ISSUE 103
SPRING 2020
EXPAND YOUR MIND, REFINE YOUR WARDROBE
Alec Baldwin “I have always avoided looking like one of those guys chasing youth. I don’t own any jeans. Act your age is a good personal style”
AVA GARDNER
A tribute to the sassiest of all Hollywood icons of the Golden Age
RITA TUSHINGHAM
The Taste of Honey star on playing a witch in Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse
ROBERT MITCHUM The hippest cat of Old Hollywood and his impeccable threads 03>
9 771749 966087
ISSUE 103
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THE CHAP MANIFESTO 1 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WEAR TWEED. No other fabric says so defiantly: I am a man of panache, savoir-faire and devil-may-care, and I will not be served Continental lager beer under any circumstances. 2 THOU SHALT NEVER NOT SMOKE. Health and Safety “executives” and jobsworth medical practitioners keep trying to convince us that smoking is bad for the lungs/heart/skin/eyebrows, but we all know that smoking a bent apple billiard full of rich Cavendish tobacco raises one’s general sense of well-being to levels unimaginable by the aforementioned spoilsports. 3 THOU SHALT ALWAYS BE COURTEOUS TO THE LADIES. A gentleman is never truly seated on an omnibus or railway carriage: he is merely keeping the seat warm for when a lady might need it. Those who take offence at being offered a seat are not really Ladies.
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4 THOU SHALT NEVER, EVER, WEAR PANTALOONS DE NIMES. When you have progressed beyond fondling girls in the back seats of cinemas, you can stop wearing jeans. 5 THOU SHALT ALWAYS DOFF ONE’S HAT. Alright, so you own a couple of trilbies. Good for you - but it’s hardly going to change the world. Once you start actually lifting them off your head when greeting passers-by, then the revolution will really begin. 6 THOU SHALT NEVER FASTEN THE LOWEST BUTTON ON THY WAISTCOAT. Look, we don’t make the rules, we simply try to keep them going. This one dates back to Edward VII, sufficient reason in itself to observe it. 7 THOU SHALT ALWAYS SPEAK PROPERLY. It’s really quite simple: instead of saying “Yo, wassup?”, say “How do you do?” 8 THOU SHALT NEVER WEAR PLIMSOLLS WHEN NOT DOING SPORT. Nor even when doing sport. Which you shouldn’t be doing anyway. Except cricket. 9 THOU SHALT ALWAYS WORSHIP AT THE TROUSER PRESS. At the end of each day, your trousers should be placed in one of Mr. Corby’s magical contraptions, and by the next morning your creases will be so sharp that they will start a riot on the high street. 10 THOU SHALT CULTIVATE INTERESTING FACIAL HAIR. By interesting we mean moustaches, or beards with a moustache attached.
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CONTENTS 8 AM I CHAP?
Readers submit their photographs for the ultimate sartorial assessment
12 EXTREME BUTLING
Mr. Gimpley-Spankworth addresses sartorial and etiquette matters, and other gentlemanly disciplines
15 GROOMING
News of an exciting collaboration between The Chap and Captain Fawcett’s Gentleman’s Grooming Emporium
FEATURES 22 ALEC BALDWIN
Gustav Temple meets the stylish actor to find out who he rates as his icons of the Golden Age of Hollywood
30 A VA GARDNER
hris Sullivan recounts the extraordinary life and career of one C of Hollywood’s greatest screen legends, plus an Ava Gardner film guide
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SPRING 2020
22 SARTORIAL FEATURES 44 FASHION PHOTO SHOOT
Glamorous ladies from the UK and the United States are photographed in classic Hollywood style
54 INTERVIEW: CHARLOTTE MITCHELL
The costume designer whose credits include style icon Villanelle in Killing Eve on recreating the early 1960s in Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse
64 S ARTORIAL LONDON
Professional City tour guide Mr. Russell Nash takes us on an elegant ramble through the fashion and menswear history of the capital, from Beau Brummell to Mr. Fish
72 T HE ALBERT SLIPPER
Liam Jefferies on the indoor footwear that can sometimes be worn out-of-doors, such is their discreet elegance
76 THE SPEARPOINT COLLAR
Matt Deckard fumes at the horizontal direction shirt collars have taken over the last few decades, and advocates a return to the classic and universally flattering spearpoint collar
82 T HE TEBA JACKET
Gustav Temple road tests a Spanish take on the Hacking Jacket that has its origins in the aristocratic circles of the 1930s
88 G REY FOX COLUMN
David Evans celebrates reaching ‘retirement age’ by hitting the road on a gravel bike in some Dashing Tweeds
LONGER FEATURES 94 ROBERT MITCHUM
The roustabout actor who laconically drawled his way through a stellar film career, mostly while high on marijuana
102 DRINK
Olly Smith sings fulsome praises to the grandfather of all gentlemanly drinks, Whisky
108 B ARBADILLO
A visit to the splendid bodegas of Sanlúcar de Barrameda to sip Manzanilla straight from the barrel
114 BUTTERFLIES
Nick Ostler turns his binoculars away from avian species and on to the equally enthralling and just as elusive butterfly
118 T RAVEL: HOLLYWOOD
Chris Sullivan trawls the streets of Hollywood and Los Angeles in search of vestiges of the Golden Age
REVIEWS 128 A UTHOR INTERVIEW
Alexander Larman meets Fergus Butler-Gallie, author of two highly regarded books about the clergy
132 BOOK REVIEWS
Books about the Old Bailey and Reginald Kenneth Dwight
134 NINA ANTONIA
Darcy Sullivan meets the writer who has chronicled the lives of decadent poets and New York glam rockers
140 RITA TUSHINGHAM
We meet the 1960s icon and hear her views on witches, the supernatural and LSD
147 CUBAN CIGARS
Sophia Coningsby on the cigars considered the best in the world since the days of Christopher Columbus
152 RESTAURANT REVIEW
A spin in an MG BGT to the Art Deco monument that is the Midland Hotel, Morecambe
157 MINNS & GOSBEE
Our antiques experts extol the virtues of the signet ring, ivory and bone
160 CROSSWORD
Cover photo: © El Dorado Pictures
ISSUE 103
Interview
ALE C B AL D W I N Gustav Temple encounters the sharply-dressed New Yorker who has been raising male standards of dress in Hollywood for several decades
“We’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired”
T
he Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin entered the humble life of The Chap in a rather odd manner. We received a phone call from Mr. Baldwin, enquiring about the ownership status of the estate of a deceased Savile Row tailor. The actor had read something about Douglas Hayward in the magazine and assumed that we would be the first port of call in an enquiry relating to the estate of Mr. Hayward.
Of course Mr. Baldwin was right, and it only took a few telephone calls to our contacts on the Row to secure the information he required. Naturally we immediately requested an interview with the actor. His interest in Savile Row reflected a general impression of a well-dressed man who is rarely pictured unsuited off screen, and the roles he has chosen nearly always display similar sartorial precision.
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Hollywood
Ava Gardner Chris Sullivan recounts the extraordinary life and career of one of Hollywood’s greatest screen legends, concluding with an unexpected encounter with her in London
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va Gardner loved drinking, staying up all night, sex, jazz, four-letter words, dogs, driving fast and Frank Sinatra. Her luminescent white skin, jet black hair, emerald green eyes, feline grace and dancer’s elegance was known to have stopped even the most hardened casting couch-abusing Hollywood producer dead in his tracks. She was thoroughly unimpressed with the movie business, considered acting not only silly but an embarrassing torment tolerated only to fund her extravagant lifestyle, was the prototype jet setting hedonist who, pursued by paparazzi, was constantly in the headlines for fighting and drinking and staying up all night. I’d say she was the most perfect woman you’d never want to live with. ‘I’m just a plain simple girl off the farm and I’ve never pretended to be anything else,’ Ava was oft to say, but her story was the stuff of myth. A bona fide rag to riches tale of a gal from the Southern back woods who became one of the world’s biggest film stars. Ava Lavinia Gardner was born the youngest of seven children to Molly and Jonas Gardner, dirt-poor Baptist cotton and tobacco sharecroppers in Grabtown North Carolina, on Christmas Eve
1922. Aged 18, local lad Ace Fordham took her to New York to see her sister Bappie. Photographer Larry Tarr, Bappie’s boyfriend, took countless shots of Ava, installing one of them in the window of his studio on Fifth Avenue. In the spring of 1941, who should see it but Barney Duhan, a runner for Loew’s Inc, the parent company of MGM Studios. Duhan got hold of a few more shots of Ava and dropped them off at the MGM offices in Times Square. That summer MGM asked to see the young girl. Al Altman was MGM New York’s screen-test director. He had introduced MGM to hundreds of the most beautiful girls in the world, but for him Gardner was ‘the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.’ Executives saw her clumsy test but were still in abject awe. Ten days later she was signed to MGM and flown to Hollywood. Louis B. Mayer saw the test and signed her up for the MGM grooming school. First of all they had voice coach Gertrude Fogler change her accent. But it seems that Ava’s biggest challenge was fighting off the wolves, such as Wizard of Oz producer Arthur Freed, just one of many executives who thought their job was a short cut to molesting young beautiful naive girls
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Photo: © Snap/Shutterstock
Al Altman was MGM New York’s screen-test director. He had introduced MGM to hundreds of the most beautiful girls in the world, but for him Gardner was ‘the most beautiful woman he had ever seen’
MODEL: Kayla Ferguson PHOTOGRAPHER: Rose Callahan
MODEL: Isabella Bliss (@miss_isabella_bliss) PHOTOGRAPHER: Scott Chalmers
Sartorial
SARTORIAL LONDON Gustav Temple takes a highly educational sartorial stroll around the West End of London with professional city tour guide Russell Nash
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e meet on the steps of the Athenaeum Club and head along Pall Mall towards St James’s Palace, where we briefly pause to reflect on its most sartorially elegant resident. Russell takes up the story: “The man who lived here between 1919, when he became Prince of Wales, and 1936, when he became King, was Albert Edward Christian George Patrick Andrew David Windsor, known to everyone as David. All Princes of Wales since the days of Queen Victoria were called Albert until our very own Charles. You’ve covered the Duke of Windsor a lot in The Chap, but my favourite fact about him was that he maintained a 30-inch waist throughout the whole of his life, from 18 to 77 years old. He died leaving 15 evening suits, 55 lounge suits and a hundred pairs of shoes, among many others. David was modernist and didn’t like dressing formally, and thus brought a more relaxed style into menswear. He danced the Rumba and the Charleston rather than the Gavotte and the Foxtrot;
he played golf rather than go shooting. He had a very stern, unbending father, George V, who had said of his parents: “My father was terrified of his father; I was terrified of him, and by God, my children will be terrified of me.” He also said about David: ‘After I’ve gone, the boy will ruin himself within a year.’ And he was right about that.
“In the fashion business, designers decide what they’re going to make and people buy into that. With bespoke, the customer is the designer. Most customers at Lobb will get fairly conservative shoes that won’t go out of fashion and can be worn every day” 65
Š Rko/Kobal/Shutterstock
94
Hollywood
ROBERT MITCHUM Chris Sullivan on the roustabout actor who laconically drawled his way through a stellar film career, mostly while high on marijuana
A
“RKO made the same film with me for ten years,” said Mitchum. “They were so alike I wore the same suit in six of them and the same Burberry trench coat. Only two pictures in that time made any sense whatever”
h, little lad, you’re staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right hand, left hand? The story of good and evil? H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E. You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers have veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends! The hand of love! Now watch and I’ll show you the story of life.’ Robert Mitchum, The Night of the Hunter (1955)
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Travel
LOS ANGELES & HOLLYWOOD Chris Sullivan’s first of 31 visits to Los Angeles was in 1978, aged 17, for a four-month stay on $200. His recollections of that first visit provide a handy guide to the best spots in the city that recall the golden age of Hollywood
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e took the 10-hour journey in Titch’s huge 1970 Dodge convertible on the magnificent Highway 1 that perilously follows the coast, edging over mighty cliffs with the raging Pacific Ocean 100 metres below. I experienced my first taste of Hollywood at Hearst Castle in San Simeon. Once home to absurdly rich newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and his main squeeze Marion Davis, the mansion was featured under the name of Xanadu in Citizen Kane. Known formally as ‘La Cuesta Encantada’ (The Enchanted Hill) throughout the 1920s and 30s, the tycoon would invite Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford and George Bernard Shaw to hobnob with Winston Churchill and President Calvin Coolidge. His soirees were renowned for their total lack of anything enjoyable
“You hit Ventura and a thousand film noir memories come and smack you in the kisser – femmes fatales Stanwick and Gardner coming on, private dicks Mitchum and Powell looking for it and villains Sterling Hayden and Jack Palance being naughty” and were the laugh of the town, described as ‘like doing national service’. Used as the location for the famous horse head in the bed scene in The Godfather, this is one lavish bachelor pad.
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Int e r vie w
RITA TUSHINGHAM Gustav Temple meets the actress who launched her career aged 18 in A Taste of Honey and now appears in Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse
Are you excited about The Pale Horse coming to our screens soon? Yes I am, because everyone loves Agatha Christie but this is a very different type of production, because you don’t have Poirot or Miss Marple.
I spoke to the costume designer and you’re not in a black pointy hat, are you? No, though I do have a different kind of hat and I also wear a wig. I wanted Bella to be a normal woman who lives in this village, rather than a caricature. It’s like, if you play a saint, you don’t walk around with a halo, do you? We all wanted the witches to be slightly believable, even though they’re slightly strange.
You were in a Miss Marple, weren’t you, in 2006? Yes I was, The Sittaford Mystery. The Pale Horse is very different; you don’t have the usual Agatha Christie thing where people are questioned, although the plot obviously is solved.
Is this the first time you’ve played a witch in a drama? I might have played one in real life!
A Taste of Honey came out in 1961. The Pale Horse is set in 1961. Is this a coincidence? It’s interesting, because when you look at the fashion from then, it was very nice to work with such a brilliant costume designer. So it took me back, because I remember that period very well, and it was nice to revisit that period, not just by watching old footage. Not that my costume is particularly glamorous!
“If you play a saint, you don’t walk around with a halo, do you? We all wanted the witches to be slightly believable, even though they’re also slightly strange”
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PINKY RING WEARERS Notable figures from history who wore a pinky ring include Richard Burton, the British Hollywood actor and megastar with the resonant voice honed from the bedrock of the welsh valleys. He seemed to have ignored the basic rule of wearing the pinky ring to denote his unavailability for marriage, ending up getting married five times; twice to the same woman, Elizabeth Taylor.
and there is evidence that the Romans considered dispensing poison from the ‘digitus minimus’ the most surreptitious and effective way of dealing with your enemies. This tradition was doubtlessly the reason Alphonse Gabriel ‘Al’ Capone adopted the wearing of a signet ring.
Oscar Wilde, flamboyant poet, playwright, raconteur and advocate of ‘Greek love’, was known to have worn a Scarab beetle ring on the pinky finger of each hand at the same time. The original etymology of the scarab ring meant mortality and resurrection, though in Oscar’s case it resulted more in immortality and insurrection. Queen Elizabeth I, arguably the greatest monarch that ever lived, commissioned the building of a huge quantity of fighting ships, thus creating the greatest navy in the world, leading to a legacy which made Britannia rule the waves for hundreds of years. She stuck steadfastly to her guns by adhering to the pinky ring rule of ‘none marriage’, stating that she would rather be a beggar and single than a queen married. Another intriguing but disturbing use of the pinky ring was when it was used to carry and to dispense poison. The poison ring, or ‘locket’ ring, dates back to at least the ancient Greeks
Al Capone’s 4.25ct diamond and platinum ring, with a 3.65-carat centre stone with shield cut diamonds on either side in a sword design.
Royal personages such as Edward, Duke of Windsor, and later Prince Charles, carried on with the tradition of wearing the pinky ring, in conjunction with a wedding ring; a somewhat confusing anomaly considering its history as a token of single status. Franklin D Roosevelt also used to wear his rings in the same manner.
IVORY AND BONE Ivory and Bone have a long history in the jewellery world; some of the earliest known examples of body adornment have been crafted from these beautiful and surprisingly durable substances. Ivory has been treasured by humans for aeons and its use in jewellery covers most periods and fashions. From Georgian miniatures in lockets painted on to wafer thin ivory sheet, through to fully functional pocket watches carved entirely (minus the spring) from ivory, including the chain! Bone, commonly perceived as the slightly poorer relative of ivory, was not only used in imitation but as a material in its own right; a great deal of beadwork, specifically in the form of rosary beads, was produced from bone, alongside more utilitarian objects such as buttons and hair combs. The popularity of ivory (and to a slightly lesser extent bone) had its heyday in the jewellery word during the period of Queen Victoria’s mourning, its subtle yet luxurious lustre complementing the monochromatic aesthetic so popular at the time. Demand for ivory in the context of jewellery continued right through until popularity waned in the late 1950s, due not only to the public attention to the less than ethical production values, but also to the advances made in synthetic polymers and resins, which were easier to form and therefore more cost effective to produce. In the early 21st century a ban was imposed in the United Kingdom on selling any ivory produced post 1947, in an effort to aid the dramatically ailing African and Asian elephant population. Subsequent bans all over the world continued this trend, and now elephant populations have, in some areas, begun to stabilise and slowly recover. The most recent update to the law bans the sale or trade of ANY ivory product (or product
featuring up to 10% ivory parts) regardless of date or provenance. Even if the item you wished to sell were to comply with the 10% restriction, you would be obliged to register it before sale, along with paying a fee. This has ruffled a few feathers, not only in the antiques trade but also among museums and purveyors of antique oriental collectables. Imagine if you had a beautiful set of ivory-handled Victorian cutlery, and in order to sell them you had to cut off the handles and sell the silver as scrap! Although the author unequivocally supports the efforts regarding the sustained recovery of our pachyderm brothers, this debasement seems not only draconian but also culturally damaging. At the time of writing, the bill is still to come into effect, the previous 1947 rule still standing, but the new law is imminent, so perhaps beginning your collection of ivory netsukes today would not be the wisest investment. The Antiques trade is keeping a very close eye on the progress of this situation, but until it comes into full effect, here are some ways you can recognise both ivory and bone. Ivory, when polished, should hold a highly reflective, rippling shine when caught by the light; it should have tonal depth and a degree of translucence giving a slight warmth. Bone cannot receive a finish to the same degree of finesse due to its formation, but can still polish well. Ivory will have a uniform texture, not pitted or displaying any minute holes, which would suggest bone – take care to observe this subtle but significant difference. Both materials, when exposed to sunlight, will eventually bleach; yellow ivory and bone have either been in prolonged storage or on the receiving end of a forger’s teabag! When tapped with a metallic object, ivory will give a clearer tone than bone (think lead crystal over glass) and also feel denser in the hand, due to the lack of a micro capillary substructure.
THE FLUMMOXER This delicate object is made from ivory, ribbon and lace – but what precisely is it for? One lucky provider of the correct answer receives a Fox Signet Ring from Mr. Gosbee’s own delicate hand.
Send your answers to chap@thechap.co.uk
Stephen Lord correctly identifed the last issue’s flummoxer as the lamp from a Nissen Hut.