pinky ring with ruby and diamond stones
• Gold open-link chain necklace with round St. Jerome pendant

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the entire series.

The Quote

Sometimes you gotta get away and stop and smell the gorilla shit.

Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Vitals

Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button, reverse-aging adventurer and family man

New Orleans, Fall 1967

Film: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Release Date: December 25, 2008
Director: David Fincher
Costume Designer: Jacqueline West

Background

Now that spring is here, venturing outside will require not a heavy wool coat but instead some intentional lightweight layering, a casual sartorial approach mastered by Steve McQueen in the ’60s and revived with Jacqueline West’s thoughtful costume design in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The premise of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is very curious indeed, following the story of a man born on Armistice Day 1918 with the appearance of an octogenarian who ages in reverse over the course of the 20th century. Early in his youth, the titular Benjamin makes the acquaintance of Daisy, a young girl who—like the rest of us—ages in the traditional fashion. The two reconnect several times over the following decades, but it isn’t until the early 1960s when Benjamin (Brad Pitt) and Daisy (Cate Blanchett)—now each in their 40s—are able to establish a lasting connection.

What’d He Wear?

Thanks to the Oscar-winning makeup work of Greg Cannom and the Oscar-winning visual effects team of Eric Barba, Steve Preeg, Burt Dalton, and Craig Barron, Brad Pitt was able to play the de-aging Benjamin Button from his birth as an 84-year-old man until well into the character’s teens.

Costume designer Jacqueline West was deservedly nominated for an Academy Award recognizing her work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, bringing each decade to life and meeting the costuming challenge of dressing Benjamin to be “both old and young at once,” as she told Variety in 2008.”I used Gary Cooper in the ’40s for my inspiration, Marlon Brando in the ’50s, Steve McQueen in the ’60s.”

The fashions of these latter sequences set in the 1960s are an ideal fit for Pitt as:

• Pitt—who was 45 years old at the time of the movie’s release—finally overlaps with the actual presented age of his character
• The physical and attitude similarities between the two actors mean McQueen’s timeless casual looks of the ’60s translate well for Pitt
• Benjamin Button himself is happiest and most at ease during this period

…thus the character looks the most fashionable and at ease when wearing the McQueen-inspired outfits that West designed.

The Carmel Cardigan

Perhaps the most obvious of the McQueen-inspired outfits is the navy shawl-collar cardigan, plain white T-shirt, and cream jeans, an ensemble famously photographed by William Claxton when he and his wife Peggy accompanied Steve and Neile on a road trip to Carmel in 1964. (Read more about this original outfit here.)

Steve and Neile at Carmel, 1964, photographed by William Claxton.

Jacqueline West designed a similar outfit for Brad Pitt’s Benjamin Button to wear when visiting Daisy in her dance studio, a scene set in the fall of 1967. Like McQueen, Benjamin wears a dark blue shawl-collar cardigan over a white undershirt and cream jeans.

Benjamin’s shoes remain off-camera during the scene, but it’s possible that he was wearing similar footwear as McQueen’s famous crepe-soled Hutton Original Playboy in brown suede.

Benjamin watches Daisy in her studio.

Benjamin’s heavy ribbed-knit wool cardigan appears charcoal blue on screen, a touch darker than the vivid navy blue worn by McQueen on his trip up the coast. It also differs with its raglan sleeves and five dark blue plastic sew-through buttons as opposed to the six woven leather buttons of McQueen’s sweater. Though the cardigan has patch pockets (like McQueen’s), Benjamin prefers to slip his hands into his pant pockets.

Underneath, Benjamin wears a plain white T-shirt in lightweight cotton, likely short-sleeved like the undershirts he wears in other scenes set across the decade.

Benjamin wears cream-colored casual pants with a softness that suggests Bedford cords like McQueen wore for the famous Carmel road trip. Like jeans, these trousers have frogmouth-style front pockets and patch pockets in the back.

The Cooler King

Five years earlier in 1962, we see Benjamin returning to his mother Queenie’s residence in New Orleans after spending the better part of a decade living the life of a swinging bachelor. The return reunites him with Daisy, eight years after she had brushed him off in Paris while recuperating from an accident.

Benjamin arrives via motorcycle wearing an outfit evoking McQueen’s most famous motorcycle-riding role, that of downed U.S. Army Air Forces fighter pilot Hilts in The Great Escape, who spends his days in Stalag Luft III wearing a brown leather A-2 flight jacket, cut-off raglan-sleeve sweatshirt, chinos, and tan boots.

McQueen as Hilts in The Great Escape (1963)

Though Benjamin Button saw action during World War II, he was never officially in the service of the U.S. military so it makes sense that he wouldn’t have an original A-2 flight jacket but instead a similar jacket, one of three unique styles custom-made by Belstaff for the production.

Benjamin’s dark brown leather Belstaff blouson does share many stylistic similarities with the A-2 including its shirt-style collar, zip-front with covered fly, epaulettes, flapped patch pockets with snap closure, and ribbed-knit hem and cuffs.

Benjamin’s shirt removes any doubt that his style is McQueen-inspired as the unique faded sweatshirt with its raglan sleeves cut off at the elbows is straight out of The Great Escape, though Benjamin’s appears to be a more faded taupe cotton than the navy blue worn by Captain Hilts.

Benjamin gets an enticing offer from Daisy.

Underneath the sweatshirt, Benjamin wears a white ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt, tucked into a pair of khaki flat front chinos. The chinos have straight pockets along the side seams, jetted back pockets, plain-hemmed bottoms, and belt loops, though—like Hilts—he foregoes actually wearing a belt.

…and takes her up on it.

Benjamin wears tan leather boots with dark soles, made from a smoother leather than Hilts’ roughout service boots.

A Harrington Jacket…

Steve McQueen, photographed by William Claxton, 1964.

The Baracuta G9 was a staple of Steve McQueen’s casual style, in both navy blue and a light stone color, with the brand’s signature tartan lining. The Baracuta story began in the 1930s when the British company introduced its G9 zip-front golf jacket with its two-button standing collar, ribbed cuffs and hem, and slanted pockets with single-button flaps. Its famous wearers also included Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. When Ryan O’Neal’s character Rodney Harrington donned the jacket on Peyton’s Place, the popular garment was renamed the “Harrington jacket”.

Benjamin Button wears a beige Harrington-style jacket several times on screen, most notably when he and Daisy return from their sailing trip in the Florida Keys in 1963 only to learn that Queenie has died. Though it has the classic two-button collar and zip front of the Baracuta, Benjamin’s windbreaker lacks the ribbed-knit hem and cuffs, instead with single-button pointed tab wrist closures.

Like McQueen, Benjamin layers this zip-up jacket over a white shirt and cream sweater, though the white shirt is another short-sleeved undershirt rather than the button-down collar shirt that the actor wore in this 1964 photo by William Claxton.

Benjamin finds his childhood home sadly empty.

Listings on The Golden Closet, Heritage Auctions, and Julien’s Live have identified Benjamin’s cream yellow sweater as a vintage 1960s piece in 100% cashmere from Royal Prince. It has long set-in sleeves and a deep V-neck that shows the top of his white crew-neck T-shirt.

Benjamin wears a few pairs of trousers with this jacket, wearing the same cream jeans with the pale yellow sweater. For a brief vignette on his silver-blue Triumph, he wears a more rugged pair of worn blue denim jeans, tan roughout lace-up boots, and mustard leather gloves.

Inset: Steve and Neile, photographed by John Dominis for the July 12, 1963, cover of LIFE magazine.
Full photo: Brad and Cate channel the famous couple in a production photo from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

…and a Bullitt-like Jacket

Less of a direct visual reference to Steve McQueen, Benjamin still recalls one of the actor’s most iconic outfits when he attends his mother’s funeral in 1963 while wearing an earthy sport jacket over a dark turtleneck, just as McQueen did when he played the smooth San Francisco police lieutenant Frank Bullitt.

McQueen as the titular police lieutenant in Bullitt (1968)

Benjamin’s dark brown plaid sport jacket has slim notch lapels and is worn over a charcoal knit sweater with a narrow rollneck.

Benjamin and Daisy at Queenie’s funeral.

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

How to Get the Look

In honor of what would have been Steve McQueen’s 89th birthday this weekend (March 24), take a page from Brad Pitt’s playbook as Benjamin Button and find a way to incorporate the King of Cool’s fashion sense into a spring-friendly weekend casual outfit… perhaps starting with the famous “Carmel cardigan.”

• Charcoal-blue heavy ribbed-knit wool five-button shawl-collar cardigan sweater
• White lightweight cotton crew-neck short-sleeve T-shirt
• Cream “Bedford cord” jeans with belt loops, front pockets, patch back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Tan leather lace-up boots

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story.

The Quote

We finally caught up with each other.

Richard Attenborough, Steve McQueen, Nigel Stock, and Gordon Jackson in The Great Escape (1963)

Today marks the 75th anniversary of “the great escape”, the mass breakout of allied airmen from the Luftwaffe-operated Stalag Luft III in Sagan-Silesia—now Zagan—in Poland on March 24, 1944. Of the 76 men who escaped, only three made it to freedom and 50 of the group were murdered by the Nazis in retaliation.

Film: The Great Escape
Release Date: July 4, 1963
Director: John Sturges
Wardrobe Credit: Bert Henrikson

Paul Brickhill, one of the Allied officers who had worked on the various tunnels used for the escape, wrote the definitive account of prison camp life, the famous March 1944 breakout, and the subsequent fallout in The Great Escape, published in 1950.

Thirteen years later, a star-studded cast reenacted the incident in The Great Escape, a now-classic war movie that dramatized this real-life story of heroism, humor, and tragedy.

Today’s post—coinciding both with the 75th anniversary of the escape and the 89th birthday of the film’s star Steve McQueen—examines the uniforms of the Allied airmen, sorted by each major character’s surname. Luckily for the escapees, service uniforms and battle dress during World War II were close enough to the cut of civilian suits that they could be converted with relative ease by the camp’s tailor Tommy Guest, renamed Griffith for the film character played by Robert Desmond.

Robert Desmond, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn, and Gordon Jackson in The Great Escape (1963). Desmond played Flying Officer Griffith, a fictionalized version of the real camp “tailor”, Tommy Guest.

Chapter 11 of The Great Escape includes some detail about the real-life “tailoring” operation at Stalag Luft III:

Tommy Guest also dispersed his tailors in rooms throughout the compound. Cloth was his main trouble. Mostly he took old uniforms to pieces and recut them along civilian lines. He got bits of cloth smuggled in from outside and sometimes used the heavy linings from old greatcoats. The only jackets and trousers ever issued in the compound came through the Red Cross, and they were either rough old Polish uniforms or the unlovely stuff they issued (and still do) to RAF “other ranks”—made of heavy serge. Guest had a couple of people shaving the serge nap off with razor blades to fine the cloth down, and then he dyed it—with beet-root juice, or a boot-polish solution, and once or twice in dyes made from the covers of books soaked in water.

He made himself a stock of paper patterns of various sizes by cutting them out of sheets of German newspaper. It greatly simplified the business of reshaping clothes. If he didn’t have time or cloth to make you a suit himself, he would—if he was in a very good mood—lend you his paper patterns. He usually did the cutting for the difficult suits himself.

And more from Chapter 14:

Guest’s tailors kept on working to the last day, and by that time they had hand-sewn nearly fifty complete suits; and most of them would have been a credit to some of the tailors I have met. They were mostly for the train travelers who had to look the part. A lot of the hardarsers were converting old uniforms. It didn’t matter so much if they looked as though they were wearing hand-me-downs. However smart they were when they left, they were going to look pretty scruffy after a few days’ trekking. Guest showed them how to shave the nap off the cloth and dye it, lent them his paper patterns, and gave them civilian-type buttons.

Note: I am not, by any means, an expert historian on the military or its uniforms. I wanted to write a comprehensive piece like this because little about the uniforms of The Great Escape—or British battle dress, in general—seems to live anywhere on the internet. I welcome any constructive feedback from anyone more knowledgable than me that would give this post greater historical accuracy and increased value to readers.

Eric Ashley-Pitt, RN

David McCallum as Lieutenant Commander Eric Ashley-Pitt in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by David McCallum

Nickname: “Dispersal”
Nationality: English

Based on: Peter “Hornblower” Fanshawe, Lieutenant Commander, RN

Service: Royal Navy (Fleet Air Arm)
Rank: Lieutenant Commander (OF-3)

Uniform: Royal Navy No. 5a

• Dark navy wool serge waist-length battle dress jacket with five black bakelite buttons, silver-toned waistband buckle-tab (right side), two button-down flapped chest pockets, epaulettes/shoulder straps (with gilt buttons), and single-button cuffs
  • Lieutenant Commander shoulder insignia
  • Fleet Air Arm wings patch
• French blue cotton shirt with spread collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Black silk tie
• Dark navy wool serge trousers with straight/on-seam side pockets, button-down flapped back-right pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Wide black leather belt with tall gunmetal single-prong buckle
• Black calf leather cap-toe two-eyelet derby shoes
• Black socks
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt
• Dark navy Fleet Air Arm officer’s cap
• Brass wristwatch with round white dial on russet brown leather strap

Lieutenant Commander Ashley-Pitt’s battle dress verges on anachronism as battle dress wasn’t introduced in the Royal Navy until 1943, and it’s hardly likely that the young officer who had reportedly been imprisoned long enough to establish a reputation for mastering the art of escape would be sporting such a recent version of the uniform. Army battle dress was authorized for RN use two years earlier in 1941, but Ashley-Pitt appears to be wearing the No. 5a battle dress developed in 1943 specifically for officers serving in the Fleet Air Arm air branch of the RN.

David McCallum as Lieutenant Commander Eric Ashley-Pitt in The Great Escape (1963)

See a historical example here and read more about RN officers’ uniforms during World War II at The Fedora Lounge.

Roger Bartlett, RAF

Richard Attenborough as Squadron Leader Roger “Big X” Bartlett in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Richard Attenborough

Nickname: “Big X”
Nationality: English

Based on: Roger Bushell (1910-1944), Squadron Leader, RAF

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Squadron Leader (OF-3)

Uniform: RAF War Service Dress

• Blue-gray wool serge RAF battle dress jacket with 5-button fly front, gunmetal-toned waistband buckle-tab (right side), two box-pleated chest pockets (with concealed-button scallop-flaps), epaulettes/shoulder straps, and single-button cuffs
  • RAF Squadron Leader shoulder insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) padded “wings” patch
  • Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) award ribbon
• Light gray cotton shirt with attached point collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Black tie
• Blue-gray wool serge flat front trousers with straight/on-seam side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather flying boots
• RAF peaked officer’s cap with blue-gray barathea wool cover and peak with gold-embroidered badge and black patent leather strap
• Tan gabardine knee-length trench coat with epaulettes/shoulder straps, hand pockets, waist sash, and belted cuffs
• Steel wristwatch with round white dial on drab leather strap
• Silver signet pinky ring

In The Great Escape, Paul Brickhill recalled that the real Squadron Leader Bushell, like his fictional counterpart, arrived at Stalag Luft III wearing “tattered old battle dress”, though he managed to smuggle in a gray civilian suit that he attempted to use during his previous escape

Richard Attenborough as Squadron Leader Roger “Big X” Bartlett in The Great Escape (1963)

A year and a half after his arrival, the real Bushell was again dressed in the gray civilian suit for yet another escape:

…Bushell, vivacious and bright-eyed, was talking gaily. A little too gaily. He looked very smart in the gray lounge suit that he’d saved from Prague, a black overcoat (an RAF coat dyed with boot polish), and a dark felt hat he had somehow scrounged through a contact. His papers described him as a French businessman, and, carrying a little attaché case filled with his kit, he really looked the part.

Colin Blythe, RAF

Donald Pleasance as Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Donald Pleasence

Nickname: “The Forger”
Nationality: English

Based on: Gilbert W. “Tim” Walenn (1916-1944), Flight Lieutenant, RN

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Flight Lieutenant

Uniform: “Austerity” pattern battledress (with mismatched trousers)

• Brown wool serge “Austerity pattern” battle dress jacket with 5-button non-fly front, buckle-tab waistband (right side), two pointed-flap chest pockets (with exposed buttons), epaulettes/shoulder straps, and single-button cuffs
  • RAF Flight Lieutenant shoulder insignia
• Sky blue end-on-end cotton shirt with spread collar, front placket, and button cuffs
• Black tie
• Dark navy wool serge double forward-pleated trousers with silver-toned buckle-tab side adjusters, side pockets, button-down flapped back-right pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• RAF peaked officer’s cap with blue-gray barathea wool cover and peak with gold-embroidered badge and black patent leather strap
• Steel wristwatch with black dial on dark brown leather strap

When Donald Pleasence who, by all accounts, had a countenance that served his surname, politely offered advice to director John Sturges, he was just as gently asked to keep his opinions to himself… until Sturges learned from another actor that Pleasence had served as an aircraft wireless operator with the Royal Air Force during World War II and actually spent time in Stalag Luft I, a German POW camp for airmen where he acted in plays to entertain his fellow Allied inmates. From that point forward, Sturges made a point to request Pleasence’s advice and input to ensure technical and historical accuracy.

A jacket purported to be Donald Pleasence’s screen-worn battle dress jacket (sans Blythe’s rank insignia and with box-pleated pockets like Mac’s jacket) was auctioned for $2,500 in December 2010. See it here!

Donald Pleasance as Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe in The Great Escape (1963)

Denis Cavendish, RAF

Denis Stock as Cavendish in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Nigel Stock

Nickname: “The Surveyor”
Nationality: English

Based on: unknown

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Flight Lieutenant (OF-2)

Uniform: 1949 pattern battle dress (anachronistic)

• Blue-gray ribbed-knit boat-neck long-sleeve jumper/sweater
• Ivory ribbed-knit scarf
• Brown wool serge “1949 pattern” forward-pleated battle dress trousers with belt loops, rear waistband buttons, flapped map pocket (left leg), two pointed-flap back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Cream cotton suspenders with tan leather hooks
• Black calf leather derby-laced ankle boots
• Light gray knit socks
• Blue-gray RAF field service forage/side cap with two gilt buttons

Flight Lieutenant Cavendish is among the more rakish interred airmen, preferring a wide ribbed-knit scarf as his primary outerwear instead of the brown battle dress jacket that he’s seen wearing on only one occasion when marching to camouflage the dispersal of tunnel sand on the compound.

His trousers appear to be from the 1949 pattern British battle dress, a slight anachronism evident by the details such as the combination of belt loops and exposed buttons on the pocket flaps. The three belt loops had been a part of 1937 pattern BD but was discontinued in 1940 when the new pattern introduced exposed buttons on the pocket flaps. It wasn’t until the post-WWII 1949 pattern that both belt loops and exposed pocket-flap buttons were a feature.

Nigel Stock as Flight Lieutenant Denis Cavendish in The Great Escape (1963)

Willie Dickes, RAF

John Leyton as Flight Lieutenant Willie Dickes in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by John Leyton

Nickname: “The Tunnel King”
Nationality: English

Based on: Wally Floody (1918-1989), Flight Lieutenant, RCAF, and consultant on The Great Escape, and Jens Müller (1917-1999), RAF, No. 331 (Norwegian) Squadron

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Flight Lieutenant (OF-2)

Uniform: “Austerity” pattern battledress

• Brown wool serge “Austerity pattern” battle dress jacket with 5-button non-fly front, buckle-tab waistband (right side), two pointed-flap chest pockets (with exposed buttons), epaulettes/shoulder straps, and single-button cuffs
  • RAF Flight Lieutenant shoulder insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) padded “wings” patch
• Cream wool sweater with ribbed-knit turtleneck (torn into a v-neck standing collar), cuffs, and hem
• Sky blue end-on-end cotton collarless shirt with front placket and button cuffs
• Beige cotton long-sleeved henley undershirt
• Brown wool serge “Austerity pattern” battle dress trousers with long-rise fitted waistband (no belt loops), straight/on-seam side pockets, pleated dressing pocket (right waist with small buttoned flap), flapped map pocket (left leg), pointed-flap back-right pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black leather two-eyelet chukka boots
• Ivory socks

Read more about Canadian airman Wally Floody, one of the real-life Stalag Luft III “tunnel kings”, and his work as a consultant on The Great Escape here.

John Leyton and Charles Bronson in The Great Escape (1963)

Lt. Goff, USAAF

Jud Taylor as 2nd Lt. Goff in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Jud Taylor

Nickname: unknown
Nationality: American

Based on: unknown

Service: United States Army Air Forces
Rank: Second Lieutenant (OF-1)

Uniform: U.S. Army Service Uniform, Class B (modified)

• Brown wool five-button topcoat with epaulettes, straight flapped side pockets, and cuffed sleeves
  • Gold bars denoting second lieutenant rank on both epaulettes
• Chocolate brown (olive drab #51, dark shade) wool gabardine Class B service uniform shirt with point collar, front placket, two chest pockets (with button-down scalloped flaps), button cuffs, and pointed back yoke
  • Gold bars denoting second lieutenant rank on both collar leafs
  • USAAF pilot wings on left chest pocket flap
• Chocolate brown (olive drab #51, dark shade) wool gabardine Class B flat front trousers with belt loops, straight/on-seam side pockets, back pockets (with button-down pointed flaps), and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Khaki cotton web belt with brass slider buckle
• Russet brown calf leather “low quarter” derby shoes
• Light gray socks
• Brown ribbed-knit wool mechanic’s watch cap, tied together on top
  • Gold bar denoting second lieutenant rank

Of the two USAAF officers featured in camp, only Lieutenant Goff wears the more traditional elements of the U.S. Army uniform as Hilts instead wears his flight jacket with a cut-off sweatshirt and chinos of no discernible military issue.

Steve McQueen and Jud Taylor in The Great Escape (1963)

Jud Taylor would later direct The Great Escape II: The Untold Story (1988), a mostly fictionalized made-for-TV movie about real-life escapee Major John Dodge, aka “the Artful Dodger” (Christopher Reeve) and his special task force hunting down the Nazis who executed the 50. It also stars Donald Pleasance, this time as an SS officer.

Fg Off Haynes, RAF

Lawrence Montaigne as Flying Officer Haynes in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Lawrence Montaigne

Nickname: “Diversions”
Nationality: Canadian

Based on: Paweł “Peter” Tobolski (1906-1944), Flying Officer, RAF, No. 301 Polish Bomber Squadron

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Flying Officer (OF-1)

Uniform: RAF No. 1 Service Dress (with mismatched trousers)

• Blue-gray wool serge RAF No. 1 Service Dress single-breasted 4-button jacket with double-prong belt, box-pleated chest pockets (with scalloped 1-button flaps), bellows hip pockets (with rectangular 1-button flaps), and single vent
  • RAF Flying Officer sleeve insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) padded “wings” patch
  • “Canada” shoulder patches
• Light blue cotton pullover shirt with spread collar, front half-placket, two flapped chest pockets, and button cuffs
• Gray wool RAF “frock” sweater with wide standing collar and ribbed-knit cuffs and hem
• Light slate-blue ribbed-knit wool scarf with frayed ends
• Brown wool serge “Austerity pattern” battle dress trousers with long-rise fitted waistband (no belt loops), straight/on-seam side pockets, pleated dressing pocket (right waist with small buttoned flap), flapped map pocket (left leg), pointed-flap back-right pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather derby-laced ankle boots
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt

As the only major escapee from this list to be caught wearing a full German uniform, Haynes would have surely been executed for espionage rather than treated as an enemy combatant.

Though primarily a background character, Haynes serves up lewks in Stalag Luft III: first, casually rocking the blue-gray RAF “frock” sweater in a cabin, then dangerously sporting a camp-made Luftwaffe uniform for the actual escape.

In The Great Escape, Paul Brickhill recalls an incident from the night of the escape that illustrates just how accurate Tobolski’s camp-made Luftwaffe uniform was while Squadron Leader David Torrens was ushering the potential escapees into hut 104:

About a quarter to eight, Torrens had his bad moment. The door of 104 opened and he saw a German unteroffiizier walk in and stride down toward him, jackboots clumping heavily on the boards… He had a shattering, sick feeling that everything was lost, and then he saw it was Tobolski, the Pole.

A controller had forgotten to warn him that Tobolski was going as a German, in one of Tommy Guest’s home-made uniforms. The uniform was a terrifyingly good imitation, with all the right swastikas and eagles and badges on it. If you compared it with a German uniform by daylight, you could see that the color was a shade bluer than German gray.

Robert Hendley, RAF

James Garner as Flight Lieutenant Robert Hendley in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by James Garner

Nickname: “The Scrounger”
Nationality: American

Based on: NAME

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Flight Lieutenant (OF-2)

Uniform: RAF No. 1 Service Dress

• Blue-gray wool serge RAF No. 1 Service Dress single-breasted 4-button jacket with double-prong belt, box-pleated chest pockets (with scalloped 1-button flaps), bellows hip pockets (with rectangular 1-button flaps), and single vent
  • RAF Flight Lieutenant sleeve insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) padded “wings” patch
  • Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) award ribbon
  • “U.S.A.” shoulder patches
• Ivory ribbed-knit wool turtleneck Royal Navy submariner’s sweater with long set-in sleeves
• Blue-gray wool serge RAF No. 1 Service Dress double forward-pleated trousers with fitted waistband, straight/on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black RAF 1936 pattern flying boots with plain toe and buckle-tab strap around uppers
• White ribbed-knit wool knee-high socks
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt
• RAF peaked officer’s cap with blue-gray barathea wool cover and peak with gold-embroidered badge and black patent leather strap
• Gold chain-link ID bracelet
• Steel military-style “W.W.W.” watch with round black dial on drab pigskin strap

Read more about Hendley’s dashing service uniform here.

James Garner as Flight Lieutenant Robert Hendley in The Great Escape (1963)

Virgil Hilts, USAAF

Steve McQueen as Captain Virgil Hilts in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Steve McQueen

Nickname: “The Cooler King”
Nationality: American

Based on: Several American officers, including Major John Dodge (“the Artful Dodger”), Major Davy “Tokyo” Jones, and RCAF Flight Lieutenant William Ash, among others.

Service: United States Army Air Forces
Rank: Captain (OF-2)

Uniform: USAAF A-2 flight jacket

• Dark brown leather Type A-2 flight jacket with zip front, epaulettes, flapped hip pockets, ribbed-knit cuffs and waist hem, and military sleeve patch
• Slate blue heavy-duty cotton sweatshirt with cut-off raglan sleeves
• Light khaki chino-cloth flat front trousers with belt loops, slanted side pockets, flapped right rear pocket, jetted left rear pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Tan roughout leather M-43 lace-up service boots
• Light gray ribbed socks
• Thick silver ring, worn on left ring finger
• Rolex Speedking wristwatch with a stainless steel case, black dial, and khaki strap
• Thin gold necklace with round St. Christopher medallion

Read more about Hilts’ dressed-down wardrobe here. You can also find the actual shirt by Western Costume Co. that McQueen and his stuntman Bud Ekins wore on screen here.

Steve McQueen as Captain Virgil Hilts in The Great Escape (1963)

Archibald Ives, RAF

Angus Lennie as Flying Officer Archibald Ives in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Angus Lennie

Nickname: “The Mole”
Nationality: Scottish

Based on: J.B. “Jimmy” Kiddell (d. 1943), Acting Sub-Lieutenant, RN, and Henry “Piglet” Lamond (1915-2009), Flight Lieutenant (retired as Wing Commander), RAF

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Flying Officer (OF-1)

Uniform: 1937 pattern battle dress (with mismatched trousers)

• Brown wool serge “1937 pattern” battle dress jacket with 5-button covered-fly front, buckle-tab waistband (right side), two box-pleated chest pockets (with button-down pointed flaps), epaulettes/shoulder straps, and single-button cuffs
  • RAF Flying Officer sleeve insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) half-brevet single-wing Air Gunner (AG) patch
• Brick red knit sweater vest
• Beige cotton long-sleeved henley undershirt
• Brown horizontal-ribbed knit scarf
• Blue-gray wool serge flat front trousers with straight/on-seam side pockets, jetted button-through back-right pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather derby-laced ankle boots
• Ivory socks
• Blue-gray RAF field service forage/side cap with two gilt buttons

Angus Lennie as Flying Officer Archibald Ives in The Great Escape (1963)

Andrew MacDonald, RAF

Gordon Jackson as Flight Lieutenant Andrew “Mac” Macdonald in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Gordon Jackson

Nickname: “Intelligence”
Nationality: Scottish

Based on: George Harsh, Jr. (1909-1980), Flight Lieutenant, RCAF

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Flight Lieutenant (OF-2)

Uniform: 1937 pattern battle dress

• Brown wool serge “1937 pattern” battle dress jacket with 5-button covered-fly front, buckle-tab waistband (right side), two box-pleated chest pockets (with button-down pointed flaps), epaulettes/shoulder straps, and single-button cuffs
  • RAF Flight Lieutenant sleeve insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) half-brevet single-wing Navigator (N) patch
• Beige cotton long-sleeved henley undershirt
• Olive green knit V-neck sweater with long set-in sleeves
• Olive drab napped wool scarf
• Blue-gray wool serge flat front trousers with straight/on-seam side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather oxford shoes
• White socks
• White cotton crew-neck short-sleeve undershirt
• Blue-gray RAF field service forage/side cap with two gilt buttons

Gordon Jackson as Flight Lieutenant Andrew “Mac” Macdonald in The Great Escape (1963)

Gp Capt Ramsey, RAF

James Donald as Group Captain Ramsey in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by James Donald

Nickname: “The SBO”
Nationality: English

Based on: Herbert Massey (1898-1976), Air Commodore, RAF

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Group Captain (OF-5)

Uniform: RAF No. 1 Service Dress

• Blue-gray wool serge RAF No. 1 Service Dress single-breasted 4-button jacket with double-prong belt, box-pleated chest pockets (with scalloped 1-button flaps), bellows hip pockets (with rectangular 1-button flaps), single vent, and dark navy sleeve-edge trim
  • RAF Group Captain sleeve insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) padded “wings” patch
  • Service/award ribbons
    • Top row: Distinguished Service Order, Military Cross
    • Bottom row (worn in reverse order): Victory Medal, British War Medal, 1914-15 Star
• Sky blue cotton dress shirt with detachable point collar (with brass collar stud), front placket, MORE
• Dark navy blue tie
• Blue-gray wool serge RAF No. 1 Service Dress double forward-pleated trousers with fitted waistband, straight/on-seam side pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather oxford shoes
• Black socks
• RAF peaked officer’s cap with blue-gray barathea wool cover with gold-embroidered badge, black patent leather strap, and gold wire oak-leaf “scrambled egg” braiding on black patent leather peak
• Irvin flying jacket in dark brown sheepskin leather
• Brown ribbed-knit wool scarf

The most awarded—and highest ranked—officer in camp, Group Captain Ramsey’s campaign and award ribbons indicate service dating back to the early years of World War I, per his lower row of ribbons. However, he wears his campaign medals in the reverse order of wear; the colorful Victory Medal and the red, white, and blue 1914-15 Star should swap places.

James Donald as Group Captain Ramsey in The Great Escape (1963)

Louis Sedgwick, RAAF

James Coburn as Louis Sedgwick in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by James Coburn

Nickname: “The Manufacturer”
Nationality: Australian

Based on: Johnny Travis, RAF, and Bram “Bob” van der Stok (1915-1993), Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Service: Royal Australian Air Force
Rank: Flying Officer (OF-1)

Uniform: RAF War Service Dress (with mismatched trousers)

• Navy blue wool serge RAF battle dress jacket with 5-button fly front, gunmetal-toned waistband buckle-tab (right side), two box-pleated chest pockets (with concealed-button scallop-flaps), epaulettes/shoulder straps, and single-button cuffs
• Red heavy ribbed-knit wool turtleneck sweater
• Gray collarless short-sleeved button-up shirt with white collar band
• Brown wool serge “1949 pattern” forward-pleated battle dress trousers with belt loops, rear waistband buttons, flapped map pocket (left leg), two pointed-flap back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather derby-laced ankle boots
• Light gray knit socks
• Dark navy watch cap

Sedgwick’s successful flight to freedom was clearly based on the actual escape of Bram van der Stok, a Stalag Luft III prisoner and the most celebrated aviator in Dutch history. “Van Der Stok, Number 18 out of the tunnel, had traveled alone, wearing a dark-blue Australian Air Force greatcoat, Dutch naval trousers, and a beret,” describes Paul Brickhill in Chapter 21 of The Great Escape. Sedgwick’s escape attire diverts from his real-life counterpart, but it’s significant that the Dutchman wore an Australian Air Force greatcoat for his escape and his cinematic counterpart’s nationality was changed to Australian.

James Coburn and Robert Desmond, who played the “tailor” Griffith, in The Great Escape (1963)

Danny Velinski, RAF

Charles Bronson as Flight Lieutenant Danny Velinski in The Great Escape (1963)

portrayed by Charles Bronson

Nickname: “The Tunnel King”
Nationality: Polish

Based on: Stanisław Z. “Danny” Król (1916-1944), Flying Officer, RAF; Per Bergsland (1918-1992), Sergeant, RAF; and Wally Floody (1918-1989), Flight Lieutenant, RCAF, and consultant on The Great Escape

Service: Royal Air Force
Rank: Flight Lieutenant (OF-2)

Uniform: RAF War Service Dress

• Blue-gray wool serge RAF battle dress jacket with 5-button fly front, gunmetal-toned waistband buckle-tab (right side), two box-pleated chest pockets (with concealed-button scallop-flaps), epaulettes/shoulder straps, and single-button cuffs
  • RAF Flight Lieutenant shoulder insignia
  • Royal Air Force (RAF) padded “wings” patch
  • Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and Conspicuous Gallantry Medal (CGM) award ribbons
• Gray knit wool sweater with gray-blue V-neck striping, set-in long sleeves with ribbed-knit, triple gray-blue striped cuffs, and burgundy sewn-on patches
• Blue-gray wool serge flat front trousers with straight/on-seam side pockets and plain-hemmed bottoms
• Black calf leather boots
• White socks
• Olive drab sleeveless A-shirt/undershirt
• Beige long underwear/long johns pants

Charles Bronson and John Leyton in The Great Escape (1963)

Dedicated to the Fifty:

Like the film itself, this post is dedicated to the 50 allied airmen—consisting of five Australians, one Belgian, 21 British, six Canadians, one Czechoslovakian, one Frenchman, one Greek, one Lithuanian, two New Zealanders, two Norwegians, six Polish, and three South Africans—who were murdered in the weeks following the escape between March 29 and April 12, 1944:

Roger Bushell (1910-1944)
Squadron Leader
RAF

Henry J. Birkland
Flying Officer, RAF

E. Gordon Brettell
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Leslie G. “Johnny” Bull
Squadron Leader, RAF

Roger J. Bushell
Squadron Leader, RAF

Michael J. Casey
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

James Catanach
Squadron Leader, RAAF

Arnold G. Christiansen
Pilot Officer, RAF

Dennis H. Cochran
Flying Officer, RAF

Ian E.K.P. Cross
Squadron Leader, RAF

Halldor Espelid
Lieutenant, RAF, No. 331 (Norwegian) Squadron

Brian H. Evans
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Nils Jørgen Fuglesang
Lieutenant, RAF, No. 332 (Norwegian) Squadron

Johannes S. Gouws
Lieutenant, SAAF

William J. Grisman
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

The Fifty. (Source: Daily Mail)

Alastair D.M. Gunn
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Albert H. Hake
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Charles P. Hall
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Anthony R.H. Hayter
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Edgar S. Humphreys
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Gordon A. Kidder
Flying Officer, RAF

Reginald V. Kierath
Flight Lieutenant, RAAF

Antoni Kiewnarski
Flight Lieutenant, RAF, No. 305 Polish Bomber Squadron

Thomas G. Kirby-Green
Squadron Leader, RAF

Włodzimierz Kolanowski
Flying Officer, RAF, No. 301 Polish Bomber Squadron

Stanisław Z. “Danny” Król
Flying Officer, RAF

Patrick W. Langford
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Tom Leigh
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

James L.R. Long
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Romualdas “Romas” Marcinkus
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Clement A.N. “Neville” McGarr
Lieutenant, SAAF

George E. McGill
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Harold J. Milford
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Cast members James Coburn and Charles Bronson are joined by Wally Floody on the set of The Great Escape, 1962. Floody was one of the real-life Stalag Luft III tunnel diggers. He survived the war and, almost 20 years after the escape, assisted the filmmakers as a technical advisor.
Source: Catherine Floody, via Beach Metro Community News

Jerzy Mondschein
Flying Officer, RAF, No. 304 Polish Bomber Squadron

Kazimierz Pawluk
Flying Officer, RAF, No. 305 Polish Bomber Squadron

Henri A. Picard
Flight Lieutenant, RAF, No. 350 (Belgian) Squadron

John Pohe
Flying Officer, RAF

Bernard W. M. Scheidhauer
Lieutenant, RAF

Sotiris Skanzikas
Pilot Officer, RAF, No. 336 (Greek) Squadron

Rupert J. Stevens
Lieutenant, SAAF

Robert C. Stewart
Flying Officer, RAF

John Gifford Stower
Flying Officer, RAF

Denys O. Street
Flying Officer, RAF

Cyril D. Swain
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Paweł “Peter” Tobolski
Flying Officer, RAF, No. 301 Polish Bomber Squadron

Ernst Valenta
Flight Lieutenant, RAF, No. 311 (Czechoslovak) Squadron

Gilbert W. “Tim” Walenn
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

James C. Wernham
Flight Lieutenant, RCAF

George W. Wiley
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

John E.A. Williams
Squadron Leader, RAAF

John F. Williams
Flight Lieutenant, RAF

Paul Brickhill’s The Great Escape noted that, once all interred at Stalag Luft III heard the news of the fifty murdered airmen, they sewed black diamonds on their sleeve in remembrance.

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Gordon Jackson, Donald Pleasance, and Richard Attenborough in The Great Escape (1963)

Check out the movie and original 1950 book by Paul Brickhill, one of the English officers who had assisted with the tunnels.

Brickhill’s book includes fascinating stories about the escape, including many of sartorial interest such as this excerpt from Chapter 19, including the details of RAF Flight Lieutenant Henry “Johnny” Marshall’s capture by the Germans and how they tried to use his suit against him to prove he was a spy in civilian wear rather than an officer in a converted uniform; proving that it was a uniform saved his life:

The same with his clothes. [Marshall] was wearing one of Tommy Guest’s suits, and it was one of Guest’s best efforts, dyed dark gray, and it had been topped off by a ski cap till they took his cap away.

“Of course you realize,” said the interpreter, “you can be shot as a spy for wearing civilian clothes around Germany.”

“Oh, this is only a uniform I changed about,” Marshall said, beginning to feel uncomfortable. “See, I recut it, put boot polish on it, and changed the buttons.”

“That’s a civilian suit,” the interpreter said.

Marshall denied it again and tried to show where he had altered it. “Bring in someone who knows about cloth, and they’ll tell you it isn’t a proper suit.”

The interrogator pressed a button on his desk, and his stenographer walked through the door from an adjoining room. The brusque man behind the desk pointed to Marshall and spoke to her in German, telling her, apparently, to examine Marshall’s clothes. She stood in front of Marshall diffidently rubbing the cloth of his coat between bony fingers and looking at the seams inside. She was a gaunt, unhappy-looking woman, nudging the forty mark, with untidy gray hair and long features like a tired horse.

Covered by her head from the interrogator, Marshall smiled into her eyes, and faintly surprised, she smiled back. Turning to the man behind the desk, she said they were not proper civilian clothes but—demonstrating with her fingers—had seams where one usually found them on uniforms. She left the room, and Marshall answered more questions, but his diarrhea of words exasperated the German so much that he slapped the desk with his hand and called the guard from outside, and Marshall was taken back to the jail.

The Quote

Group Captain Ramsey: Roger’s idea was to get back at the enemy the hardest way he could, mess up the works. From what we’ve heard here, I think he did exactly that.