Charles Bronson in Mr. Majestyk (1974)
Vitals
Charles Bronson as Vincent “Vince” Majestyk, principled melon farmer, ex-convict, and Vietnam veteran
Rural Colorado, Fall 1973
Film: Mr. Majestyk
Release Date: July 12, 1974
Director: Richard Fleischer
Men’s Costumes: James Linn
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
We’ll conclude this summer’s Car Week with Mr. Majestyk, a Charles Bronson action flick released 50 years ago tomorrow on July 12, 1974. (At least according to Wikipedia; IMDB states July 17th, but it doesn’t seem worth splitting hairs.) Just weeks later, Bronson would cement his place in action cinema lore with the release of the revenge-themed Death Wish, though I prefer the fun of Mr. Majestyk, which delivers the characteristic color that could be expected from Elmore Leonard’s original screenplay.
Bronson stars as Vince Majestyk, a decorated Vietnam veteran operating a melon farm in rural Colorado, proudly manned by experienced migrant workers like the passionate union leader Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal). When local hotshot hoodlum Bobby Kopas (Paul Koslo) tries to force Majestyk to replace his crew with Kopas’ own unskilled winos, Majestyk attacks him with his own shotgun and sends him back up the road.
Following his arrest for assaulting Kopas, the police discover Majestyk’s past conviction for assault and keep him in jail, where he also runs afoul of menacing mob hitman Frank Renda (Al Lettieri). The two men’s tenuous acquaintanceship further sours after Majestyk sabotages an escape attempt engineered by Renda’s henchmen, instead kidnapping Renda himself and intending to trade the contract killer to the authorities in exchange for his own freedom.
After Majestyk loses Renda, the hitman forces Kopas to drop the assault charges so that Renda would be free to exact his own violent revenge on Majestyk—despite the advice from his loyal right-hand man Gene Lundy (Taylor Lacher).
Majestyk himself doesn’t seem overly considered with the treat, more focused on finding labor to help him harvest his melon crop after Kopas effectively intimidates most of the town into refusing to work with him. Indeed, the crop would have struggled during his stay behind bars if not for Nancy, with whom he develops a relationship built on mutual respect after they met when he defended her fellow migrant workers’ right to use a public restroom.
Nancy: If you want to go to bed with me, why don’t you say it?
Majestyk: I don’t want to say it, I want to do it. Come on.
Aware that the police hope to use him as bait to entrap Renda, who confronts Majestyk during a barroom date. “Seems like there’s no use trying to get on your good side,” Majestyk declares before slugging him and leaving with Nancy, who proves to be deft at more than just picking melons when she handles the wheel of Vince’s Ford pickup truck during a chase with Renda’s hired guns.
Renda may be a professional killer in pursuit of him, but Majestyk honed his own skills as a Silver Star-awarded Army Ranger who escaped Vietnamese captivity and soon turns the tables on Renda. The hunted becomes the hunter as Majestyk pursues Renda all the way back to his own hunting lodge and taunts him to come out:
Come on, Frank, let’s finish it! I got work to do!
What’d He Wear?
After spending the first half dressed in a plaid work jacket, chambray shirt, and corduroy trousers, Mr. Majestyk changes for the second half into the familiar “denim sandwich” of a trucker jacket and jeans.
Majestyk wears a Lee 101J Rider, the waist-length “cowboy jacket” that the Kansas-based company launched in the late 1940s. The body of the jacket is a dark indigo denim with a slightly mis-colored collar, and it features the traditional Lee signatures like the zig-zag top-stitching around the six rivet buttons’ horizontal buttonholes and the chest pockets positioned along the slanted yokes, “reportedly… easier for cowboys to reach into with their opposite hand,” according to Lee. Both pockets are covered with flaps that are rounded in the corners and close through a single button. The cuffs and adjuster tabs on each side of the waist also close with matching rivet buttons.
Majestyk typically wears a brown flat cap made from a lightweight woven cloth, likely a synthetic blend that’s clearly prone to pilling as seen at the top of the soft crown.
Following his release, Majestyk first wears a surprisingly dressy shirt for melon-picking—not quite as appropriate for the context as the chambray work shirt he had worn during the first half. The white shirt has blue pencil stripes and its styled with a front placket, breast pocket, single-button mitred cuffs, and a large ’70s-style point collar.
Whether a continuity error or an intentional costume change, Majestyk begins wearing a different shirt when accompanying Nancy to the bar after they complete a hard day’s work in the melon fields. This shirt also features a blue pattern against a white ground, but the closer spacing of the two-toned blue mini-check makes the shirt present like a light-blue. It otherwise is styled the same as his previous shirt with its substantial point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs.
Majesty’s dark indigo denim jeans lack any of the signature branding elements of the “big three” contemporary denim outfitters—Lee, Levi’s, and Wrangler—even though he wears a Lee jacket. Rather than a traditional sturdy cotton, his double-knit denim appears to be a stretch blend that incorporates synthetic fibers like elastane. This was increasingly common through the ’70s as denim became increasingly accepted beyond workwear, unfortunately eclipsing with the questionable dawn of the leisure suit. (Ironically, it would be very appropriate for a rural melon farmer to be wearing traditional work jeans, but somewhere between James Linn’s costume design and Charles Bronson’s movie star persona, the decision was made to outfit Majestyk in these non-workwear jeans.)
Despite departing from traditional work jeans, Majestyk’s denim trousers have the typical curved front pockets, patch-style back pockets, and belt loops. He holds them up with a smooth dark-brown leather belt that closes through a darkened gold-toned single-prong buckle.
Majestyk always wears russet-brown leather plain-toe work boots, derby-laced through two sets of gold-finished eyelets and two sets of gold-finished speed hooks. These ankle-high boots have soft black leather collars and black rubber lug outsoles. His crew socks appear to be plain white.
Though Charles Bronson had cycled through some notable on-screen watches, like the Rolex Submariner he wore two years earlier in The Mechanic (1972), he sports a more nondescript timepiece as Vince Majestyk, befitting the more modest character. Majestyk wears a flat stainless steel watch with a round case, minimalist silver dial, and silver-toned bracelet that may be an expansion band.
The Truck
After quiet but reliable duty as Vince Majestyk’s time-tested farm vehicle for most of the movie’s running time, his “Meadowlark Yellow” 1968 Ford F-100 pickup truck gets the chance to shine during an eight-minute chase that puts it through the ringer against both Frank Renda’s gunmen and the rugged Colorado terrain.
Perhaps most impressive is that the production team didn’t even modify the two screen-used trucks prior to its extensive stuntwork. Purchased from a used lot for $1,500 (about $900 less than it would have cost new in ’68), the five-year-old F-100 was decidedly ready for the high-speed jumps and extreme off-roading performed by stunt driver Craig R. Baxley. The truck’s performance was so impressive that Ford licensed scenes from Mr. Majestyk for a series of commercials run in 1976.
Ford introduced its iconic F-series full-size pickup trucks for the 1948 model year. 1967 was the first year for the fifth generation of F-series trucks, currently comprised of the entry-level F-100 rated to handle a 1/2-ton payload, the 3/4-ton F-250, and the 1-ton F-350, all of which were also available in base, Custom Cab, and Ranger trim.
The design remained generally unchanged into ’68 except for the addition of marker lights to comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and swapping out the 352 “Y-block” V8 for two new FE-series V8 engines (360 and 390 cubic inches). This was also the first year for factory-installed air conditioning, for which Majestyk would have likely been grateful after long days in the melon fields.
To my knowledge, the exact configuration of Majestyk’s long-bed F-100 “Styleside” has been lost to history. A trio of six-cylinder engines were offered for the 1968 F-100, though it’s more likely that Majestyk’s truck is powered by one of the new FE-series V8 engines. The way it performs off-road suggests a four-wheel-drive (4×4) drivetrain rather than the rear-wheel-drive option. I believe that the only stock V8 for a 4×4 model in 1968 was the 360 FE, so we can safely canonize Majestyk’s F-100 as a 360 V8 4×4, mated to a four-speed Cruise-O-Matic automatic transmission with overdrive.
Built Ford tough!
1968 Ford F-100 Styleside 4×4
Body Style: 2-door pickup truck
Layout: front-engine, four-wheel-drive (4WD)
Engine: 360 cu. in. (5.9 L) Ford FE-series 360 Truck V8 with 2-barrel carburetor
Power: 215 bhp (160.3 kW; 215 PS) @ 4100 rpm
Torque: 375 lb·ft (508 N·m) @ 2600 rpm
Transmission: 4-speed automatic
Wheelbase: 131 inches (3327 mm)
Length: 202.3 inches (5138 mm)
Width: 79.4 inches (2017 mm)
Height: 74.2 inches (1885 mm)
Nancy initially drives the truck during Mr. Majestyk‘s famous final act chase scene while Majestyk himself provides defensive fire with his pump-action shotgun from the truck’s eight-foot-long bed until eventually taking over at the wheel.
The Guns
“Mr. Renda… what if he’s got a gun?” Bobby Kopas nervously asks his new boss. “Then we’ll just have to take it away from him, won’t we?” Renda responds.
Indeed, watching Renda’s henchmen line up in the trees outside his house, Vince pulls a Winchester Model 1200 Ranger pump-action shotgun from the wall-mounted gun rack where he also keeps his hunting rifle. “You know how to use this?” he asks Nancy, who responds “you point it and pull the the trigger, isn’t that all you do?” Less than satisfied with her answer, Vince resolves to arm himself with the shotgun during the ensuing battle conducted from his truck bed, where he attaches the shotgun’s barrel and loads it with 12-gauge Winchester Super X shells.
The Model 1200 was still a relatively new shotgun at the time Mr. Majestyk was made, introduced by Winchester in 1964 as a lower-cost alternative to the similar Model 1912 pump shotgun. The Model 12 and newer Model 1200 are cosmetically similar with their “hammerless” (internal hammer) receiver and tubular under-barrel magazine, but—unlike the Model 12’s tilting breechblock mechanism—the Model 1200 employed a less common rotating bolt in a bolt carrier, only the second shotgun to do so after this system was pioneered in the short-lived Armalite AR-17.
Winchester offered the blued Model 1200 chambered in 12-, 16, and 20-gauge, with an alloy receiver, checkered walnut slide and stock, and a takedown functionality illustrated by Majestyk attaching the barrel while in the back of his truck. (An IMFDB contributor speculated that Majesty’s Model 1200 may be the same shotgun that Kopas had held on him during the first act, though Kopas used a vent rib barrel while Majestyk attaches a non-ribbed barrel before the gunfight.)
The updated Model 1300 was introduced in 1978, eventually superseding the Model 1200 when Winchester discontinued it in 1981. The Model 1300 would be manufactured in a wider variety of configurations until production ended in 2006 following the bankruptcy of the U.S. Repeating Arms Company, which had taken over production of Winchester firearms in ’83.
The car chase ends as Renda realizes he’s been lured into a trap, just in time for Majestyk to open fire with his bolt-action hunting rifle that he also takes with him to Renda’s lodge, where he switches back to the Winchester shotgun for his final assault.
Majestyk switches back to the shotgun, handing the bolt-action rifle to Nancy.
We never get a very clear view of Majestyk’s rifle, which remains unidentified on IMFDB. Admittedly, my knowledge of rifles isn’t deep enough to attempt a meaningful identification.
This production photo of Charles Bronson in Mr. Majestyk provides a clearer image of Majestyk’s bolt-action rifle than what we see on screen.
What to Imbibe
“Hey, didn’t somebody say something about a cold beer after work?” Majestyk invites Nancy. This being Colorado, they naturally get bottles of Coors Banquet, poured into glasses… with a few dashes of table salt added.
Theoretically, adding salt to beer reduces its bitterness.
How to Get the Look
Charles Bronson in Mr. Majestyk (1974)
- Dark indigo-blue denim Lee 101J Rider trucker jacket with six rivet buttons, two chest pockets (with single-button flaps), 1-button squared cuffs, and button-fastened side-adjuster tabs
- Blue-on-white striped or checked shirt with large point collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs
- Dark indigo denim jeans-style trousers with belt loops, curved front pockets, patch-style back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Dark-brown smooth leather belt with darkened gold-toned single-prong buckle
- Russet-brown leather plain-toe 2-eyelet/2-hook derby-laced work boots with black leather collars and black rubber lug outsoles
- White ribbed cotton-blend crew socks
- Brown woven synthetic flat cap
- Stainless steel flat wristwatch with round silver dial on stainless expanding band
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
Maybe I can fix it so you never smile again.
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