While reading Roger Ebert’s article here, I came across this interesting tidbit:
Now, while I admire Ebert for his writing, and respect him (usually) as a critic, I’m curious about this. Is it, indeed, a “fact” that Norman Jewison is responsible for this fashion? Can someone back him up here?
This site: hispeed.com - This website is for sale! - Hi speed Resources and Information. dates the baseball cap fad to only the 1960s.
Actually, I heard from a friend that it was because JFK didn’t wear a hat at his inauguration. (ducks) 
So, that site doesn’t say. Can anyone else help out? I have a hard time believing that director Norm Jewison started this trend, if for no other reason than I’d expect everyone to know it. Nothing in his bio on IMDb…nothing on the web…this is ultimate bar trivia if it’s true.
Huntz Hall was wearing a ball cap back in the forties, if not earlier. I am suspicious of Ebert’s “fact”
Hmmm…I can’t answer the question, but it sounds like Ebert has been partying at the Canadian Film Institute (Jewison’s pet project for developing home-grown talent) during the Toronto International Film Festival. It sounds like just the sort of rumour that would float around at this type of shindig (not that I would know first-hand).
I did a half-hearted google search and came up empty handed. The only thing I know for sure is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jewison bare-headed.
Thank you for the link Manduck! I’ll preesnt this evidence to the Movie Answer Man.
Just because Huntz Hall wore a ball cap in those wonderful movies doesn’t mean he started a trend. Obviously, he didn’t.
Jewison may have started a fashion trend. All someone has to do is find out when Jewison started wearing ball caps, and whether actors started doing it in imitation(not hard to believe)… The public would follow.
samclem, how do you know it wasn’t Huntz Hall? A generation of baby boomers weaned on old movies on TV may have learned their fashion sense from the Bowery Bows!
I suspect this is one of those “facts” like that McDonald’s commercial where the guy says, “You know how you put the ketchup for your fries in the top of the Big Mac box? I invented that!”
In the 1958 movie “Run Silent Run Deep” (not directed by Jewison :p), Don Rickles’s character is always wearing a baseball cap (Cinicinatti IIRC). Sorry, I couldn’t find a picture on the web, but if you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about.
I find the Jewison story hard to believe. Directors (except maybe Hitchcock) weren’t mainstream celebrities in those days; it’s not likely that the general public would imitate them, because they would hardly ever even see them. Also, Jewison wore this cap only when he was working, not when he was out in public.
I think it’s more likely that it was a trend that was slowly gathering momentum, with Huntz Hall being one of the more visible early adopters, but not necessarily the inspiration for the whole thing.
Farmers have been wearing hats similar to baseball caps with the logos of agricultural companies on them for a long time. Is it possible that this was the source of the trend?
how about beaver cleaver?
Trouble is, the Beaver didn’t start a fashion trend. Kids/young adults around the US didn’t start wearing ball caps during or after the show was on from 1957-1963. It was a later thing.
I wouyld love for someone to contact Ebert and ask him just when
he thinks the “fashion fad” was born. What year?
Farmers wear ‘feed hats’, not baseball caps.
That’s why I said “similar to baseball caps.” I find it easier to believe that someone wanted to copy farmers (but couldn’t find any feed hats, so they wore baseball hats instead) than that they copied Norman Jewison.
FWIW, Ken Burns’s documentary Baseball shows footage of kids from the 40s and 50s wearing baseball caps. Admittedly, this is at a baseball game or baseball-related event. Still, they had these caps and they wore them. I would find it hard to believe they didn’t wear them to school or around the neighborhood when they were messing around with Wally and Larry Mondello and junk.
Baseball players are not the only people who wear round caps with a bill, as Wendell Wagner pointed out. Not only farmers, but military, gas station attendants, and others. The wearing of a hat with a specific team’s logo may be a more recent phenomenon, but I think Ebert swallowed the notion a little too readily.
Scotty Becket (sp?) wore a baseball cap sideways.
And bud Spanky McFarland in his younger days wore a golf hat, even when he wasn’t playing. That did not seem to catch on as a fad, though.
