Figure 1.--This boy wears a short pants suit with knee socks and a schoolboy cap. This is a style that is much too late for the period being dramatized and for that matter not likely for Iowa even later. But of course historical realism is hardly the point in splashy American musicals. A knickers suit would have been much more likely st the time. In Iowa even later in the 1920s and 30s, a knicker suits and a flat cap would have been much more likely even for the younger boy.

One of the characters, Winthrop, the librarian's little brother is usually dressed in a knickers suit or sailor suit. He sings the song "Gary, Indiana" with a lisp. Winthrop wears a knee pants suits. The boys all wear knickers. There is also a scene where they sing the song about the pool hall. Boys are shown in knickers peering into the pool hall. One of the tell tale signs of corruption is for a boy to rebuckle his knickerbockers below the knee, to look older, after he leaves the house. A young culprit is caught and his parents yank his knickers up exposing his knees. Here's that memorable quote from the Music Man, in the song "Trouble" sung by the bogus Professor Harold Hill, warning the River City parents of the need to set up a boys' band in order to stop their sons going off the rails: "The minute your son leaves the house, does he rebutton his knickerbockers BELOW THE KNEE?" (A sure sign of incipient delinquency!) Actually the costuming is somewhat stagey and quite untrue to the decade of the 1910s. But many of the boys do wear knickers with black stockings. However, in the famous scene where Professor Hill warns the town about the danger of letting boys buckle their knickerbockers below rather than above the knee, some worried relatives pull up the bottom of their boy's knickers to expose black stockings that reach only to the knees and not above (which, of course, is a historical mistake, since all boys of the period wore long stockings with their knickers suspnded by some kind of sticking supporter). Another scene shows a highschool boy wearing knee pants with long white stockings--another anachronism since white long stockings were almost always reserved for very young boys if they were worn at all. Another false note in the costuming occurs when we see the lead little boy (played by Ron Howard) wearing a short pants suit with knee socks and a British-style peaked school cap. Short pants suits of this sort were a later development (the 1920s-40s) and tended to be a style worn mostly in the eastern United States by boys from rather affluent families in imitation of British schoolboy dress.

Created: 3:55 AM 4/23/2006
Last updated: 3:55 AM 4/23/2006