Vic Morrow in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)
Vitals
Vic Morrow as Everett Franklin, maverick police captain
San Joaquin County, California, Fall 1973
Film: Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
Release Date: May 17, 1974
Director: John Hough
Wardrobe Master: Phyllis Garr
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The talented actor Vic Morrow died 42 years ago today during a helicopter accident on the set of John Landis’ movie The Twilight Zone that also claimed the lives of child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen. Born on Valentine’s Day 1929 in the Bronx, Morrow’s acting career dates to the ’50s when he starred as Stanley Kowalski in a stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire and made his screen debut in the 1955 drama Blackboard Jungle. He later brought his real-life experience as a Navy veteran to his star-making role in the 1960s World War II series Combat!
One of my favorite of Vic Morrow’s performances is as Everett Franklin, a renegade police captain tasked with chasing Peter Fonda, Susan George, and Adam Roarke making their high-octane getaway through the walnut groves and highways of central California in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, released 50 years ago in May 1974.
We’re introduced to Captain Franklin at his ranch, where he’s dismayed to learn from a hapless young deputy that all he has to go on for the pursuit is that the crook is driving “a blue ’68 Chevy.” After the deputy attempts to volunteer that the sedan may be “souped”, Franklin comments that Larry’s maneuvers can be attributed to “the driver, not the car.” A maverick in his own right whose refusal to wear a gun or badge are among his colleagues’ many grievances against him, Franklin proves to be a suitable foe for Larry, who exclaims to his accomplice that “he’s crazier than I am!” as Franklin doggedly pursues him in the department’s Bell JetRanger helicopter.
Morrow insisted upon a $1 million insurance policy before filming any scenes inside the helicopter, explaining that “I have always had a premonition that I’ll be killed in a helicopter crash!” This intuition became tragically prescient after the crash that killed Morrow, Le, and Chen when a Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter spun out of control in the early morning hours of July 23, 1982 while Landis was filming a sequence for The Twilight Zone set during the Vietnam War.
What’d He Wear?
Considerable mention is made of how Captain Franklin ignores the sheriff department’s sartorial standards, eschewing uniforms and instead wearing his regular ranch gear that also suits his renegade style of leadership.
This includes Franklin’s well-worn cowboy hat, made from a sandy beige felt. Befitting Franklin’s side occupation as a rancher, the hat follows the traditional “cattleman’s” style with its center-ridged crown and curved brim. The inelegantly wraping on the brim’s grosgrain-finished edge suggests a hat aged and distressed from plenty of sturdy wear. The tan cloth band is arranged in four tufts, bordered by beige tufts that match the cord laced around the band itself on the right side.
Franklin wears a light stone-colored cotton gabardine windbreaker that echoes the details of a contemporary McGregor Drizzler jacket. The front fastens with a brass-toned straight-zip front that extends up to the shirt-style collar from the straight waist hem, which is elasticized across the back. A horizontal yoke across the back meets the top of the side pleats which allow greater range of arm movement.
The set-in sleeves are finished with a pointed tab on each cuff that closes through one of two buttons for a wearer-adjusted fit around the wrist. Swelled seams form the rounded borders of each large hip pocket, accessed by a slanted set-in welt.
Franklin wears a chambray work shirt, though the warp appears to be violet rather than the traditional blue. The pink contrast thread (rather than white) suggests that the shirt may have indeed originally been blue until it was washed in hot water with a red-dominant cloth that bled onto Franklin’s shirt, dying the blue cambric cloth a purplish shade while the white thread turned pink.
The shirt has a large point collar, consistent with fashions of the ’70s, as well as a front placket, two flapped chest pockets, and three-button barrel cuffs that all fasten with dark-navy plastic buttons. He keeps the top two shirt buttons undone, occasionally showing his silver-toned chain-link necklace.
Richard Unekis’ 1963 source novel The Chase, from which Dirty Mary Crazy Larry was very loosely adapted, describes police superintendent Franklin as a Navy veteran—like Morrow himself—so it’s possible that the cinematic Franklin’s decision to wear Army-issue OG-107 utility trousers are a subtle suggestion of the character’s military experience, though it was increasingly common by the ’70s for civilians to co-opt fatigues as workwear or statement style. Named for the olive-green shade of eight-ounce cotton sateen used to produce them, OG-107 uniforms were first issued by the U.S. Army in 1952 and remained in service through the Vietnam War. By the time the uniform had been phased out in the late 1980s in favor of the camouflage battle dress uniform (BDU), the cloth had been generally updated with the OG-507 cotton/polyester blend.
Through this tenure, OG-107 fatigue trousers remained generally unchanged, fashioned with belt loops (though earlier Type I and Type II models also had button-tab side adjusters), patch front pockets with slanted entries, and back pockets covered by rectangular flaps that closed through a single button. The fit was full through the legs down to plain-hemmed bottoms.
In 1962, Army Material Command requested a variation of OG-107s suitable for the Vietnamese climate, resulting in Natick Labs designing what would ultimately become the M1967 Jungle Utility Uniform, also known as the Tropical Combat Uniform (TCU). The tropical combat trousers were built from the standard OG-107 uniform but followed the example of World War II-era paratrooper trousers with the addition of cargo pockets positioned over the thighs as well as the return of adjuster tabs on the waistband in addition to belt loops.
Consistent with military uniforms, the TCU evolved in response to field feedback and uniform budgets, including six patterns of TCU trousers. The first change to be made was covering the buttons on all the pocket flaps as the exposed buttons tended to snag in the jungle. (You can read more about Tropical Combat Trousers at Vietnam Gear.)
Franklin’s olive-green cotton trousers with their belt loops, slanted side pockets, and exposed buttons on the single-button back pocket flaps and cargo pocket visible over his right thigh suggest he wears a civilian variation of the 1st pattern Tropical Combat Trousers (like these from The Real McCoy’s), as mil-spec pants would have had larger two-button cargo pocket flaps positioned over the side of each thigh as well as pocket leg ties, though these could have also been removed.
Franklin holds up his trousers with a tan belt attached to a silver rectangular buckle that features a bull head in relief. His square-toed cowboy boots have light tobacco-brown sueded leather uppers.
Franklin dresses his right wrist with an ornately carved silver Navajo-style cuff bracelet. Two turquoise stones are mounted in the center, flanked on each side by a diamond-shaped plate and a triple-prong cuff that tapers out to the opening.
Franklin’s Rolex GMT Master wristwatch likely belonged to Morrow in real life. The presence of crown guards indicate that Morrow clearly wears a contemporary ref. 1675 GMT Master, housed in a stainless steel 40mm case with a round black dial under T116 crystal and the iconic “Pepsi bezel”, so named for its blue-and-red anodized aluminum insert that resembles the popular soda brand’s logo. He wears it on the iconic steel three-piece Oyster-style link bracelet.
Rolex had launched the first GMT Master in 1954, developed in collaboration with Pan Am for pilots to have a reliable 24-hour watch during long-haul flights. In addition to the standard hour, minute, and second hands, the GMT Master boasts a white-wheeled date window (at the 3:00 position) and a dedicated 24-hour hand that allows wearers to instantly see the current time in two time zones, by following the hours inscribed on the 24-hour scale bezel. After five years of the original ref. 6542 in production, Rolex replaced it with the ref. 1675 that substituted the problematic radium Bakelite bezel with screen-printed metal, increased the case size from 38mm to 40mm, improved the automatic movement, and added crown guards.
Produced in a variety of metal finishes, dial colors, and bezel combinations, the ref. 1675 was the only GMT Master produced by Rolex until 1980. (You can read more about this model at GMTMaster1675.com.)
How to Get the Look
Vic Morrow in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)
- Light stone-colored cotton gabardine windbreaker jacket with straight-zip front, shirt-style collar, large hip pockets with set-in slanted welt entry, and button-fastened pointed-tab cuffs
- Violet chambray work shirt with long point collar, front placket, two chest pockets (with button-down flaps), and three-button barrel cuffs
- Olive-green cotton sateen flat-front fatigue-style trousers with belt loops, slanted side pockets, thigh-positioned cargo pockets (with single-button rectangular flaps), two back pockets (with single-button rectangular flaps), and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Tan belt with silver rectangular bull-head buckle
- Light tobacco-brown suede square-toed cowboy boots
- Beige felt cattleman’s-style cowboy hat with center-creased crown, beige-and-tan tufted band, and curved brim
- Silver chain-link necklace
- Silver ornately carved Navajo-style triple-prong cuff bracelet with two center-mounted turquoise stones
- Rolex GMT Master ref. 1675 stainless steel chronometer with 40mm case, blue-and-red “Pepsi” bezel insert, black matte dial with luminous hands and white 3:00 date window, and stainless steel Oyster-style three-piece link bracelet
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie
The Quote
You want a statement, okay, here it is. Uh, quote: “I admire any man who tries to get anything he wants any way he can as long as it’s, uh, legal. Now I may be a little bit old-fashioned, but I believe in law and order. So this poor son-of-a-bitch better start thinking, ’cause this is my territory, and I’m gonna get him.” Unquote it now, and see if you get the word “son-of-a-bitch” in print.
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