Great looking suits in the movies

[Phil]

Bogart is particularly well turned out in Sabrina -- he has to be to play opposite Miss Audrey. I love his diamond point bow ties too and am having a couple made up by one of my tailors for the fall.

Astaire is a favourite for the easy way he wears his clothes. He truly looks comfortable in very dressy things and we have to thank him for the tie as belt. An interesting thing, I was looking at a book on his style and realized that while he belted his pants with a necktie, those pants often had no belt loops. So there really is a bit of innovation going on there.

[JLibourel]

It is embarrassing to me to admit that I saw a fair number of the movies mentioned when they were current, but I can't remember much about the male apparel in them. Admittedly, I was not as interested in fine menswear back in, say, 1956 as I am today, and the passage of a half-century or so has dimmed the memory somewhat.

Good to see Adolphe Menjou cited. One constantly sees Cary Grant and Fred Astaire cited in discussions of this sort, with Clark Gable and Garry Cooper trailing, but Menjou seems to be largely a forgotten man. As I recall, he was very active in fairly extreme right-wing political movements in his later years. I think he may have been on the board of the John Birch Society although I'm not positive about this. Whatever his politics, he was certainly one of the most dapper, elegant men in Hollywood in the Golden Age.

My uncle and Clifton Webb were friends. Webb was really more a close friend of a good friend of my uncle's. I met him several times when I was a boy. He impressed me as being as courtly and elegant in person as the characters he portrayed on-screen.

Although not a vintage movies, among more recent films, the one I enjoyed the most from a sartorial perspective was Seabiscuit. I really liked a lot of the outfits Jeff Bridges was wearing (although some of the 1930s-era Western wear I would be inclined to pass on.)

[Mark Seitelman]

Jlibourel, it is good to see Clifton Webb added to the list. I always found him very elegant.

Did you know that he was a Broadway musical comedy star? Webb introduced Cole Porter's "At Long Last Love" in the show, "You Never Know" (1938).

It is interesting that some of the elegant greats were not particularly handsome men in the same class as Cooper and Grant.

[JLibourel]

It is interesting that some of the elegant greats were not particularly handsome men in the same class as Cooper and Grant.

Interesting point. This may be why Menjou and Webb are not cited so much, but it doesn't explain the adulation of Fred Astaire, who certainly could not be described as "particularly handsome." Another old-time actor who I thought was very suave and elegant was Ronald Coleman. My mother and I spent some time with his ex-wife Thelma when we were briefly sojourning in Cannes in 1954.

[exigent]

Clifton Webb looked particularly swell in Laura, where he wears an outstanding heavy grey tweed suit with high-waisted, properly cut trousers which hang ideally from the shoulders.

David Niven was a tasteful fellow who always looked right; he was known for his "colorful" use of language, much as was Fred Astaire's sister Adele, whom FA simply adored (Niven, too, fittingly, was a great friend of Astaire's). We lived in Villefranche-sur-Mer in the early sixties. My father told me he often ran into Niven at Cap d'Antibes, and that he was a terrific person.

Ronald Colman always looked wonderful in his clothes (Random Harvest, Prisoner of Zenda and A Double Life are personal favorites). William Powell is top-shelf as chic detective Philo Vance in the Kennel Murder Case, which is an outstanding film. Also worthy of mention, though the series' aired on the tube, are both Ian Carmichael and Edward Petherbridge, each playing Lord Peter Whimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers's inspired murder mysteries. Lord Peter models a swellegant wardrobe for which any toff would immediately sell his mother-in-law.

[JLibourel]

The creator of Philo Vance, Willard Huntingdon Wright, who wrote under the pseudonymn of S.S. Van Dyne, was a great friend of my grandfather They were in Los Angeles Times building on the night that it was blown up by radical socialists in 1911 (I think). Fortunately, they left the building about an hour before it went ka-blooey; otherwise I would never have existed! As I remember, Wright had a serious drug problem that took him down to an early grave, but I am not positive about this. I know my grandfather had an absolute horror and loathing of illegal drugs, largely stemming from their widespread use in the early days of Hollywood, where he was very much a player as an art director and studio designer.

[exigent]

Wonderful story, JL!

[Egor B.]

Here's a favorite of mine:

Gentlemen,

I can just say Mr. Bond looks iconic in this light grey suit! I like the way the lapels of the coat correlate with the lapels of the waistcoat...

Therefore, I'd like your opinion on whether the suit would remain its elegance, if the coat had peak lapels. In my opinion, peak lapels add more formality to a SB lounge suit, whereas lapels on a waistcoat are an extra layer, which decreases the overall formality of a suit. Wouldn't it be contradictory?

Yours,
E.B.

[Jordan Marc]

Egor:

At the time Goldfinger was made, Anthony Sinclair was still tailoring Sean Connery for the Bond films. To address your question directly, the suit would retain its elegance with peak lapels if cut properly and complemented by a slight rise in the sleeveheads. But keep in mind that single-breasted suits with peak lapels and a vest were more common in the 1930s than the 1960s. Further, I doubt you would find a square-fold plain white hanky in the breast pocket of a well-dressed man in the 1930s; that's strictly a 1960s affectation borrowed from television news readers. Decades earlier men handled the placement of pocket squares with a nonchalant elegance that was the epitome of style. It's something of a lost art these days, but it can be mastered with practice.

JMB

[old henry]

Robert DeNiro in The Godfather when he goes back to Sicily to kill the old man..

[schneidergott]

Robert DeNiro in The Godfather when he goes back to Sicily to kill the old man..

+1
That is a beauty. The lapels are outstanding, look at the roll:



Has an interesting cut as well. Not the "regular" lounge coat.

[bond_and_beyond]

I read (or heard) somewhere that in the 30s/40s the actors would were different fitting suits depending on the camera angle. For example in Casablanca when Bogart is seen from his right talking on the phone the length of the suit jacket was cut so that it would show the correct amount of sleeve (and if he was shown from the left he would be wearing a different jacket with different sleeve lengths etc). Therefore I guess much of the "perfectness" of the clothes in the films of this era is also due to "film trickery", although of course the clothes very beautifully cut.

[Pssst]

Good night, and Good Luck (2005) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433383/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNq8LoYjG2E&

[castiglione]

James Cagney wore always excellent suits. Remember him in "White Heat". As to Gark Gable he had the quintessential AA look in Mogambo, which I suggest to watch again. Broadly speaking I agree with the LL members. To watch a classic movie (1935-1950) is cause of wonder. All male, including the supporting cast, dress like no one in today´s movies. It is self evident the suits were cut by excellent taylors, something easily explained by the european diaspora, above all from Central german speaking Europe. Today things are no longer like this. But the downfall affects also fencing and riding- with some exceptions. Stunts and fights were also personal in the good ole days. The world goes forward...or backwards. Your pick.

[Melcombe]

I chanced across this thread after watching a run of You Only Live Twice yesterday afternoon - and very enjoyable it was too, if you make allowance for some fairly major changes in attitudes since 1967...

Sean Connery's suit is quite the star of the show. Not only does he remain immaculately turned out whilst tackling various ne'er-do-wells and somersaulting off a warehouse roof, even the supposedly well to do baddies (Osato etc.) sport far less impressive attire.

A quick Google reveals disappointingly few shots of this epic whistle : it's a 2 button notch lapel, single vent, flap pocket coat over pleated trousers in a very attractive blue-grey (RAF, almost as rendered on our tv). What sets it apart is the fit - it looks almost as if it is a extension of his skin. How on earth do you get trousers to sit well around the ankle as you catapult a 20-stone yakuza through a paper screen?