Category: Throwback
Samuel L. Jackson in The Hateful Eight
Samuel L. Jackson as Major Marquis Warren in The Hateful Eight (2015)
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Samuel L. Jackson as Maj. Marquis Warren, bounty hunter and veteran Union Army cavalry officer
Wyoming Territory, Winter 1877
Film: The Hateful Eight
Release Date: December 25, 2015
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Costume Designer: Courtney Hoffman
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Happy birthday to Samuel L. Jackson! Born December 21, 1948, the actor hustled for two decades before his breakthrough performance as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction (1994), his first of six collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, and he is currently the highest-grossing actor of all time with his films having collectively grossed more than $27 billion worldwide.
The actor’s most recent prominent role in a QT joint was the wintry western The Hateful Eight, released ten years ago this month on Christmas 2015, and an appropriate watch for tonight’s winter solstice.
Jackson leads the ensemble cast as Major Marquis Warren, a former Union Army cavalry officer now working as a bounty hunter who prides himself on his deadly reputation:
My bounties never hang, ’cause I never bring ’em in alive.
Blood Simple: Dan Hedaya’s Slate Leisure Suit
Dan Hedaya in Blood Simple (1984)
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Dan Hedaya as Julian Marty, surly bar owner
Texas, Fall 1982
Film: Blood Simple
Release Date: January 18, 1985
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Costume Designer: Sara Medina-Pape
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
In honor of Dan Hedaya’s 85th birthday—born July 24, 1940—it’s worth revisiting one of the most memorable early showcases for his talents: the Coen brothers’ 1984 feature debut, Blood Simple. With a screen career stretching back to 1970, Hedaya has long been one of cinema’s most welcome character actors, equally at home playing sleazeballs and softies—from Carla Tortelli’s scummy ex-husband Nick on Cheers to Cher Horowitz’s gruff but loving dad in Clueless.
In Blood Simple, Hedaya takes on one of his most tragic and pathetic roles as Julian Marty, the cuckolded Texas bar owner whose simmering jealousy leads him to hire crooked private detective Loren Visser (a sweaty, unforgettable M. Emmet Walsh) to trail his wife Abby (Frances McDormand, also making her screen debut). Continue reading
Glory: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw’s Union Army Uniform
Matthew Broderick as Col. Robert Gould Shaw in Glory (1989)
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Matthew Broderick as Col. Robert Gould Shaw, Union Army officer
Civil War-era America, Fall 1862 through Summer 1863
Film: Glory
Release Date: December 15, 1989
Director: Edward Zwick
Costume Designer: Francine Jamison-Tanchuck
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Memorial Day honors military personnel of the United States Armed Forces who died during their service. The Department of Veterans Affairs credits the holiday’s origins with Mary Ann Williams, who was widowed during the American Civil War, and the resulting holiday was known as “Decoration Day” when it was first proclaimed by Major General John A. Logan on May 30, 1868. Logan originally intended the holiday to honor Union soldiers and officers who had died during the Civil War, but the scope expanded to recognize all members of the U.S. military who had fought and died in service. On the 100th year of the observance in 1968, Congress standardized the timing to align with the last Monday in May.
Last spring, my wife and I traveled the nearly 200 miles east to Gettysburg—my first time visiting the historic city and battlefield since I was a child—which reinvigorated my interest in this destructive period in history. Combined with the origins of Memorial Day following the devastation of the Civil War, it feels appropriate to honor the true story at the heart of Glory, Edward Zwick’s Oscar-winning drama about the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment—one of the first Black regiments organized by the Union Army.
Glory follows the regiment’s real-life commanding officer, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick), from his service during the bloody Battle of Antietam in September 1862 through his assignment to lead the 54th and leading the regiment into battle against the considerable Confederate defenses of Charleston Harbor, culminating with the 54th’s heavy losses during the culminating Second Battle of Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863. Born to an abolitionist Bostonian family, the 26-year-old Shaw increasingly supports equal treatment and pay for the troops under his command.
The real Col. Robert Gould Shaw (1837-1863) and his screen counterpart, portrayed by Matthew Broderick in Glory.
Wicked: Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz
Jeff Goldblum in Wicked (2024)
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Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz
Emerald City in the land of Oz, circa 1900
Film: Wicked: Part I
Release Date: November 22, 2024
Director: Jon M. Chu
Costume Designer: Paul Tazewell
Tailor: Martin Nicholls
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Congratulations to Wicked costume designer Paul Tazewell, who received the Academy Award for Best Costume Design during last night’s Oscars ceremony. Jon M. Chu’s first installment adapting this mega-hit Broadway musical was nominated for ten Academy Awards, also winning for Best Production Design.
The musical itself was adapted by Stephen Schwartz from Gregory Macguire’s 1995 novel Wicked, a revisionist expansion of the universe that L. Frank Baum developed in his “Oz” books and had been immortalized in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. The stage and screen musical adaptations of Wicked refrain from some of the novel’s darker elements in favor of maintaining the colorful fantasy associated with the story.
We don’t actually meet the wizard until the final act of Wicked, nearly two hours into the 160-minute movie. After an intimidating introduction as a gravely, disembodied voice behind a massive robotic face, the wizard reveals himself to be a man as Jeff Goldblum strides out and introduces himself to fledgling witches Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda Upland (Ariana Grande). Continue reading
Paul Schneider as Dick Liddil in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Paul Schneider and Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
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Paul Schneider as Dick Liddil, smooth-talking outlaw and incorrigible “innamoratu”
Missouri and Kentucky, Fall 1881
Film: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Release Date: September 21, 2007
Director: Andrew Dominik
Costume Designer: Patricia Norris
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
The James Gang committed over 25 bank, train, and stagecoach robberies from 1867 to 1881. But, except for Frank and Jesse James, all of the original members were either now dead or in prison. So, for their last robbery at Blue Cut, the brothers recruited a gang of petty thieves and country rubes, culled from the local hillsides.
— Hugh Ross’ narration from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Based on the last few months of the infamous bandit leader’s life, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford illustrates how Jesse (Brad Pitt) and Frank James (Sam Shepard) had fallen from their notorious “glory days” of riding with the Youngers, now reduced to a band of fanboy ruffians like the simple-minded Ed Miller (Garret Dillahunt) and brothers Charley (Sam Rockwell) and Bob Ford (Casey Affleck). One of the more capable members of this new iteration of the gang is Dick Liddil (Paul Schneider), though even he seems more interested in how many women he can “diddle”. Continue reading
Lee Van Cleef as “Angel Eyes” in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
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Lee Van Cleef as “Angel Eyes”, ruthless mercenary
New Mexico Territory, Spring 1862
Film: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
(Italian title: Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo)
Release Date: December 23, 1966
Director: Sergio Leone
Costume Designer: Carlo Simi
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today would have been the 100th birthday of Lee Van Cleef, the actor whose Golden Boot Award-winning contributions to the Western genre began with his debut performance in the iconic High Noon (1952) but remains arguably best known for his back-to-back roles in the latter two films of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars trilogy” that established the spaghetti Western subgenre.
Born January 9, 1925 in New Jersey, Van Cleef served in the U.S. Navy aboard a minesweeper during World War II. Following his debut in High Noon, Van Cleef’s distinctive appearance and sinister mannerisms resulted in a string of supporting—and often villainous—roles in crime stories and Westerns until his breakout role as Colonel Douglas Mortimer in Leone’s For a Few Dollars More (1965), which resulted in his sole Golden Globe nomination.
Leone followed For a Few Dollars More with the Civil War-set The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—the final installment of his so-called “Dollars trilogy”—which also prominently co-starred Van Cleef opposite Clint Eastwood’s stoic “Man with No Name”. As opposed to the more heroic Colonel Mortimer whose violent quest was driven by a sense of justice, Van Cleef’s character in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly embodied the eponymous “Bad”—a sadistic assassin who kills for money… and occasionally pleasure. Continue reading
Legends of the Fall: Brad Pitt’s Tan Leather Car Coat
Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall (1994)
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Brad Pitt as Tristan Ludlow, tough bootlegger and World War I veteran
Montana, Fall 1925
Film: Legends of the Fall
Release Date: December 23, 1994
Director: Edward Zwick
Costume Designer: Deborah Lynn Scott
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Legends of the Fall may be a biblical title, but the style is autumnal, set amidst the network of the fictional Ludlow ranch in Montana across the first quarter of the 20th century.
Family patriarch William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins) had been a decorated Army colonel before leaving the service in protest of the government’s treatment of Native Americans, raising his sons Alfred (Aidan Quinn), Tristan (Brad Pitt), and Samuel (Henry Thomas) on their remote ranch, where they learn to be the self-sufficient types that can survive bear confrontations… and if they don’t survive them, at least put up enough of a fight to earn “a good death.”
Portraying the tough but troubled Tristan Ludlow provided a breakthrough opportunity for Pitt, continuing the momentum he’d built in a similar role two years earlier in A River Runs Through It, though Tristan is arguably a more rugged character than Paul Maclean. By the mid-1920s, Tristan had seen and done it all, as a cowboy, soldier, big-game hunter, and now a bootlegger whose rumrunning runs him afoul of his own Volstead-voting brother Alfred and his nemeses, the crooked O’Banion brothers. As blood spills on both sides of the conflict, Tristan fears that those he love most are damned to die before him, only to be saved by the bonds of his family. Continue reading
The Newton Boys: Dock Newton’s Gray Morning Coat
Vincent D’Onofrio as Dock Newton in The Newton Boys (1998)
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Vincent D’Onofrio as Wylie “Dock” Newton, ex-convict and outlaw
Toronto, Summer 1923
Film: The Newton Boys
Release Date: March 27, 1998
Director: Richard Linklater
Costume Designer: Shelley Komarov
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
One hundred years ago tomorrow on June 12, 1924, the notorious Newton brothers gang committed their last* holdup after a wildly successful five-year spree that robbed at least 80 banks across ten states, about half of these in their home state of Texas where brothers Willis, Jess, Joe, and “Dock” Newton were born in Uvalde.
“If there are any bank robbers you’d want as family members, it would be the Newton Boys,” writes Duane Swiercyznski in his volume This Here’s a Stick-Up: The Big Bad Book of American Bank Robbery, in which he describes the group as “unfailingly polite, nonviolent, and professional heisters.”
In addition to their preference for courtesy over cruelty, the brothers attributed their success to initially sticking to less risky nighttime robberies targeting specific old-fashioned safes that could be more easily blown open with nitroglycerin. It was only when departing from this formula that the Newtons encountered real trouble, such as their impulsive attempt to rob daylight messengers of the Imperial Bank of Canada in July 1923… which netted C$84,000 but broke the gang’s avoidance of violence when four guards were shot and wounded.
Just under a year later, the Newtons again should have stuck to their formula rather than agreeing to what would be one of the last—but biggest—train robberies in American history. On the evening of June 12, 1924, the Newtons joined a group of professional criminals in the attempted robbery of R.P.O. train 57 outside Rondout, Illinois, about forty miles up the Lake Michigan coast from Chicago.
“Ain’t this a helluva way to make a living?” Jess reportedly joked to the conductor, whose nerves at being robbed—even by the generally nonviolent Newtons—resulted in him failing to stop the train where the bandits expected. In the subsequent confusion and darkness, one of the outsiders recruited into the job mistook Dock for one of the guards and opened fire. Continue reading
Heaven Can Wait: Don Ameche’s Blue Silk Smoking Jacket
Don Ameche in Heaven Can Wait (1943)
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Don Ameche as Henry Van Cleve, successful businessman
New York City, Fall 1923
Film: Heaven Can Wait
Release Date: August 11, 1943
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Costume Designer: René Hubert
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Born 116 years ago today on May 31, 1908, actor Don Ameche stated during a 1983 interview that his favorite filmmaking experience over what was then a half-century in the movies was appearing in Ernst Lubitsch’s dazzling supernatural comedy Heaven Can Wait, adapted by screenwriter Samson Raphaelson from Ladislaus Bus-Fekete’s play “Birthday”. Continue reading
Bela Lugosi as Dracula
Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931)
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Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula, debonair vampire
Transylvania to London, Spring 1930
Film: Dracula
Release Date: February 14, 1931
Director: Tod Browning
Costume Design: Ed Ware & Vera West (uncredited)
Background
With Halloween less than two weeks away, embrace spooky season through Bela Lugosi’s iconic performance as Count Dracula in Tod Browning’s 1931 Universal horror classic Dracula. Continue reading
