O'Toole On The Ould Sod by Gay Talese

Peter O'Toole, Esquire Magazine, August 1963, Photo by Brian Seed

"When my father would come home from the track after a good day," said Peter O'Toole, leaning against the bar, "the whole room would light up; it was fairyland. But when he lost, it was black.  In our house, it was always either a wake...or a wedding."

My Esquire, purchased from the double maduro - double corona chomping used magazine vendor on the upper west side, is yellowed and crumbly. Gay's profile of O'Toole, and it reeks of beer, cigarettes, whiskey and how I like to think I'd handle that kind of success at 31, can be read here.  It's a pisser of a story.

Gary Cooper As Gary Cooper

Cover photo by Bert Stern

Excerpts from, 'The American Hero Grows Older' by Thomas B Morgan, Esquire, May 1961.

"Seemingly ageless, Cooper has continued through the postwar boom that started in '29... Television may close movie theatres. Disc jockeys and crooners may replace Hollywood stars as teen-age heroes. Private eyes may vie with cowboys for popular attention. Yet Cooper persists."

""I feel real good," Cooper said. "Keep my weight to 190 by backing away from the groceries every now and then.""

"He had the laconic air of a man who never stands when he can sit and never sits when he can get flat. "Here I am, all the time talking about how hard actors work," he said, "and here you find me lying on my ass.""

""They may call that stuff on TV Westerns," he said, "but they're really Easterns. They're gangster stories with big hats and they're all crap. And the hats they wear! There's only one real cowboy hat and it's not the one those kids wear on television.""

"He went to the room in which he had left his city clothes, peeled to the waist and washed off his make-up. He wore a St. Christopher's medal on a chain around his neck. (He had converted to Catholicism in 1959.) ...he dressed himself in alligator shoes, grey flannel trousers, blue shirt, dark tie, yellow sweater, tweed sports coat with sky-blue hanky flaring from the chest pocket, and a Tyrolean hat."

""Every Fall, I meet Hemingway out in Sun Valley. We both have places there. Well, Papa and I go hunting. You know, it does you good to get out and get your butt wet every once in a while.""

"The face was seamed and worn in the Western way, but it wasn't stern the way some Western faces are. The sophisticated, sunny life of southern California was there, rather than the country life up where the winters last so long. "

"...a young man with two comrades looked up, recognized Cooper, and said nastily, "Look chaps, a movie star!" Cooper had already gone a step beyond the table. He stopped, turned, and towered over the three young men. A muscle twitched in his jaw and his lips became a hard, thin line.

And with a voice as gentle as ever, the voice that sounded almost like a caress, but drawling a very little more than usual, so that there was almost a space between each word, he issued his orders to the trio: "Stand up when you say that!" he said.

For a moment, the young men were motionless. Then one smiled -- faintly. Gary Cooper turned away, walking out of the restaurant to the Duke of Gloucester's Rolls-Royce, at fifty nine going on sixty, still playing Gary Cooper."

Dead or Alive: 25 Best Dressed (Full Article)

Esquire Gentlemen S/S 1993, Woody Hochswender - Editor











(click on image to enlarge)

George Frazier: Lobb or Peal?

From 1993's, 'Esquire Gentleman' 25 Best-Dressed Men (Living or Dead) by Alan Flusser

Flusser has Frazier in custom Peals but the letter from John Lobb in London confirms Frazier's payment plan mentioned in, Another Man's Poison. Whether this is at the exclusion of custom Peals, who knows.


John Lobb letter regarding Frazier's monthly payments (click image to read)

In 1981, Flusser's review of John Lobb hints at a drop in quality, rigidness over the house aesthetic and a long turnaround.

"Lobb shoes used to be considered without peer, but in recent years the firm has lost many of its older workmen and the product has suffered. It is still an excellently hand-crafted shoe, but in my opinion it doesn't quite compare to the shoes made by Lobb, Paris, its French brother. The London shop, in addition, is too inflexible about styling. It wants the shoe to look the way it wants, and it also wants six months to make it."
Alan Flusser, Making The Man, 1981

Did Frazier have both Peal and Lobb make his shoes? I'm not sure he could afford both. He was always having problems with money. Then again, maybe this is why. Or, was Flusser reluctant to mention Lobb due to perceived issues of quality. Who knows. Who cares. I just wanted an excuse to put up that letterhead.

1965's Medicine Cabinet

Esquire: December 1965

Double click images to enlarge and return to long lost names as well as brands and packaging that remain unchanged to this day. Can you spot those still around and are any in your cabinet?

Trad Rule # 9

Trad Rule #9: You can never have too many sweaters. Have a happy and natural fiber filled Fall.

Esquire: The Look of Summer, July 1959

(click image to enlarge)

GQ's Ireland (1962)

GQ Magazine, April 1962

While GQ seemed to be the smaller and more intellectually challenged little brother of Esquire, and I've waded thru years and years of both….GQ, for a time, stood on firm turf in the early to mid '60s... both visually and in the writing.  This April issue celebrated Ireland and it has a moody and dark attitude.  I love it.

An GQ is not easy to find and this came from a bound volume so scanning was a challenge.  However, inspirational ideas, fashion jargon for 'stealing,' are everywhere despite the binding.  Not only in unique layout, photography and stories but in the apparel itself.  The nubby stripe shirt reminds me of nubby silk Rooster tie stripes -- A mitre madras shirt reminds me of…nothing. It's unlike anything I've ever seen and I'd kill to have one today.  A rain coat with hacking pockets and sleeve turn ups?  I'd buy that.  I'm even saving up for a Jill Gill - - the NYC artist of all those beautiful whiskeys.

I know fashion designers dig thru these old mags but do fashion editors?  I'm guessing most do not.  And for the very first time, during NY Fashion Week, my hunch was confirmed from widely divergent sources regarding what we'll call,  "Fashion editor illiteracy."   "He didn't know shawl from peak."  "Zip knowledge of apparel history."  "I had to explain canvas construction." "All he liked was black." You get the idea.

I sat in front of Nick Sullivan at Esquire and in a couple minutes he showed me a 1950's Mac hanging on the back of his office door and pointed out the construction suggesting it might even be my size.  We discussed the military influence of clothing and why stealing unit insignia was not only vulgar but unnecessary.  And sure, there was the 24 hour "shoe-cam" which was monitoring what he wore on his feet everyday…but the man was fashion literate.  That much you could not argue.

G. Bruce Boyer bemoaned the GQ of today doing a 20 page spread on jeans and t-shirts.  It's what they know, Bruce.    But I'm guessing there's an archive somewhere in that GQ office and I'd like to suggest it would be a lot more fun to go thru than the PR pitches.