Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition (2002)
Vitals
Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan, recently widowed Irish mob enforcer and dedicated father
The Midwest, Winter 1931
Film: Road to Perdition
Release Date: July 12, 2002
Director: Sam Mendes
Costume Designer: Albert Wolsky
Tailor: John David Ridge
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
“Natural law… sons were put on this earth to trouble their fathers,” avuncular mob boss John Rooney (Paul Newman) advises his top enforcer Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) at a time that both men are facing crises with their respective sons.
Father’s Day feels like the appropriate time to celebrate the style from this unorthodox role for America’s Dad. Tom Hanks pivoted from a career built on playing affable heroes and everymen to a dangerous Depression-era mob hitman in Road to Perdition, Sam Mendes’ 2002 drama adapted by screenwriter David Self from a graphic novel series of the same name by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner.
“In every one of my dad’s films, I can see him; he’s being himself,” said Tom’s son Chet Hanks, according to IMDB. “But that role is the farthest from his normal self of the movies he’s done.”
Road to Perdition centers around Sullivan’s 12-year-old son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), whose narration opens the story:
There are many stories about Michael Sullivan. Some say he was a decent man. Some say there was no good in him at all. But I once spent 6 weeks on the road with him, in the winter of 1931. This is our story.
At the start, Michael Sullivan is the loyal enforcer to gangster Rooney—loosely inspired by the real-life crime boss John Looney—who shows a clear preference for the level-headed Michael over his own irresponsible son Connor (Daniel Craig). Seeking to learn more about his mysterious father, Michael Jr. hides out in the backseat of the family Buick one night and witnesses Michael accompanying Connor as the latter impulsively executes an associate.
Fearing the consequences of Michael Jr. revealing what he saw and already motivated by personal jealousy, Connor engineers the liquidation of the Sullivan family. His nerves steeled but judgment clouded by booze, Connor personally kills Michael’s wife Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and their younger son Peter (Liam Aiken), whom he mistakenly believed to be the witness as Michael Jr. was unexpectedly delayed at school. Michael Sr. also managed to evade Connor’s trap, returning home just in time to the gruesome sight of his murdered wife and son.
Sullivan hastily packs his surviving son Michael Jr. into the family Buick and sets out from Rock Island, Illinois on a journey that’s equal parts revenge and survival, hoping to safely deliver Michael Jr. to live with an aunt at their beach home in the fictional Lake Michigan village of Perdition. While robbing the mob, killing gangsters along their path, and dodging the deranged photographer-cum-hitman Harlen Maguire (Jude Law), the father and son finally develop their long-overdue bond.
Of its six Academy Award nominations, Road to Perdition was awarded Best Cinematography for the late Conrad L. Hall, who died six months after the film was released. Paul Newman also received his ninth and final Oscar nomination for his performance as John Rooney, his final screen role (aside from voicing Doc Hudson in Cars.) According to IMDB, Hall began crying while lensing the 76-year-old Newman in his viewfinder on set, explaining that “He was so beautiful… he was so beautiful.”
Road to Perdition was released just over a week before my 13th birthday, so—as someone who already had a fledgling interest in 1930s crime thanks to Bonnie & Clyde and Dillinger—I was especially intrigued by seeing a fellow 12-year-old boy as the Depression-era bank robber I had always dreamed of being… but then watching such a poignant story about a father and son with my own wonderful dad made it an even more special film for me.
What’d He Wear?
Road to Perdition was also a watershed moment for my attention to costume design, as I recalled a contemporary interview about the efforts that costume designer Albert Wolsky took to accurately replicate the fashions of 1931, sourcing era-correct wool suiting from Susan “Rabbit” Goody, owner of Thistle Hill Weavers in upstate New York, and then dying and aging the garments to look lived-in. “We tested the current fabrics and there was just no way to fake it,” Wolsky explained. “The weight dramatically affects the way the clothes move.”
Wolsky elaborated for a making-of featurette that he was informed by the season and era: “There was color in those days, but there wasn’t also. It’s winter, it’s cold, so the only thing I can do is pull back as much color as I can. I guess my inspiration was a black-and-white movie,” supported by Conrad Hall’s vision of keeping the cinematography as monochromatic as possible.
Michael’s gray-heavy wardrobe illuminated by the sunlight and shadows of the blinds in this banker’s office illustrate the inspiration that costume designer Albert Wolsky and cinematographer Conrad Hall found in old black-and-white cinema.
“Road to Perdition is a period movie in which there are no double-breasted, pin-striped suits and no spats,” Mendes explained to Ray Zone for the August 2002 issue of American Cinematographer. “I was trying to get away from all the clichés of the gangster genre.” Indeed, Wolsky keeps most of our gangster characters realistically restrained in their wardrobes, with only the brash Connor approaching bolder gangster styles with his chalk-striped tailoring and polka-dot shirts.
The reserved Michael Sullivan dresses more to blend in, no flashier than the average businessman of 1931 in tasteful but common suits for the era, tailored by stage and screen costumer John David Ridge to follow a then-fashionably full cut. He cycles through several somber gray solid and subtly striped suits during the first act of the film, dressing in a gray-and-black wool three-piece suit patterned with alternating black and red stripes and irregular flecks of blue and white.
Apologies for the potential spoiler alert (if you haven’t seen the movie yet, uh, Michael spills some ketchup on himself in one of the many diners he and his son frequent), but this sunny close-up shot provides the best look at Sullivan’s complex suiting.
Sullivan’s single-breasted jacket has notch lapels that taper to high on the front, above the top of the full three-button front that balances Tom Hanks’ 6’0″ height. The jacket also features a welted breast pocket and straight jetted hip pockets, a minimalist alternative to flapped pockets that was en vogue as tailors restricted their use of excessive fabric during the Depression.
Framed by the straight shoulders and ventless back, the jacket has a squared and boxy—but not unflattering—cut consistent with the classic American “sack suit” silhouette. The sleeves are finished with three buttons on each cuff.
Sullivan’s suit has a matching single-breasted waistcoat (vest) with five buttons up the front above the notched bottom and four welted pockets. An adjustable strap cinches the fit around the waist against the charcoal-gray back that matches the lining.
The flat-front trousers have belt loops that go unused as Sullivan prefers to hold up his trousers with suspenders (braces) instead of a belt, following the common sartorial practice of eschewing a belt with a waistcoat to avoid the unsightly bunch of a buckle. The suspenders are black with five narrow gray stripes, silver hardware, and black leather hooks. The trousers have side pockets, jetted back pockets (with a button through the left one), and a full fit straight through the legs to the plain-hemmed bottoms.
Apropos the rigors of a Midwest winter, Sullivan wears heavy-duty black leather combat boots that are only revealed as such when not covered by the full break of his trouser bottoms. The cap-toe boots are laced up derby-style through at least eight sets of nickel-finished eyelets.
Sullivan rotates through a series of similarly styled cotton shirts in plain white, pale-ecru, and ice-gray. All have a front placket, breast pocket, button cuffs, and a point collar that slightly flares out toward the tip of each collar leaf.
With his small mustache against a five o’clock shadow, open-neck white shirt, and unbuttoned dark waistcoat, Michael Sullivan’s appearance at the end of the movie recalls the famous images of contemporary bank robber John Dillinger in police custody in early 1934.
The first tie that Sullivan wears with the suit is a narrow swath of silk printed in a swirling Deco-style black and gold paisley.
During his and Michael Jr.’s six weeks on the road, Sullivan also occasionally wears a burgundy tie covered with a field of beige pin-dots arranged in double sets of downhill stripes, overlaid by the same dots creating irregular squares in three-dot rows. Calling out the red stripes in his suit, the burgundy ground makes this a slightly more colorful tie than the more monochromatic black-and-gold tie.
Sullivan had previously worn it with a different (but similar) suit during the opening scenes at a funeral wake and pulls it out again as his and Michael Jr.’s bond grows closer during their larcenous road trip across the Midwest, suggesting that the warmth echoes Sullivan’s attempts to be more in touch with humanity. I suspect this is intentional, as Sam Mendes explained in a making-of featurette that “there is a color shift in the film, everything is in some way linked into telling that story, the way they all dress—wear clothes—everything is designed to tell the story of the gradual humanizing of the central character.”
Sullivan’s fedora was crafted by the late Dave Brown from a muted olive felt, self-edged and styled with a dark-gray grosgrain silk band.
Apropos the winter setting, he wears an overcoat of heavy charcoal-gray wool, also sourced from Rabbit Goody. “The fabric Goody produced had the look and heft of period material—but when the coat got wet it weighed a full 32 pounds, and Hanks couldn’t walk while wearing it,” Rachel Dickinson reported for an issue of Smithsonian Magazine earlier this year. “‘We had to weave more fabric that looked exactly the same,’ Goody says, ‘but used much lighter materials for the coat used in the rain scenes.'”
The coat has a 6×3-button double-breasted front, set-in sleeves finished with cuffs, and a long single vent. The swelled edges are reinforced with stitching approximately 3/8-inch from the edge, a detail that Matt Spaiser writes for Bond Suits helps “balance the heavier cloth and a coat’s larger proportions” on outerwear. The wide ulster collar and parallel button arrangement follows the design of a naval-inspired bridge coat, which is essentially a pea coat extended to the length of an overcoat, though Sullivan’s coat features patch pockets over the hips covered with flaps rather than the slash pockets traditionally associated with bridge coats.
The full-fitting coat extends well below Sullivan’s knees, presumably providing him with the room to conceal a Thompson submachine gun in a pinch.
Sullivan wears a cream-colored cotton long-sleeved undershirt that provides an extra layer of insulation against the Midwestern winter. The henley-style shirt has a three-button top with horizontal buttonholes.
Consistent with his reserved personality, Sullivan’s sole affectations are a plain gold wedding band on his left ring finger and a gold rectangular-cased dress watch with a white rectangular dial on a black leather strap.
Several pieces from Tom Hanks’s screen-worn costume as Michael Sullivan have been auctioned (in various states of bloody distress) and can still be seen at The Golden Closet, iCollector, Invaluable, and The Prop Store.
The Guns
“They go on missions for Mr. Rooney. They’re very dangerous, that’s why he brings his gun,” Michael Jr. rationalizes to Peter after spying his father unloading his blued M1911A1 after returning home from work one evening.
Designed by the legendary John Browning, the groundbreaking “Model of 1911” series had already been the officially adopted sidearm of the United States military for 20 years by the time the Sullivans hit the road in the winter of 1931. Within that time, the weapon had already gone a subtle update in the mid-1920s with a shorter trigger, longer grip safety spur, arched mainspring housing that resulted in the M1911A1 which was otherwise operationally the same as its predecessor.
Colt and Springfield Armory were the primary manufacturers of mil-spec 1911 pistols for most of the 20th century, though the needs of World War II outsourced production to even non-firearms manufacturers like typewriter company Remington Rand (not to be confused with Remington Arms), rail equipment manufacturer Union Switch & Signal, and even a few hundred by Singer Corporation—famous for its sewing machines. Indeed, it may have been one of these M1911A1 pistols that Hanks’ character Captain John Miller famously fired at an advancing tank during his last stand in Saving Private Ryan.
Though details like calibers, capacity, and size have evolved into countless variants over the decades, the standard mil-spec M1911A1 is a substantial 8.5 inches long with a five-inch barrel, weighing in at a hefty 39 ounces when unloaded and firing potent .45 ACP ammunition fed from seven-round box magazines, though some of the fictional Michael Sullivan’s real-life underworld contemporaries of the early 1930s like John Dillinger and “Baby Face” Nelson were known to carry M1911A1s that Colt produced to fire the .38 Super cartridge.
All 1911 pistols follow Browning’s original design principles of a short recoil operation and a single-action trigger, which means the trigger performs only the single action of releasing the hammer; unlike modern double-action pistols like the Beretta 92FS (M9) that superseded it as the standard American service pistol, operators must chamber a round and keep the hammer down for the trigger to be pulled and actually fire a round. The classic 1911 design also incorporates both a grip safety (preventing the pistol from firing without pressure from the user’s purlicue under the hammer) and a manual safety lever on the left side of the frame. Thus, most who regularly carry 1911 pistols keep them on “condition one” with a round in the chamber and hammer down but the manual safety on, only requiring the latter to be clicked off to be ready to fire.
Michael’s blank-adapted M1911A1 has been replaced with a theatrical “non-gun” for this sequence, evident by the fact that he fires it with the hammer up and it doesn’t actually cycle when firing. Non-guns provide a safe alternative on stage and screen when an actor is required to fire at another actor in close range, as they still create a dramatic muzzle flash without the danger of cycling and firing blank ammunition so close to another actor.
On the first night of their getaway, Sullivan stops to lean on one of Rooney’s associates. As he has to leave Michael Jr. alone in the car, he pulls out his backup Colt Detective Special and hands it to him with the added instruction that “if I’m not back in half an hour, you go see Reverend Lynch at First Methodist and you tell him what’s happened. Do not go to Father Callaway!”
Something of a Chekhov’s gun in this gangster story, the Detective Special found quick preference among cops and crooks alike after Colt introduced it in 1927 as an easily concealed “belly gun” for plainclothes policemen—hence its nomenclature. This double-action revolver with its six potent .38 Special rounds in the cylinder and two-inch “snub-nose” barrel was a quick success and remained in production, albeit with subtle design changes, for nearly seventy years.
Michael Jr. considers the Colt Detective Special that his father thrust into his hands, hoping he’ll won’t have to use it.
For the climactic sequence as Michael prepares to take on a small army of Rooney’s gangsters, he unpacks the Thompson M1921AC submachine gun made infamous as the “Chicago typewriter” and “the gun that made the twenties roar,” hence the later being used as the title for William J. Helmer’s book chronicling the weapon’s history. (Sullivan assembling his Thompson on screen nicely builds tension, though the way the foregrip simply slides on is not 100% accurate with how this part would be attached.))
Before it became a symbol of Prohibition-era violence, the Thompson submachine gun had been developed by General John T. Thompson as a handheld “trench sweeper” intended for combat, though the first prototype wasn’t delivered until after the hostilities of World War I had ended. Despite the Armistice, Thompson founded the Auto-Ordnance Company to bring his vision to fruition and the Thompson submachine gun was formally launched in 1921.
This original iteration of the Thompson offered a dramatic profile with its angular foregrip and sweeping stock, made even moreso with the addition of the Cutts compensator muzzle brake option in 1926 (designated the M1921AC, as opposed to the standard now named M1921A) and large round drum magazines that made made up to 50 rounds of .45 ACP ammunition available to the operator.
“There’s a lot of shots of… this Thompson submachine gun being put together, because it’s not a trivial thing,” Tom Hanks explained in a making-of featurette. “I think we’re trying to do something here in which the psychological aspect of what they’re doing has the grander attention on it as opposed to how cool it looks to fire these weapons.”
After Prohibition was repealed and the Depression-era crime wave ended, the “Tommy gun” cultural image shifted to a growing association with its military usage during World War II, when American troops were deployed in combat with the simplified M1928A1, M1, and M1A1 models. (As with the M1911A1, Hanks’ character in Saving Private Ryan was armed with the latter.)
The Car
Michael Sullivan’s car follows the same understated reliability of his wardrobe and weapons, driving a dark-green 1931 Buick Series 50 sedan (Model 57) that Michael Jr. helps him repaint a deep burgundy after they begin their bank-robbing spree across the Midwest.
Michael Jr. eventually becomes more comfortable driving his father in the family’s repainted 1931 Buick sedan.
Buick launched the Series 50 models in 1930, powered by a straight-six engine for the first model year only before debuting the OHV “Fireball Eight” that was installed in all 1931 models. This 220 cubic-inch eight-cylinder engine produced 77 brake horsepower and 156 lb·ft of torque, though the entry-level Series 50 had yet to receive the innovative synchromesh transmission so Michael Jr. is forced to learn how to drive on the older three-speed manual transmission that needed the clutch to be engaged between each gear. (Testing his son during their first lesson, Sullivan asks “so what does the clutch do?” to which Michael Jr. drolly responds “it clutches.”)
Designed by GM’s prolific Harley Earl, the Series 50 was produced in a range of two- and four-door styles provided by Fisher Body, all on a 114-inch wheelbase. Weighing in at around 3,200 pounds, the four-door Model 57 sedan was the top of the line but also the most common, accounting for more than 33,000 of the 50,000 Series 50 vehicles produced in 1931. According to Curbside Classic, MSRP for a new 1931 Model 57 sedan was $1,095, matched only by the Model 56C convertible coupe.
Of course, the Buick was still its original factory green through the first act of the movie.
How to Get the Look
Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition (2002)
Michael Sullivan Sr. intentionally dresses with a low profile, his nearly monochromatic palette of staid gray three-piece suits, muted coat and hat, and white or off-white shirts virtually indistinguishable from how wardrobes were presented in black-and-white movies of the era, with only subtle color in his suiting and ties.
- Dark-gray (with alternating rust and black striped) wool suit:
- Single-breasted 3-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight jetted hip pockets, 3-button cuffs, and ventless back
- Single-breasted 5-button waistcoat with notched bottom, four welted pockets, and adjustable back strap
- Flat-front trousers with belt loops, side pockets, jetted back pockets (with button-through left pocket), and plain-hemmed bottoms
- White cotton shirt with point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
- Black-and-gold paisley or burgundy mini-dot patterned silk ties
- Black (and white-striped) suspenders with silver-toned hardware and black leather hooks
- Black leather cap-toe combat boots with 8-eyelet derby lacing
- Black socks
- Cream-colored cotton long-sleeved henley undershirt with three-button top
- Olive felt fedora with dark-gray grosgrain band
- Charcoal heavy wool double-breasted overcoat with ulster collar, 6×3-button double-breasted front, flapped patch-style hip pockets, set-in sleeves with cuffs, and single vent
- Gold wedding ring
- Gold rectangular-cased watch with white rectangular dial on black leather strap
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
That’s for you. Call it a handling charge. Tell Chicago I took it, but if read about this in the papers—if I read about the savings of some innocent farmers being wiped out by a heartless bank robber—I won’t be happy.
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