California, the playground of the western world.
Gregory Peck as Mike Hagen in “Designing Women” (1957)
I’m glad to say that this 1957 movie was the first new film I saw in its entirety this year. Gregory Peck plays Mike Hagen, a working-class sports reporter from New York on assignment in Beverly Hills. There, he finds the vacationing Marilla Brown, another charming New Yorker who is played by Lauren Bacall, after a night of drinking. Despite knowing nothing of this lady’s life, Hagen falls in love and marries her within a week. He returns home and has Brown visit his home, only for her to take him to her home, where he learns that she’s a wealthy fashion designer. Against social conventions at the time, he moves in with her, but an old photo and series of boxing-related exposés bring about misunderstandings and shenanigans.
I went into this illustration this thinking that I’ll finally try a different style, perhaps cubism. That didn’t happen, but I still like how this turned out. I also thought the ’80s television series of the same name was an adaptation, but they’re actually two separate stories.
Interesting to note about the production, the female lead was supposed to be played Grace Kelly, but Bacall managed to snatch it for a lower salary as a means to distract herself from the terminally ill Humphrey Bogart, who died before the film was released. Kelly did not get to wear the elegant clothes designed by Helen Rose, but her iconic looks in Edith Head’s clothes are better remembered given the director attached to them. Plus, Kelly still had her lover by the time this film was shown.
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Dearest Reverie 