Lee Marvin's shirt

ok, so here's an oldie-but-goodie for the Xmas, winter-weather season... what colour was Lee Marvin's shirt in "The Wild One" ?

Hunter Thompson quotes it as being blue-and-yellow. I've also seen it described as having appeared on a studio poster in red-and-white. Jack Nicholson wore black-and-white striped trousers in one of his "biker" roles, which are probably intended to be taken as prison trousers ( do you get released from American prisons in your prison clothes? )

Now, blue-and-yellow would be typical for something intended to appear as black-and-white in a monochrome film - nurses' uniforms from "Emergency Ward 10" were actually brown-and -ellow, for example.. Re-and-white would be a typical "colourisation" of a monochrome print bearing no necessary resemblance to the original colours - there is a pic from "The Wild One" featuring Bruce Dern and Peter Fonda which has been colourised with red and yellow tints, knocking around the internet.

Interestingly enough, one of the other riders in that picture is wearing a black-and-white sleeveless t-shirt or crew shirt, or at least it LOOKS black-and-white in monochrome.. which is where we came in...

.............anyone?

[Pa]

I can't participate in the clothing color quiz but i wanted to say how much I admired Lee. Lee was a true hero. He was modest and did not chat about his brave and give all acomplishments. Lee kept his honorable deeds to himself. A man of total deserving salutations he was.

I think he served in the USMC during the Second World War?

[Pa]

Yes....Lee humbled himself over his own unselfish honorable acts and he never really disclosed to the public all he had offered as a Marine. He pushed his credits to others because he took a hit in the behind. That would make one a bit humble, would you not say ? Mil records twist much of lee's true facts. For some reason or another, public record is totally distored on Lee's mil career. I believe the Man because his nature was true to truth and to not fictions.

that has set me searching... http://www.snopes.com/military/celebrit ... marvin.asp seems to summarise the various accounts of this. What seems beyond dispute is that Marvin DID serve in combat and WAS wounded in the Pacific as a US Marine.

Digressing slightly, I sometimes go to a pub at Polebrook, Northants, where there is a framed picture of a certain Capt W.C.Gable, USAAF, standing at the bar; the pub is little changed and the picture is immediately recognisable. Gable spent several months at RAF Polebrook and flew five combat missions in this time, although he was not - strictly speaking - regular aircrew as he was already overage when he enlisted, and his actual role was with a film unit.

just seen that the BBC's one-time Saturday evening favourite, "The Black and White Minstrel Show", used to record for monochrome tv using RED make-up because black didn't film well... so a red-and-white shirt appearing as black in a monochrome film would be quite possible.

45Brit
The blue and yellow colouring of the shirt worn by Marvin is also mentioned in a book by Yves Lavigne but of course he may have just got that after reading what Thompson wrote.

I've seen a photo similar to the one you mentioned with Bruce Dern and Peter Fonda and the movie was called The Wild Angels. The photo was in a book I had on loan from a local library a while back but I couldn’t tell the colour of the guy’s shirt. And IIRC the picture was a mirror image.

There were some very sharp looking Harleys in The Wild Angels.
Eric