Doppelganger Dresses, Part 2: The Baby Carriage Dress

We're back with another edition of Doppelganger Dresses, where we feature the possible inspirations for Gone with the Wind costumes from period fashion plates. Today's entry is the pink stripe dress a petulant Scarlett wears to go strolling down Peachtree Street with Rhett and baby Bonnie. Like the Shantytown dress we featured last week, the "baby carriage" dress was a popular style of the time and versions of it appear in many fashion plates. 

We've selected two similar fashions for your viewing after the jump, along with the original Walter Plunkett costume sketch and several publicity stills from GWTW for reference. Do you think they resemble the baby carriage dress? Which one more so? Let us know what you think in the comments! 

Poster of the Week

This week's poster (date unknown) hails from the Scandinavian north of Sweden and features Rhett and Scarlett in the famous embrace from the proposal scene. 

  

Image from movieposterdb.com 

Sweets and Champagne: Another Honeymoon Edition of Southern Cookin'

"The wines and liqueurs and champagnes of New Orleans were new and exhilarating to her, acquainted with only homemade blackberry and scuppernong vintages and Aunt Pitty's 'swoon' brandy..."

" 'You eat as though each meal were your last,' said Rhett. 'Don't scrape the plate, Scarlett.  I'm sure there's more in the kitchen. You have only to ask the waiter.  If you don't stop being such a glutton, you'll be as fat as the Cuban ladies and then I shall divorce you.'

But she only put out her tongue at him and ordered another pastry, thick with chocolate and stuffed with meringue."  

--Gone with the Wind, Chapter XLVIII

In our previous installment of Southern Cookin' we brought you an assortment of Creole dishes that Rhett and Scarlett could have enjoyed on their honeymoon in New Orleans. But MM didn't just mention rich entrees, of course. There's also the small matter of liqueurs and champagne and sweets. So today I'm pleased to highlight the good stuff some sweeter and more bubbly fare from New Orleans.

The recipes--all either sugar or alcohol based--once again come from the trusty The Picayune's Creole Cook Book, first published in 1901 by The New Orleans Times-Picayune. (More info about the cookbook can be found in the first honeymoon cuisine post.)  

Check out the completely delicious, totally unhealthy menu after the jump.

The Quotable Rhett Butler: Good Phrases From "That Book"

As one of our readers aptly observed in a comment for the very first edition of our Quotable Rhett Butler (aww, I am getting nostalgic), for a man who professes not to be a believer, Rhett does use a solid number of biblical references. In fact, the Bible and Shakespeare are probably the top two sources for the allusions one can find in his speech. And it's always a pleasure to see that our talented Mr. Butler is aware of that fact as well: 

"'Lusting in your heart.' That's a good phrase, isn't it? There are a number of good phrases in that Book, aren't there?" --Gone with the Wind, Chapter LIV

You probably recognize the setting for this conversation: the dining room of the Butler mansion, after Ashley's infamous birthday party, with a drunken Rhett  just getting started on the central theme of the night: mental infidelity. Well aware of the fact that his wife was never physically unfaithful to him, he nonetheless knows that her love for Ashley is what triggered both that day's scandal and Scarlett's decision to ask for separate bedrooms. And what better phrase could he find to illustrate that than one picked from a collection of warnings against adultery (Proverbs 6: 20-36, that is)? 

"Do not lust in your heart after her beauty

   or let her captivate you with her eyes,

for the prostitute reduces you to a loaf of bread, 

  and the adulteress preys upon your very life. "

But what's more interesting about his line is that, though the phrase is clearly lifted from the Old Testament, its meaning there is quite different from the one in which Rhett uses it. It's obvious that the message was one of precaution: lusting in one's heart and allowing one to be tempted by a woman opened the door to actual adultery, and that was the sin, not the lusting itself. Rhett, however, implies that mental infidelity qualifies as adultery in itself, ergo Scarlett is guilty, though she was never physically unfaithful.

But we can find another passage in the Bible (and if we can't, Google sure can), a little different in wording perhaps, but that captures the essence of that idea better, by going further than the Old Testament had gone. And what's more interesting is that we know for sure Rhett was familiar with it. Here it is, the entire fragment from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5: 27 ), with the relevant sentence highlighted:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell."

And if we convert a small fragment of this to King James' English--"And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee"--it starts to sound awfully familiar, doesn't it?

Doppelganger Dresses, Part 1: The Shantytown Dress

As we promised earlier, it's time to kick off our new series, Doppelganger Dresses, highlighting real dresses from period fashion plates that closely resemble the costumes of Gone with the Wind. 

Our first dress is the Shantytown dress and to get things started, we've found two dresses that match up nicely with it. You can find the two fashion plates, along with several movie screenshots and the original sketch from costume designer Walter Plunkett for comparison after the jump. The first plate is dated 1866 and taken from a beautifully illustrated book of fashion history called Dame Fashion: Paris-London, 1786-1912, published in 1913 and filled with authentic fashion plates from the time span in question. The second plate is dated as 1865-1870 and comes from another lovely old book, The History of Fashion in France, published in 1882. 

While the two dresses posted here are the closest ones I have seen to the GWTW costume, the general style (light grey/blue dress with dark decorative detailing) seems to have been a tremendously popular one in the mid 1860s. I've spotted at least a half dozen dresses in period fashion plates that generally look like the Shantytown dress. So it's not surprising at all that this style became part of Scarlett's wardrobe.

Take a look and let us know what you think in the comments- do the dresses look like the Shantytown dress to you too?

Poster of the Week

Call it the staircase poster before the staircase poster. This image of Rhett carrying away a swooning Scarlett, seen here on a 14x22 poster from 1941, was a highly prevalent one in GWTW poster art from its inception as part of the movie's 1941 ad campaign through the early 1960s. 

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit this might be my least favorite GWTW poster ever. Scarlett looks passed out and Rhett is sporting one hell of a creepy leer. Not adding to the poster's general sense of class? The tag line "Rhett takes Scarlett in his arms!" That's fine, of course- I just rather prefer to imagine she was conscious for it. So, yeah, I'd even take the Polish love fans poster of this one here!

Image from moviegoods.com. Poster information cited from Herb Bridges' "Frankly My Dear..."

 

The Talented Mr. Plunkett and the Costumes of Gone with the Wind

Walter Plunkett. Image from the Harry Ransom Center.

Excellent news for us Windies! Yesterday the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin announced that it had achieved its goal of raising $30,000 to preserve five of the original costumes worn by Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, including the iconic green drapery and red party dresses. And what better way for us to celebrate than to tip our hat in tribute to the man behind the dresses, legendary costume designer Walter Plunkett? 

Given that our blog's header features no less than four of his GWTW sketches, it's probably no surprise to you that we're rather fond of Mr. Plunkett and his costumes around here. After all, Gone with the Wind simply wouldn't be the movie we all know and love without Plunkett's inspired work on costumes for everyone from Scarlett and Rhett on down. So today we're pleased to give Walter Plunkett his due with an exploration of his work, his legacy and of course his instrumental role in GWTW--complete with a slideshow of 53 of his original sketches.  

An Oakland, California native born in 1902, Walter Plunkett abandoned his law studies to begin first his Broadway and then his Hollywood career as a movie extra in the mid 1920s, before making the shift to costume design. His first credited costume design role came in 1927 for Hard-Boiled Haggerty by RKO Studios, where he served as the Head of the Wardrobe Department. There, Plunkett was given a great degree of latitude in his costume design and his star quickly rose within the industry. By the mid 1930s, he was already considered to be Hollywood's leading expert on historical costume, thanks to his work on several period films starring Katharine Hepburn.  It was in fact Hepburn who encouraged Plunkett to read Gone with the Wind. The rest, as they say, is history...

Plunkett read GWTW and was so captivated by the story that he immediately called his agents to request the job of costume designer on the film.  Selznick knew of and admired Plunkett's costumes from having worked with him on Little Women, and hired the designer on the spot. 

And in Plunkett, Selznick got an employee who shared his fanatical attention to detail--because meticulous is the only true way to describe Walter Plunkett's approach to costume design on GWTW. He read the book multiple times, checked and cross-checked every passage related to fashion, and put together a notation book of 200 pages(!) with quotes about costumes. 

Then he went to Atlanta to meet Margaret Mitchell, who provided him with several books for research and introduced him to fellow Atlanta ladies in possession of 1860-70s era clothing. While in Atlanta, MM also gave Plunkett a blessing of sorts: her permission to change the color of Scarlett's dresses, as in the book the dashing Miss O'Hara's wardrobe is almost exclusively green (Margaret Mitchell's favorite color). From Atlanta, Plunkett embarked on a tour of the museums of the South to gather more research and fabric samples, with stops in Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans and the Smithsonian Institute. 

Then, at last, he started to design. But after a first round of sketches, it seemed that, though his meticulous research was perfect for garbing all the roles that made the background of the movie, Plunkett did not have what it took for the dramatic flair of Scarlett's wardrobe, as envisioned by Selznick. "We will need somebody to give us perhaps half a dozen sensational costumes that will need to be original creations in addition to the Plunkett job - if it is Plunkett - which will be based largely on research," said the producer in a memo from February 1938. The favorite for this position seemed to be New York designer Muriel King whose sketch for a Scarlett costume had gained Margaret Mitchell's enthusiastic consent. 

But by January of 1939, as a Selznick memo noted, "Plunkett has come to life and turned in magnificent Scarlett costumes so we won't need anyone else." With this, the designer was given free reign with all the costumes.  The final sum of his work when all was done? 5,500 wardrobe items for a cost of $153,818 and a laundry bill of $10,000. A staggering output by any stretch of the imagination--not to mention one that includes some of the most memorable costumes to have ever graced the silver screen.  If the category existed back in 1939, Plunkett would have definitely won an Oscar for Best Costume Design. As it was, he won the prize for An American in Paris in 1951, and was nominated 9 other times.

Today, Walter Plunkett is widely remembered as one of the legends of cinematic costume design, largely due to his work on Gone with the Wind, though his record with other productions is impressive as well. Interestingly, though, there are some, like costume designer Frances Tempest, who dispute his reputation for exacting historical accuracy:

"A film always reflects the time when it is made regardless of when the story is set. This is unconscious and only becomes apparent after, say, ten years hindsight. Even when creating a faithful, historically accurate, reproduction of a particular era, after a few years the film will obviously belong to the 1970s, 1980s or whenever it was made. So GWTW belongs to 1939 and is in the tradition of other 30s historical dramas such as Little Women. To our eyes these films look ‘very 1930s’. I am sure the film-makers thought they were accurately reproducing 19th-century society. With Europe on the brink of war GWTW creates a fantasy Deep South. Walter Plunkett has tapped into the zeitgeist, and mined a rich vein of nostalgia, to a world that never actually existed. "

--remarks by Frances Tempest, excerpted from Fashion, Media, Promotion: The New Black Magic By Jayne Sheridan

We don't deny the idea that films reflect the time period in which they are made, or that GWTW is in many ways a product of 1930s-era Hollywood glamour (it's the poster child for that, after all). However, we do take issue with the last claim that Plunkett created a vision of "a world that never actually existed." In fact, our own research has turned up just the opposite--Plunkett's costumes were incredibly grounded in period fashion, so much so that it can be quite eerie at times to find a Plunkett dress staring at you from an issue of Godey's Lady's Book. 

And to that end, we're taking this opportunity to announce a new series, Doppelganger Dresses, where we'll highlight real dresses from period fashion plates that bear close resemblance to the costumes of Gone with the Wind. Stay tuned... our first Doppelganger dress will be up later this week. And for now? Enjoy a lovely GWTW slideshow, of course! 




For more info on GWTW costumes, be sure to check out the invaluable Harry Ransom GWTW online costume exhibition and its Walter Plunkett page, which includes costume-related correspondence from the making of GWTW.