James Cromwell as Dudley Smith in L.A. Confidential (1997)
Vitals
James Cromwell as Dudley Smith, charismatic LAPD police captain
Los Angeles, Spring 1953
Film: L.A. Confidential
Release Date: September 19, 1997
Director: Curtis Hanson
Costume Designer: Ruth Myers
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy birthday to James Cromwell, the prolific actor and activist born January 27, 1940 with a career spanning a half-century across the stage and screen. Two years after his first Academy Award nomination for a starring role in Babe (“That’ll do, pig”), Cromwell brought his dignified presence and talents to the ensemble cast of L.A. Confidential as Dudley Smith, the 1950s police captain with a charming brogue and easygoing demeanor that may mask something more sinister.
(I did warn about spoilers, right?)
James Ellroy’s novel L.A. Confidential establishes from the first chapter that Dudley is using his LAPD position to leverage power in the City of Angels’ heroin racket, but the cinematic adaptation waits until the end of the second act to deliver the news with a literal bang as Dudley’s villainy becomes apparent when he shockingly shoots Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), a cynical detective who ironically turns to Dudley as one of the few people he believes he can trust with evidence of a drug conspiracy that links back to a months-old massacre in a local diner.
The next morning, after Dudley reports Trashcan Jack’s uh, unsolved, murder to the rest of the LAPD, he pulls aside Ed Exley (Guy Pearce), an unpopular and ambitious lieutenant with whom Vincennes had been quietly cooperating on trying to uncover the conspiracy. Though Dudley had served as something of a mentor to Ed through the first two acts of L.A. Confidential, he accidentally tips his hand to his own complicity when he asks Ed about a “tip” from Jack: Rollo Tomassi, the colorful name that Ed had given to the anonymous purse-snatcher who killed his cop father—or, as Ed later succinctly explains to Dudley—”the guy who gets away with it.”
What’d He Wear?
The earthy neutrals and soft fabrics of Dudley’s tailored costumes work with his demeanor and gentle brogue to disguise his inner darkness, a quality evident from the first chapter of the novel but unclear until the film’s final act.
Through the first part of L.A. Confidential, Dudley rotates between a taupe glen plaid jacket, a light brown double-breasted suit, and a brown tweed sports coat.
From the press conference announcing Jack Vincennes’ murder to when he confronts Ed and a wounded Bud White (Russell Crowe) during a gunfight at the Victory Motel, Dudley wears a warm gray suit with a subtle light pinstripe—the most businesslike of his tailored apparel. This suit follows the same cut as the light-brown double-breasted suit he wore earlier in the chief’s office, distinguished by a low-slung double-breasted jacket with a closely spaced 4×1-button stance. It’s a curious style to be chosen for the 6’7″ Cromwell, as Matt Spaiser wrote for Bond Suits that “because the 4×1 has fewer buttons than the 6×2, it can be more flattering on shorter men because it breaks up the body less.”
The jacket’s full-bellied peak lapels have slanted gorges, accentuated by the fact that Dudley regularly wears his double-breasted jackets fully open, which doesn’t pull the lapels together to take the intended shape than if Dudley wore his jacket closed. While a fastened double-breasted jacket can look especially neat or fastidious, Dudley wearing his double-breasted jacket open serves the aesthetic purpose of making him look more laidback (even with the somewhat fussy tie chain more visible as a result) while also allowing him quicker access to his holstered sidearm.
Tailored with then-fashionable straight, wide shoulders and a ventless back, the jacket also has three-button cuffs, straight jetted hip pockets, and a welted breast pocket that Dudley dresses with a square-folded white pocket square.
“Hold up your badge… so they’ll know you’re a policeman.”
Dudley wears a plain white cotton shirt, styled with a front placket, breast pocket, button cuffs, and a spread collar with minimal tie space. He also wears a mottled gray cross-hatched tie, with a thin gold tie chain worn low on the tie, a fussy alternative to the classic tie bar that serves a similar purpose of keeping neckwear straight.
The suit’s matching trousers have double reverse-facing pleats, consistent with trends of the early 1950s as tailors continued capitalizing on the lack of wartime fabric restrictions to craft elegant (and often excessively draped) clothing. Dudley’s trousers are styled with belt loops, side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups (cuffs).
Dudley holds his trousers up with tan cloth suspenders, detailed with gold adjuster hardware and brown leather ears that connect to buttons along the inside of the waistband. However, he also wears a brown leather belt, which closes through a polished silver-toned single-prong buckle. He holsters his service revolver in a cross-draw brown leather rig on the left side of his belt, with a matching leather pouch on the right side, presumably carrying extra .38 Special rounds under the large flap secured by a brass-toned snap.
Dudley’s belt-and-braces costume decision may have been a reference to Once Upon a Time in the West when Frank (Henry Fonda) asks “How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders? Man can’t even trust his own pants.” While Dudley Smith is arguably among the least trustworthy characters in cinema, the choice may have also been informed by his preference for suspenders being balanced by the necessity of a belt to holster his revolver and extra rounds for it.
To be fair, Bud doesn’t seem perceptive enough to have mistrusted a guy who regularly wears belt and braces.
On the ring finger of his left hand, Dudley wears a gold ring with a large green emerald-filled face, though it’s not confirmed if this is merely an ornamental nod to his Irish heritage hailing from the Emerald Isle or serving as a wedding ring. (Or both!) During the finale, the ring remains covered by the black leather gloves that he typically wears for confrontations at the Victory Motel.
Dudley’s dark lace-up shoes are hardly seen well enough to even discern their color, though they may be the same brown leather cap-toe oxfords he had earlier worn with his sport jackets. Brown shoe would also coordinate with his brown leather belt.
Dudley checks out at the Victory Motel.
Though Dudley often wears a dark brown felt fedora with a matching grosgrain band, he evidently left it behind on his office coat-rack.
The Gun
After his henchmen engage Bud White and Ed Exley in a gunfight at the remote Victory Motel, Dudley himself strides into their holdout cabin to finish the job, armed with a blued Smith & Wesson Model 15. This .38 Special service revolver would have been known as the “Smith & Wesson K-38 Combat Masterpiece” at the time L.A. Confidential was set in the early 1950s, as it wasn’t until 1957 when Smith & Wesson began numbering its models and the K-38 Combat Masterpiece was designated the Model 15.
Dudley cocks the hammer of his Smith & Wesson.
Smith & Wesson introduced its K-38 Target Masterpiece in 1947, an evolution of the medium-framed (“K”-frame) Military & Police revolver that had been in production for nearly a half-century. Two years later, Smith & Wesson responded to a request from the FBI to evolve the design into the new K-38 Combat Masterpiece, characterized by its shorter, service-oriented four-inch barrel and Baughman Quick Draw front sight.
Each of these revolvers have a traditional double-action/single-action (DA/SA) operation and six-round cylinders for the venerated .38 Special ammunition that had been a favorite of American police agencies since the Military & Police was launched around the turn of the 20th century. When Smith & Wesson began numbering its firearms in the late 1950s, the Military & Police, Target Masterpiece, and Combat Masterpiece were renamed the Model 10, Model 14, and Model 15, respectively.
How to Get the Look
James Cromwell as Dudley Smith in L.A. Confidential (1997)
After spending much of L.A. Confidential as an avuncular (if assertive) presence in his earthy neutral tailoring, Dudley Smith reveals his true nature to the audience at the beginning of the film’s final act when he dons a more businesslike gray double-breasted suit with his usual affectations of belt, braces, and tie chain.
- Gray with subtle white pinstripe suit:
- Double-breasted 4×1-button jacket with slanted-gorge peak lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
- Double reverse-pleated trousers with belt loops, side pockets, button-through back pockets, and turn-ups/cuffs
- White cotton shirt with spread collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
- Gray melange tie
- Gold tie chain
- Tan cloth suspenders with gold-finished adjusters and brown leather ears
- Brown leather belt with silver-toned single-prong buckle
- Dark-brown leather cap-toe oxford shoes
- Gold ring with emerald-set stone
- Black leather gloves
Nate D. Sanders claims a screen-worn suit from Western Costume in its 2016 auction listing, though the pictured suit has a fine-scaled glen plaid pattern while the screen-worn suit features a subtle stripe—not to mention that one of the movie stills included in the listing shows a completely different two-button single-breasted jacket, albeit a glen plaid one. The same screen-worn suit appears to have been sold by iCollector four years later in December 2020.
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie and James Ellroy’s dark, sprawling source novel.
The Quote
Are you going to shoot me… or arrest me?
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