Not long ago, I saw a clip from a movie set in the 1960s. It showed a bunch of hippies frolicking unclad. The women all had Brazilian waxes.
Derbies were for townsfolk. The Boss of the Plains hat, or any of every wide brimmed “wideawake” felts hats were what cowboys wore.
A writer saw a lot of pictures of cowboys posed in dress up with derbies and assumed that that was what they wore, because yes, the sterotypical cowboy hat wasnt common until later. When Teddy Roosevelt wrote about his days as a rancher and hunter on the frontier, he said any cowboy wearing a bowler or similar hat would get it shot off.
This isnt the original article but it passes on the same wrong info.
Here’s a link to a article that shows real cowpokes out on the range, taking a “coffee break”- it shows none with “real” cowboy hats, but no bowlers either, they all have widebrimmed felt hats of one sort or another.
https://truewestmagazine.com/cowboy-coffee/
and here’s another:
That article also sez: *Hats typically varied from region to region, as the weather indicated what type of hat was needed. For instance cowboys of the northwest preferred smaller brims as they had high winds, and the southerners had larger brims, similar to sombreros, to protect cowboys from the rays of the sun. But no matter where the cowboy worked all hats were made out of felt with deep crowns. The deep crown of the cowboy hat was essential as it enabled it to stay on one’s head securely while riding a galloping horse [7].
By the 1890s, cowboys everywhere were wearing Stetson hats, designed by John B. Stetson [8]. His most popular designs were the peaked hats, nicknamed “Montana Peak,” and his ten-gallon Stetsons.*
So yeah, the hat we call a cowboy hat came later in the period, but a widebrimmed felt hat was worn on the trail, not no derbies.
Another thing that makes my gourd all frosty.
Two people, a pilot and a passenger, are riding in something like a DeHaviland Beaver, and conversing in normal tones of voice. I guarantee you, that big round engine is so loud that even shouting is barely hearable. in actuality, almost always each person is wearing headphones and a microphone so that they can talk to each other.
The 2010 remake of* True Grit* was one of the few westerns that tried to use authentic clothing styles from the era. A commentary from the movie mentioned the hat issue. You can see the results in this crowd scene.
Once in elementary my friend was chasing me for some reason and I stopped and gave him a huge kick ‘you know where!’ Everyone, especially the guys were *OOOOOOOooooo…WHY’D YOU DO THAT!" :eek: It was pure instinct at the time (and yeah, I’m a guy!) that probably hasn’t left me!
TL;DR…Don’t chase lingyi! 
Whenever the script calls for an actor to fake playing an instrument, it is always done badly and the actor’s movements obviously have no relationship to the sound purportedly being produced. It’s like they don’t even try. In Sherlock Benedict Cumberbatch doesn’t even move the bow in any realistic way, and in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Tom Hanks’s left hand is way too high on the piano for what notes are supposedly being played. Is it that hard for someone to study a bit for 5 minutes and tell them how to fake it? Or figure out camera angles so you don’t actually see what their fingers are doing?
The only show I ever thought did a good job of faking this was House, then I learned recently that Hugh Laurie’s side gig is professional musician and the show was actually significantly underselling what he can really do with a piano. So the hunt continues.
Nor are there ever dozen messages from scammers/robocalls.
Ralph Macchio worked for months with Arlen Roth to make it look like he knew how to play guitar in Crossroads.
I wish Steve McQueen had taken a few fife lessons before they filmed The Great Escape. He would have at least learned how to hold the instrument properly.
YES! This drives me crazy too. I’ve seen the dance hall girls in westerns from the 60s-70s wearing bright blue eyeshadow. Even as a kid watching MASH and Happy Days I noticed the styles were all wrong. I don’t get it. It’s like the actors refused to really look the part.
Both MASH* - the movie and especially MASH* - the series were full of allegories about the Vietnam war, hypocrisy of the government and the futility of the Vietnam War which was ongoing during the time of the movie and first years of the series. They never strived for accuracy, except for the surgery scenes, which in the series didn’t have laugh track.
"As he concludes, undermining the falsely reassuring and overly optimistic message of the original film, “Guns, and bombs, and anti-personnel mines have more power to take life than we have to preserve it. Not a very happy ending for a movie. But then, no war is a movie,” (“Yankee Doodle Doctor”).
Hawkeye’s speech, and other comments he makes throughout the series, reinforce the face that despite its setting in Korea, MAS*H is widely accepted as a critique of the Vietnam War, which is most evidenced in these early years (Shires)"
“While the show is traditionally viewed as a comedy, many episodes had a more serious tone. Early seasons aired on network prime time while the Vietnam War was still going on; the show was forced to walk the fine line of commenting on that war while at the same time not seeming to protest it. For this reason, the show’s discourse, under the cover of comedy, often questioned, mocked, and grappled with America’s role in the Cold War.”
"The end of the Vietnam War in 1975 was a significant factor as to why storylines become less political in nature and more character driven. Several episodes also experimented with the sitcom format:
“Point of View” – shown from the perspective of a soldier with a throat wound
“Dreams” – an idea of Alda’s, where during a deluge of casualties, members of the 4077 take naps on a rotation basis, allowing the viewer to see the simultaneously lyrical and disturbing dreams
“A War For All Seasons” – features a story line that takes place over the course of 1951
“Life Time” – a precursor to the American television series 24, it utilizes the real time method of narration[2]"
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAS*H_(TV_series)
The biggest physical change, especially in her hairstyles was Margaret who went from a parody of the '50’s woman, striving to please the men in her life, Frank, Donald, her Dad, to an independently strong woman, reflected in the later years by her contemporary 70’s, '80’s hair styles.
When he was directing Taking Woodstock, Ang Lee recreated a good many of the iconic photos from the original festival, like the guy waking with an American flag draped over his shoulders. Accordingly, for the skinny dipping hippy scene, the extras were hired months before the shoot so they could stop trimming or shaving and let it grow back in.
He also commented it was hard finding skinny people. “People were skinnier back then. We have skinny people today but it’s a different kind of skinny.”
That was a different character.
To get really picking my nits:
Casino Royale makes a much bigger gaffe in the poker scene. In the final hand, where everyone bets, and Bond and Le Chifre go all in, you don’t reveal hands based on went all in first! You go with who had the most, or the side pot between the two who had the most, and then keep going down to the main pot.
In other words, it should have been Le Chifre and Bond revealing first for their side pot and then the winner being challenged for the other (side) pots until it’s all won.
But that’s not dramatic! It does throw me out of the scene, though.
I don’t agree that it’s table stakes but instead that you can only bet what you have in front of you. The others players have the right to know how much you can bet. (You don’t have to count it for your opponent if they ask, just show your stack and let them count it.) It makes a big difference to bets if you can suddenly drop more onto the table or if you have more you are willing to bet. Even in cash games, you can’t bet more than you started the hand with but can rebuy to keep the seat.
Military members with haircuts that would get them at the minimum gigged, if not immediately ordered to the barber.
I noticed another related one while watching Young Sheldon last night. The current season is set circa 1990 I think. The cars shown, for the most part, fit the period, but they’re pretty much all American sedans and wagons and pickups, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t really represent an accurate mix of cars that actually would have been seen on the roads in those days. Where are the minivans? As I remember, minivans had become extremely by the late 1980s, pretty much killing off station wagons. Yet you never see minivans in shows set that era. They always show families driving around in station wagons, like Sheldon’s mom.
And where are the imports? You might argue that Young Sheldon is set in Texas, where there was probably a stronger “buy American” mentality, but today a car blog I read featured a photo of a street in Dallas in the early 1980s. Yes, there are several American sedans, but also two Toyotas. And this is something I’ve noticed in other period shows as well. For that matter, you don’t see many domestic compacts in period shows either. Never any Cavaliers or Escorts or Chevettes in shows set in the 80s, nor Pintos or Vegas in shows set in the 70s. I know, actually finding those cars is probably a pretty tall order for the producers – I suspect finding a stock Vega is next to impossible.
Stranger Things did feature a Pinto as a character’s car, which I thought was a nice touch. And an old beat up Ford LTD, avoiding the “every car looks brand new” problem.
The problem here is that productions typically rely on renting vehicles from companies which specialize in such. Here’s one.
Fair enough, although I do note that their inventory does contain several 1980s Toyotas and Hondas, so it seems like they could show some of those in the background every so often. But it looks like their only 80s minivan has some pretty severe damage to it, like some previous production cut a hole in the hood for some reason. And not a single 80s domestic compact, and one really beat up Pinto in their 70s collection. But they do have multiple Gremlins and Pacers, some of the quirkiest cars of the 70s!
Body lice was a major problem. Not just cause of the itch but because of the diseases they carried.
People, and generally this meant the more upper crust folk (as well as the people that, um, dealt with them personally), shaved everything they could. Hence wigs and merkins.