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[blondebrainpowered]

Harvey, 1950

[professorpski]

What Bad Girls Wear: Within the Law, 1939

That is Rita Johnson at the top and she gets to wear all the over-the-top, wackily dramatic outfits in the movie. Johnson plays a criminal who blackmails married men by having affairs and then threatening them, but blackmail is against the law and she ends up in prison. Her dramatic clothing is meant to catch the attention of such men and signal her sexy wickedness. She goes into prison wearing a suit trimmed in fox fur with a matching hat in the style of the Russian Cossack. Dolly Tree designed the costumes and they are perfect for signalling what we need to know about the characters. It is the late 1930s, so shoulders in women’s clothing have started getting bigger, and skirts are not so short as they were in the mid-1930s. They would settle to just past the knee for daywear, and formal evening wear remained floor length.

While she is in prison she befriends Ruth Hussey who is the heroine of this story. Notice Hussey wears a sensible, tailored suit and hat when she goes to serve time because she is a good girl. She was framed for a theft at the department store where she works. While in prison, she reads law books and realizes she can have her revenge without ever risking jail time again while staying “within the law.”  In a scene in the sewing room at the prison--yes, a sewing scene!-- Hussey advises her new friend to change how she dresses, and attract men with “quiet” looks. That way, instead of blackmailing men, she can sue them for breach of promise of marriage, and look so virtuous and innocent that she will get the money and any jury will side with her.

Fortunately, Johnson does not take that advice and we get to see the wackiest braided shoulder ornamentation. She can’t help herself, she loves glitter! Ruth Hussey wears more expensive, but still relatively restrained clothing once she comes into money as part of the criminal gang. She does get to wear this dramatic evening coat, the evening being a time when any woman, good or bad, was allowed to be over-the-top if she liked.

As I teach legal history as well as fashion history, I am intrigued by these tales of good girls gone bad, and what they wore. But has Hussey really gone bad? You can find out here on TCM.com and watch a trailer:  http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3318/Within-the-Law/

[professorpski]

Julius Caesar, 1953, or The Virtues of the Toga

I mentioned I was going to blog the clothing in this movie despite it being in black and white and being an assortment of togas and other Roman classical gear, and my friend asked, Why? My answer: amazing weaves. Of course, this is also a Shakespearian classic and you will learn it’s where “it’s Greek to me” comes from. But I was struck by how the costumer, Herschel McCoy, managed to use a great variety of fabrics, trims and accessories in order to distinguish the characters from one another. The sexes are clearly distinguished with Deborah Kerr (top photo) and Greer Garson (in the middle) wearing draped necklines with fitted bodices. Notice how Louis Calhern as Caesar wears a much simpler, if still draped toga. You can really see the weaves in the last photo which has James Mason and John Gielgud conspiring to murder. It gives you some idea how the same color can still have variety. The men wear shorter gear after war breaks out.

Of course, on some level it is strange to see men you have watched in MGM comedies, in NYC detective stories, etc, all turn up in ancient Rome, but the story remains compelling. The male actors do seem oddly stiff, as though Roman senators avoided moving their arms whenever possible, compared to the women. Maybe wearing what is essentialy a dress threw them off. Added bonus: it turns out James Mason looks good in a skirt. Marlon Brando is there too but his role is relatively small.

You can find it on TCM.com: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/79974/Julius-Caesar/#

[professorpski]

I Suffer Stewardess Envy Watching Come Fly With Me (1963)

Admittedly, there are not a lot of outfits in this movie as the three women at the center of the plot are stewardesses, but oh, those spiffy little uniforms. Does this explain my own yen for fitted, navy suits? True, the ones in the film are too tight to be practical, and one of women is always clutching her pillbox hat so it doesn’t get lost, but they look great. The blouse alone is worth a study with its winged collar and center front placket to keep the collar’s front lines perfect. The fitted suit was a staple of 1950s fashion, and although suits were becoming boxier by the early 1960s, the uniforms held to the earlier trend. Skirt had crept up to just below the knee. Women in public still dressed formally, which explains why the suit was a wardrobe staple as was the hat. The hat underwent an assault starting in the late 1950s with giant puffed up hair, but these women are sleeker and hats are part of their uniform, although they take them off while working on the plane. It was not until the late 1960s that the idea of formal dressing got discarded by the younger generation and then by many of their elders.

The story? Well, one falls for a pilot and two fall for passengers, and they fly back and forth, and have adventures, and love problems. It’s one of those multiple-stories-multiple-cities movie efforts you see in the early 1960s designed to make us feel like we are in on some cosmopolitan adventure, when really we are watching three preposterous love stories. But, my, those uniforms are spiffy. You see Dolores Hart in the top picture and then off-duty in her silk suit with the flowered hat at bottom. In between are Lois Nettleton after she rejects her makeover by her two roommates, and Pamela Tiffin in that great blouse.

You can find it on TCM.com: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2992/Come-Fly-with-Me/

[professorpski]

The Lieutenant Wore Skirts or Slinky in the 1950s (1956)

If this actress looks an awful lot like Marilyn Monroe, she was supposed to. This is Sheree North playing opposite Tom Ewell. He is a writer, she is his younger and far prettier wife. The silly plot turns on her re-enlisting in the Air Force and him chasing after her. It can be funny and obviously absurd at the same time. North’s plays an intelligent and competent woman who happens to look like a blonde bombshell.

The top photos are the flashier and more erotic fashions of the 1950s that make the most of North’s figure. These include the slinky skin-tight evening dress which seems to offer up her breasts. Then there is the halter-top bathing suit on Rita Morena as a very friendly upstairs neighbor. You may remember that Ewell was in the Seven Year Itch with Marilyn Monroe as his neighbor. North wears the bright blouse with slim trousers which were a casual at-home look of the 1950s; women did not wear trousers in public except for sports, resorts, beaches, and other casual places until the mid-1960s. The outfits are by William Travilla who worked in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s.

True, North spends a fair amount of time in uniform, yet even the uniforms follows trends of 1950s fashion as you see in the last photo. The turned-up cuffs serve no purpose except that they were the fashion of the time. Heer bodice is nipped, and her skirt is the long and flared, a style which dated to the New Look introduced by Christian Dior in 1947. Clearly, the armed forced noticed women’s fashion even as it choose which trends to use.

You can find it on TCM.com here: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/81320/The-Lieutenant-Wore-Skirts/

[professorpski]

Walking on Air, 1936

It’s the middle of the Great Depression, gowns have long skirts, marked waists, and lots of interesting details, and movies set among the wealthy show them off. This comedy features Ann Sothern and Gene Raymond. She’s trying to get married to a cad who is after her money, her rather is trying to stop her, and she hires Raymond to pretend to be an obnoxious French count so that she can show her father that there are worse men she could fall for than the cad. Two great old actors, Horace Stephenson and Jessie Ralph, play her father and her aunt, coping with her schemes for getting her way.

Meanwhile, she wears lovely evening gowns, see the 2 black ones with diamond clips, and the white which may be embroidered organza or some other filmy stuff. Also, she wears some lovely daywear like the sports outfit you see in the last picture. Notice the blouse sleeves are pleated down the center to give the flare you need to move the arms freely in golf. I don’t know why we lost that particularly useful kind of sleeve which would be nice to have all summer, but we could easily recover it. You only need only slit the sleeve right down the middle, calculate your pleat and add it (I’m thinking total of 2 inches for that), and then baste down the pleat at the the top before you set in the sleeve. Also there are two pleats below the back yoke of that blouse, again for ease of movement. Bernard Newman did the gowns as he did many others for RKO in the early 1930s before he returned to Bergdort Goodman in New York.

You can find it on TCM.com here:  http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3082/Walking-on-Air/

[professorpski]

Latin Lovers, 1952, or Helen Rose Enjoys Dressing Lana Turner

This movie is perfectly silly, but the outfits are wonderful. Lana Turner is the heiress and head of the board of directors of a fabulously successful oil company her father founded. But can she find true love? And should she find it in Brazil with Ricardo Montalban? Or is he, like everyone else, just after her $40 million? I didn’t really care, but I loved the outfits.

Helen Rose did both a slew of spectacular black and white evening gowns, and then some lovely day wear which I appreciate more as I have very few places to wear spectacular evening gowns, but I must get dressed every day. In fact, I studied her secretary’s suits too as I am far more likely to wear a suit. It’s the early 1950s, so everything is fitted through the waist. Then, you see the two versions of the New Look which Christian Dior made famous in 1947: either long flared skirt or long fitted skirt. Turner even gets to wear snappy riding pants. And since she is supposed to be fabulously rich, there is a different outfit for every change of scene. It’s one of those lavish MGM productions. Look hard and you will see a young Rita Moreno dancing too.

It is on TCM.com: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/1905/Latin-Lovers/#

[professorpski]

Dead Reckoning: Femme Fatale Wear or just Femme Wear?

Lizbeth Scott plays the husky-voiced girlfriend of Humphrey Bogart’s army buddy who suddenly goes AWOL when he realizes that he will be photographed for winning the Congressional Medal of Honor. Who is he really? And is his former girfriend bad or good?

Being a possible femme fatale in this 1947 film noir, and being a former nightclub singer now wealthy widow, Scott gets to wear sexy evening clothes by Jean Louis. But even a possible femme fatale gets around during daytime, so she also wears a few sportswear numbers which shows you that even dubious girls followed the Dress Doctors’ rules for dressing for the occasion. The story is dark and full of twists. Who is telling the truth? And who can be trusted? And where did she get that dress?

You can see it on TCM.com: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3801/Dead-Reckoning/