Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets (1973)
Vitals
Harvey Keitel as Charlie Cappa, conflicted Mafia associate
New York, Fall 1972
Film: Mean Streets
Release Date: October 14, 1973
Director: Martin Scorsese
Wardrobe Credit: Norman Salling
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
To celebrate the prolific Harvey Keitel’s 85th birthday, today’s #MafiaMonday post flashes back to the New York-born actor’s first prominent starring performance as the conflicted and connected Charlie Cappa in Martin Scorsese’s breakout feature, Mean Streets.
Born May 13, 1939, Keitel had served in the Marine Corps and worked as a court stenographer before he studied acting under Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, eventually landing the lead in Scorsese’s independently made debut feature Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967). Five years later, Scorsese directed his next project, the Depression-era crime exploitation flick Boxcar Bertha (1972), for the late Roger Corman prompting his friend, fellow director John Cassavetes, to advise Marty to follow his own talent and experiences and make something more like his debut.
Who’s That Knocking at My Door foreshadowed the themes that Scorsese would revisit in Mean Streets, including Keitel’s role as a young Italian-American in New York City torn between his troubled burgeoning romance, his conflict with Catholicism, and his increasingly shallow street friendships. Considering the film to be an opportunity to make his own variation of I Vitelloni (1953), Scorsese drew upon his own recollections from growing up in Little Italy, bestowing his main character with his mother’s maiden name for a surname and adding the characters’ proximity to the Mafia—cinematic themes that were now fortunately popular thanks to the massive success of The Godfather.
Scorsese himself made a few sporadic cameo appearances in Mean Streets as “Jimmy Shorts”, meeting here with Charlie and the ambitious mobster Michael Longo (Richard Romanus).
Premiering in October 1973 to considerable critical acclaim, Mean Streets established many hallmarks of Scorsese’s work, including cast members like Keitel and a young Robert De Niro, who shines as Charlie’s volatile friend “Johnny Boy”, as well as his oft-visited themes exploring masculinity, Catholicism, and crime. Scorsese’s considerable use of popular music in the soundtrack was also revolutionary for the time, from tracks by The Rolling Stones and The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” against the opening credits to The Marvelettes’ “Please Mr. Postman” punctuating a bar-room brawl to Cream’s live recording of “Stepping Out” adding to the chaos of the finale.
What’d He Wear?
Martin Scorsese and Mardik Martin describe Charlie as “always well dressed” in the screenplay, reflected by his regular wardrobe of suits and sport jackets typically worn with ties, contrasting the trendy leather jackets and knitwear worn by the reckless Johnny. Although Scorsese has stated that the film’s setting is meant to be sometime in the 1960s, the hair, clothing, and cars are all clearly contemporary to the 1972 production.
Charlie frequently wears a navy chalkstripe three-piece suit tailored in homage to 1930s heritage—likely much to the delight of his mobbed-up “mustache Pete” uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova)—his style also follows contemporary fashions, like the sporty checked suit he wears for significant scenes like the “Please Mr. Postman” bar-fight and the finale.
This suit presents a fawn-colored overall appearance but, like Charlie himself, looking more closely reveals a more complex pattern, woven with a brown and rust micro-check against the tan ground. The suit may be 100% wool, or it may incorporate synthetic fibers that were becoming increasingly popular in ready-to-wear men’s fashions.
Note the details of Charlie’s woven micro-check suiting and multi-striped shirting.
Unlike the ’30s-inspired cut of the navy chalkstripe suit, this checked suit is sporty and contemporary as immediately seen in details like the pocket design and the jacket’s long double vents and broad notch lapels that extend out nearly to the armholes.
The single-breasted jacket has two buttons positioned to meet the trousers’ medium rise, with two smaller matching vestigial buttons on each cuff. The patch-style pockets over the hips are covered with narrow rectangular flaps, as is the set-in breast pocket—a uniquely sporty element.
Charlie’s style with his broad-lapeled suit jacket and long tie may not be too everyone’s taste, but—unlike Joey Clams (George Memmoli)—I’d hardly call him a mook!
The flat-front trousers have curved “frogmouth”-style front pockets, a western-inspired detail that was common to tailoring from the late 1960s through the ’70s. The back pockets are jetted with a single button to close through the back-left pocket. Consistent with ’70s trends, the fit flares out toward the plain-hemmed bottoms, which have a full break that covers most of Charlie’s shoes.
Assuming Charlie wasn’t a half-century ahead of the vaping trend, that appears to be Harvey Keitel’s mic pack tucked into the back-right pocket of Charlie’s suit trousers. The woman leaning in to try to help him and Teresa is Catherine Scorsese, Marty’s mother making one of her many short cameos in her son’s films.
The trousers’ belt loops are slightly wider than usual. He wears a large medium-brown smooth leather belt that closes through a polished gold-toned single-prong buckle.
Charlie’s voile shirt complements the suit with its light shades of brown and subtly complex pattern. Against the cream-colored ground, the shirt is printed with balanced sets of four narrow fuzzy brown stripes that each enclose two hairline-width beige stripes; from a distance, these appear to be solid beige stripes filling the gaps between the brown stripes.
The shirt features a fashionably long point collar, a plain button-up front, breast pocket, and double (French) cuffs that Charlie fastens with ornately detailed gold rectangular bullet-back links.
Charlie debuts this suit and shirt when accompanying his friends to Joey’s pool hall where Jimmy (Lenny Scaletta) asks for his payment, only for Johnny Boy’s insults to escalate things to a bar-fight that attracts New York’s finest. His first tie is fawn-colored silk, embroidered with a repeating pattern of cornflower-blue dots encircled by eight smaller white dots to present a floral-like medallion effect.
During the final act of Mean Streets, Charlie wears the same suit and shirt but with a different tie, patterned in a complicated check that would make Dan Flashes proud. This tie presents diagonally intersecting sets of beige double lines against a brown ground, overlaid by “uphill” sets of four beige lines and translucent baby-blue “downhill” bar stripes bordered on the bottom by abstract white-and-brown checkerboard stripes.
Charlie and his epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson) are tragically united by their costumes for the final act, with his tie’s colorway and complicated pattern reflected in her knitted sweater vest.
Charlie remains tonally consistent with his shoes, wearing brown leather lace-ups with his suit. There’s a brief continuity error during the finale when the close-up of Charlie slamming the pedals of his 1972 Imperial Lebaron shows the black calf five-eyelet wingtip derby brogues that he wore with his navy chalkstripe suit. However, when Charlie clambers out of the damaged car, we see that he’s clearly still wearing brown shoes with his dark-brown cotton lisle dress socks. These brown shoes aren’t shown clearly on screen, but the silhouette appears to reflect cap-toe oxfords.
Whether he’s in a suit, sports coat, or just a shirt buttoned to the neck, Charlie layers against the cold in a heavy black wool overcoat. Like his chalkstripe suit jacket, this double-breasted cut crafts a 1930s-style athletic hourglass silhouette, building up the wide, concave-shaped shoulders that are emphasized with peak lapels, suppressing the waist, and flaring out to a full knee-length hem. Fastened with a double-breasted 6×2-button arrangement, the coat also has spaced two-button cuffs and straight flapped hip pockets.
Both Johnny and Charlie wear short double-breasted overcoats, though Charlie’s black coat has more classic lapels and wrap than Johnny’s more contemporary-styled camel coat.
Charlie’s regular rotation of jewelry includes a diamond-studded gold ring that glistens from his right pinky and a yellow-gold watch on his left wrist. This subdued dress watch features a round, light gold dial with non-numeric hour indices and a gold-finished expanding bracelet.
Consistent with his Catholic faith that drives much of his inner conflict, Charlie wears a large yellow-gold crucifix on a gold necklace. Since he always wears ties or shirts buttoned to the neck, we only see the crucifix when he’s stripped down to his underwear, which consists of a white ribbed cotton sleeveless undershirt and cotton boxers—in these scenes, those are patterned a red-and-violet tartan plaid, though he also wears solid white and light-blue.
What to Imbibe
“You mind if I have a beer, Joey?” Charlie asks, pulling a stubby bottle out of a cooler. “Go ahead, I got Scotch here,” Joey confirms while pulling out a bottle of J&B Rare. This blended whisky was developed by the London-based Justerini & Brooks, which was was founded in 1749 and began its uninterrupted supply of spirits to the British monarchy a dozen years later with the 1761 coronation of King George III. The fortuitous timing of J&B Rare’s launch in the early 1930s coinciding with the end of Prohibition in the United States increased the market palette for blended Scotch and made it a top seller for decades.
Though the four shots Joey pours go untouched for the time being due to a bar-fight over who’s a mook and who’s a skank, J&B is established early as a favored spirit in Scorsese’s underworld—shelved on the personal bars of Nicky Santoro in Casino (1995) and Frank Sheeran in The Irishman (2019), but perhaps most famously featured when Henry Hill smuggles a fifth into prison in Goodfellas (1990).
How to Get the Look
Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets (1973)
- Tan (with brown-and-rust woven micro-check) sport suit:
- Single-breasted 2-button jacket with wide notch lapels, flapped set-in breast pocket, flapped patch hip pockets, 2-button cuffs, and long double vents
- Flat-front trousers with wide belt loops, curved “frogmouth”-style front pockets, jetted back-right pocket, button-through back-left pocket, and flared plain-hemmed bottoms
- Cream (with brown-framed beige hairline-stripe pattern) shirt with long point collar, plain front, breast pocket, and double/French cuffs
- Gold ornate rectangular cuff links
- Brown patterned tie
- Medium-brown smooth leather belt with polished gold single-prong buckle
- Brown leather cap-toe oxford shoes
- Dark-brown cotton lisle dress socks
- Black heavy wool double-breasted 6×2-button knee-length overcoat with peak lapels, straight flapped hip pockets, spaced 2-button cuffs, and single vent
- White cotton sleeveless undershirt
- Red-and-violet tartan plaid cotton boxer shorts
- Gold crucifix on gold necklace
- Diamond-studded gold pinky ring
- Gold wristwatch with round light gold dial (with 3:00 date window) on gold-finished expanding bracelet
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The post Harvey Keitel’s Tan Plaid Sport Suit in Mean Streets appeared first on BAMF Style.