Figure 1.--Here we see Patrick after he has first arrived with his new pony in 'Mamme'. This is the Lucile Ball muical version of Auntyn Mame. Aunty Mame is teaching him to "Live, live, live." |
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You can also slect the movies available on HBC by using this alphabetical movie listing. At this time only a few movies have been analized by HBC for clothing information, but more pages are being added all the time.
Disappointing musical version of Patrick Denis' novel Aunty Mame with Lucy. Patrick Dennis (Kirby Furlong) whose very conservative father has died is sent to live with his only living relative, an eccentric aunt. Mame is the exact opposite of his father. She is a fun-loving, with a flare for life to the upmost. She also has a insightful wit. Patrick's transition is show cased in his clothing. He shows up in rather dowdy knickers, but Aunty Mame soon has him in all sorts of nice short pants outfits, all with knee socks. There is even one little ensemble with a beret.
We see several scenes of Patrick and the amtics of his wonde=urfully scatter-brained aunt.
There is brief glimpse of a school group at a museum, all smartly uniformed in caps, short pants suits, and knee socks. In another scene Patrick makes an appearance in a speakeasy. He descends the stairs in short pants tuxedo. Patrick's arrival occurs at the end of the Roaring-20s. In fact Aunty Mame loses her money in the Wall Stree Crash soon after.
Patrick's frolics with his Aunt are put to an end by Mr. Babcok, the executor of the will Patrick's father left. Patrick is rushed off to a boarding school. Mame is rescued from poverty by a wealthy Southern plantation owner who somehow has oil money. They marry, but she is soon widowed. Her dear actress friend, Vera Charles, adds to yhe insanity at 3 Beekman Place. The non musical version is "Aunty Mame".
George Spell
When a widow and a widower meet during a visit to their children's boarding school, a friendship ripens into love. I haven't seen this, but the boarding school could provide some interesting costuming.
Story about a white man captured by Indians, but then becomes a leader. Some Indian boys appear in realistic costuming. It stared Richard Harris as John Morgan the English aristocratic who was captured by American Indians in 1825. As time passes, he settles down to the American Indian way of life and accepts their culture and one day finds himself leader of the tribe he has spent most of his life with. It reminded me of Dustin Hoffman’s "Little Big Man".
'A man called Peter' is a true life story about preacher Peter Marshall. Itvwasca well-received box office hit and received an AcademybAward nonimation. Peter was born in Coatbridge (North Lanarkshire), Scotland.
He was raised in a modest, devout family. As a boy, Peter wants to go to sea. As he becomes a young man he experiences a spiritual awakening leaving him a strong calling to the ministry so he can do the Lord's work. He emigrates to America where he studies in a New York seminary. He then works in Atlanta, Georgia churches. He became known for his powerful sermons. He marries and then is appointed chaplain of the U.S. Senate. He also served pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. Various boys are pictured in the film. He is pictured as a boy in Scotland who wants to run away. His son, Peter John, is pictured as a little fellow, about age 5 years. The boy is pictured more extensively at about age 12. The boy who played the part appeared extensively in films of the period, I think is Billy Chapin. The film is adapted from the best selling 1951 biography of the same name which was written by his widow Catherine Marshall.
A veteran smuggles two war orphans into Australia, treating them as his children.
Street urchins develop an unusual relationship with the amnesiac they adopted as their Little League coach.
A small town boy's dream of becoming a detective is realized. Junior Durkin.
Roddy McDowall appeared in his first American movie at about 12 years old. He had a small part as a ship's boy who hides Walter Pidgeon from pursuing NAZIs. It is a ridiculous movie, but Roddy is really quite charming in his role for which he wears long pants, I wonder if it bothered him as he got older in his subsequent U.S. films that he was put in shorts.
This film is also known as "I Married a Nazi". It is based on a short story by Oscar Schisgall. The film mixed in period 1938 newsreel footage into the film. This was the year the NAZIS annexed Austrua and forced the British and French to abandon Czechoslovakia at Munich. Carol Hoffman (Joan Bennett) is an American woman married to Eric Hohhman (Francis Lederer), an American of German ancestry. They married in America and Carol does not learn the truth about her husband unytil the family travels to Germany to visit with Eric's family. She is horrified about what she sees in Germany. Her husband is mesmerized and emerges as a devoted NAZI. She tries to get their son Ricky (Johnny Russell) back home to America. The film was made after the NAZIs had conquered much of Europe, but before America had entered the War. Darryl Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox decided to shoot a series of movies to inform Americans as to what was happening in Europe. The film includes the stock characters such as storm troopers, Gestapo, Hitler Youth boy
Flashbacks reveal the tale of a conniving governess' plans to steal the husband of her employer and a childhood friend.
A corporate executive must make personal choices. A classic movie, but with little of costuming interest. His son is briefly pictured and in one nice scene the neighbor from next door sorts the kids out when they get boisterous. Mom ran away for a night when she learns that her husband fathered a son in Italy during the war. The son appears only briefly.
A kindly costume store proprietor works magic on three patrons renting Santa Clause outfits. Nothing of any real interest, although two boys appear. One is a little 5-year old whose father ignores him. The other is a bratty 12-13 year old. He wears longs, but has a Dutch boy hair cut. I've seen him in a lot of TV shows and movies, but I don't know his name.
Filmed biography of Lon Chaney, Jr., the silent film star. Three boys play his son at various ages. I didn't see the younger's costume, but the older two wear knickers--the oldest boy eventually changes to longs.
See Il Ferroviere.
A man tries to win over his girl's son. The boy is played by Jonathan Taylor-Thomas from the TV show "Tool Time." The boy does everything he can think of to discourage the man from marrying his mon. He and his friends wear shorts, the long baggy sort. He tries to give his possible stepfather as hard a time as possible. He wears longish shorts and jeans. The other kids in the film wear jeans and shorts. This is a decent film from Disney.
For the sake of his son, a devoted father learns to overcome the bitterness he feels toward his ex-wife.
Hitchock mystery. Not one of his best, but there the principal couple's son, Hank (Eddie Hodges I think) who is kidnapped plays a prominent part at the beginning and end of the film. He is rather effective as a normal American boy about 10 or so. He still says "Mommy" and "Daddy". He wore his hair in the common 1950s style with the front combed up. He is usually smartly dressed, always in long pants.
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This is an excellent film noir written by Joel and Ethan Coen and directed by
the former entitled "The Man Who Wasn't There" (2001). The story concerns a
middle-aged barber, Ed Crane, who works in a small California town in 1949. The apparently uncomplicated and rather dull, chain-smoking barber lives a life of such appalling boredom that he drifts, almost blunders, into blackmail and revenge. A movie full of unexpected twists and surprises that mixes the horrible with the unintentionally comic. The costuming of the late 1940s is quite accurate. Of special interest to HBC readers are the details of different styles of boys' haircuts in the 1940s. One of the boys whose hair Ed Crane cuts is played by the child actor Christian Ferratti, who sports a blond crew cut. He wears a striped tee-shirt, tan cotton shorts held up by clip-on suspenders, ankle socks, and what look like sneakers. He is about 11 years old.
Film about a disfigured, reclusive teacher who is beautiful inside. The film is set about 1968 along the Maine coast. A friendship develops between the man and Chuck (Nick Stahl), a young teenager about 14. The boy wants to escape his dysfunctional family (his swreish? mother and sisters) and hopes to attend the military school his late father attended. Everyoner tells Chuck he is "slow" and his chances don't look good. The local youths call the man "hamburger face." Chuck is at first appalled, but develops an affectionate relationship with him and the man begins to tutor him. The people in the small town become concerned with false rumors which the film ineffectually raises.
Nice movie based on the book. A little French boy, Jean-Claude (Sebastian Dungan), comes to America to see the father he did not even know about. He arrives in a short pants suit with knee socks. He doesn't put it on again until he leaves. It is a blue-grey short pants suit with long, dark blue socks. The other boys in the neighborhood didn't see him in his suit. The French kid wears blue jeans most of the time. He does wear American casual shorts though, khaki shorts and blue ankle socks and blue jeans. The other kids are depicted in typical early 80's attire, OP Cord shorts, soccer shorts and tube socks. In one scene, some American boys tease him for being a sissy because he has been staying with the girls. One boy who has been taunting him, says "maybe you should wear a dress." The French boy gets his own back, however, by going one on one with him with a soccer ball. Very well played by the boy, but I don't know his name. A HBC reader comments, "The last scene in the film is one of the most heartrending I've ever seen." The main other kid is Billy Jacoby, who plays Craig T. Nelsons obnoxious son. He's the one that Jean-Claude embarresses with the soccer ball.
Two boys are shown at the beginning of the movie. Mickey Rooney plays the young Clark Gable. I only saw a still flashed on the TV screen, but it looked like Mickey was wearing a lace collar. I think the other boy was wearing a sailor suit. The two boys grow up together, but tale opposite sides of the law. I'm not sure, however, how long the childhood sequence lasts. It is probably only a brief episode. Actually the movie is quite a famous one. It was the film that John Dillenger went to see with the "Lady in Red."
Grade B movie about a boy and his sister, she falls in love with an illegal alien. A judge sends the boy to an orphanage when he decides that his sister can't look after him. The boy wears knickers.
A mystery with the FBI tracking down a psychotic killer. It features Kevin (David Seaman), a blond boy about 11 or 12. He first appears in shorts along the beach, but later in longs. He is realistically played as a thoughtful little chap.
A police rookie assumes the responsibility of coaching a team of Little League misfits.
A Spanish reader reports that he is aware of at least one rather popular and current boy character in Spanish children's literature. He is called Manolo and is overwieght. He wears
glasses as well and is called MANOLO GAFOTOS or four eyes. A movie was just made (1999?) of one of the stories and it is a delight. I am not sure that this is the actual name of the film.
See "Babes in Toyland"
"Mare Nostrum" (Our Sea,i.e., the Mediterranean, but also the name of the male lead's boat) is an important French silent film. It was directed by Rex Ingram in 1926. Ulysses Ferragut (Antonio Moreno), the owner and captain of the boat, has an uncaring wife and a teenage son, Estaban (Mickey Brantford), whom he loves very much. An evil but sexy German spy Freye (Alice Terry) seduces Ulyssess and inveigles him into helping bring supplies to a German submarine. Ulysses agrees to do this only to have the submarine tragically blow up the ship that his beloved son Estaban is travelling on. Freya Talberg, the seductive spy (who was married incidentally to the film's director, Ingram) is executed by firing squad.
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"Marie Antoinette" (Warner Brothers) deals with one of the most famous women of history, the young Austrian princess wgho became queen of France. The film was one of the most lavish black and white historical movies ever made. A factor here, of course, is the lavish hair styles and clothing of the French Court. It was based on the famous biographical romance by Stefan Zweig and gives prominence to the Swedish count, Axel de Fersen, who is supposed to have had a love affair with the French queen and who tried unsuccessfully to save her from the guillotine. There was such an individual who was very close to the Queem. Whether they had actually consumated a love hair is not known with any certainty. The screenplay was written by Donald Ogden Stewart and the film directed by W.S. Van Dyke. The action covers the life of Marie Antoinette from 1755, when, as an Austrian princess, she was betrothed and married to the Dauphin, grandson of Louis XV, to 1793, when she was beheaded for treason during the Great Terror of the French Revolution. Actually she was charged with many offenses including false charges of unspeakable acts with her son. These were charges were baseless and meant by Revolutionary officials to defame her. There is no doubt, however, that she was guilty of treason. The Dauphin Louis-Charles was played by a young Scotty Beckett.
Der Marsch zum Fuehrer ("The March to the Führer")was made in 1940. Der Marsch is about an hour long and films actual Hitler Youth boys from all over the Greater Reich marching toward Nuremberg for the annual Party Day Rally. Every summer thousands of Hitler Youth marched from their home towns to along countless German roads cinverging en mass at Nuremberg to participate in the annual Nazi Party Congress. Goebells in 1940 had this film made commemorating the Hitler Youth (HJ) participation in the annual event. The boys are pictured in their columns as they march through the mountains, forests, fields and towns of the Reich, still untouched by the War. The film clips for the groups are brief. Camping, singing, and marching along the way are given a bit more time. One segment of the film shows an HJ member having supper with a host family at one stop along the way; the family members ask questions which allow the young man to tell the audience about the HJ and the march. The film's climax is the rally, featuring speeches of Hiler and Baldur von Schirach, the head of the HJ. NAZI party rallies were held in many locations and at different times of the year. The highpoint of the year for NAZI stalwarts and older Hitler Youth was the annual party rally at Nuremburg. The national HJ pilgrimage is climaxed by the elaborate ceremonies and pagenantry of the Nuremberg Congress. The boys parade before their Führer and are addressed by NAZI potentates such as youth leader Baldur von Shirach, Rudolf Hess, and of course Hitler himself. Behind the now chilling pageantry of this film and the all to notable discipline of its participants is shown the cleverness of NAZI leaders in preparing German youth, both physically and psychologically, for war.
Le Mari de la Coiffeuse (The Hairdresser's Husband) was produced in 1990. The beginning of the film is set in France during the late 1940s. We're introduced to 12
year old Antoine, played by Henry Hocking. Antoine wears a short sleeved pull-over shirt, short pants, ankle socks, and sandals. Antoine is infatuated with the attractive woman who is his barber; indeed, he gets a haircut at every opportunity! He grows up to marry a
hairdresser who seems the very image of his childhood ideal. Her clients include one child who wears a bow tie and a short pants suit with light-colored knee socks. The on-again, off-again peculiar relationship between the grown up Antoine and his hairdresser wife
is the storyline of the film. There are some funny scenes with several odd patrons of the hairdresser. One note: if you have a taste for Middle Eastern music, you'll enjoy the music Antoine is fond of playing. It's the kind usually associated with
belly-dancing.
A revealing documentary profile of Marjoe Gortner, who began as a child prodigy on the evangelist circuit and progressed to become a star of the revival tent circuit. The real-life Gortner gave up his ministry as a result of the publicity associated with the film.
Story of a big-hearted Italian prostitute. She has three sons. In a still I saw two, about 7 and 3 years old. They are wearing a suit and sailor suit respectively.
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This romance drama included several children who were pictured as coming from an affluent family. The best known child was French-born child star Philippe de Lacey was in it. The still shown here show how realtively affluent children were dressed in the 1920s. Note that it is a winter scene, yet the boys wear short pants suits. Boys from less-affluent families would have more likely worn knickers. One boys wears a double breasted overcoat with his short pants suit and hold a beret. Philip has a winter scarfe and a peaked cap. Both boys wear kneesocks. The ones Philip wears are patterened. Philippe and presumably the other children appear in various other natty outfits.
Bobby Blake had a small part.
Bobby Blake had a small part.
Documentary exploring the relationships between mothers and nannies, children and nannies, and mothers and daughters. The film features two long-time nannies and the children they helped raise. Martha is a tyrant obsessed with cleanliness and discipline. She is a German trained in NAZI schools who ruled her charges, three boys and two girls, with a big wooden spoon. The boys still shudder at the thought of Martha's spoon, but the girls are quite attached to her. Ethel is a black sharecropper's daughter who raised five white children, a boy and four girls, with love and compassion. The reviewer says that while she may have smacked a fanny or two, mostly she listen and hugged.
A Czech Jewish teenager visits his free-thinking uncle in a small town. The uncle has divorced his unfaithful young wife and marries his long-time German maid. Then the Germans invade.
An escaped convict and the young boy (Justin Henry) he takes hostage become comrades during an adventure-filled journey. At the beginning of the film the convict flashes back to his boyhood while talking to a priest. He is pictured as a boy in one evocative sequence. He wakes up in a boathouse during the summer. He is wearing PJ bottoms. He runs outdoors, and dives into the lake. He gets into and out of a canoe and is pictured swimming around. A bell rings in a near by cabin and then the camera switches from his boyhood back to the prison where a bell is ringing.
Classical film about a whimsical chimney sweep and an enchanted governess with a carpet bag filled with marvels. The boy involved wears Edwardian-era clothes, mostly a suit, sometimes with shorts and other times with knickers. His smartest outfit is a stripped blazer with white shorts.
See "Homework."
After her husband's tragic death, a woman sells all of her horses and swears her son will never ride.
This is a wonderfully done fictional account of an engagement between an English and French ship during the Napoleonic Wars. While fictional, the film is an accurate depiction of naval warfare of the time. The costuming is also quite accurate. One of the questions that HBC has not yet researched is the life of boys on war ships. Boys of various ages were involved in different capacities. There were cabin boys, midshipmen, and powder monkies. We note from the advertising clips that that midshipmen were involved. The uniform looks accurate, but the treatment of the boys seems more gentle than was probably the case. I am not sure if other boys were depicted. A reader writes, "I just saw Master and commander with Russel Crowe. In the movie the lower ranking seaman were wearing sailors pull over caps, which are like woollen beanies."
Will Oldham
See: "Staircase to Heaven."
Dickie Moore
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'Max Hvelaar' is a movie based ona Novel by Multatuli. This is the pen name Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820–87). He is best known for this satirical novel (1860). The movie was an expose of colonialism. It is set in the Dutch East Indies , but is a Dutch film directyed by Fons Rademakers. Here we see an Indinesian boy and his water bufalo.
For reference to 2001 American kids' fashions, the new Disney film Max Keeble's Big Move shows a good cross section og Jr Hi clothes. The boys wear baggy jeans and khakis and a shorts of different lengths. One kid wears a suit all the time and another wears a bathrobe over his clothes and the kids nickname for him is "Robe". Alex D. Linz is the main star.
Grade B picture set in India based on the sojourn of a little white boy played by Jay North of Dennis the Menace fame who plays Terry Brown. Terry after his mother dies joins up with his father Hugh (Clint Walker) in India. His father is a big game hunter. Then problems begin. An incident with a tiger causes Hugh to question himself. Terry is then outraged when his father shoots a young cheetah that Terry had adopted. Terry runs away. He meets an orphaned Indian boy, Raji (Sajid Khan). Raji is on a quest. He is a devout Hindu and has promised his dying father that he he would deliver a white baby elephant in thir care to a sacred jungle temple. The baby elephant is named Maya. Terry offers assist Raji, beginning their jungle adventure. The authorities search for Terry, but he conceals himself with Raji's help. This was a little tricky for a light complexioned boy with blond hair and blue eyes. He dons Indian clothes. In one scene he falls in the water and is dragged out by Raji. He spend quite a while around a fire drying off. The film inspired a short-lived television series.
A political racketeer has a change of heart when he observes the cruel conditions at a state reform school. Jimmy Cagney portrays the racketeer who becomes a reform school commissioner. He is sympathetic to the boys confined to a brutal reform
school ruled by a wicked warden. In one scene, a boy who disrespects the warden is quickly warned to answer, "Yes, sir", or else. When this boy tries to escape, he's caught and given an horrendous whipping on the spot by the warden. The commissioner forces the warden to provide the boys with decent food and to limit his severe punishments. When one of the boys dies due to the warden's neglect, however, it's more than the inmates will stand. They converge on the terrified warden's office and chase him up to the roof of a barn in the reformatory, where he slips, falls on to electrified barbed wire, and lands in a hog pen, dead! This film is one of a long line of Warner Brothers' "social
conscience films" from the Depression.
Navigate the Boys' Historical Clothing Web Site:
Max Keeble's Big Move - (US, 2001)
Maya - (US, 1966)
(The) Mayor of Hell - (US, 1933)
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Created: January 30, 2000
Last updated: 1:43 AM 1/20/2014
