Not all the films about St. Patrick’s Day (17th March) have got to be scary and feature a malevolent leprechaun. Some of them can be fun and with intriguing fashion references as well.
Check out for example "The Luck of the Irish" (1948), a low-key comedy directed by Henry Koster that follows the vicissitudes of Stephen Fitzgerald (Tyrone Power), an American reporter.
Stephen is on holiday with his friend Bill (James Todd) and, while travelling in Ireland, they have a car accident. Stephen looks for help and meets a man (Cecil Kellaway) who is hammering a shoe near a waterfall. The man directs him to the nearest village where Stephen stops at a local inn run by Nora (Anne Baxter).
When Stephen recounts his encounter at the waterfall the innkeeper tells him there is no waterfall nearby and suggests he may have met a leprechaun. According to the legend, if Stephen catches him, the leprechaun will have to give him a pot of gold. Stephen doesn't believe the story, but he eventually catches the leprechaun who offers him his gold. The young man refuses to take it, though, and, when the next boat becomes available, he leaves to go back to New York.
Here Stephen starts working for David C. Auger (Lee J. Cobb), a successful and unscrupulous publisher hoping to start a career in politics. The man wants Stephen to write his speeches, while Anger's daughter Frances (Jayne Meadows), in love with Stephen, wants to marry him.
In the meantime, the leprechaun arrives in New York to show his debt of gratitude towards Stephen and serve him. The delightful leprechaun becomes Stephen's butler, but does so with mixed results.
One day Stephen gets the underground and, after meeting by chance Nora who happens to be in New York, starts thinking the leprechaun may have had a hand in bringing the woman there ("You brought Nora here, didn't you?" he asks, but the leprechaun, acting as Stephen's conscience answers "No, you brought her yourself...in your mind, long ago.").
After struggling between his dreams of wealth, fame and power, Stephen opens his eyes and realizes he has lost his integrity as a free-thinking independent journalist and man.
Where is the fashion connection in the film? Bonnie Cashin designed the costumes for this film, mainly focusing on Nora and Frances.
The former dresses more simply, especially when she's serving at the inn. We often see her in basic dresses matched with an apron and a shawl (like the blue cotton poplin dress with a floral print and scoop neck trimmed with cream eyelet lace and three-quarter sleeves she wears when Stephen gets the boat to go back to New York; this costume was auctioned a while back). When we meet her in New York she is more elegantly dressed, but her clothes such as her skirt suit with a jacket decorated with lace cuffs and collars, still look functional, sensible and rather conservative.
Frances is the opposite of Nora: she is wealthy and wears elegant clothes like a black off the shoulder boat neck dress and a voluminous fur coat with ample shoulders. She usually wears matching jewels or a statement necklace.
One of the most modern designs we see in the film is an evening dress donned by Frances with a black fitted bodice and a long skirt with an architectural construction around the hips (imagine a pannier skirt without the actual structure underneath the skirt to support the fabric).
Cashin often used clothes and accessories in the films she contributed to to highlight certain personality traits in the characters. But in this case there is also an indirect parallelism between Stephen and Bonnie Cashin: like the fictional character in this film, Cashin didn't trade her soul for success, but she kept her principles and integrity.
"The Luck of the Irish" premiered in 1948 and for its original showing the sequences shot in Ireland were tinted in green.
Want to check further green designs while following the main theme of this post? Look online for some vintage Bonnie Cashin like the lime green cotton canvas A-line raincoat from 1955 that was featured in the 2018 exhibition "Pockets to Purses: Fashion + Function" at New York's Museum at FIT.
The coat was characterised by a trompe l'oeil shoulder bag applique that formed a pocket with Cashin's signature twist locks. the sketch for the coats makes the purpose of the construction clearer, with the note: "Look ma, no hands! Let your coat carry your bag." Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Comments