Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger (1973)
Vitals
Jack Lemmon as Harry Stoner, cynical businessman and World War II veteran
Los Angeles, Spring 1972
Film: Save the Tiger
Release Date: February 14, 1973
Director: John G. Avildsen
Wardrobe Credit: John A. Anderson
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
One of my favorite actors, Jack Lemmon was born 100 years ago today on February 8, 1925 in Newton, Massachusetts.
After serving in the U.S. Navy as communications officer aboard an aircraft carrier during World ar II, Lemmon rose to fame playing comedic roles in the 1950s, such as his back-to-back pairings with Judy Holliday in the early 1950s and his performance as the wily Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts (1955) that earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Lemmon’s successful streak continued when he teamed with director Billy Wilder in the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960), followed by five more movies together over the next quarter-century.
Lemmon’s talent in serious roles was widely demonstrated in Blake Edwards’ 1962 drama Days of Wine and Roses, though it wasn’t until a decade later when the middle-aged actor returned to drama as the disillusioned veteran Harry Stoner in Save the Tiger (1973), a film he was so dedicated to bringing to the screen that he waived his usual salary to work at union scale—which was $165 per week—and a percentage of the gross. Lemmon ultimately received his second Oscar—this time the Academy Award for Best Actor—for his poignant portrayal of a man trapped by his past and the hollow promises of the so-called American Dream, perfectly playing the weariness of a lifetime of war-torn cynicism battling that characteristic twinkle in his eye.
Despite his ostensible success, Harry shares a joyless home life in a Beverly Hills mansion with his wife Janet (Patricia Smith), who nags him about seeing various doctors and scoffs at his wish to visit their daughter whom they’ve enrolled in an expensive Swiss boarding school. Haunted by his wartime experiences, Harry consistently tries to find nostalgic escapes through memories of baseball and big band, but Janet resents his attempts at minor pleasures like listening to music in the morning.
Things aren’t much better at the garment business he co-owns with the older but more idealistic Phil Greene (Jack Alford), who assures Harry that “if this country doesn’t go in the crapper, we’ll have a great season… we’ll make some money for a change.” Though Phil had agreed to some creative bookkeeping to stay afloat and keep their staff employed over the past year, he’s aghast at Harry’s suggestions of arson and insurance fraud, and he wants nothing to do with his pimping for clients like the sleazy Fred Mirrell (Norman Burton).
Harry’s PTSD culminates with a very public breakdown on stage at the Belgrave Hotel while hosting his company’s fashion show among a full auditorium of buyers and models—triggering flashbacks that transform the audience into the fallen comrades that he lamented to Phil seem all but forgotten a generation later:
I drove down to Anzio. There’s a ridge there and the sand is all piled up like a dune… you know; it runs about 200 feet. In 1944 that sand was muddy with blood, and last year it was covered with bikinis—bikinis, you know—cute little buckets sweating into the same sand that held all that blood. Hell, I don’t want to talk about war. It’s the final joke.
Harry only seems to find happiness during his solitary commutes. That morning, he had picked up the young hitchhiker Myra (Laurie Heineman), who shocked and amused him by her offer “to ball” after making some quick small talk. Encountering her again in the evening after a troubling and traumatizing day, Harry is more willing to follow Myra to the beach house she’s been watching for a friend, where they indulge in marijuana and a massage together, but his incoherent rambling dissolves any prospect of romance.
Released on Valentine’s Day 1973 just days after Lemmon’s 47th birthday, Save the Tiger underperformed at the box office (while still recouping its relatively small million-dollar budget) but notably established Lemmon as a more serious actor. Now the first male performer to win Oscars in both lead and supporting categories, he would continue deftly balancing comedy and drama through the rest of his career in films like The China Syndrome (1979), JFK (1991), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) until his death in June 2001 at the age of 76.
What’d He Wear?
“That’s a groovy suit,” Myra comments after Harry picks her up for the first time, and she recognizes his slubby silk suiting when he picks her up again that evening. Given his affluence and the nature of his work, it makes sense that Harry Stoner would be a fashionable dresser. His suit drives much of people’s first impressions about him, with two of his female colleagues—and even the otherwise taciturn arsonist Charlie Robbins (Thayer David)—commenting on his “beautiful suit,” to which he almost always grumbles back his stock answer: “Passatti. Italian silk.”
After his combat in Anzio and subsequent recuperation, Italy remains central to Harry’s identity. After all, it’s where he became the man still haunted nearly 30 years later, even if the future he fought for doesn’t even know he was there. (“We never fought a war with Italy!” Myra laughs when Harry recounts his wartime memories.) During his impulsive breakdown during the fashion show, Harry explains that the experiences influenced his decision to name the company Capri Casuals:
Capri has a very special significance for me because I was recuperating there, you see? It was a sanctuary for the living. It was beautiful. Roman columns. And it was quiet, and it was filled with men—brave men that stuck together because they believed in something.
Thus, Harry makes sure that everyone who asks knows that his eye-catching gray suit is made of Italian silk. Specifically, it’s dupioni silk—a highly lustrous summer-weight fabric often characterized by its irregular slubs, defined by Alan Flusser in Dressing the Man as “a luxurious shantung-type silk fabric made from a double silk fiber from two cocoons nested together.” Aside from his sweat-soaked pajamas and boldly patterned robe, this silk dupioni suit is the primary outfit that Harry wears through the narrative that spans 24 hours in his dreary life.
Save the Tiger could be simplified as a 1970s update of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Nunnally Johnson’s chronicle of a family man aspiring to the American ideal while grappling with his wartime service in Italy; as the titular man, Gregory Peck was dressed by his tailor Huntsman in the staid gray flannel suit that was a de facto uniform of 1950s corporate America.
More than a decade after Jack Lemmon’s character so proudly climbed the corporate ladder in his dark understated suits and “junior executive” bowler hat in The Apartment, Harry Stoner now personifies the ’70s version of Peck’s character as our man in a gray silk suit, more prone to flash and detailed with the touches of excess that were characteristic of the era’s tailoring.
Harry’s single-breasted suit jacket has fashionably wide lapels that roll to a single button, proportionally positioned over Lemmon’s waist—aligned with the jacket’s waist suppression as part of the conventional ’70s silhouette of a suppressed waist and full skirt, split in the back with a long single vent. The sleeves follow this trend, finished with flared four-button cuffs.
The jacket is lined in a bright vermillion Bemberg rayon, with the manufacturer’s label stitched onto the inside of the right breast; it may have indeed been made by a tailor or firm called Passatti, but I can’t find any records of this. In addition to a welted breast pocket, the jacket has slanted hip pockets with asymmetrical flaps.
The gray dupioni silk suit’s matching flat-front trousers have the full-top “frogmouth”-style front pockets that were fashionable through the 1960s and ’70s and a low-slung jetted back-left pocket. Though the fashionable height for trouser rise had slightly fallen into the 1970s, Harry’s trousers are still proportional with his jacket.
With cutters like the old-timer Meyer (William Hansen) working for him, it’s no surprise that Harry wears trousers smartly tailored with a fitted waistband that needs no additional suspension in the form of belt, braces, or even adjustable waist-tabs. The waistband only has an extended squared tab across the front that closes through a hidden hook closure. The plain-hemmed bottoms are slightly flared.
Harry brings out drams of Scotch for himself and his long-time cutter Meyer. Note that he’s already swapped his striped shirt for Phil’s oxford.
Harry’s black calf leather cap-toe monk shoes show a dash of offbeat creativity, harmonizing better with his visually interesting slubby silk suit than if he had worn plain black oxfords or derby lace-ups. Each shoe has a single monk strap, fastened with a silver-toned buckle. Flusser cites monk shoes as “one of the few articles of apparel to earn its name honestly,” patterned from footwear that originated among Italian friars during the 15th century—marking yet another instance of Italian influence on Harry’s style.
Harry signs the titular petition to “save the tiger.” The petitioner was played by Lemmon’s friend Biff Elliot.
“The most egregious breach of hosiery etiquette that a man can commit is to allow a patch of skin to show between trouser and hose while seated, because his socks are too short,” Flusser wrote in Style & the Man. Harry avoids this sin by not only wearing black silk dress socks that extend high over his calves but also supporting them with garters.
Though sock garters had fallen generally out of fashion as a casualty of declining formality standards by the ’70s, Harry’s preference for them illustrates that he knows the hidden tricks to keeping a neat appearance.
Clad in his thin ivory V-neck short-sleeved undershirt and white cotton boxers, Harry first pulls on his socks before strapping on his white-edged black elasticized garters, each rigged with silver-toned adjusters and hooks that clip onto the reinforced double-ply tops of his socks.
Harry pairs the suit with a busily striped shirt, styled with a long point collar, plain button-up front, and two-button squared barrel cuffs. The striping alternates between pale sage-gray stripes and slightly thinner white satin stripes, with the latter alternating between being bisected by a narrow lilac stripe or framed and split with sets of four narrow lilac stripes.
Harry’s scarlet-red matte-silk tie is printed with a repeating pattern of gold shapes depicting the iron fero prow-head attached to the bows of Venetian gondolas—yet another nod to the significance of Italian culture in Harry’s life. The tie blade synchronizes with his fashionably wide lapels and collar, though the overall width is rather restrained with a classic-looking four-in-hand knot that doesn’t look as chunky as some men’s tie knots during the ’70s.
“I shoulda been a ballplayer… I coulda made Brooklyn. Chicago, anyway,” Harry muses while tying his tie in the morning.
Harry’s all-gold wristwatch consists of a small rectangular case with a squared gold dial, attached to a gold rouleaux-style bullet-link bracelet. His only other jewelry is his plain gold wedding band, worn per tradition on his left ring finger.
“It’s awfully nice of you to offer, but I’m running a little behind schedule,” Harry deadpans while checking his watch in response to Myra asking if he wants to ball.
After a long day, Harry asks to borrow one of Phil’s shirts, taking a cream poplin shirt as Phil comments “that’s two you owe me.” The shirt follows a typical design with another fashionably long button-down collar, front placket, breast pocket, and button cuffs, not unlike the one Phil had been wearing all day already.
Harry looks a little more grounded by the end of the story, having traded his busy-striped shirt with its trendy collar for Phil’s more modest and timeless button-down oxford, his tie loosened and fancy silk jacket thrown over his shoulder.
What to Imbibe
When the sleazy Fred Mirrell (Norman Burton) requests “a little Scotch on the rocks,” Harry replies, “well, I’ve got the Scotch—I haven’t got the rocks!” and pours them each a dram of Haig Dimple Pinch blended whisky with a splash of water from his office bathroom sink. Back at the office later, Phil pours Harry a dram—neat. Harry then takes another out to Meyer, who is working late at the sewing machine.
“Don’t you sell America to me! I’ve got friends over there sittin’ under the sand with bikinis on their heads! I used to get goosebumps every time I looked at that flag. When I was a kid, sittin’ alone in the room playing the radio, if they ever played the national anthem, I stood up—all alone in the room—I stood up at attention. Don’t sell me America! Now they’re makin’ jockstraps out of the flag. Maybe it’s terrific. Maybe it’s healthy. I don’t know, I don’t know, boy, but I do know there are no more rules.”
After lunch, Harry and Phil head to a bar playing High Sierra (foreshadowing the film’s ending), and Phil orders them “two White Label on the rocks—presumably more blended Scotch, specifically Dewar’s White Label. We later see a bottle of Dewar’s also in Harry and Phil’s office.
How to Get the Look
Jack Lemmon in Save the Tiger (1973)
As a garment industry executive with a deep appreciation for Italian influence, Harry Stoner balances tasteful tailoring with visually interesting style in his gray dupioni silk suit, trendy striped shirt, black leather monk shoes, and a fiery red tie patterned with an iconic symbol from Venetian gondolas.
- Gray Italian dupioni silk suit:
- Single-breasted 2-button jacket with wide notch lapels, welted breast pocket, slanted flapped hip pockets, 4-button flared cuffs, and long single vent
- Flat-front trousers with beltless waistband, frogmouth front pockets, jetted back-left pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Pale sage-gray (with wide white satin stripes and narrow pink over-stripes) shirt with long point collar, plain front, and 2-button squared cuffs
- Scarlet tie with gold gondola fero repeating print
- Black calf leather cap-toe single-strap monk shoes
- Black dress socks
- White-trimmed black sock garters with silver-toned buckles
- Gold wedding ring
- Gold rectangular-cased watch with squared gold dial on gold bullet-link bracelet
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
I want that girl in a Cole Porter song. I wanna see Lena Horne at the Cotton Club, hear Billie Holiday sing “Fine and Mellow”, walk in that kind of rain that never washes perfume away. I wanna be in love with something. Anything. Just the idea. A dog, a cat. Anything. Just something.
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