Celebrate the holidays classic movie clips

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree
with Classic Movies

Georges Méliès: The Christmas Angel (1904)


Santa shows up early with My Favorite Wife, Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Gail Patrick; Celebrate nontraditional Christmas movies

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Desk Set

Fake Snow Bringing winter to silent movies

Snow Scenes in Early Movies
Making snow blizzards in Hollywood California

There's nothing like the real thing, snow-stuff

When the weather outside is frightfully gorgeous in California, the location man -- usually a man in the teens and twenties -- was sent to find the snow. The producer sent scouts to look for the snow. We're not talking Snow White or Frozen.... Well, really we kind of are, but we're not.

Chaplin employed a group of men
to make their way to the top
of a mountain to film
The Gold Rush

This was often dangerous, time consuming and expensive. People were injured, some lost their lives in accidents procuring places to shoot winter scenes and in the process of shooting scenes. Cast and crew members were stranded during unexpected storms and avalanches.

When Charlie Chaplin made The Gold Rush in 1924, he worked high in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. 

An exact replica of the famous Chilkoot Pass, the gateway to the Alaska gold fields of 1898 was duplicated, built on a mountainside. To make a pass a pathway thousands of feet long was cut through the snows of the far northern boundaries. 


Charles Chaplin gets snowy in the 1920s

1916 Motion Picture magazine illo

The Goat, The Script and The Silk Slippers
One ad for Back to God's Country displayed a row of illustrations of animals,

"Never a film like this - An absolute novelty, so different. Sixteen different kinds of animal actors." 

There were special children's matinees. In towns where the film was playing, there were contests for children to draw the different animals or to write essays about them as a stunt to win tickets to see the show.

Abel Gance knew no English, Ivy Close, the British artiste in the cast is unable to speak a word of French. A new language was invented half English and half French. Communication troubles extended beyond mere words. The cast included animal actors. A goat of the highest credentials was a part of the ensemble.

"The goat commenced his screen career by eating several pages of the scenario of the picture in which he was to appear.  Suspicion became certainty when Ivy Close found him supping off one her satin slippers. But the goat, being an excellent actor had to be humored like the other players."

Antonio Moreno faces an 'ice flow'
actually filmed in a swimming pool
For the serial House of Hate with Pearl White

Real Alpine scenes are to be found in Abel Gance's picture The Wheel for the famous French producer ascended Mont Blanc. They faced real peril from snowstorms and avalanches and Ivy Close leading lady nearly lost her life through a 200-foot fall down a mountain. 


Actress Nell Shipman did many films that had snow scenes

Actress Nell Shipman did a series of films that took place in cold climates and she had a series of mishaps. While making Back to God’s Country in 1919, Ronald Byron who had been selected to play the leading male role died from exposure when the picture was barely begun.

Bert Van Tuyle served as a production manager. He fell into the icy water of Northern Idaho where they were shooting, sustained frostbite in his foot that turned gangrenous. Reports of the time said his foot had to be amputated, but more recent reports suggest that a few toes were lost.

Lillian Gish is Anna, adrift on the ice in Way Down East

We recently watched Way Down East with some friends, a movie party where we streamed it over Amazon Prime.  We included a meal while the film was on.

Way Down East 1920
"One cameraman was especially active. His name was Allen and we would see him jumping from cake to cake, always trying to get as close as possible to me, to show that no one was doubling for me. Once or twice he fell in camera and all but he was safely fished out. Then I made a suggestion which has caused me considerable suffering since. 

"I thought it would be more realistic if I dipped my hand in the icy water and let it lie there while the camera took a closeup  and a long shot of my hand. If you have ever put your your hand in ice water -- well, don't! Ice water feels just like a burning flame. When I took my hand out of the water I found it was cramped and stiff and ever since I have suffered from painful rheumatism in the palm of my hand and the fingers." 
-- Lillian Gish talking about the making of the famous ice floe scene in Way Down East

"Once I managed to get myself lost in a blizzard and wandered about for an hour til the search party found me with my toes frozen. They were so crippled by this experience that I can't move them today." -- Leatrice Joy


Charles Chaplin in The Gold Rush 1925
 
One of the most unusual stories, aka:
Aaaah, Mister press agent, play me a violin

Note: The fact that the group was stranded in their car was well documented. The entirety of this story is not completely positively certain, though. We should ask Mr. Chaplin who ate his shoe, laces, sole and all about this. 

Being stranded apparently occurred while the team was working on God's Country and the Woman, the 1916 film in their successful franchise.

"'And when the last bean and the last prune had been eaten they took the strings from the violin and made soup out of them!' 

"If you don't believe it they'll show you the stringless fiddle. What's it all about? Why only a thrilling press agent story about a Vitagraph company being snowbound in the San Bernardino mountains during the filming of some snow stuff. 

Snowblind, 1921. So cold that the oil in the cameras froze.
Costars Mary Alden, Russell Simpson and Pauline Starke

"The heroine of the story, Nell Shipman, the leading man, William Duncan, Rollin Sturgeon the director, Iguchi the Japanese cook all vouch for the truth of the story. How did they escape death by starvation? The press agent had to stop and gasp for breath here but our private opinion is that until they could walk down the hill the vast mile or two separating them from civilization the material of the violin itself served as board."
--Photoplay 1916 


Not only did people risk their lives but innumerable small technical problems

Nell Shipman;
The Silent Screen &
My Talking Heart
An Autobiography

arose when working in the cold and snow.  
While making Way Down East, D.W. Griffith's cameras actually froze, according to star, Lillian Gish.

While making The Covered Wagon "Lois Wilson and Warren Kerrigan found their greasepaint frozen hard in their makeup boxes while outside the electricians discovered that Jack Frost had been interfering with the works." Not a single engine would work.


Several articles and notes mentioned film companies that headed for Truckee, California to find snow. The town is in the vicinity of Lake Tahoe. Residents of San Jose and the San Francisco bay area may head to this region in wintertime to ski.

Theater lobbies went all out to promote movies.
For the 1923 film Call of the Wild, The Majestic Theatre in Portland, OR
created a 3-D snow scene to give the audience a real experience along with the show

Tricking Nature, Fake Snow

"'How cold! How cold the world!' sobs the heroine, clutching her nameless child to her bosom and the sarcastic laugh of the villain is cut short by a voice off that hisses, 'Mind your cigar, you fool! You're setting the snow on fire!'"

Since many films requiring snow were released at holiday-time they were often made in the summer. Finding snow for making the movies was that much harder. One special effects director spoke of coming to the set in the 1940s to find wildlife eating the artificial snow. 

For instance Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan and Sydney Greenstreet was filmed May-July 1944. It contained many "snow" scenes. How did they make fake snow in the old days?

How did they make snow in the 1920s?

Insta-Snow Jar

Salt
If a film producer is forced to fake a snow scene he does the thing in style. For one winter exterior filmed in California under blazing summer sunshine over forty tons of salt were employed. 

White pine sawdust is often used in the summer to resemble snow and glass icicles help the illusion. 

The snow may be "manufactured out of some small scraps of paper and a few tons of salt. It looks real."

If the snow is needed in only a few scenes salt and paper thrown down from above and churned around in the air by means of a wind machine make an excellent substitute.  

One of the earliest movies about life in Hollywood and making movies, Souls for Sale, contains a scene showing exactly how this is done.

Souls for Sale stars Frank Mayo, Richard Dix, Mae Busch, Barbara LaMarr, Lew Cody and Eleanor Boardman. The film includes cameos of director Erich von Stroheim and a non-Tramp Charlie Chaplin and snippets of directors Fred Niblo and Marshall Neilan. 

For The Gold Rush, some scenes of great magnitude are also built at the Chaplin Studios in Hollywood. A reproduction of the main section of Nome in 1898 was erected there with a background of the mountains. 



The 1922 silent film, Beyond the Rocks with Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino is reputed to have used at least some fake snow for its scenes in the French Alps. Even in the early days of movies, reviewers were not always able to suspend their disbelief.

"The frozen north is a treacherous ally as perilous as it is fascinating and it is small wonder that many producers prefer the imitation to the real thing and content themselves with snow storms safely manufactured in the studio and with quickly congealing paraffin poured on the water to simulate a freeze-up. 

Gloria Swanson
Beyond the Rocks
1922

"The dramatic Alpine scenes in Beyond the Rocks for instance are just artificial as the frankly artificial snow ballet in A Fool's Paradise and -- between ourselves -- they look it!

"It is often better and cheaper to fake a snow scene in this way for the real stuff is generally too uncertain to rely on. One company a short time ago wen to Truckee to film some Alaskan scene and waited three weeks for the required snow. 

"Eventually they went home disappointed and had to fake the scene at the studio. Afterward they heard that the evening after they left the mountains in the area came down in a regular blizzard!"

Corn Flakes:
The most common stand-in for snow in the early decades of film-making was white-coated or bleached cornflakes, sometimes mixed with shaved gypsum. It produced so much audible crunching and crackling when actors walked across it that dialog was often over-dubbed afterwards.

Cotton Wool
"Shooting snow stuff in the neighbourhood of Truckee California for a picture entitled Big Game. Snow stuff the real thing and not studio salt or cotton wool. You'll find this picture cool and refreshing now that summer is here." The star, May Allison, is an excellent cook and when on location provides many delicacies for the members of her company.  
-- Picturegoer 1921

Gypsum was probably the main mineral used in making fake snow in the early days. It's said to have contributed to the death of actor Lon Chaney. In 1929 he came down with pneumonia. He was later diagnosed with lung cancer. While Mr. Chaney was a smoker, another contributing cause may have been his inhaling the crushed gypsum used in the fake snow in some of his films including Nomads of the North (see link below). Chaney was in his mid-forties when he died.

Several re-takes for Way Down East were filmed in the summertime in 90 degree temperatures. Richard Barthelmess sweltered in his bearskin coat, they said, all the players in their wintry garb their sufferings were far more real than the screen sorrows of the heroine.  

MBT Lighting SM100DMX Flurry Snow Machine 
A few companies make snow-making machines for instant snow that are available to the public, MBT is one of them. I see that regardless of manufacturer customers sometimes think the machines are loud.They're used for weddings, birthdays, proms and other parties, photo shoots, plays, videos and other performances. They also make fog machines and bubble machines. 

For Crafts, there are recipes calling for glitter, mica even Ivory Snow
and you can buy spray on and other things.
** Mashed potato flakes can work for big and small applications, they're safe for kids and most pets.

It's a Wonderful Life James Stewart, 1946

Frank Capra creates a Wonderful New Snow with RKO

Fake snow was upgraded once again in for the 1946 classic film, It's a Wonderful Life thanks to RKO studio’s special effects wizard, Russell Shearman, director Frank Capra who also happened to be an engineer. Helpful was the availability of some post-WWII technology.

The crew used a mixture of foamite, the material used in fire extinguishers, sugar and water, some accounts claim it included soap flakes. Six thousand gallons was pumped at high pressure through a wind machine. The new pseudo-snow "clung convincingly to clothing and created picture-perfect footprints, while generating nothing like the sound of trod-upon breakfast cereal."

Marty Martin, Jack Lannon, Russell Shearman and the RKO Special Effects Department received a Class III citation aka a Class III Scientific or Technical Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for "developing a new method of simulating falling snow on motion picture sets." 

Falling snow in movies today is made from foam-paper.  What are your favorite movies with snow scenes? For some reason, a more current movie that comes to mind for me is Groundhog Day. And I remember the snow in The Godfather which is a favorite film. 

I'm curious about old vs new methods of animating snow. We have an artist in the family who was painting ice and snow, water and bubbles, melting ice cream and Popsicles... Interesting project.

Hawaiian Shaved Ice and
Snow Cone Machine Party Package
A best seller; snow ball maker?

Winter, snowy shorts, serials and feature-length films of the era:

Strongheart, the early dog actor owned by writer and producer Jane Murfin was a hero in several winter-themed films. Some are considered lost and others are difficult to find. Strongheart and Rin Tin Tin were in similar films, they were both huge stars and both have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

After his death, books were written about Strongheart and his legacy, some dealing with communication with animals.

• The Awful Truth (1925)  Agnes Ayres, Warner Baxter, Winifred Bryson
• Blind Husbands (1919) Directed by Erich von Stroheim. Sam De Grasse, Francelia Billington, Erich von Stroheim appears as Lieutenant Eric Von Steuben 
• Call of the Wild (1923) jack Marshall; from Jack London book of the same name
• The Chechahcos (1924)  William Dills, Albert Van Antwerp, Eva Gordon
• The City of masks (1920) Robert Warwick, Lois Wilson, Theodore Kosloff    
• The Girl from God's Country (1921)  Nell Shipman, Edmund Burns, Al W. Filson (Nell Shipman is Neeka Le Mort aka Neeka of the Northlands / Marion Carslake). This film preceded Back to God's Country
• God's Country and The Woman (1916) Directed by Rollin S. Sturgeon, William Duncan, Nell Shipman, George Holt
• The Golden Snare (1921) Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, Melbourne MacDowell  
• The Great White Trail (1917)  Doris Kenyon, Paul Gordon, Thomas Holding
• The House of Hate (1918) Serial  Pearl White, Antonio Moreno, Peggy Shanor, Helene Chadwick
• Hazel Kirke (1916)  Pearl White, Allan Murnane, Riley Hatch
• I pagliacci (1923) Adelqui Migliar, Lillian Hall-Davis, Campbell Gullan
• Nomads of the North / The Shock Lon Chaney, Lewis Stone, Melbourne MacDowell
• Out of the Silent North (1922) Barbara Bedford, Frank Mayo, Frank Leigh
• Snowblind (1921)  Mary Alden, Russell Simpson, Pauline Starke
• Snowdrift (1923) Irene Rich, Dorothy Manners, Buck Jones
• The Snowshoe Trail (1922) Jane Novak, Roy Stewart
• Tracked in the Snow Country (1925)  Rin Tin Tin, June Marlowe, David Butler
• Tyrant Fear (1918)  Dorothy Dalton, Thurston Hall, Melbourne MacDowell
• The Wheel / La Roue (1923) Directed by Abel Gance. Ivy Close, Severin-Mars. Ivy Close, leading lady nearly lost her life through a 200-foot fall down a mountain
• Wolves of the North (1921) Herbert Heyes, Percy Challenger, Eva Novak The film "contains a wonderful avalanche scene, This effect which purports to be an Alaskan snow-slide was staged in the Yosemite National Park, hundreds of tons of snow and rocks being precipitated down a mountainside whilst busy cameras filmed the scene.

Links to Films and Related Pages of Interest

Nell Shipman Movie Collection DVD Sets

A Good Cry-Off Camera Musicians Help Silent Film Actors Bring Tears Your Director tells you to Cry! Lillian Gish talks more about her role in Way Down East, also video of her being interviewed by Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show 1983

10 Great Stunt Women of the early Silent Movies Real bullets flying by, hanging onto the wheels of trains, whoa Nellie :: More about the work of D.W. Griffith, Lillian Gish in Way Down East

Animals on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: Strongheart, Rin Tin Tin, Character Costumes : Muppets, Godzilla [Currently being revised]

Cocktail Recipes, Drinks named for early Film Stars, Favorites, Ideas for serving : Round ice cube molds

Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (Routledge Advances in Film Studies) From description: "How do cinematic portrayals of the weather reflect and affect our experience of the world? While weatherly predictability and surprise can impact our daily experience, the history of cinema attests to the stylistic and narrative significance of snow, rain, wind, sunshine, clouds, and skies. Through analysis of films ranging from The Wizard of Oz to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, from Citizen Kane to In the Mood for Love, Kristi McKim calls our attention to the ways that we read our atmospheres both within and beyond the movies." 
Kindle, e-book or paper, available to rent. 

For researchers, makers of documentaries, indie, feature films
* The Advances in Film Studies series of books is very interesting and covers a broad range of topics such as Japanese Horror Films, religion in film, fatherhood in film, The Woman's Film of the 1940s and many more. Most available in ebook form.


Pictures & Picturegoer December 1921, 1924
Photoplay October 1924
Screenland September, November 1924
Life Magazine 1946 

Classic film actors talk jobs, clothes, tools of the trade

Costuming Hollywood Movie Stars in the 1930s-1950s

Robert Montgomery
Magazine Photo orig

"The distinction that these stars of the past attained through the way they dressed reveals how much the film industry has changed today – and with it, how our notions of the icon has changed. 

"When Astaire, Cooper and Grant were making films, Hollywood had an increasing number of make-up artists, stylists and costume designers–but even with these amenities at hand, the leading stars often dressed themselves, sometimes with their own clothes. 

"This personal touch of an actor being responsible for his own wardrobe is a far cry from today, where an actor’s wardrobe is sourced for him (frequently to endorse a particular couturier or brand)." 
-- Hollywood Costume by Deborah Nadoolman Landis

The costume designer who worked mainly or exclusively on women's fashion tended to receive credit on screen for an entire film. Several others did work in wardrobe and accessories. A different designer might oversee gowns, another jewelry and accessories. If a contemporary film, men's wardrobe was purchased or designed by the men's wardrobe department when need be.

When making purchase decisions, actors may have bought multiples, in the case that something had to be cleaned or something was damaged in the course of filming. I read a few times that they anticipated color film so they kept that in mind early on while still thinking how it would look in black and white.

Good to note that clothes for either gender to be intentionally damaged during production are studio property. As an example, Warner Brothers picked up the tab for "the former clothes" worn by Dick Powell and Rosemary Lane when they splash about in the lily pond in a scene in Hollywood Hotel. The 1937 film included Busby Berkeley's Hooray for Hollywood.

Tyrone Power, Dick Powell, Charles Laughton ...

Makes you wonder. How about the clothes William Powell wore in the beginning of My Man Godfrey, when he lived in the dumps. Or the suit Cary Grant wore in the shower in Charade. With little chance of being reused by the actors, were these 'on the studio,' as they say? 

Hard to believe that the clothes we saw old actors wearing in many of the classic movies were actually suits or tuxedos, shirts, coats, etc that the actors themselves had bought and paid for.

James Stewart needs a Tailored Bathrobe ASAP

Sometimes even when filming a 'modern' movie, what seemed like the simplest thing will need to be specially made to fit the director's vision and maybe the proportions of the actor. Quite a bit has been written about the recurring Greek motif and goddess references, including the specially designed robe made by Adrian for Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. 

Cary Grant, a costar of this film is one of the few male actors whose clothes have been analyzed with gusto. Between Grant's looks, his knowledge of dressing a character, his taste and interest in clothes he is a role model not just for actors but for men in general. Sometimes it's a character who's been played by different actors, like James Bond, who piques the public's interest.




In The Philadelphia Story, there was an unexpected poolside glitch. Neither Mr. Stewart nor anyone else had foreseen it when choosing clothes for his character.

"[James] Stewart had to have a robe for a swimming scene with Miss Hepburn. Nothing was thought about it until the day before the sequence was to be filmed, when director George Cukor requested several bathrobes to be tried on Stewart. None owned by the studio would do. They all hit the six-foot four-inch Stewart around the knees.



"The wardrobe department hastily canvassed all the stores in Hollywood and the surrounding vicinity, but there wasn't a bathrobe in Southern California to cover the actor's lanky figure. Plenty could be found to fit six-footers, but not Stewart. 

"It was finally necessary to make one and three studio tailors labored all night on the job. The moment the scene was completed the wardrobe department had a man on hand to take the robe back and carefully put it away just in case Stewart ever was to wear a bathrobe on the screen again." 
-- The Montreal Gazette, February 18, 1941

I can't say for sure, but my guess is that particularly if Stewart became the owner of that robe, it was well-used in later pictures when he worked with studios other than MGM. 



In early 2014, The Museum at FIT had a show about fashion in the 1930s. Their video, "Elegance in an Age of Crisis" talks about the way men dressed, the importance of the suit both for the men in families and the men in society, 1930s style and beyond.

Cary Grant occasionally wore things
that probably weren't hanging in his closet
Knight in shining armor; Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer

Suits made by a tailor on Savile Row

Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby were among the classic film stars who had shoes made at Henry Maxwell Shoe Makers on Savile Row in London. Once he was able to do so, Grant had his clothes custom tailored in London such as Kilgour or Norton and Sons also on Savile Row.

Some of the Savile Row shops use the names and even images of the old Hollywood stars on their web sites to this day.  A few years ago, Burberry used a photo of Humphrey Bogart wearing his famous trench coat in some of its advertising. They hadn't gotten approval from Mr. Bogart's estate and there were legal ramifications. 

Looking online for information about Cary Grant in Hitchcock films, there are slightly different versions of pretty much the same story. Add books and interviews and the end result was that Grant provided his own clothes most of the time. Not surprising. In a film like North by Northwest, several versions of the famous grey suit were manufactured. There were also several copies of the tie, etc.



In the 1980s Cary Grant gave a series of talks across the country, conversations with audiences where he answered questions with fans. This is an audio recording where he talks about working with Hitchcock and specifically discusses the suit he wore in North by Northwest.

Actors had to know their audiences, the characters they were playing. Cary Grant knew what he wore impacted the character, the picture and his fan base. Grant not only wore the clothes, he spent time figuring out timing, just how he would adjust his tie for the best comic effect. How would he put on or take off a jacket. Was the scene seductive, suspenseful, silly? 

The actor inhabiting the suit understands the importance of a cuff being precise down to the eighth of an inch. The placement of an object on a table means the choreography and performance of the scene will work well. This can include the choreography involved with dressing, undressing and adjusting what you're wearing.

Back in the 1930s, when Peter Lorre complained on the set of The Man Who Knew Too Much, that a suit had been ruined, Hitchcock, a lover of practical jokes, had another one sent to him, beautifully tailored in the same material but cut to infant size.

Adolphe Menjou wore 16 suits in The Goldwyn Follies. But that did not represent his entire wardrobe. For special accessories, including top coats, shirts and ties, all designed with the garish demands of the color camera in mind. Menjou's bill ran well over $5,000. And most of it was a total loss because the suits and accessories were so glaring he wouldn't dare ware them, except to a masquerade.



In 1947, Robert Montgomery starred in and directed the film noir Lady in the Lake.  the  film is shot from the viewpoint of the central character, Marlowe. You hear him, but he's rarely seen. Still he's dressed as the character. 

"Robert Montgomery, in Wooden Wedding now in production is wearing six new business suits, two  sport outfits a full dress and a dinner suit. His tailor bill for that film will stand him more than 2,000. And Wooden Wedding didn't spot Montgomery into an especially well-dressed part. For many of his society playboy roles he spends even more. 

Ann Blyth "Killer" Robert Montgomery
Once More My Darling b&w 8x10 1949

"When a scenario demands the male lead wear half a dozen or more snappy outfits it is reasonable to  assume the studio should pay the costs, said Montgomery. It is true the actor retains title to his clothes and possibly can wear some of them in future pictures. And on top of that there's a huge pile of tricky outfits we'd never think of wearing outside the backyard. It's all pretty much of a loss." Wooden Wedding became The First Hundred Years (1938) 

Clark Gable Boom Town Photo with Spencer Tracy

Where oh where has his undershirt gone?

Bob Cummings couldn't have been the only one his undershirts and shorts tailor made to wear in movies. Other actors' underclothes, or lack of them, have been making news from the beginning.

What men wore in films, particularly those set in the present day, just didn't get anything close to the attention the women's clothes got unless the film was a period piece. Maybe if the movie took place in space or some other unusual locale. Sometimes the actor got to don an interesting sweater or leather jacket. 

Once in a while a t-shirt or lack of one made a huge statement. It's what Clark Gable didn't wear in It Happened One Night in 1934, his appearing on screen without an undershirt that they say caused a significant drop in the sale of undershirts. In a later film his character would appear wearing an undershirt. Marlon Brando would again cause a rise in sales when he wore a T-Shirt type undershirt in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951. Brando, too had a very popular leather jacket in The Wild One, 1953. Did he have to buy these for himself?

These stories may be somewhat apocryphal. They have been well repeated. I haven't seen any sales figures from these years and don't know if we can attribute sales directly to what we saw in the movies, let alone to one movie. But sales and fashion trends do seem to have been happening around the times of these films.

Marlon Brando talked about how he was perceived partly based on what he wore. "The closer you come to the successful portrayal of a character, the more people mythologize about you in that role. Perception is everything. I didn't wear jeans as a badge of anything, they were just comfortable. 

"But because I wore blue jeans and a T-shirt in Streetcar and rode a motorcycle in The Wild One, I was considered a rebel. It's true that I always hated conforming because it breeds mediocrity, but the real source of my reputation as a rebel was my refusal to follow some of the normal Hollywood rules."
-- Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me by Marlon Brando

Brando talks about how he didn't like to give interviews. In the years before

Marlon Brando Vivien Leigh
8x10 glossy Photo

actors such as Cary Grant were the same way. Interviews with him would sometimes consist of his asking things like, "Why are people so interested in actors' private lives?" Can you have a rebel in a tuxedo?

In Marlon Brando by Patricia Bosworth there is a story of choosing and styling the T-shirt and jeans Brando would wear in A Streetcar Named Desire. Costume designer Lucinda Ballard took him for a fitting at Eaves Costume Company for role as Stanley Kowalski. The story also appears in Brando: the Biography by Peter Manso.

"She dyed a couple of T-shirts red and washed them over and over again until they shrunk Then she tore the right shoulder to suggest that Stella might have scratched Stanley. 

"She had the tailor cut and taper the jeans to fit the countours of Brando's body like a second skin; they were tight as a glove, and Brando didn't wear any underpants when they were fitted.  When he saw his reflection in the mirror, he saw how the jeans outlined every muscle in his thighs. 

"He 'almost went crazy' Ballard told Peter Manso. 'He wa dancing between the gold cases leaping off the ground.' Brando said, 'This is it! This is what I've always wanted!'"
-- Marlon Brando



Style from Robin and the 7 Hoods
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Bing Crosby 1964

Let's visit (and inventory) the clothes in a couple of actors' closets. Follow me and bring your calculators ...

Robert Cummings appeared in two Alfred Hitchcock films Saboteur (1942) and Dial M for Murder (1954) alongside Grace Kelly. His character's clothes won't ever get any notice there! His other movies include Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939) with Deanna Durbin, The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) with Jean Arthur, and The Bride Wore Boots (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck and Moon Over Miami (1941). 1955 through 1959 he starred on TV in  The Bob Cummings Show. Mr. Cummings is letting us peek into his closet first, he could use a custom closet organizer. The year is 1950.

"Tools of the trade is what Bob Cummings and other male stars call their expensive duds. Bob reckons he has invested $30,000 or more in his wardrobe, part of which he keeps in a room at home and part in a storage company warehouse.

"In his early screen days Bob would try to get by with a comparatively cheap suit though it was the best he could afford. During shooting it would become shapeless and ruined, he said, and 'just didn't pay.' Now he pays $200 to $250 per tailored suit. He owns 60 virtually all bought for screen roles. 

"He estimated other items: 15 sport coats at about $190 each; slacks about 30 pairs ($40-$60); shoes, 15 pairs ($15-$30); hats ($20), including gray, brown, panama, opera and character toppers. His 100 assorted white shirts ($20 each) are dyed faintly grayish, like all movie leading men's, to prevent glare into the camera. His 100 ties must knot as neatly at the end of two months' shooting as they did at the start. He orders them in pairs. If one is lost or damaged, shooting isn't interrupted.

"He has about six full dress suits ($500 each), 10 full dress shirts ($30), 10 overcoats ($150-$300), and 10 pairs of gloves (gray, black, white, pigskin at $7.50-$10). Cummings may take 40 suits to a studio when outfitting himself for a role. If the girl wears light clothes in a particular scene, he probably wears dark for contrast.

"A suit may be cleaned and pressed 20 times on a picture. A studio tailor makes a replica of the leading man's suit of a cheaper material, for him to wear when thrown into the mud or tattered in a fight. Four or five duplicates may be damaged in action sequences. Are Bob's clothes luxuries? 'In this business,' he says, 'they're a necessity.'" 

Maybe this would have been a good time for a actor to start his own clothing design line? Maybe do some modeling? Something to make a little extra money.

This wasn't just limited to the gentlemen who were known for wearing suits and tuxedos, the ones sometimes called the glamor boys of Hollywood. John Wayne's had to buy at least some of his own clothes. If in the contract any performer may have to supply his own clothing, a featured performer, an extra.

1930s Fans chimed in, sort of...

Too much nudism. "Have you noticed the insane mania of late to show men as well as women in bathroom scenes displaying every part of the anatomy they can get away with? .... He now seems to conduct most of his work showing his naked body or consuming enormous quantities of liquor -- much of the picture was taken of him in the bath, scrubbing and soaping his hulk. He is so darned conceited. ... Now he simply seems to want to display his manly form." This is the gist of a 1936 Modern Screen Magazine received a letter from, if you're interested, a male film fan.

What star do you think they're talking about, flaunting his manly nakedness and liquor drinking? Why it's William Powell in one of The Thin Man films. (In the movie magazines of the 1930s-1950s I've looked through only about about a third of the fan letters had anything negative to say about the stars or the films. And this topic is sort of the antithesis of costume.) 

The Public and Private sides of William Powell 

Promo shot for Reckless
Powell with Jean Harlow

So of course, we're on to the home of William Powell. We've gone back in time. The year is 1935. Maybe Jean Harlow will be visiting? Unlike the suave detective characters he plays on screen in real life, if Powell loses his shirt studs, he says rather than look for them it's easier to buy another set. Bill's valet's biggest job is to keep him dressed up to the public's demand. ... 

He had to have a special closet built off his bedroom for all of his suits. This wardrobe is not his personal private clothes closet. It's his stock in trade, the tools of his profession, it's the stuff he has to wear on the screen to keep his spot.   

Full dress suits 5; dinner jackets (tux to you) 6; street clothes, business suits and so on - 44; overcoats 14 (and one all white one he has never worn); gloves 39 pairs; sports trousers 25 but not one pair of knickers or plus fours, he hates 'em); hats 54 (including toppers and the opera-hat things you can pop); neckties 167; turtleneck sweaters a la Gable 6, sox [sic] 175 pairs shirts 63 and one white beret. What did his personal clothes closet contain?

In 1936, Clark Gable was number one when newspapers polled chorus girls asking who they thought was the Best Dressed Men in Pictures. Number two was William Powell. In 1937, Hollywood outfitters released a list of the Best Dressed Movie Star. Gable and Powell tied for first place. Gable for sports clothes, Powell for business suits. 

William Powell was known to be somewhat fastidious about his clothing when working. In the privacy of his home, he was said to be more interested in comfort. Beyond that, he had the reputation for wearing little to nothing at all when possible. "He doesn't care for clothes and doesn't know much about fashions. He prefers not to wear clothes. At home he generally walks around completely naked, except when it is necessary to wear a dressing gown."
-- Pittsburgh Press, October 30, 1936

"This best-dressed man reputation he's got, that gives Bill a laugh, too. Because the fact that there isn't a sloppier dresser in all Hollywood than Bill Powell, when he can do it."

At home, in the privacy of his house and with his intimate friends about, Bill loves to wander about with a somewhat neglected stubble of whisker, his hair tousled, his legs encased in in an ancient and streaked pair of unpressed slacks or old pants, a well-seasoned sweatshirt or polo shirt on and a pair of comfortably aged slippers on his feet. Or if the weather's warm, give him a breech-clout* and a drink on the patio and he's contented. 

Your own
breech-clout

*I'd read in a couple places how Mr. Powell enjoyed walking around his home au naturel. After consulting different sources for the definition of breech-clout the best I can come up with is that today or in 1935 it is something of a loincloth. Comanche warriors normally went about in only a breech clout and moccasins. Movie stars, too?

How to make your own breech-clout:

"The width of the Breech Clout is determined by the size of your hands. Place hands, palm down, thumbs bent out in almost a right angle, thumb tips touching. Width of the cloth is distance between the outside edges of hands." You might like to decorate yours with paint or beads. You might recall seeing Rudolph Valentino wearing one of these in a movie poster??

"For general use, most Indians wore breech clout and moccasins solely. But for ceremonies and special occasions they got into more elaborate fineries."
-- Rough idea and image example from 1941 Boys' Life

In some cases, it would work a little differently. Again, it all depended on how you drew up your contract. Here's how Lew Ayres acquired some of his suits. Aside from starring in the series of Dr. Kildare movies alongside Lionel Barrymore, Ayres was in All Quiet on the Western Front, Holiday with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work in Johnny Belinda. Co-star Jane Wyman won in 1948.

"Lew, whose taste tended towards elegance, had a noticeably large and full closet of tailored suits. He had accumulated them through the years by purchasing them from the studios for half the cost after making his films. While at Universal, he paid $200 for a suit and at Warners he purchased each $600 suit for $300 after wearing them during filming."
-- Lew Ayres: Hollywood's Conscientious Objector

Boom Town Costume & Spencer Tracy's Big Idea

Boom Town Lobby Card

 
Wardrobe, contractually the responsibility of the actor on a modern-dress picture, became a matter of swapping out clothes with genuine laborers. 

When making Boom Town, "Larry Keethe, our wardrobe man, thought I was crazy when we bought a bunch of new work clothes and went down to a building project around here, looking for a couple of workmen who were about my size. 

"We traded the new outfits for those a couple of guys were wearing. They thought I was crazy, too. But you can't look like a worker in the oil fields walking into a picture in brand-new dungarees. They must be baggy and faded from sweat and dirt and many washings."  
-- Spencer Tracy: A Biography

There were many famous Robert Mitchum movies including Night of the Hunter, The Sundowners and Cape Fear. He was nominated for an Oscar for his work in The Story of G.I. Joe. He was in Scrooged with Bill Murray in 1988. In his autobiography, Mitchum said, "I kept the same suit for six years - and the same dialog. We just changed the title of the picture and the leading lady.  ....

"RKO made the same film with me for ten years. They were so alike I wore the same suit in six of them and the same Burberry trench coat. They made a male Jane Russell out of me. I was the staff hero." 

Glamor Boy, Errol Flynn

In the 1930s and 40s, there were sometimes gender inequities in dressing rooms. It could, and still may to this day, work either way. In Errol Flynn's case, while working on location on the movie, working on location shooting Objective Burma, he saw female stars such as Bette Davis receive trucks to dress in. 

On the other hand Flynn was given what amounted to a tent. It had holes in the canvas walls and a dirt floor. Locals would drop by and peer through the holes, watching as he changed clothes. 

One day in 1944, he returned to the tent to find his clothes and other belongings had been stolen. He wrote a scathing letter to Warner Brothers. "Some things happen to actors that shouldn't happen to a dog." 

Errol Flynn 1940

A collection of the most popular and best dressed actors particularly those such as Flynn and Adolphe Menjou were called glamor boys. A mid-1938 edition of Life Magazine had the actor on the cover with the simple caption, Errol Flynn, Glamor Boy.

Such a suave and charming epithet can work against you. In early 1943 when Flynn was on trial for statutory rape, there was worry that some female jury members would be lenient.  

The prosecutor calling him 'the great glamor boy' in final argument to jury in day-long plea, asked that Mr. Flynn be sent to prison. He asked that same punishment that would be accorded an ordinary citizen. Deputy District Attorney Thomas Cochran had referred to him earlier as "the glamor man of all glamor men."

Women didn't always wear beautiful clothes created by studio costume designers. It all depended on the situation and the film. More clothes than just those worn making the film were needed for actors, there would be time spent promoting the movie.

Dressing an actress from "the basement store"

Providing your own clothing and wearing clothes other than the top of the line designer outfits wasn't something that happened exclusively to men. Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man was a true life story. The director wanted realism, the main characters to dress like the real people dressed. When making the docudrama The Wrong Man with Henry Fonda and Vera Miles in 1956 Alfred Hitchcock dressed even his leading lady in attire purchased in stores where the woman Miles was playing would have shopped.  

The real woman had done her fashion shopping in a local basement store so they didn't need Edith Head,' he'd said. They'd just buy the actors' clothes there. "So Miss Miles didn't feel too deprived, we had Edith create a wardrobe for her to use on her promotional tour." 

Joan Crawford's Studio Wardrobe

When a magazine toured Joan Crawford's closets in 1935, it is ambiguous. Does she, too have some clothes she's bought only to wear on screen. Could well be. I know that she, like some other actresses had some outfits worn in films remade by designers for her personal use.

"She keeps not only one but four closets opening off the large white mirrored dressing room of her Westwood home. One contains studio wardrobe, another street things, number three holds all the evening frocks and number four, her pajamas and negligees. Then there are her shoe cabinets. .... Her hats are sorted by color and then by shade."

** This is part of a short series. When other parts are posted links will be provided here.

Sources and Resources:

Many of the books have hardcover, paperback and Digital/eReader/Kindle versions available. Sometimes digital versions don't include photos, etc.  Editions can be slightly different, too.

Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best by Nancy Nelson 

Spencer Tracy: A Biography  by James Curtis 

Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me   by Marlon Brando and Robert Lindsey

Lew Ayres: Hollywood's Conscientious Objector by Lesley L. Coffin

Marlon Brando by Patricia Bosworth

Brando: the Biography by Peter Manso

Comanches The History of a People by T.R. Fehrenbach 

Hitchcock On the Half Shell: Time Magazine, May 9, 1983

Motion Picture Magazine November 1936

Silver Screen June 1935

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London will host an exhibition, Hollywood Costume, October 2, 2014, through March 2, 2015. The exhibition is curated by Deborah Nadoolman Landis. It is presented by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sponsored by Swarovski.

Related Pages of Interest:

Dressing Male Stars in Old Hollywood; Provide Your Own Clothes Hollywood male film stars rebel against high wardrobe costs, The Internal Revenue Service, Tricky Tax Deductions in the 1930s ...

Dressing Gable, Rathbone, Robert Montgomery, Marlene Dietrich
It's 1930, Sherlock Holmes, Cary Grant's Stand-In talks about his duties

The Philadelphia Story, Features of Romantic Comedy

Blue Food Dinner Parties, The Practical Joke so nice Alfred Hitchcock played it twice

Hey Stella! Streetcar Named Desire, Barbara Stanwyck Stella Dallas, Kay Francis

Errol Flynn 1942 Birthday party ends in a brawl

Famous TV Dads, Movie character costumes

Men in the Bath: Have a personal film festival at your place, choose your own theme  

Sources listed may be used for any of the posts in the series. Major updates and corrections if necessary will be noted with a date.