CLOTHES RE-MAKE THE MAN

My fedora, waiting for its next role.

Over the last couple of decades, there’s been one constant to my sartorial style:a slightly battered, faded brown felt fedora I bought at a haberdashery on 8th Avenue near Penn Station. It cost only $15, but thanks to delighted wardrobe folks on TV productions, has helped me reap rewards many times over.

If old movies on TCM are to be believed, the fedora was once the most versatile of hats. Tough guys wore them with trench coats, Businessmen made them perfect for suits. Leading men proved fedoras could even look great with tuxedos. Idiots like Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys pushed the brim straight up like a car hood. 

 

 

 

As a subway passenger on an indie movie
set: there is nothing wrong with this look.

But it was the look favored by wiseguys, sidekicks and working stiffs that I went for: tilted to the right, brim flat across, like every 1940s character actor I secretly aspired to be. It represented an everyman dignity which, what it lacked in alleged “class”, made up for in personality.  

To my wife Sue, however, I apparently resembled a lowlife bookie one step ahead of the cops. "Can’t you please pull down the brim?” she requested time and again. 

Nothing doing -- not only did I love the look, I often received compliments from total strangers, all of whom were African-American men. 

That this post-middle age, whiter-than-white product of a small New England town was now a fashion plate admired by urban males was reason enough to ignore my wife's preposterous demands. The brim would stay flat. 

But that was before two utterly disparate events: a new hairstyle, and a visit from my father – who died over 30 years ago.

I suppose an explanation is in order.

The go-to guy for insulting advertising.

Since my 40s, I had responded to my thinning hair by getting it cut in a spikey manner – what you might see in a Tom & Jerry cartoon when Tom sticks his paw into an electric socket – and getting it cut every three weeks or so. In my character modeling days, when my hair was thicker, it didn't look bad, and could be easily exaggerated for my computer nerd ads. 

And even when I started background work, it didn't seem to be a problem, even if other guys my age appeared more, shall we say, debonair. Make that normal.

Then in 2019, at a fitting for the 1940s-based HBO series The Plot Against America (which I would be working on throughout the summer), the stylist urged me to start growing my hair. Not only would it fit my character, longer hair would lead to other roles that called for a more upscale look. 

 “It’s easier to trim your hair for a part than grow it,” he added with the kind of logical perspective that tends to elude me until I’m walloped across the face with it. 

Too bad about the sagging neck,
though.

Taking the advice to heart, I began parting my hair on the side as it grew in. Sue suggested I brush it straight back, going so far as to let me use her styling products. I wanted to return the favor, but one person with my kind of style was enough. 

For the first time in close to 20 years, my hairbrush was once again doing what it was meant for, rather than taking up space in my bureau. No longer did my head resemble a dying lawn in the middle of winter.

Up until now, the on-set stylists regarded at my hair with a mixture of relief (that they didn’t have to do anything with it) and bafflement (“How does the hell does it grow like that?”).  Now, on the first day working in my 1940s look, I had to sit in a chair while a professional actually worked on me for a few minutes. 

When she was finished, I put my glasses on and looked at the mirror in front of me. Looking back was my father.

 Although lasting only a brief moment, the experience was startling enough to stick with me for the rest of the day, particularly as my period wardrobe was similar to those he wore in old photos. It wasn’t just eerie – it made me wonder who I had become.

 As my hair continued to grow, I found myself gravitating toward a simple baseball cap rather than the fedora. For reasons unknown, I couldn’t bring myself to wear the item that had become such a part of me that, until now, I felt undressed without it.

 After a few weeks of this fedoraphobia, I ginned up my courage, grabbed the hat and, stepping to the mirror, placed it on my head at its usual jaunty angle.

 Only now, something wasn’t quite right. More accurately, there was something very wrong with what was staring back at me. 

 It became clear that the problem wasn’t the fedora; it was the way I was wearing it. Even though I couldn't see my slicked-back hair under the hat, I could feel the new personality it had created for me. 

On the set of Law & Order: SVU:
a new man in an old hat.

No longer did I resemble a guy who worked at the Pabst brewery circa 1945. I finally looked like who I was: an Upper East Sider in his mid-60s with a wife, adult daughter, and financial advisor. In order to reflect my authentic personality, the fedora brim had to be pulled down. 

 The idea of replicating my father – or, rather, someone like him -- wasn’t something I aspired to, but a change had to be made. With one hand, I pulled down the brim. With the other, I crossed my fingers.

 The result? I looked pretty damn good. The new style suited me just fine. Not only did I appear different, when I stepped outside I found myself walking differently – with confidence -- without my hands stuffed in my jacket pockets as they often were. Why didn’t I do this before? 

 As usual, it took Sue to explain it in words I could understand: I had been more comfortable playing a lower-class role in real life rather than the more upscale person I really was.

 It wasn’t that I had become my father, as I had feared. I became me.

No question, it had been fun looking like what movie credits would have called Sidekick #2. But at my station in life, a bit of leading man was more appropriate. A newfound positive self-image was possible because of a different hairstyle and the snap of a hat brim. Who knew it could be so simple?

 Sue believes I've stumbled upon something very deep in reaching this point the way I did. Speaking as a TCM fan, though, I know I had simply gone from Allen Jenkins to Dana Andrews. Now when do I get my close-up with Ava Gardner?

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