Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Dec 9/10: John Wayne [Updated]

What's the color of John Wayne's shirt in this screenshot from Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo (1959)? He wore the same color in John Ford's The Searchers (1956).

Rio Bravo



 The Searchers


A                           B                           C                           D

 
 
Obviously it is C. In fact, it is not uncommon for Western heroes to wear pink shirts. It's still a shade of red and red as a hot and powerful color has long been associated with powerful men.

Just look at this other screenshot from The Searchers: even with all the characters wearing plaid shirts, John Wayne as the leader is getting the combination of red and white, so that even without seeing the heads you could tell who's dominating the scene.

4 comments:

Aaron said...

B. red seems to bright. tan seems to bland.

sunny kharbanda said...

Is it A?

Amelia said...

I'm gonna go with D.

Soriah said...

I forgot to submit my answer the other day and to be honest I would've gotten it wrong anyway. My first choice was A.

I would've never have guessed Red but when you explained that Red is a powerful color being associated with power guys (or in this case, manly cowboys in western films) it makes much more sense to me now.