Dennis Wilson in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
Vitals
Dennis Wilson as “The Mechanic”, an unnamed car mechanic
Arizona through Tennessee, Fall 1970
Film: Two-Lane Blacktop
Release Date: July 7, 1971
Director: Monte Hellman
Costume Designer: Richard Bruno
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
This week would have been the 80th birthday of Beach Boys drummer and co-founding member Dennis Wilson, whose sole acting credit was Monte Hellman’s 1971 road movie Two-Lane Blacktop. Born December 4, 1944 in Inglewood, California, Wilson was the sole Beach Boy—even among his bandmate brothers Brian and Carl—who could actually surf, despite the band’s many songs celebrating surf culture.
Though Two-Lane Blacktop has gained a cult following in the decades since its unceremonious release in the summer of 1971, this wasn’t Wilson’s first brush with cults as he had briefly been acquainted with Charles Manson during the year before the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders.
Wilson was cast only four days before production began in August 1970. Casting director Fred Roos had recommended him to Hellman, who later explained to Marc Savlov for the Austin Chronicle that he had confidence in the inexperienced Wilson as “he had lived that role, that he really grew up with cars. It was almost as though he were born with a greasy rag in his back pocket.”
Wilson starred opposite James Taylor, a fellow popular musician making his screen debut—and, to date, sole credit—as the restless young men racing their ’55 Chevy around the country. No names are given for any of the film’s major characters, with Taylor and Wilson credited simply as “The Driver” and “The Mechanic”, respectively.
During their travels, they pick up a teenage hitchhiker known only as “The Girl” and engage in a race for pink slips against the swaggering driver (Warren Oates) of a brand-new Pontiac GTO. A strange alliance forms between these two emblems of American automotive performance as they chase each other between the ditches of old Route 66 and the blue highways stretching between the southwestern desert and the nation’s capitol.
The two automotive stars of Two-Lane Blacktop: a primer-gray 1955 Chevy and the “Orbit Orange” 1970 Pontiac GTO.
What’d He Wear?
I had been planning to write about Dennis Wilson’s wardrobe as “The Mechanic” when I received a request from BAMF Style reader who indicated interest in seeing this come to fruition and also shared the wisdom from Monte Hellman’s DVD commentary that the clothing worn on screen was sourced from thrift stores. (Thanks, Will!)
Given the scant four-day window between Wilson being cast and the start of production, I’m not sure if costume designer Richard Bruno already had the mechanic’s outfit purchased when Wilson stepped into the role. The Beach Boy left his Pendleton shirt behind and dressed in a denim jacket and jeans, white T-shirt, and motorcycle boots—recalling the rebellious greasers of the ’50s but with the shaggier long hair and sideburns of the Woodstock era.
Like their ’55 Chevy and his overall aesthetic, even the mechanic’s jacket specifically dates to the 1950s.
The double pockets and knife pleats specifically identify Wilson’s screen-worn denim jacket as the Levi’s 507XX, known to collectors as the “Type II”. Introduced in 1953, the Type II maintains the overall boxy cut of its predecessor—the single-pocket 506XX “Type I”—but is slightly longer and features an additional pocket on the right side for a more symmetrical presentation. Both chest pockets are covered with single-button flaps. Levi’s began adding their now-signature branded “red tab” to the chest pocket seam of Type I jackets in the 1930s, and this practice remained on the Type II and its successor.
Just like the post-World War II update of Levi’s iconic 501 jeans, the Type II also removed the Type I’s cinch-back strap, replacing it with the short waist tabs that remain a standard fixture on modern trucker jackets. Double sets of sewn-in knife pleats run from the horizontal chest yoke down to the waistband, flanking each side of the five-button front. All of the buttons—including the five up the front, the pocket flaps, the waist tabs, and cuffs—are all silver-toned iron rivet buttons.
The Type II was the shortest-produced iteration of Levi’s denim jackets, replaced after just nine years by the 557XX “Type III” trucker jacket that has remained continuously in production since 1962.
Wilson wears a plain white cotton crew-neck T-shirt. Unlike the undershirts associated with ’50s counterculture thanks to Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Fonzie, the mechanic wears a T-shirt with short sleeves that extend nearly to his elbows and a patch pocket over the left breast.
The mechanic demonstrates some brand loyalty with his Levi’s jeans, identifiable by the faint remains of the arcuate stitch across both back patch pockets as the red tab appears to be long gone—a casualty of the suggested years of wear that also resulted in the frayed edges, whiskered cloth, and dirt that has been lovingly ground in to the twill cloth, resulting in a duller shade of mid-blue denim than his jacket.
The jeans have the usual belt loops and five-pocket layout that was standardized by Levi’s on their postwar 501s, though the way each leg flares out below the knees suggests Wilson could be wearing the Levi’s 517
Boot Cut model that had just been introduced in 1969 as the “Saddleman”, specifically designed to be worn over high-shafted boots.
The boot-cut jeans accommodate the high shafts of the mechanic’s black leather engineer boots, identified as such by the silver-toned buckle fastening the leather strap over each instep. Like the rest of his outfit, engineer boots are rooted in the 1950s counterculture of greasers and rebels portrayed on screen by the likes of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean.
The style had actually originated in the late 1930s when boot makers Chippewa and Wesco evolved the ankle-strapped harness boots long worn by U.S. cavalrymen to be rigged with simplified straps—one over the instep and another securing loose gussets over the tops. These became as “engineer boots” as they were adopted by those in hardy professions from railway firemen to shipyard welders, though they also caught on among motorcyclists who liked the protection of the calf-high bullhide shafts without the safety hazards of laces and excess straps. This latter adoption by bikers led to their eventual association with ’50s counterculture.
Wilson holds these jeans up with a wide belt of smooth brown leather, fastened in the front with a gold-toned double-prong buckle. The buckle appears to be an ornate center circle, flanked by a narrow wing on each side—I’m sure it’s more intentional design, but my Star Wars fan eyes can only compare it to an Imperial TIE fighter.
Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird, and James Taylor during the production of Two-Lane Blacktop.
The mechanic’s duties ranging from meticulously timing his friend’s racing to tuning his engine require the reliable functionality of a trusty chronograph. Like so many well-loved tools and the rest of the mechanic’s attire, his stainless Desotos 17-jewel watch reflects plenty of wear, illustrated by scratches on the crystal and the black markings rubbing off the rotating bezel. The bezel frames a bright-red dial with luminous hour indices—Arabic numerals for even hours and non-numeric indices for odd hours, aside from the two red sub-registers at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions. Wilson wears the watch strapped to a black edge-stitched leather bracelet on his left wrist.
Desotos was a smaller, inexpensive brand that generally operated through the 1960s and ’70s. There seems to be little information about the watches they produced during this period, and in particular almost nothing about red-dialed chronographs like Wilson clearly sports in Two-Lane Blacktop, though this watch has become something of a grail among enthusiasts and fans.
Dennis Wilson’s screen-worn look of a Levi’s “Type II” denim jacket, white T-shirt, blue jeans, and boots would be repeated two years later by Martin Sheen in Terence Malick’s 1950s-set directorial debut Badlands (1973).
The Car
James Taylor and Dennis Wilson travel the country in a 1955 Chevrolet 150, a two-door sedan that was part of Chevy’s economy-level lineup through the mid-’50s and implied to have been heavily modified by Wilson’s mechanic to allow Taylor’s driver to ably compete in races. Originally painted powder-blue, the production team repainted the cars in a matte-gray primer to maintain a no-nonsense appearance.
Chevrolet intended the 150 to be primarily a fleet vehicle when it was introduced for the 1953 model year, a no-frills alternative to the mid-level 210 and premium Bel-Air lines. Initially, the 150 only featured a straight-six engine mated to a three-speed syncro-mesh manual transmission, but the two-speed Hydramatic automatic transmission became an option for ’54, and a 265 cubic-inch “Turbo Fire” V8 was introduced for the 1955 redesign.
“The Chevy, an unconventional hero car for 1970, became The Driver’s ride when, during pre-production for the film, associate producer, Gary Kurtz, consulted car builder Richard Ruth about fabricating cars for the movie,” writes Rob Finkelman for Street Muscle Mag. “Ruth had recently built himself a big-block ’55, and the two men did a bit of street racing in it around LA’s San Fernando Valley one day. By the time they were done, Kurtz was hooked on using a ’55 Chevy for the movie and contracted Ruth to build three cars for filming.”
At his North Hollywood shop, Ruth transformed two ’55 150 coupes and a Bel-Air into identical star and stunt cars, stripping out the insides and replacing the stock steel doors, trunks, and hoods with lighter-weight fiberglass units, in addition to mounting mailbox-style air scoops on the hoods. The side glass windows were also replaced with sliding plexiglass windows. “All three cars were equipped with 1960s Oldsmobile Positraction rears with 4.88:1 gears, straight axles with coilovers, and four-wheel disc brakes,” adds Finkelman. The American Mag 200-S five-spoke “daisy” wheels measured 15×6 on the front and 15×10 on the rear, alternating between Firestone Grand Prix tires for the street and M&H Racemaster drag slicks for racing.
Two of the cars were powered with the new 454 cubic-inch big-block V8, which Chevrolet had just introduced for the 1970 model year. Ruth installed these with aluminum heads, a Weiand tunnel ram, and dual 4-barrel Holley carburetors, all mated to a four-speed Muncie M-22 “rock crusher” transmission to help the Chevy run “well into the 12s”. The remaining stunt car received a 427 cubic-inch “L88” big-block V8 from the late ’60s, mated to a four-speed Turbo Hydra-matic automatic transmission.
Dennis Wilson, James Taylor, and Laurie Bird in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
1970 Pontiac GTO
Body Style: 2-door sports coupe
Layout: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive (RWD)
Engine: 400 cubic inch (6.6 L) “Ram Air IV” OHV V8 with Rochester 4-barrel carburetor
Power: 370 hp (276 kW; 375 PS) @ 5500 rpm
Torque: 445 lb·ft (603 N·m) @ 3900 rpm
Transmission: 3-speed Turbo Hydra-matic automatic
Wheelbase: 112 inches (2845 mm)
Length: 202.9 inches (5154 mm)
Width: 76.7 inches (1948 mm)
Height: 52.3 inches (1328 mm)
The three screen-used cars sat on Universal Pictures’ prop lot for over a year after filming concluded. After one of the 454-powered Chevys (which had used for interior shots) was sold to a studio mechanic, Hollywood again came calling for the two remaining cars when Gary Kurtz was hired as co-producer on American Graffiti and pictured the mean ’55 Chevy as the ideal ride for Harrison Ford’s swaggering local cowboy Bob Falfa.
The two Chevys were repainted a glossy black and finished with chome exterior details, new windows, and full interiors, with the twin-carb 454 serving as Bob’s “very wicked ’55 Chevy” hero car while the 427 fitted with a rollover cage met its end during American Graffiti‘s culminating race scene.
The Mechanic: You’d have yourself a real street-sweeper here if you put a little work into it.
G.T.O.: I go fast enough.
The Driver: You can never go fast enough.
As the driver and mechanic’s competition against G.T.O. grows more oddly collaborative, the mechanic even gets a few turns behind the wheel of that “orbit orange” 1970 Pontiac GTO. Despite its owner’s boasting that he was “on line… when the 455 came out with the Mark IV Ram Air and a beefed blower end and a Carter high-rise setup,” this configuration is self-contradictory as the Ram Air was only offered with the 400 V8 which is likely under his hood.
The mechanic slips into the GTO’s cockpit.
How to Get the Look
Dennis Wilson in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
Dennis Wilson’s mechanic in Two-Lane Blacktop looks natural in his blue denim Levi’s Type II jacket, dirty jeans, white pocket tee, and engineer boots—sporting the wardrobe of a ’50s rebel but with a non-posturing authenticity further demonstrated by the job-informed chronograph with its bold red dial shining from his left wrist.
- Blue denim Levi’s 507XX “Type II” jacket with five iron rivet buttons, double sets of sewn-in knife pleats, two chest pockets (with button-down flaps), button cuffs, and button-fastened side adjuster tabs
- White cotton crew-neck short-sleeved T-shirt with breast pocket
- Blue denim Levi’s 517 “Saddleman” boot-cut jeans with belt loops and five-pocket layout
- Brown smooth leather belt with ornate gold double-prong buckle
- Black leather engineer boots with silver-toned buckles
- Stainless steel 17-jewel chronograph watch with bright-red dial (with two sub-registers) and black rotating bezel on black edge-stitched leather strap
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
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