Wednesday, August 15, 2018

COSTUMES #9


Posted by Chic Silber at 8/15/2018 12:44:00 AM

3 comments:

Roger Smith said...

Wow--Quite a menacing characterization of Buttons. The role had him as a doctor who euthanized his dying wife, but James Stewart didn't take it to this level of darkness.

15 August, 2018 06:06
Unknown said...

As a former military policeman and former clown, I gotta say that movie had some iffy police work.

Looking for a really tall guy (6' 3"), they never thought to check on the tallest guy on the lot?

Looking for someone hiding, they never thought to check the one clown who never took his makeup off?

Looking for someone who resembled the character played by Jimmy Stewart, the makeup stymied them, though despite the makeup, every movie fan in the world recognized it was Jimmy Stewart?

15 August, 2018 07:40
Roger Smith said...

DeMille made sure movie fans knew it was Stewart when he had the detective, played by DeMille regular Henry Wilcoxin, show Brad a photo of Stewart as the suspected doctor, minus the whiteface, then had him look at it twice. Stewart had written DeMille, asking to play a clown, so DeMille took him on.

The full-time makeup on Buttons raised questions for me when I was first seeing the film as a boy. If he had to keep the makeup on to hide, how did he sleep with it and keep it so performance-ready? Clowns have to shave every day to apply their makeup--how did Buttons shave? And I asked myself how did some doctor kill his wife, take it on the lam, simply join the GSOE, and at once become a top-featured clown? We can thank DeMille's townie writers for this ill-conceived plot point.

16 August, 2018 13:53

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