Future Clothing Styles From the 1930s

What might The World of the Future be like? For instance, what sorts of clothing will people wear?

That great philosopher and New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra has been cited as saying something like "Predicting is difficult, especially about the future." This post presents some World of the Future costumes, mostly from movies from the 1930s. At the time, the influence of Modernism was in full flow with streamlining and simplicity as ideals. Even so, only one film of the batch in Gallery below went super-modernist where costuming was concerned.

Below are images from the following: "Metropolis" (1927), link here; Buck Rogers comic strip (started early 1929) and 1939 movie serial, link here; "Just Imagine" (1930), link here; Flash Gordon serial (1936), link here; and "Things to Come" (1936), link here.

Gallery

Metropolis (1927)
Not a 1930s movie, but both near enough and a very early science-fiction epic.  Above is a scene at the office of the father of the hero. Clothing is not far from current fashions, though proportions are slightly distorted.

Metropolis (1927)
The hero is wearing a shirt and necktie along with sort of puffy riding britches, whereas the lady's clothes are skimpy.

Metropolis (1927)
On the other hand, the heroine is dressed modestly; her skirt (not seen here) is long, unlike 1920s flapper fashion.

Buck Rogers (comic strip started 1929)
Promotional drawing by comic strip artist Dick Calkins. Buck and Wilma Deering are wearing futuristic variations of 1930-vintage pilot helmets. Like the Metropolis hero, Buck is wearing jodhpur pants, but in the 1930 military style. Wilma wears tights and a form-fitting top. Strapped on their backs are flying belts.

Just Imagine (1930)
Here the hero is on Mars confronting the queen. His outfit has a military appearance thanks to the large belt and side pouch. The featureless bib on his chest seems vaguely military, but lacks functionality. This was how men in 1980 might dress according to the costume designers.

Things to Come (1936)
A British film extrapolated by H.G. Wells from his book "The Shape of Things to Come." It did correctly predict that England would be at war in 1940. The scene above is set farther into the future when a technocracy prevails. The costumes strike me as being inspired by Roman military outfits supplemented by those odd pieces that exaggerate shoulder widths. All very 1930s futuristic, but only for fit folks under 40 years of age. Makes me wonder how ordinary, dumpy folks were clothed.

Flash Gordon serial (1936)
Flash was not a character of the future, but rather a Yale graduate transported to the planet Mongo. Nevertheless, the setting was futuristic in spirit. The costumes were based on those depicted in Alex Raymond's comic strip.

Buck Rogers serial (1939)
Buck's adventures took place 500 years in the future -- the 2430s. The costumes designed for the serial strike me as being a bit more removed from those in the comic strip than the Flash Gordon outfits. They do seem pretty functional and not overly contrived. However, all the characters seen here are wearing variations of 1930s airplane pilot helmets.

Dan Sayre Groesbeck: Illustrator, Muralist, Man of Mystery

Dan Sayre Groesbeck (1879 - 1950), illustrator, muralist and Hollywood movie industry artist, was born and died in California, is known to have served in Russia's east coast while in the Canadian army, but much of his first 40 years of life is poorly documented and was subject to exaggerations and other distortions by the man. His formal art training seems to have been minimal, but he succeeded because he had a knack for capturing people's looks, clothing styles and, especially, visualizing dramatic situations and settings. Which is why he became the go-to concept artist for famed director Cecil B. DeMille and others from the early 1920s until his death.

As noted, Groesbeck's life and half of his career are difficult to pin down, but I offer this link as a reasonably good source.

Here are examples showing Groesbeck's mature style.

Gallery

Three apparently related illustrations of women costumed with large headgear.

Large painting/mural titled "Landing of Cabrillo" at the site of the future Santa Barbara. This was painted for a Santa Barbara bank, but spent years in the county courthouse as noted here.

Groesbeck painted a set of large murals for the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, an outstanding example of 1920s Spanish Revival architecture. Above is the left hand segment of a larger mural.

This seems to be concept art for a movie. Its title seems to be "Abigail Hale on trial at the Old Bailey for 'Unconquered'."

Costume design for Edna May Oliver as Nurse in "Romeo and Juliet." 1936.

Vladimir Sokoloff as Anselmo in "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

Depiction of Akim Tamiroff as Dominique You in "The Buccaneer."

Albert Whitlock, Matte Master

Nowadays, computer-generated images are used. But up into the 1980s, movie sets and settings were expanded to fill up the screen via paintings that sometimes were supplemented by scale models.

The alternative would be to create expensive, full-scale sets such as the one shown above for the D.W. Griffith movie "Intolerance" from 1916. And for scenes in natural settings, the setting would have to be found, a production unit sent there and then might have to wait and wait for the correct atmospheric effect to appear. Better to build part of a set or film only a fragment of the countryside and then paint the rest. Much more convenient and usually far cheaper. As a result, most movie studios by the 1930s had teams of artists creating matte paintings. For a number of years use of matte painting was a kind of trade secret, studios fearing that audiences might feel cheated if they knew that many scenes were partly or even largely faked. Eventually, matte art became known and even honored at Oscar time.

For me and many other observers, one of the very best matte painters was Albert Whitlock (1915-1999). Background information on him can be found here, here and here.

Whitlock usually painted freely unless he was constrained by having to have his image merge with sound stage items with hard edges such as furniture, doorways, windows and other architectural or interior-decorative features. Another kind of constraint was that the painted part of the final image had to match the filmed part in terms of color, shadow angles and other details that, if not done with care, would reveal the painted part for what it was. Not the sort of thing most fine-art painters have to deal with. And by the way, some movies might require dozens of such paintings to be done under time constraints.

For more about all this, I highly recommend this blog. The Whitlock images presented below were shamelessly lifted from various posts.  Click on them to enlarge.

Gallery

Day of the Locust - 1972
Much matte work was to expand partially built sound stage interiors. This example shows the blacked-out area reserved for the action filming. This would be the part of the screen that attracted the audience's eyes, so the matte part didn't necessarily have to be crisply painted.

Earthquake - 1974 - full painting
Part of Los Angeles following a hugely destructive earthquake. Impossible to create as a movie set, and difficult and costly if model buildings were made.

Earthquake - 1974 - detail from printed publication
This shows Whitlock's free brushwork. It allowed him to create the painting more rapidly, yet the sketchiness wasn't detectable when seen in a theater.

Frenzy - 1972
This matte is of London's Covent Garden. Note the exaggerated perspective.

Greystoke - The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes - 1983
A good deal of matte work created atmospheric effects that could not be conveniently found when filming on location.

Hindenburg - 1975 (detail)
The airship Hindenburg was destroyed in 1937 and support facilities such as hangars are gone or have been changed since then -- so bring in Al Whitlock to create the scene.

Tobruk - 1967
Only the road and trucks are real in this composite.

Hal Phyfe's Pastel and Camera Portraits

Hal Phyfe (1892-1968), according to this report: "Great Grandson of Duncan Phyfe, the iconic furniture designer of the early republic, Herold Rodney Eaton "Hal" Phyfe was born in Nice, France, to a New York society family. Trained as a sculptor in France and a painter in Italy, Hal Phyfe began pursuing photography an an enlistee in World War I..."

That link contains the most detailed biographical information I could find in a quick Web search. According to it, Phyfe did pastel portraits of Hollywood and Broadway stars after the war, then shifted to photography starting about 1926. Pastels were the fashionable portrait medium for movie fan magazine covers during the 1920s and early 30s, perhaps because smooth blending was possible so that faces of female stars generally looked more flattering than if done in oil paint. Plus, pastel portraits could be made relatively quickly and cheaply.

It seems that Phyfe was something of an eccentric who nevertheless was acceptable socially. And his approach to portrait photography of women was practical: scroll down the link for his hints to sitters.

As best I can judge, his pastel portraits were about par for the fan magazine cover course, lacking the pizazz of masters of that small art such as Rolf Armstrong. And his photos also strike me as being competent, but not in the Cecil Beaton or Edward Steichen league.

So that we have below are decently made period pieces, which make them interesting to me and perhaps you.

Gallery

Bebe Daniels - 1923

Gloria Swanson - 1923

Gilda Gray - 1926

Colleen Moore - 1927

Billie Burke
Phyfe was one of Florenz Ziegfeld's photographers by 1930, but he made this pastel of Ziegfeld's wife Billie Burke for what seems to be a Follies promotional piece or program cover.

Photo in perfume ad - c.1926

Clara Bow - 1932

Marian Nixon

Una Merkel

Molti Ritratti: Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson (1899-1983) was a legendary movie star whose career was at its height during the 1920s and early 30s. An extensive biographical link is here.

Today's Molti Ritratti is another switcheroo in that rather than featuring formal commissioned oil portraits, the images below are cover illustrations for movie fan magazines.

Nowadays fan magazines use photography for cover art. But into the 1930s their covers normally featured illustrations, and those illustration were often done in pastels rather than oil paint, watercolor, gouache and other commonly used illustration media.

Hollywood cranked out a lot of pictures each year, therefore keeping the stars very busy. So I don't know if cover illustrators were able to view their subjects in person or else relied mostly on photos furnished by the studio publicity staffs. I suspect the latter.

In any case, for your viewing enjoyment, below are covers featuring Miss Swanson.

Gallery

Publicity photo for "The Trespasser" - 1929
Swanson was about 30 year old when this was taken, and it strikes me as a suitable image for comparison with the magazine covers below.

Motion Picture - November 1923
By Hal Phyfe.

Motion Picture - November 1926
The cover artist is Marland Stone.

Photoplay - September 1928
By Charles Sheldon.

Screen Book - December 1929
The artist's signature reads as John Clarke, best I can tell.

New Movie Magazine - September 1930
I cannot see an artist signature.

Motion Picture - February 1931
Another cover by Marland Stone.

Unconvincing Matte Paintings

Nowadays computer graphics are used, especially if the entire film is digitized. But up to around 20 years ago, the production costs of movies were held down by building partial sets and filling the rest of the screen with what is called a matte painting. A nice book on the history of matte painting is "The Invisible Art" which, unfortunately, seems to be out of print. I've been re-reading my copy and it brought to mind scenes that used matte painting undetectably and others where the artifice was obvious. Just for fun, let's deal with the latter case.

I saw Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" only once, many years ago. But I noticed that a number of images didn't seem realistic. For example, some of the buildings in New York street scenes of the early 1900s looked stiffly unnatural. Unfortunately, I could not find examples of those on the Internet, but have others that support my contention. Chesley Bonestell and maybe other matte artists working on the movie created sharp-edge paintings, perhaps according to Welles' wishes or possibly because that was their preferred style. The extensive Wikipedia entry linked in this paragraph notes that Welles strived to achieve "deep focus," where both near and distant objects appeared sharply defined. I'm not sure why he wanted this, but it might help explain why some of the matte shots (and the film had many) didn't work well because the paintings had to be crisply done, increasing their potential artificiality. Then again, maybe Welles didn't really want the movie to look completely realistic. Film and "Citizen Kane" buffs, please clarify this in Comments.

Much matte art was done using large brushes, especially for background objects that would be slightly out of focus anyway. Where sharp edged features such as door frames, bannisters and other manufactured objects were close to the camera's focal plane, then matte artists had to use distinct edges to blend their painting with those objects in the movie set. Otherwise, looser painting seemed to work better, especially in the years when film stock did not permit high definition for any of what was being shown.

Another point regarding matte painting is that such paintings served best for scenes lasting less than ten seconds; better yet, less than five seconds.  Otherwise, matte artists feared that viewers would discover the artifice.

Here are some examples of scenes using matte painting.

Citizen Kane - opening sequence
Kane's Xanadu, in the distance, might not quite be in sharp focus (the image I found seems a little blurred all over). But it doesn't seem "real" to me.

Citizen Kane - political convention
The matte part is the convention floor and seating. Looks like a painting.

Citizen Kane - political convention, different viewpoint
Another false-looking scene. The nearest few rows probably had live actors, and there might have been some on the stage, but I can't be sure, given this static image.

Citizen Kane - credited to Bonestell
The Gothic windows seem a little too sharply defined.

Citizen Kane - successful Bonestell matte
The reflection of the distant figure on the floor is part of the painting.

The "Star Wars" movies used a variety of special effects including matte painting. Most of the mattes were hard to detect, but a few jarred me, especially those of the Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back". The matte artist was Ralph McQuarrie, who did the concept art for the original Star Wars movie but had never done matte painting previously. For some reason, his paintings of Cloud City on the planet Bespin looked phoney, yet were kept in the movie.

The Empire Strikes Back - completed view of Cloud City

The Empire Strikes Back - Cloud City matte painting

The Empire Strikes Back - Ralph McQuarrie painting Cloud City matte

The Empire Strikes Back - another Cloud City painted scene

Everything is in too sharp focus and there seems to be a lack of reflected light. Also, the mattes were on view for a substantial time, which allowed their unreality to sink in. There might be other problems, but I find it hard to put a finger on them; perhaps some readers can help here too. But the main thing for me was that this special effects lapse (along with a few more minor ones) lessened my enjoyment of the movie when I first viewed it.