Figure 1.--Ando plays the Japanese Ambassador's son in 'Paper Tiger'. Here he wears traditional Japanese clothing. |
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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. We incourage readers to submit informatiin on their favorite movies.
Romance is on the minds of students and teachers at British secondary school set in the 1950s. A boy's travails at home and at school where he is punished for constant tardiness. The thrashing scene is played for humor. The hero and his friends still wear short trousers to school, but the one suave boy they all dislike wears longs. Apparently boys, are more correctly the oparents, at their school are allowed the option of long or short pants with their uniform. The boy is played by John Albasiny. An English reader was particularly impressed with this film, "This was a delightful movie, and was the first one shown on Britain's Channel 4. There is some fine period (60s) costume in the film and well-worth seeing if you have the chance. The boy's development is observed by metaphor through the voice-over of a cricket commentary."
Made for TV movie about a president's son, stifled by life in the White House trades places with a look alike delivery boy. Lance Kerwin.
An aspiring arm wrestling champ with a stow away teenager in his truck winds up in jail on the way to the championship.
Touching little film about an orphaned boy. The boys is the subject to a custody battle by two aunts, one of modest circumstances and the other quite well off. His rich aunt, who wants to take care of him. He wears short pants including a short pants suit. The clothes are typical of Australiam boys' clothdes in the 1930s. He goes to a new school where the school bully, interestingly a girl, picks on him. Nicholas Gledhill played a limited, but successful roles in the film, although the plot is built around his character.
Reasonable comedy about a city family which moves to the country to escape the evil city influences on their kids. The children protest and beg to stay. The son (David Hollander) who is about 13 plays his part well. Dad appears in shorts, but not David.
Somewhat slow-paced deams about a shepherd's son must make peace with himself and his father after spending his childhood in a harsh environment. The film is an autobiography of famed Italian poet Gavino Ledda. Like the boy in the film, he worked as a shepherd for his tyrannical father for 14 years. He finally joins the army, attends university, and goes pn to become one of Italy's most renowned modern poet.
Richard (Macaulay Culkin) is a timid boy who won't even climb the ladder to the new tree house his father built for him. He inadvertently pops into a library and the librarian suggests Richard needs an adventure. The boy steps through a mural at the library into an animated world. Mac only appears briefly at the beginning and end. Costuming is contemprary. Richard's cartoon persona has big glasses.
Insufferable 1960s beach movie, but Billy Mummy, the boy in the TV series Lost in Space plays an endearingly bratty boy.
Heart warming story about a black and white family in the 1930s and how their friendships are tested in the rural South.
The first film production of Booth Tarkington's, The Magnificent Ambersons was a 1925 silent film, Pampered Youth. The child star, Ben Alexander, who was not a little boy at the time, wears a very elaborate Fauntleroy suit and long ringlet curls.
Armando Islas
Tommy Rettig
Nice if rather maudlin film about a preacher and his eight kids based upon a book and real life experiences. The boys wear longs and all the clothing references in the book are deleted. The film is set in the 1950s. The book starts at an earlier period and one of the boys always has to dress up for weddings and special events in a velvet suit he hates.
Sweet Edwardian costume comedy-romance about a tippy, but kind-hearted father. His two children are girls. Very elaborate costuming, but no boys are involved.
It's Christmas 1932 and times are tough. Joe's father is unemployed, leaving Joe's newspaper sales the family's sole means of support. Some interesting costuming.
Times are tough for a paper boy and his family as they attempt to eke out a living on the meager earnings from the boy's paper route. This may be the same as the above with an incorrect date.
The English tutor (David Niven) of a Japanese ambassador's son (Ando) finds he must live up to his greatly exaggerated tales of heroism when the boy is kidnapped by terroists. He acts out his dreams of heroism. This comedy stars David Niven. The boy wears a variety of outfits, mostly Japanese style "T" shirts and short and long pants. He also wears some traditional Japanese garments. Despite the English tutor, he does not wear English clothing. I have not seen this film, but a HBC reader has provided some scenes from the film. The fim was directed by Ken Annakin.
Deals primarily with a girl, but one boy is featured, Marc (Elliot Spiers). He appears, materialized from a drawing. The girl wishes she had put down a more cheerful playmate. He is gravely ill and hasn't left his bed in years.
Rehash of "Blue Lagoon", two teenagers come of age in 1823 Baghdad. This time the movie is set in a desert lagoon with an American boy and a British girl. Willie Ames is the boy. Acting even worse than the "Blue Lagoon."
A story about how a boy brings an estranged couple
together. The summertime care of a painfully shy boy helps a couple mend their troubled relationship. Remake of the famous French movie Le Grand Chemin set in post-World War II Europe. The remake has an American setting, but is also about the loss of a child and the healing affect of the arrival of a 10-year old Willard (Elijah Wood) in their home. Willard first appears in the city where he goes to a private school and wears a blazer. He is chased home by the local toughs. Once safely enconsced in the country for the summer with a friend of his mother, he often wears play shorts. He makes friends with a little neighbor girl. Elijah wears typical shorts for the early 1990's, just above the knee with crew socks, as well as jeans. A very good, underrated film.
I think we already have stills from this film archived on HBC to illustrate long stockings and we did not know the tgitle of the film. We ran across this still on the Russian internet, and I think it is from the same film that we already had. The Russian site calls the film "Paragon, Gola", Paragon being the main character's name. The plot apparently concerns a young football (soccer) player on his school's team who is the most talented of the boys athletically speaking. But he is somewhat wild and unruly in school. He and a mate run away, stealing a boat (or barge) and having other adventures in a forest or rural area. They are finally discovered and returned to school. The ending, I think, is happy with Paragon actually winning the championship in the soccer competition. The costuming is a little strange because the boys wear very short shorts with long cotton stockings that are continually falling down. They don't wear garter waists as most such boys would have done, but hold their stockings up by misfiting and probably improvised elastic bands around. We think the director's idea was to dramatize by the untidy and badly fitted stockings something of the boys' maverick qualities.
The main character is a girl (Hayley Mills) who plays twins. One of the sisters wears a black velvet dress with a lovely collar. As in many American movies, the "evil" stepmother seeks to send her future daughter to boarding school. The film shows the uniforms that boys and girls used to wear at the "better" northeastern summer camps.
Very effective, realistic family movie staring Steve Martin. Several kids are involved, the most prominent is Kevin, a personable, but troubled 9-year old. Kevin wears longs throughout the film and has no interesting costumes. He is a very honestly depicted boy who is having trouble fitting in with other boys. He makes errors on his baseball team and at a pizza parlor a smaller boy steals his quarters. Unlike most movie or TV depictions in which the children are either bratty, angels, or horrors--Kevin is honestly depicted as areal boy. There is one scene at Kevin's birthday party. Only a very few of the boys wear short pants, but one little chap is inexplicably in dressy short shorts. He even has a scene to himself as he ties to break the piņata.
A reader reports, "I just downloaded a film titled 'Paris 1942'. It is a French film with English subtitles. The plot describes a Paris Mosque that hides Jewish children. The Gestapo finds out about the children, but they are spirited away in the nick of time by the Resistance to a safe place. That's all I know from the small clip. I saw.
It is based on true events."
Typical Bob Hope movie. The film begins on a luxury liner. One boy appeared early on seeking an autograph. He was about 6 or so in a suit with extremely short shorts. It used to be customary for people (including boys) to dress up when traveling on trans, planesm and ships. I haven't seen the rest of the film, but as it is set in Paris, there might be some French background scenes.
A cowboy befriends a homeless orphan, I'm not sure whether it is a boy or girl.
In "The Party" (Blake Edwards-Peter Sellers) there is towards the end a group of young people (students) coming to the house. One of them is a blonde boy with blazer, short trousers, and knee socks.
This charming little Japanese silent film is a wondeful example of the historical value of film. The film is a little slow moving, but rewarding to view. It is set in a working class neigborhood and we see how the Japanese working class worked, dressed, ate, and passed their time. We learn all about Japanese clothing as the male characters are constantly dressing and undressing. Interestingly for a film, the movie begins in a kind ofvtheater. It was not a movie theater, but a theater where a man tells a story. The film was made by famed Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. He made silent films into the mid-1930s because he thought he had not yet fully mastered the possibility of of the medium. And this film is a tour-de-force of silent film making. The film focuses on a father, Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto), raising his son--Tomio (Tomio Aoki). His work mate, Jiro (Den Obinata) as well as the widow who runs a kind of restaurant next door also have major roles. The actors give much more restrained performances from what we see in Hollywood silent films. What really makes this film a masterpiece in the performance of the boy. His father is a poor provider, but he is an excellent student. He even brings up George Washington whis isn'twhat one might expect in apre-War Japanese film. Father and son clealy love each other, but have issues. Tomio taunts his father by striking mocking poses in front of him. (We are not sure just what the poses are meant to represent.) Tomio wears a basebal-type cap, a uniform jscker, and knee pants. He dies not wear short under his jacket, because his father is poor. Other boys likely had shirts. The women all wear traditional clothing. The films offers interesting insughts as to when men wore traditiional Western clothing. The boys only appear in Western clothing.
A young teacher does away with the stern, rote teaching methods used by the old village school master. I've only seen a still, but one of the boys wears a bow instead of a neck tie.
First of the Apu trilogy, concerning a Bengali family and the boy Apu. The warm and visually poetic tale of a young boy named Apu and his poor Brahmin family trying to stay together despite the hardships in a Bengali village. The story deals primarily with Apu's father and his effort to support the family in their ancestral village. The warm and visually poetic tale of a young boy named Apu and his poor Brahmin family trying to stay together despite the hardships in a Bengali village. Pathfinder - (Norway,1987?) Award winning Norwegian adventure film. All I know about it is that a nice boy, about 13 or 14 plays the roll of Algin (Mikkel Gaup) in a kind of wilderness saga.
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'The Patriot' is a genre now called American historical fiction. In reality, there are very few Holywood historical fims that are not historical fiction, including the films based on real events and characters. It was directed by Roland Emmerich and written by Robert Rodat. The cast starred Mel Gibson, Chris Cooper, Heath Ledger, and Jason Isaacs. It was produced by the Mutual Film Company and Centropolis Entertainment and was distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film is set in the southern theater, suposedly rural York County, South Carolina. The plot describes an American desiring to remain neutral, but swept into the Revolutionary War because his family is threatened. The fictional Benjamin Martin played by Gibson is a composite figure the scriptwriter says is based on four factual Revolutionary figures: Andrew Pickens, Francis Marion, Daniel Morgan and Thomas Sumter. The premise is of course absurd. You can not base a character in such disparate individuals. The film provides a surprisingly realistic view of the War, at least for Hollywood. Like several of Gibson's films, it proved controversial. The controversies involved the portrayal of historical figures and the depiction of atrocities. Professor Mark Glancy, instructor of film history at Queen Mary, University of London complained "It's horrendously inaccurate and attributes crimes committed by the Nazis in the 1940s to the British in the 1770s." [Bettridge] Now the British have a great deal to complain about regarding Hollywood's depiction of the British. But here 'The Patriot' is more honest than most Hollywood films. Th Revolution abounded with rueties and attrocities. In the South Major Banastre Tarleton. And the British tratment of POWs was little shot of genocidal. That said, the Colonists were also often brutal, not Washington's Continentals, but the many irregulars as well as mob action against loyalists. The film shows young boys fighting. There were drummer boys on both sides. We are not sure to what extent boys and youths were involved in the fighting. we are not entirely sure about the accracy of the costuming. We suspect that the boys wear clothing that the more affluent would have worn. The tri-corner hats are historically correct, but we are not sure if every colonial boy had one or even if most boys had one. Nathan Martin
There was an interesting little scene in the actual newsreel footage interspersed with the film. It pictured American and British soldiers joining up in Tunis after defeating Rommel. The Americans are all in longs. Most of them had probably only seen very small boys in shorts. The Brits were all in shorts. One GI who was dancing (I think with a bottle of booze) around with a British soldier looked down at his shorts and began tugging the hem up so that the newsreel cameraman could get a good shot of his legs.
Tommy Rettig
Paw is the name of the main character who is played by Jimmy Sterman. The film is some times entitles, "Boy of Two Worlds" from the name of the book by Loma Elgin on which it is based. (The book is set in Kenya.) Paw grows up in is the West Indies. After he is orphaned, he is sent to live with his aunt in Denmark. He loves the outdoors. He encounters bullies and is misunderstood in the rural community that he finds himself. He gets involved with the local poacher, he tgen goes into hiding. The fil is fundamentally a morality play appealing to innocence, tolerance and reconciliation. The film is shot rather like a documentary. One of the issues addressed is hunting. There are cuts to nature scenes. The film is in English, but I am unsure how to classify the nationality of the film. The director is Astrid Henning-Jensen who I assume is Danish.
A very powerful movie about the loss of a man's family during the Holocaust and his unfulfilled life in America. Interspersed in this movies are scenes in the concentration camp and of his family before the deportation. The little boy who plays his son only occurs in the briefest of flashes. The boy dies in the cattle cars on the way to the concentration camp.
Pay it Foward is a Warner Bros Picture directed by Mimi Leter. It stars Kevin Hunt, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment. There is also a cameo role featuring Bon Jon Jovi. Haley Joel Osment stars in
the role of Trevor McKinney, a 12 year old suburbian boy who resides with his mother, Arleen in a lower class suburb of a big city. Arleen is a closet alcoholic who works as a waitress at a downtown gambling joint where there is strip and table dancers. She has to contend with rowdy and drunk patrons but does so admirably. She is a dedicated and hard working women. She has kicked out her drunken husband (played by Bon Jon Jovi) and takes care of her son.
Bettridge, Daniel. "How accurate is Hollywood history? We asked an expert which films got their facts wrong". Yahoo Movies, U.K. & Ireland. (April 13, 2012).
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