Gene Hackman as Harry Caul in The Conversation (1974)
Vitals
Gene Hackman as Harry Caul, anxious audio surveillance expert and saxophonist
San Francisco, December 1972
Film: The Conversation
Release Date: April 7, 1974
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Costume Designer: Aggie Guerard Rodgers
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Released today in 1974, The Conversation featured a characteristically great starring performance from the late Gene Hackman. Hackman stars as San Francisco surveillance specialist Harry Caul, a paranoid loner described by one of his few pals as “the best bugger on the West Coast.”
Director Francis Ford Coppola later shared that, though Hackman initially struggled to connect with the repressed and introspective Caul due to their contrasting personalities, he ultimately came to regard the role as one of his personal favorites.
Coppola shot The Conversation in under three months between the first two Godfather films, tapping Fredo himself—John Cazale—to co-star as Harry’s more extroverted assistant, Stan. The film’s haunting, minimalist piano score was composed by Coppola’s brother-in-law David Shire, who would go on to score The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), All the President’s Men (1976), and Saturday Night Fever (1977).
The story follows Harry’s life, which—by design—is almost entirely consumed by work, as even his sneaky link Amy (Teri Garr) teases him for spying on her. In the rare moments that he isn’t actively tailing targets for profit or his own peace of mind, Harry retreats to his sparsely furnished apartment to play his saxophone in solitude.
Harry’s pad is even more sparse by the end.
A few weeks before Christmas, Harry and Stan spend Harry’s birthday surveilling a couple walking through Union Square on behalf of their mysterious client, known only as “the director” (Robert Duvall). Unlike the nosy Stan, Harry makes a rule of not bothering himself with the content of their recordings (“I don’t care what they’re talking about; all I want is a nice, fat recording”), but a troubling snippet of the couple’s conversation piques Harry’s attention and anxiety. His attempts to personally deliver the recording to his client are thwarted by the director’s enigmatic assistant, Martin Stett (Harrison Ford), who insists on serving as the intermediary.
Though Hackman’s performance earned BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, he was snubbed at the Oscars, where The Conversation also lost in all three categories where it was nominated, including losing Best Picture to Coppola’s own The Godfather Part II—admittedly, tough competition.
What’d He Wear?
The Conversation hardly outfits Gene Hackman in his most fashionable on-screen fits, but costume designer Aggie Guerard Rodgers perfected this detail of his character by crafting a limited wardrobe befitting the intensely private, paranoid, and professional Harry Caul. Aligned with his asceticism, Harry’s clothing is rooted in function over form with a plastic-like raincoat, sturdy suits, and browline glasses.
It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate fine clothes—as Harry compliments a friend’s natty gray pinstripe double-breasted French-tailored suit—but his claim to own nothing “personal… nothing of value” would have to extend to his clothing, which are mere vessels for dressing himself just enough to impress his clientele. Aside from a silkier charcoal suit he wears with a white shirt and burgundy tie at a security conference, a place where dressing to impress drives better business, Harry’s Columbo-like approach to dressing centers around a single working outfit, comprised of dreary neutrals and earth tones.
Amniotic Outerwear
This was only Aggie Guerard Rodgers’ second credit, following her debut costume design for American Graffiti, but her work with Coppola and Hackman to build Harry’s iconic look remains recognizable and symbolic more than a half-century later.
“Mr. Coppola chose the kind of raincoat that Mr. Hackman wore. He told me exactly what he wanted,” Guerard Rodgers confirmed to Chris Laverty for Clothes on Film. “I went to an army surplus store there called Kaplan’s and bought two dozen raincoats in a little pouch. They rip easily so I got a lot! It was a play on Mr. Hackman’s character name—Harry Caul, so it was kind of creepy to me.”
This aligns with the theory advanced by Peter Cowie in the 1990 biography Coppola, suggesting the connection between Harry’s surname, the fact that the word “caul” describes the amniotic membrane enclosing a fetus, and his see-through coat serving as something of an amniotic membrane itself. However, Coppola himself shared on Threads around the time of the film’s 50th anniversary in 2024 that the genesis for this uniquely translucent outerwear may have been more straightforward:
During pre-production of the film, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: “Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart?” Since the theme is of the film was ‘privacy’ I chose the plastic coat you could see through. Knowing a film’s theme in ONE word helps you make a decision when you’re not sure which way to go.
Constantly wrestling with paranoia and guilt, Harry may comfort himself in the thin veil of a translucent coat that shows just enough of its wearer to the world to demonstrate that, unlike the people he is hired to spy on—and often those who hire him to spy in the first place—he has nothing to hide.
The daylight streaming through the windows in the director’s corner office silhouette Harry’s suited frame through the translucent fabric of his raincoat.
Subverting the stereotypical trench coats associated with dashing noir heroes, the somewhat less-than-dashing Harry opts for a plain knee-length rain slicker made likely made from a rubberized translucent vinyl, finished in a viridescent field-gray color that complements his usual suit.
The ventless coat has five large black buttons up the single-breasted front, reinforced on the inner side of the fabric with a silver ring and corresponding to reinforced buttonholes up the left side. Welted pockets are set-in at a gentle slant at hand level, and the raglan sleeves are finished with plain cuffs.
An Outdated Suit
Described in Coppola’s original screenplay as “an out-of-fashion suit”, Harry’s regular wool suit is a mini-houndstooth weave often colloquialized as “puppytooth”, in an olive-green and black that creates a drab brown finish.
“You know lots of the characters in the film wore green. It was where my head was then,” Guerard Rodgers explained to Clothes on Film, adding that “my mind thinks that I felt all of them would start anew again; spring, renewal, green. I had hope in these characters—sad but hopeful.”
“The suits were really from the ’60s,” Guerard Rodgers elaborated, completing the portrait of a man who would have purchased a suit of decent quality a decade earlier without feeling the need to update it to keep up with fashions as it continued serving its purpose, even it may not have fit as well as it once did. “Harry’s clothes were not crisp or sophisticated, and they were a bit short in the sleeve, which I really liked.”
The single-breasted jacket has notch lapels of a much more moderate width than was fashionable during the ’70s, reinforcing the costume designer’s recollection that it was made in the prior decade. The lapels roll to a single button that fastens just over Hackman’s natural waist, where it neatly meets the top of his trousers. Though the single-button closure is less conventional, the rest of the jacket design follows typical American tailoring standards with its welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and double vents.
While a single-button suit jacket and trousers with a fitted waistband may seem chic to some, there’s also a minimalist austerity to them that would appeal to Harry. He’s the sort of guy who would keep his figure consistent enough to only need one or two well-tailored suits, without relying on belts or braces.
The flat-front trousers reflect some contemporary trends of the suit’s likely mid-1960s manufacture, like the frogmouth-style front pockets instead of on-seam side pockets. A squared waistband tab extends a few inches beyond the fly, closing through a hidden hook closure. The two back pockets each close through a single button, and the bottoms are plain-hemmed.
Subdued Shirts and Ties
Harry always wears beige shirts with this suit, softening the contrast against his earthy suit more than the white shirt he wears with his charcoal silk suit. For the Tuesday surveillance in Union Square that opens the film, Harry wears a beige shirt with subtle satin tonal stripes. The shirt may also be a product of the ’60s like his suit, as suggested by the narrowness of his semi-spread collar at a time when men’s shirt collars were multiple inches long and counting. The shirt also has a breast pocket and single-button rounded cuffs.
Harry’s narrow brown tie also harmonizes with the overall earth tones and the ’60s-informed widths, knotted in a neat half-Windsor that stays unobtrusive due to the tie’s slim width. Just below the straight gold bar that traverses the entire width of the tie and is often worn askew, the brown tie boasts a small curved beige shape.
On the following days, Harry sports a solid beige poplin shirt with a slightly wider semi-spread collar, front placket, and button cuffs. Also worn with his usual gold tie bar, his straight black ties coordinate to the darker check in his puppytooth suiting.
Footwear, Underwear, and Everything Else
Harry’s working shoes are more utilitarian than stylish, leaving the polished black oxfords for special occasions while instead wearing dark-brown pebbled calf leather moc-toe derbies with ridged black outsoles. Dark-brown socks maintain tonal consistency between the shoes and trousers.
Harry’s uninspired underwear consists of a white cotton crew-neck short-sleeved T-shirt as his undershirt and plain “whitey-tighty” cotton briefs, most clearly seen as he removes his shoes and trousers while rebuking his neighbor for reading enough of his mail to know that day was his birthday.
Like the rest of Harry’s wardrobe, his browline-style eyeglasses had fallen out of fashion since their 1950s and ’60s heyday, but he sees no reason to replace what works for him. The style was pioneered in 1947 by Jack Rohrbach, vice-president of eyewear company Shuron Ltd., who launched these customizable frames as the Ronsir. The style grew popular over the following decades, with Art-Craft Optical, American Optical, Bausch & Lomb (pre-dating the 1980s-era Ray-Ban Clubmaster), and Victory Optical joining Shuron in offering variations of the browline, which continued gaining visibility thanks to famous wearers ranging from LBJ and Colonel Sanders to Malcolm X and Vince Lombardi.
Harry’s glasses have black plastic frames that follow the shape of his browline onto the arms, each detailed with silver static-like diagonal lines that echo a similar detail on the front each temple. The silver chassis is visible on the bridge and eyewire rims. The shape and temple hinges suggest that Harry wears the original Shuron Ronsir model, though I’ve never seen any vintage pairs from Shuron—or their competitors—with those staggered diagonal silver lines on the temples and on the arms, seemingly separating the glossy-finshed forward part of each arm from a matte rear section that tapers behind each ear. However, Shuron allowed their glasses to be quite customizable, so it’s likely that Harry completely tailored his to suit his needs.
Consistent with Harry’s quietly refined taste, he wears a gold-cased dress watch on a mid-brown leather strap and no date complication. The round off-white dial features straight non-numeric gold hour indices, including bolder lines for the 3, 6, and 9 o’clock markers and two bolder lines at 12 o’clock. This simple and classic design was used by many watchmakers during the 1970s, including prominent Western brands like Bulova, Omega, Orient, and Timex, and even the Soviet watchmaker Raketa.
Harry’s diamond pinky ring is a perhaps surprising affectation for such his mild-mannered dress and demeanor, though his intentional approach to everything suggests a deeper meaning that only Harry knows. Typically worn on his right pinky, the ring has a silver or white-gold band that swells out to make room for the diamond mount.
How to Get the Look
Gene Hackman as Harry Caul in The Conversation (1974)
Harry Caul’s puppytooth suit, slim ties, and browline glasses may have been out of fashion by the early ’70s, but there’s a trusty and grounded staying power to his well-made clothes that explain why he would keep them in his daily rotation… though there’s little admirable about his translucent raincoat outside of its costume-related significance.
- Olive-and-black puppytooth wool 1960s-vintage suit:
- Single-button jacket with notch lapels, welted breast pocket, straight flapped hip pockets, and double vents
- Flat-front trousers with frogmouth-style front pockets, button-through back pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Beige solid or satin-striped shirt with narrow semi-spread collar, front placket, breast pocket, and 1-button rounded cuffs
- Brown or black skinny tie
- Gold tie bar
- Dark-brown calf leather moc-toe derby shoes
- Dark-brown socks
- Field-gray translucent vinyl knee-length rain slicker with five-button front, slanted welt side pockets, raglan sleeves with plain cuffs, and ventless back
- Black plastic-framed browline-style eyeglasses with silver chassis and silver-detailed temples and arms
- Diamond-set silver-toned pinky ring
- Gold dress watch with round off-white dial (with gold non-numeric hour indices) on brown leather strap
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
Listen, if there’s one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it’s that I don’t know anything about human nature. I don’t know anything about curiosity. That’s not part of what I do.
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