Someone wrote asking if I knew who made the shirt Jeff Bridges is wearing in the latest issue of Cowboys and Indians magazine, promoting his new movie, a remake of 1969′s True Grit.
I don’t know who made the shirt. However, Bridges’ sawtooth not only demonstrates good taste, it’s also consistent with him being framed as the new American Cowboy, an image Hollywood and has embraced since giving him the best actor Oscar for last year’s Crazy Heart. Washed-up country singer “Bad Blake” was a role he initially turned down. His friend T-Bone Burnett later convinced him to do it.
As today’s Hollywood Cowboy, he appropriately wields a vintage guitar instead of a rifle, both on and off screen.
I’ve never seen John Wayne, Hollywood’s most famous American Cowboy, in a sawtooth shirt. He favoured bib shirts and neck scarves. Like in his breakout role, in John Ford’s Stagecoach from 1939.
John Wayne also starred in the original True Grit, which got him the only Oscar of his career, for best actor in1969 .
Another kind of cowboy movie was also in the running that year: John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight were each nominated for best actor for their roles, along with The Duke, who was clearly the Academy’s “sentimental favorite”.
Midnight Cowboy costume designer Ann Roth created some over-the-top shirts for Voight’s Joe Buck, like a sawtooth with asymmetrical birds and hearts, and this panhandle with silver piping and roses.
In 2009, Bridges was Oscar’s sentimental favorite. His Bad Blake, infused with late-life drunken regret, was a lot easier sell than Voight’s naive aspiring hustler.
Sort of harkens back 40 years to when Wayne’s “drunken hard-nosed US Marshal” Rooster Cogburn was an easier sell than Joe Buck. It looks like he still is.
