I won't pretend to be an expert, but did notice few to none of the costumes appear to be very authentic looking for the period of the 1920's, other than the flapper dress & racoon coat shown in the 1st scene with the children. This didn't seem to be a terribly low budget production and don't all studios have a stock wardrobe dept. to derive period costumes from? Just seemed a pretty glaring mistake or just a dumb decision?
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Apart from the fact that the costumes seemed more 1950s than 1920s, there are a couple of other clangers I noticed - in the scene where Nanette and Tommy are sitting in the garden, her uncle appears at the window behind them; in the next shot there is a high green hedge behind them! Another one is in the "Oh, me, oh, my" dance sequence - all the dancers follow Jimmy out into the hall, in the next shot lots of them are sitting on the floor under the stair well, something that couldn't be done in that space of time. Apart from that, I love this movie - one I hadn't even heard of until I got it in a box set, especially Uncle Max's version of the English language!
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As a kid,I'd always get confused when a movie that was made before I was born opened 'in the present day' (for this movie 1950),and then went largely flashback twenty years or so.Both epochs were ancient for me.They make the point at the beginning that one of the 1950s kids is wearing a silly propellor hat,but still spouting on about the absurd fashions of the 20s.
I notice that the fame fatale seems to favour colours normally considered flattering to insects.
The kids-find-phonograph-leads to flashback form is the same as 'Margie',a very sweeet film.
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I notice that the fame fatale seems to favour colours normally considered flattering to insects.
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LOL! I'm laughing uproariously as I'm running to prune any bright colors from my closet.
In period movies/TV shows of the Fifties and Sixties, clothes, hairstyles and make-up almost always looked more like styles from decades in which they were actually shot. Ever see Liz Taylor version of Cleopatra, where most of her costumes look like exotic cocktail dresses? Or bouffant hairdos on all the women on The Wild Wild West? One theory is that filmmakers feared truly authentic costumes, etc. weren't flashy enough for modern audiences.
shareIn the sequence out by the swimming pool, Doris is chatting with Billy De Wolf and when he asks her a certain question, she says "Mmmm-Hmmm"--which can be construed as a 'yes'. I say she lost the bet!
shareI came here to complain of this exact thing! The movie was really cute and fun, but the costumes, hair and makeup were clearly not accurate for the 30s. Everyone looked so 50s that if I had missed the beginning I never would have had a clue it was supposed to be set in any other time. In the last musical number everyone is wearing more appropriate 30s costumes, so I don't know why they didn't utilize the style throughout the film. Very bizarre decision!
shareThis was very common during the 50's you'll also notice that the hair styles were all 1950 and the sets for the Broadway show were all in the art-moderne of 1945-50 with warped walls and strange angles. Worth a relook just to catch them all.
shareYes, like others have stated, movies made back then tended to reflect the decade they were produced in, and rarely [accurately] reflected the period they were portraying. It's like the hair that actors/actresses sported; it was the "Hollywood glamor wig" look that was clearly obvious in most of the tv and movie productions back then. Now, the pressure to be "glamorous" in period pieces tends to take a backseat to historical accuracy...though I still believe some low-budget productions such as the Comanche Moon miniseries give into fashion stereotypes of the culture and time instead of doing more thorough, exhaustive, historical research.
but with movies from the 40s, 50s, etc. you have to be willing to forgive them for those errors, particularly if it's a great movie like this one. I don't think it's necessarily as important as the storyline and the actors driving the movie.
So glad others noticed this too! I'm only 20 minutes in and the costumes are already bugging me. Haha! I'm a stickler for historically accurate costumes in films and this is not one. The costumes (minus the 20s clothes in the first scene) are NOT 20's. Granted it's the end of the 20s so the clothes would have BEGUN to change and the "flapper" dresses and cloches would have been beginning to "phase" out but still. It's not really 30s either. It is 50s! Come on...it's not that hard to make authentic period-correct costumes even if it might have been low-budget. Ya know?! Anyways...just had to get that off my chest because it bugs me. lol.
shareBack in the day of those Technicolor musicals, they were faithful about historic costume up to the point that it didn't de-glamourize their stars. Whatever worked onscreen was what ended up on screen, history be damned.
This attitude pervaded even the plots - as in "Yankee Doodle Dandy" with James Cagney which completely overlooked George M. Cohan's tawdry life and also "Night and Day" with Cary Grant which essentially was a complete lie about the life of GAY Cole Porter.
That was Hollywood.
"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"