Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1918)

A Wartime Tip on Fashions T TOW many suits of clothes must the ■*• A well-dressed man possess? "Numbers," says Levy, "are not important. Good-breeding and gentility in fashioning the clothes, and the care of the clothes themselves are far more important than variety, or that other humbug of the man who wants to run you into a big tailoring bill, 'the proper suit for each occasion.' Remember that in these war times!" The World's, EDITOR'S NOTE : Sam Levy, of Los Angeles, came of a line of merchant tailors. But his father ruined him for the tailoring business by sending him to college, and afterward, to Europe. What youth could wield a goose with the same artless enthusiasm after a degree, Piccadilly and Montmartre? But as Sam began to languish, the motion picture business began to rise. So he went to work on the oddly-clad heroes of the period, and, single-handed, worked a revolution in male dressing. He found the screen an Eden Musee, and made it an abode of gentlemen. A' LTHOUGH I am not and never have been a newspaper-man, I can see a news-item of general public interest in the male clothes situation. The stage was the criterion of fashion. The screen is the criterion of fashion. At least, this is absolutely true as far as the men are concerned. I know what I am talking about, for making clothes for both dramatic professions is my business. The change has come in the last two years. In the early days, to be a "motion picture actor" meant that a man looked like a freak, whether he was a freak or not. Where the first screen men got their idea of apparel only the imp of perversity knows, but who can forget the wave of exaggerated sport shirts, heavy velvet collars, effeminate cuffs, frantic waistcoats, lunatic ties, rainbow shoes and impossible hats that greeted the eye when a collection of "gentlemen" passed across the screen? Many a well-bred actor, going from the footlights to the Klieges, considered that these monstrosities were part of the business. Opportunity and a particular situation are always a determining factor in any man's work; and as an influence in male screen attire opportunity and situation certainly favored me: I am in Los Angeles, and most of the pictures have been made in Los Angeles. Obviously a man in a hurry for an outfit couldn't go to London or New York to get it, and I first began to take a real interest in motion pictures themselves when I saw the screen's pitiful sartorial state, and realized that — after a battle which would mean the inevitable loss of some friends and some business— I might be instrumental to some degree at least in making screen actors look like gentlemen and not like the burlesque idea of the newly-rich. I may say, here, that the beginning \ of my interest in things theatrical dates back nineteen years. At that time I had just returned from London, and I my life-long friend Oliver i Morosco was about to climb out of his position L as a small stock theatre ?fck manager. He was |fk just putting his iv/'\ foot on the first Ej& round of the *k ladder that has lifted 4 The small figures on these pages ate among those leading actors whose dress is the responsibility of Mr. Levy. Standing on Levy's shoulder — Mr. Herbert Rawlinson; on blade of shears — Elliott Dexter; on opposite page, reading from left to right: Wallace Reid, William Desmond and Franklyn Farnum. «?