Rainwear in Films |
Before 1950 |
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| Database beta | New or substantially revised entries have an orange panel. | |||
1920 |
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 Twelve Miles Out, Jack Conway, USA, 1927 |
This silent film stars John Gilbert and Ernest Torrence as gun-runners who fall out over a woman. The woman in question is a young Joan Crawford in an oilskin slicker. Could this be the earliest appearance of such rainwear in films? (Dave D) |
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 The Hollywood Revue of 1929,
Charles Reisner, US, 1929 |
This part-technicolor variety show included a "Singin in the Rain" sequence that featured one of the earliest appearances of plastic macs in the cinema. (T) | |||
1930 |
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 The Mad Parade, William Beaudine, US, 1930 |
The way war effects women, it says. Well, it certainly makes them wear macs! In this case it's heavy duty trenchcoats. (Dave D) |
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| La Petite Lise, Jean Grimillon,?, 1930 | Nadia Sibirskai wears a plastic see thru raincoat - (Anon) | |||
| Anna Christie, GB, Clarence Brown, 1930 | Based on the play by Eugene O'Neill, starring Greta Garbo and Charles Bickford. Screen shots in Rainy Day Cinema (T) showing the beautiful Greta Garbo in her oilskin slicker. |
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| Rain, Lewis Milestone, US, 1932 | The old Joan Crawford, Walter
Huston version of the movie of the much filmed Somerset Maugham story.
A series of wet shiny cape shots, happy singing marines & other male characters,
then neatly dressed in rubberised cotton (it seems) genteel ladies. "Wait,
I'll get my coat", says Sadie Thompson, seizing a light coloured
mac from hook by door, flapping it extravagantly. She goes to run out,
but stops, holding her mac, during a long dialogue with the reforming
preacher. Later she is supposed to be coming back in from the rain, but evidently Joan Crawford chickened out. When she appears inside the house she is quite dry, & the figure seen from the back must have been a stand-in. (TG) Sadie Thompson and Miss Sadie Thompson are other versions. |
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 Rich and Strange, Alfred Hitchcock, 1932 (sometimes listed as 1931) UK |
Quite an oddity, this. It stars Henry Kendall, Joan Barry and Percy Marmont. At the start of the film, we see office workers leaving work during a deluge. Henry Kendall find himself in close proximity to an attractive girl on the tube. Would you try to read your newspaper in this situation? (Dave D) Available from Amazon.
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| King Kong, Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack, US, 1933 | Fay Wray while sailing on board the ship to Skull Island is leaning of the railing of the ship which is in a fog bank. She has on a plastic raincoat. You have to look closely as the scene is not that long. But she is wearing a plastic raincoat! (PVC) | |||
| Of Human Bondage, John Cromwell, US, 1934 | Starring Bette Davis, with a black rubber mackintosh.(W) | |||
| Sing As We Go, Basil Dean, GB, 1934 | Early on we see Gracie Fields from the rear putting on a rubberised silk mackintosh, and as she turns we see the full rippling and flow of the mackintosh as she walks. (James) | |||
 The
Bishop Misbehaves, E.A. Dupont, US, 1935 |
A mac-attired Maureen O'Sullivan attempts to foil the shenanigans of a naughty English bishop played by Edmund Gwenn. More screen shots in Rainy Day Cinema (T) | |||
 Satan
met a Lady, William Dieterle, US, 1936 |
This is a loose adaptation of 'The Maltese Falcon' starring William Warren and Bette Davis. The Gutman character (played by Sidney Greenstreet in the Bogart film) is here transmogrified into Madame Barabbas (Alison Skipworth). In one scene Bette Davis wears a cape and Alison Skipworth causes a baggy raincoat to bulge! (Dave D) |
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| Windjammer, Ewing Scott, US, 1937 | Young woman on yacht dressed in oilskin coat and souwester in the middle and at the end of the movie. (PEC) |
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| Between two Women, George B. Seitz, US, 1937 | Maureen O'Sullivan wears a translucent hooded rain cape, approximately between minutes 57 and 61 of the film. Furthermore several nurses are shown in a short scene wearing the same kind of cape. (Toni) |
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 The
Green Cockatoo, William Cameron Menzies, UK, 1937 |
Naive mackintoshed heroine is saved
by a young John Mills. Earlier in this scene a police inspector enquires
after the girl in the "white mackintosh".....wonderful. (RM) |
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| The Broadway Melody of 1938, Roy Del Ruth, US, 1937 | Features Judy Garland with a chorus of dancers garbed in transparent plastic tuxedos. Unfortunately, this scene was eventually deleted from the film. (Rainman) | |||
 Love
of a Stranger, Rowland V. Lee, GB, 1937 |
Thriller featuring Basil Rathbone and Ann Harding, who wears this mackintosh at the beginning of the film when there are also some brief wet weather street scenes with a host of mackintoshes. (RM) | |||
| On Such A Night, E.A. Dupont with Karen Morley and Milli Monti, US, 1937 | Flood waters maroon a houseful of people including a Broadway star, her husband - falsely accused of murder, and the real killer. Picture in Rainy Day Cinema.(T) | |||
| Crashing through Danger, Sam Newfield, UK, 1938. | At the end of movie: heavy rainstorm, an electric maintenance worker must repair power line. His wife is watching him in the pouring rain, dressed in a rubber oilskin raincoat and rainhat. The rain water is running down in streams on her coat. She calls for help an another peson in rubber raincoat joins. (PEC) |
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| La femme du boulanger , Marcel Pagnol, France, 1938 | At the end of the movie (last ten minutes) actress Ginette Leclerc wears a raincoat in "pied de poule" rubberised cotton with a black collar. (GMC) | |||
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A pale and gaunt Michele Morgan, resplendent in a transparent plastic mac, haunts the fog-shrouded docks and dimly-lit cafes of Le Havre. She attracts the attention of Jean Gabin with whom she shares the misty ambience of writer Jacques Prevert's romantically pessimistic world. Picture in Rainy Day Cinema. (T) | |||
 Abus
de Confiance, Henri Decoin, France, 1938 |
The young Daniele Darrieux wears a shiny black rubber slicker nearly all the time. (Pierre) PM alerts me to a misleading second entry for this film which used to be above, corrects the spelling (Danielle Darrieux) and points out that she wears her black rubber mackintosh in the first half of the film only. He also supplies the photos and gives this link for another. Thanks!
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| Ask a Policeman, Marcel Varnel, GB, 1938 | Glennis Lorimer plays the girlfriend of a policeman. She arrives one wet stormy night at the police station wearing a rubberlined mackintosh. The garment has a chequered pattern and in a later scene outside can be seen to have also a shoulder cape. (Bob) | |||
 La
Bete Humaine, Jean Renoir, France, 1938 |
Has Jean Gabin in a black rubber mackintosh making love in pouring rain to Simone Simon who is wearing a black rubber cape. (AR) | |||
| St Martin's Lane, Tim Whelan, GB, 1938 | In one scene a number of ladies wear plastic raincoats for their performance on stage. (PVC) | |||
| The Stars Look Down, Carol Reed, GB, 1938 | Features a brief but sensational appearance of heroine Margaret Lockwood in a classic single texture cotton coat, soaking wet. The hero says "Here let me take your mac off", which he does with a nice sound effect. In one scene a number of ladies wear plastic raincoats for their performance on stage. (JS) | |||
| At the Circus, US, 1939 | During minutes 8-12, Florence Rice wears a translucent plastic rain cape and sings a song. (Toni) | |||
| La Règle du jeu, aka The Rules Of The Game (USA), Jean Renoir, France, 1939 | There is a scene in which some of the characters
are arriving at a house in the rain, and they all wear raincoats and umbrellas.
It is just a very brief shot however. Also another scene in a swamp where
the lady wears big knee-high black shiny pull-on boots. There is a shot
that is fairly long of them walking through the swamp, and when the lady
starts to sink in the mud - great views of her boots. (Michael D) |
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| The Rains Came, Jerry Jameson, US, 1939 | Set in India. Myrna Loy wears a white rubber cape. (Bob) | |||
1940 |
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 Women in War, John H. Auer, USA, 1940 |
Wendy Barrie (a well-known English actress who went to the USA in the late 1930's and notoriously became the mistress of New York gangster, Bugsy Siegel) stars as a young woman who decides to go to England to become a war nurse. Her relationship to the very strict Matron (Elsie Janis) is closer than she thinks. Awful film, but the nurses do wear their uniform raincoats. (Dave D) |
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 Rebecca,
Alfred Hitchcock, US, 1940. |
Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier) makes his new wife (Joan Fontaine) wear a mackintosh for a walk to the lake. A servant is told to fetch one which used to belong to Rebecca. Reluctantly Mrs de Winter puts it on and wears it as they walk through the estate and she encounters for the first time something of its dark secret. (H) Eric adds: I wonder if the golden age of the mackintosh didn't start with this film. |
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| Girl in the News, Carol Reed, GB, 1940. | Margaret Lockwood plays a Nurse sacked wrongly by her boss. She wears a black plastic raincoat in some scenes as she looks for another job. (Bob) | |||
| Jeannie, Harold French, GB, 1941. | The story of a Scottish lass visiting Europe for the first time. Barbara Mullen wears a thick rubberlined mackintosh that crackles loudly when she takes it off in a restaurant. (Bob) | |||
| Springtime in the Rockies, Irving Cummings, US, 1942 | This is a musical starring Betty Grable and John Payne. Also featured are Harry James and his Music Makers (James and Grable married a year later) and Carmen Miranda (who for once doesn't have a bucketful of fruit on her head!).The story concerns Vicky Lane who breaks off her engagement to and stage partnership with Dan Christy, and takes up again with her previous partner (Cesar Romero). Dan follows them to the Canadian Roackies and woos her back. Early in the film, Vicky and Dan perform a number called "Run Little Raindrop, Run'" in their Broadway show, in which a rainstorm is simulated on stage. For this, Vicky wears a white satin raincoat with a hemline just above the knee and little white boots to match. She wears the hood up, but it is pinned well back so as not to obscure her hair. This is purely a stage costume and does not reflect the streetwear of the time. Dan and the men in the chorus wear proofed cotton raincoats. The girls in the chorus wear all wear transparent plastic macs with the hoods up. After the number, while Vicky and Dan are arguing, three of the girls, still wearing their macs, can be seen at the edge of the screen walking up a staircase to the dressing rooms. As the last girl mounts the stairs, Vicky's dresser (Charlotte Greenwood) pinches the back of her leg, causing her to utter a very audible "Oh!". There seems to be no reason for this. Was there an off-screen feud perhaps? (Dave D) | |||
 Careful,
Soft Shoulder, Oliver H.P. Garrett, US, 1942 |
American
wartime espionage drama starring Virginia Bruce. Great for 40's fashion
throughout, but in one scene the heroine is walking in the rain wearing
a typical 1940's cut semi-transparent P.V.C. knee length hooded mac.
(ME) |
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| Journey into
Fear, Norman Foster (and uncredited Orson Welles) US, 1942 |
Rather a good little thriller which sees Joseph Cotten embroiled in intrigue with the Head of the Turkish Secret Police, Colonel Haki (Orson Welles). Exotic dancer, Josette (Dolores Del Rio) wears a nicely- cut trenchcoat (sans epaulettes) in several sequences. There's an exciting window ledge shoot-out in driving rain at the climax. The assassin, Banat, (Jack Moss) earlier demonstrates how not to eat a water biscuit with your soup! (Dave D). | |||
 Joan
of Paris, Robert Stevenson, US, 1942 |
Michele Morgan, Paul Heinreid, Alan Ladd - some of the same cast of "This Gun for Hire". At least two transparent raincoat scenes, including travels through the Paris subways, with the heroine under guard by the Nazis. (Milo) | |||
| Hangmen Also Die, Fritz Lang, US, 1943 |
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The True Story of
Lilli Marlene, Humphrey Jennings, UK, 1943 |
In the final scene actress Lisa
Danielli goes off to the Albert Hall to sing wearing an SBR mackintosh.
This was used as an advertisement for the slicker coats sold at Lawrence's
shop in Charing Cross Road. (Bill) |
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| The Human Comedy, Clarence Brown, US, 1943 | Donna Reed's character (and sister) wear crystal clear plastic raincoats in one scene, which is long enough to allow the viewer a really good view. Picture in Rainy Day Cinema (PVC). | |||
 In
the Meantime, Darling, Otto Preminger, US, 1944 |
Early Premiger, starring Jeanne Crain, sometimes in plastic (H) | |||
| Hotel Reserve Lance Comfort, Mutz Greenbaum (more), 1944, UK |
Herbert Lom wears a riding mac for the last ten minutes - great sound when he takes it off. (JKR) | |||
| Phantom Lady, Robert Siodmak, US, 1944 | An obscure and extraordinary 'film noir' flick where the heroine (the lovely Ella Raines) has an extensive scene searching for witnesses who can clear her boss (whom she loves) of murder. Walking the rain-soaked streets and elevated train platforms, she wears a lovely transparent plastic raincoat. Lots of opportunities for backlit views of her in the raincoat. (Milo) | |||
 Brief Encounter, David Lean, 1945, UK |
There is a sequence in this film where Laura (Celia Johnson) wears a mac, buttoned and belted, when she meets Alec (Trevor Howard). Is there not a bit where she says, "I love raincoats! There's something so terribly, terribly exhilarating about the way they're so impervious to precipitation."? No? Well, there ought to be! (Dave D) |
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 Spellbound, Alfred Hitchcock,
US, 1945 |
In this psychological thriller there is a scene where Ingrid Bergman wears a grey gabardine raincoat at the railroad ticket counter. It makes Gregory Peck come over all unnecessary! (Dave D) | |||
| This very good version of the Raymond Chandler novel stars Dick Powell (as Philip Marlowe), Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley and Mike Mazurki as 'Moose' Malloy. So whatever happened to Malloy's girlfriend, Velma? In the latter part of the film, Claire Trevor briefly wears a classic trenchcoat. As Moose would say, she looks 'cute as lace pants'! (Dave D) | ||||
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See a Dark Stranger, Frank Launder, GB, 1945 |
An Irish colleen (Deborah Kerr) who hates the English comes to England to spy for the Nazis but falls in love with a young English officer. Picture in Rainy Day Cinema. (T) | |||
 Scarlet
Street, Fritz Lang, US, 1945 |
Edward G. Robinson rescues Joan Bennett from an attacker. The seductively raincoated Joan invites her hero to escort her home. How can he refuse? Further picture in Rainy Day Cinema. (T) | |||
| This intriguing little film starts
with Nina Foch (as Julia) in a downpour, wearing a white trench coat,
buttoned to the top and with the belt tied, with a matching white beret.
Unusually, Dame May Whitty takes the part of the villainess. Alas, no
more rainwear, but the film is well worth watching. (Dave D) |
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| I know where I'm going, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, GB, 1945 | Features the adventures of a young woman (Wendy Hiller) who for some implausible reason gets marooned on a Scottish Island where the inhanbitants (male and female) wear black oilskins most of the time. The heroine herself gets very wet and windy while dressed in a fetching yellow oilskin ensemble during a dramatic boat voyage. (PM) | |||
| National Velvet, Clarence Brown, US, 1945. | A very young Elizabeth Taylor wears a traditional riding mackintosh for a short scene. | |||
| The Blue Dahlia, George Marshall, US, 1946 | This film stars the Lump of Wood (aka the Ladd himself) and Veronica Lake. The lovely Veronica wears a stylish white raincoat in one scene. (Dave D) |
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| Johnny Frenchman, Charles Frend, GB, 1946 | Set in a Cornish fishing village during the Second World War, Johnny Frenchman features Patricia Roc wearing a really shiny black plastic raincoat. (Bob) | |||
 Her Kind of Man,Frederick de Cordova, US, 1946 |
This is an obscure 'B' picture, in which Janis Paige plays a singer torn between gangster, Zachary Scott, and newspaper columnist, Dane Clark. The only highlight of the film is Janis wearing a fetching trenchcoat with wooden buttons. (Dave D) |
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 Till
the Clouds Roll By, Richard Whorf, US, 1946 |
June Allyson and Ray McDonald dance in the rain togged out in their snappy rainproof regalia. This film was a biography of composer Jerome Kern. Another picture in Rainy Day Cinema. (T) | |||
 Frieda,
Basil Dearden, UK, 1947 |
Mai Zetterling's traditional tough black rainwear sees her through an escape with her lover (played by David Farrar) through worn-torn Europe, and a bruising encounter with his family circle, uncomprehending and hostile.Her foreign attire announces to them her alien identity, but it also offers an image of steadfast resilience in this powerful post-WW2 movie, directed by the undersung Basil Dearden. Another picture, showing Zetterling and Farrar escaping inclement weather this time, by ducking into the post-WW2 cinema itself, is shown in Rainy Day Cinema.(T) |
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 The
Woman on the Beach,
Jean Renoir, US, 1947 |
Joan Bennett is the woman in question. Robert Ryan is the coast guard who falls for her. Alas, Joan disappoints us by not wearing a mac. However, Nan Leslie in a supporting role wears a rubber one. (Dave D) | |||
 The Two Mrs Carrolls, Peter
Godfrey, US, 1947 |
Artist Geoffrey Carroll (Humphrey Bogart)
is a dab hand at fixing a glass of hot milk for his second wife, Sally
(Barbara
Stanwyck) - as he was for his first! His young daughter (Ann Carter)
tries to outdo Bogie a trenchcoat. No chance! (Dave D) |
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| Brighton Rock, John Boulting, GB, 1947. | Virginia Winter wears a plastic raincoat in the pub and outside towards the end of the film. (Bob) | |||
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Claret writes: "The heroine here wears a white/cream satin rubber mac in one scene after another " - But does she? There is interest in this film, but the white/cream satin rubber mac escapes me ( - as it does RB) LE Another visitor writes to confirm: I have seen It Never Rains on a Sunday several times and the two girls are wearing plastic, not rubber, macks. As it happens, you've missed the woman in the heavy single textured rubber lined mack. She appears briefly in the film and is the wife of a shopkeeper who is having an affair. She appears two or three times, passing through his shop, and the last tiime tells him she is leaving him. On two of these ocassions she is wearing her mack and an obvious rubber lined one it is. (Elvis) I have seen the shopkeeper's wife too, and can believe the mac she is wearing is rubberised cotton, but it's very dark as well as quick in the copy of the film a have. L.E. Further comment by H. |
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| A Boy a Girl and a Bike, Ralph Smart, UK, 1947 | This black and white film concerns a cycling club in Yorkshire. While out on a Sunday ride a group of cyclists take shelter from a shower in an old barn. Honor Blackman though decides to go on and puts on a plastic cape (no hood). Later in the film at the start of a bike race there are many scenes of the crowd with a number of young ladies wearing either plastic raincoats or rubberlined mackintoshes although it isn't raining then.. (Bob) | |||
| The Babe Ruth Story, Roy del Ruth, US, 1948 | William Bendix as Babe Ruth joins raincoated chorus girls in a song and dance number from this biography of the legendary American baseball player. Picture in Rainy Day Cinema. (T) | |||
| The Fallen Idol, Carol Reed, GB, 1948 | Includes a scene in a police station where the main character (Bobby Henry) is comforted by a 'lady of the evening' - wearing a plastic mac. (LH) She is played by Dora Bryan. (Bob) | |||
The Voice of the Turtle, Irving Rapper, US, 1948 |
This is a somewhat neglected film version of a play. It stars Eleanor Parker as a broken-hearted actress who gets wooed by a lonely soldier (Ronald Reagan) and puts him up in her apartment. In one sequence, she wears a hooded gabardine raincoat. The film is much better than you might expect. (Dave D) | |||
 Good
Time Girl, David MacDonald, GB, 1948 Tiny clip |
Life punishes the heroine, in this simple-minded sermon, by forcing her into prostitution after she escapes from Reform School. During a small (alas!) part of her ordeal she is buttoned and buckled very tightly into a terrific noirish kind of mackintosh. (H) | |||
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Renee Asherson wears a nice rubberised riding mac for a short while. Dirk Bogarde was the lead actor. (Pete D) (Does Pete imply here that there are some rubberised riding macs that are not nice? I have never come across any myself...LE) |
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L'Épave, Willy Rozier, France, 1949 |
"A physically strong man shoots tomatoes at all girls who do not take off their clothes" (from The Internet Movie Database). This may sound like a perfectly clear first line of a problem in Logic, but as the launchpad of a movie not so terribly promising. Concentrate on Françoise Arnoul. (H. Nomination by André) |
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 The Third
Man,Carol
Reed, UK, 1949 |
"Could it be that in The Third Man Alida Valli is simply wearing a coat full stop, and I have, so to speak, undressed and transposed her into a belted skin-grazing raincoat for reasons my psyche alone can understand?" Howard Jacobson, The Independent, 29:04:06 | |||
 The
Huggetts Abroad, Ken Annakin,GB, 1949 |
Within the first ten minutes, Susan Shaw comes downstairs to meet her boyfriend wearing a glorious polka dot rubberised taffeta mackintosh, tightly belted, with a hood showing the smooth white rubber lining. It swishes and rustles as she fastens the top button, and as she goes out the door pulls the hood up over her head. Wonderful! (James) Another observer adds: The film starts with Dinah Sheridan and her boyfriend at a travel agents on a wet day. She is wearing a white opaque hooded plastic raincoat and when they go outside she pulls the hood up. Then a woman wearing a hooded raincoat is seen walking down the road in the pouring rain. Unfortuneatly she has an umbrella . Dinah Sheridan is then seen arriving home and taking off her raincoat. (It is the same as the one worn by Patricia Plunkett in It Always Rains on a Sunday.) A few minutes later the other grown up daughter Susan Shaw comes down the stairs wearing a polka-dot rubberlined hooded mackintosh. When she looks in the mirror the white rubberlining in the hood is clearly visible . We then get a back view of her pulling up the snug fitting hood. This scene only lasts 20 seconds but what a superb mackintosh! Here it is - big big thanks to Alan D. |
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| Man In Black, Francis Searle, GB, 1949 | The heroine, wearing a see-through plastic mackintosh, is chased up the drive by an unseen presence. This turns out to be her cousin dressed in a long rubberised cotton mackintosh which has one of the loudest mackintosh swishing sounds ever heard in the movies. (Bob) | |||
 Follow
Me Quietly, Richard Fleische, US, 1949 |
Newspaper journalist, Dorothy Patrick, tracks down leads on a serial killer who only strikes during heavy rainstorms. Her foul weather gear shields her from the downpour but not from the lascivious stares of male pub patrons. Another picture in Rainy Day Cinema. (T) | |||
| Boys in Brown, Montgomery Tully, UK, 1949 | This is a film about a reform school run by
Jack Warner. The 'boys' are played by Richard Attenborough (then 26),
Dirk Bogarde (28), Jimmy Hanley (31), John Blythe (28), Alfie Bass (29)
and others, who as you can see were all rather mature for their parts. Towards the end of the film there is a a scene where Jimmy Hanley meets his girlfriend (Barbara Murray) in the rain. She wears a transparent plastic mac with the hood up. (Dave D) |
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