Warren Beatty as Joe Frady in The Parallax View (1974)
Vitals
Warren Beatty as Joe Frady, maverick political reporter
Seattle and Los Angeles, Spring 1974
Film: The Parallax View
Release Date: June 14, 1974
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Costume Designer: Frank L. Thompson
Background
The Parallax View was released 50 years ago today on Flag Day 1974—an appropriate observance for this second of Alan J. Pakula’s trio of politically themed paranoid thrillers that also included Klute (1971) and All the President’s Men (1976).
Warren Beatty provides one of the arguably best performances of his career as Joe Frady, an investigative reporter for an Oregon newspaper who is tipped to a deadly political conspiracy by ex-girlfriend Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss) shortly before she too died under questionable circumstances attributed to a drug overdose. At a time when, in Joe’s words, “every time you turned around, some nut was knockin’ off one of the best men in the country,” Lee witnessed the assassination of a presidential hopeful three years earlier. As one of the last remaining witnesses, Lee’s mysterious death tragically validates her suspicions and prompts Joe to conduct his own investigation.
Amidst car chases and explosions, Joe pieces together that the secretive Parallax Organization has been recruiting political assassins in the form of “security” operatives. Joe narrowly escapes when yet another witness to the candidate’s assassination is killed, explaining to his editor Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn) that he plans to use his supposed death at sea as cover to apply undercover to Parallax:
I’m dead, Bill, and I just wanna stay that way for a while.
What’d He Wear?
Joe dresses through most of the second act of The Parallax View in a brown cotton canvas trucker jacket, cut similarly to the blue denim Levi’s 557xx “Type III” that he had previously worn in the rural Washington town of Salmontail, though the brown jacket lacks any clear branding and may be one of the scores of imitations made by other outdoor outfitters like Sears following the popularity of the Type III.
The waist-length jacket follows the conventional Type III styling with its six copper rivet buttons up the front, two chest pockets with their pointed single-button flaps aligned with the horizontal chest yoke, and single-button squared cuffs. Two short tabs are positioned rearward on each side of the waistband to close through one of two buttons to adjust the fit as needed.
Joe debuts the brown jacket layered over a white-and-brown mini-gingham check shirt, which appears to be the same one he had worn with a jacket and tie during Senator Carroll’s assassination at the start of The Parallax View. The button-up shirt follows a contemporary style for the 1970s with its long point collar as well as a front placket and two-button cuffs.
Joe meets with former FBI agent Will Turner (Kenneth Mars), who wears a gray and red-striped T-shirt made by surf brand Hang Ten.
Joe typically wears the brown jacket over his usual ecru cotton shirts, uniquely styled with an era-specific long point collar, stacked two-button cuffs, and a straight hem with side vents that could be worn untucked. The distinctive front placket with its two narrowly spaced columns of stitching down the middle suggest that the shirt was made by storied London shirtmaker Frank Foster, of whom Warren Beatty was a regular customer in real life and had recently worn their shirts on screen in The Only Game in Town (1970) opposite Elizabeth Taylor.
When Joe visits psychology professor Nelson Schwartzkopf (Anthony Zerbe) to analyze a Parallax personality test, he tucks the ecru shirt into a pair of dark-brown polyester trousers in a cloth and cut that was fashionable through the mid-1970s. The trousers have a self-suspended waistband, held up on their own without a belt or adjuster tabs, and curved open-top front pockets similar to jeans. Designed with either a flat-front or a darted front, the trousers follow a narrow fit around Beatty’s hips and thighs, flaring out below the knees but avoiding the excess of bell-bottoms. The plain-hemmed bottoms have a full break that envelop the tops of his dark-brown leather moc-toe lace-up ankle boots.
For most of The Parallax View after Joe’s visit to Professor Schwartzkopf, he pairs the brown trucker jacket with the heavily distressed boot-cut jeans he had worn with his Navy surplus deck jacket during an early sequence. These light-blue denim jeans lack any clear branding, though I believe the traces of Lee‘s signature “lazy S” stitch can be seen across both back pockets. These pockets show significant fraying along the top and bottoms, echoed on the belt loops, the curved front pockets, and the wear at stress points like the knees.
The brown jacket and blue denim jeans are an inversion of his earlier costume in rural Washington, where he wore a blue denim Levi’s jacket and light-brown chinos.
How to Get the Look
Warren Beatty as Joe Frady in The Parallax View (1974)
Joe’s brown trucker jacket, neutral shirt, blue jeans, and hardy boots provides a smartly versatile and relatively timeless active casual outfit for a reporter whose work takes him to increasingly unpredictable places.
- Brown cotton canvas trucker jacket with six copper rivet buttons, shirt-style collar, two set-in chest pockets (with single-button pointed flaps), single-button squared cuffs, and button-tab waist adjusters
- Ivory shirt with long-pointed collar, front placket, and button cuffs
- Light-blue distressed denim boot-cut jeans
- Dark brown leather moc-toe lace-up ankle boots
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
Well, there is a natural bureaucratic tendency to cover up mistakes.
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