Monkey Suite or Dinner Jacket—It’s All Tuxedo to Me

 

                         How men think they look in a tuxedo.  Trust me, they don't.

Mopes like me get to put on rented evening wear a handful of times in our lives.  At a prom—if   we can find a date—and at weddings.  The process of rental is expensive and time consuming.  And most of the time the fit isn’t all that great, upon closer examination the suit has gone out more often than the easiest girl in high school, and the patent leather shoes pinch.

But standing in front of the mirror in the shop you could, if you squinted, imagine yourself as debonair as Cary Grant, as hip and swinging as a Rat Packer in Vegas, or as cool as James Bond at the baccarat table in Monaco. 

But in high school, I came of age when the lapels grew as wide as the shoulders, shirts got frilly, and instead of sophisticated black, designers thought that pastel shades—mine was baby blue—with lots of satin ribbon trim was the way to go.  Kinda destroyed the illusion.

My prom '67 prom picture is long lost but my tux looked a lot like this with satin ribbon trim on the lapels.  Imagine  a head of a nerdy looking guy in Clark Kent glasses with a zit on his chin, and you get the ugly picture. 

I got one more chance.  My prom date, the lovely Ida Fidritch, asked me to be her escort at the Germania Club Ball in Chicago.  The Germania club was maybe the city’s swankiest ethnic club, set in an elegant building just of LaSalle Street in Old Town.  The ball was a big deal and Ida was officially coming out there.  That’s right.  I know you don’t believe it, but I was officially dating a debutante.  She, tall and elegant, looked lovely in a shimmering strapless gown. 

Unfortunately, I had blown all my money renting the prom suit.  So I borrowed a cream colored evening jacket that my Dad had bought when he was in the Wyoming state cabinet and had to attend formal functions.  It was a western cut with arrow head pockets and a yoke on the back.  And set off with patent leather cowboy boots three sized too long for me but also too narrow.

The Germans, being old school and proper, all showed up in classic black jackets.  Maybe one or two in white.  Needless to say, no one else was dressed like Gene Autry at wedding.  Ida’s embarrassment was deep.  I solaced myself with the discovery that I could be served at the bar.  Tragically, it was our last date, although I did glimpse her that summer when she was elected Queen of the Skokie Ox Roast.  She was later a first runner up to Miss Illinois.  Clearly my sartorial choice pegged me as not even close to her league.

I skipped formal wear at my wedding—got married in a brown hand-me-down suit also obtained from my father and pearl snap western shirt embroidered with brown roses.  But I did have to get dressed up for my daughter Heather’s wedding.  And if I do say so myself, I cut quite a figure at the American Legion Hall where we danced the night away for her reception.

American Tuxedos circa 1898.

All of this is prologue to the topic of the day—the introduction of the tuxedo at a posh New York country club on October 10, 1886.  On that date a leading society toff and tobacco heir, Peter Lorillard IV was said to have shown up at the first annual Autumn Ball of the Tuxedo Club, a country club retreat for the Big Apple elite, wearing a tailless black formal suit.  He created a sensation and a tradition.  This is the same club memorialized years later by Glenn Miller in Tuxedo Junction when his swing band was hired to play there.

Other members aped Lorillard’s style and the new jacket became a trademark of club membership.  When some began to wear it to dinner in the city, instead of at an “informal” country club, the style began to catch on.

The suit style, quickly dubbed for the club of its debut, caught on as, ironically, informal wear.  The black tail coat suit, white waistcoat, starched bib shirt front, wing collar and white tie worn with spats on the dancing pumps and a silk high hat remained the full dress formal wear for a night out.  As anyone who watches old movies will attest, that style still ruled into the 1930’s and is still, on rare occasions, trotted out by the very swellest of swells at the toniest of charity balls or opera openings.

The tuxedo was more typically reserved for dinner, summer wear (they tended to be made from lighter material than tails), or, increasingly, for formal occasions away from Broadway.  Because they were worn at dinner, they quickly became the uniform of waiters in eateries highbrow to beer hall and earned the derisive name, monkey suites.  This low class adoption probably contributed to the continued use of tailcoats among the very top members of the societal pecking order.

Despite earning their name and spreading in popularity from the American country club, the suit style did not originate there.

The Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria’s son the future King Edward VII is the usual suspect.  Stories claim that as early as 1860 he asked his tailors, Henry Poole & Co. of Seville Row for a blue silk smoking jacket for use in informal dining at country estates away from formality of Court and London.  He liked the comfort, but the smoking jacket was considered lounging wear and may have shocked his guests and/or hosts, if such people could afford to be shocked by the eccentricities of the heir apparent.

English roots of the dinner jacket.

By the 1880’s Edward had refined his idea, based on the tailless short mess jackets of Army officers of the period.  In 1885 he can be confirmed as ordering from Poole’s a “tailless diner jacket” made of the same black cloth as formal tail coats.

The next year, Edward is said to have shown the style to visiting New York millionaire James Potter, another early member of the Tuxedo Club who may have shared his discovery with Lorillard.  Or perhaps giving the daring new style the stamp of royal approval simply gave it that extra aura of respectability.

We do know that Edward was wearing the style and it spread in the drawing rooms of the Great Houses by the turn of the 20th Century.

The classic Tuxedo style was one button with un-notched satin lapels that recalled the earlier smoking jackets.  It was more closely fit and tailored than a standard men’s business suit.  A satin ribbon stripe often ran on the outside trouser seam.  If worn with a waistcoat—the vest was black—or daringly a contrasting bright color—the boiled bib was worn.  By the ‘20s a starched and pleated formal shirt with studs was generally worn with a cummerbund.  They were worn outside with informal hats—a bowler in winter, a straw skimmer in summer.  Eventually, those gave way to soft black felt hats, either homburgs or fedoras.  By the mid ‘60s the hat was generally disposed of entirely.

Styles did change.  Lapels became peaked or notched, wider and narrower as fashion dictated.  Two and three button versions and double breasted styles were introduced.  By the ‘30s white was becoming fashionable for summer wear, although this style reverted to the British name of dinner jacket.

Still, most of us picture the simple elegance of the tux as it was worn in the early ‘60s by various cultural icons.  Then the aforementioned late ‘60s early ‘70s kitsch took over resulting in various abominations including plaid and denim suits.

 

2024 Oscar night tux looks.

These days most rental tuxes follow styles on display at the previous year’s Academy Awards.  Currently that means black coats tailored looser and more like business suites, usually without the satin adornment on the notched lapels.  Shirts are softer dress shirts worn with cuff links but often dispensing of studs in favor of buttons.  In the early 21st Century long ties, previously taboo in evening wear, are becoming fashionable. The overall effect was more like a funeral director than a waiter.

This year a variety of looks were on display.  Most still wore black. But some disposed of ties and went with their shirt necks unbuttoned.  Other sought attention with color or designer flights of fancy.  I don’t remember anyone showing up in a Tux t-shirt.

Of course, I may never have to worry about picking out a tux again.  Unless I get that call from the Pulitzer Committee for my richly deserved Poetry Prize.  Then stand back and watch me rock the duds.  And now I even have a black cowboy hat to go with the suit.

                           

 
 

There Was a Bomb on Board a Boing 247—A Real Unsolved Mystery

The doomed United Air Lines Boeing 247, registration number NC13304 was photographed over Chicago's Century of Progress and Soldier Field just weeks before it went down.

It seemed like a routine flight for the relatively early days of regularly scheduled commercial airline operations.  In the late afternoon three crew members and four passengers climbed aboard one of United Air Lines most modern aircraft, a twin-engine Boeing 247, at Newark, New Jersey for a transcontinental flight to Oakland, California with several stops for fuel along the way.  Most of the passengers had Chicago as a destination.  Other fares would be picked up there.  After a stop in Cleveland, Ohio the plane was cruising at about thousand feet over Indiana around 9 pm October 10, 1933 when it was ripped apart by and explosion, falling in two pieces into cornfields near Chesterton and the Dunes of Porter County.  Everyone on board was killed.

The sleek new Boeing 247 was not a likely candidate for an accidental explosion.  The aircraft, which was introduced into fleet service in May and was the highly talked about centerpiece of the Boeing exhibition at Chicago’s Century of Progress, was the safest and most modern commercial plane in the air.  It was so far advanced that it immediately made the high wing Fokker and Ford Trimotors and Curtis Condor bi-planes then in service obsolete.  It was the first airliner with an as all-metal anodized aluminum construction, a fully cantilevered (low) wing, and retractable landing gear. Other advanced features included control surface trim tabs, an autopilot, deicing boots for the wings and tailplane, and even a climate controlled, air conditioned cabin for passenger comfort.  It’s airspeed was faster than the most modern Army Air Corps fighter, but its design allowed it to be set down gently at a mere 62 mph on a remarkably short runway for its size and weight.  The 247 was so revolutionary, it essentially was the prototype for all subsequent multi-engine passenger planes.

Witnesses on the ground in Indiana reported hearing an explosion shortly after 9 pm and saw the plane in flames at an altitude of about 1,000 feet.  A secondary explosion occurred after the main body of the aircraft plowed into the ground.  The tail section aft of the baggage compartment and lavatory was found mostly intact almost a mile away from the main wreckage indicating that the plane had broken up almost immediately after the initial explosion.

Rescuers arriving on the ground immediately noted suspicious conditions of the debris.  By the next morning Boeing 247, head of the Chicago office of the United States Bureau of Investigation, an already a famous gang buster whose regular appearances in the newspapers was stirring the ire of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, arrived on the seen with a team of agents to investigate the wreckage.  He found the toilet and baggage compartment smashed into fragments with metal shrapnel riddling the inside of the toilet door while the other side was free of the metal fragments.  Purvis later reported to the press that:

Our investigation convinced me that the tragedy resulted from an explosion somewhere in the region of the baggage compartment in the rear of the plane. Everything in front of the compartment was blown forward, everything behind blown backward, and things at the side outward…The gasoline tanks, instead of being blown out, were crushed in, showing there was no explosion in them.

 

Dapper Melvin Purvis, agent in charge of the Chicago office of the Bureau of Investigation gets off of anther Boing 247 shortly after he got Most Wanted gangsters Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger in 1934. His knack for getting publicity for his high profile cases was irritating his boss, J. Edgar Hoover.

Dr. Carl Davis of the Porter County Coroner’s Office called on the Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University to conduct forensic tests on the wreckage.  His report, based on the Lab conclusions was that the plane had been brought down by an explosive device, probably employing powerful nitroglycerine.  There seemed to be no doubt that the plane was sabotaged with a bomb.  The Coroner’s Jury ruled that the seven dead were homicide victims.

It was the first known case of what we would now call a terrorist bomb bringing down an airplane.

Figuring out who did it and why proved virtually impossible.  No note was found. Nor was there a claim of responsibility that would be common in aircraft bombings decades later.  Investigations turned up no known enemies of the passengers or crew.  There were no attempts to extort the airline or its parent company and plane manufacturer Boeing.  No one carried un-usual or extravagant insurance coverage.  In short, no motive could be established and without a motive, suspects were impossible to identify.

There was a brief stir of excitement when a witness recalled seeing one of the passengers board the plane in Newark with a package wrapped in brown paper.  Then the package was found intact amid the wreckage.  There was also a rifle on board but it was in the nearly destroyed baggage compartment and was the property of a passenger on the way to Chicago to compete in a shooting match at the North Shore Gun Club.  All of the passengers and crew were evidently in their seats when the mid-air explosion took place. 

The crime has never been solved.  

 

Stewardess Alice Schiber's home town Stevens Point, Wisconsin newspaper printed this diagram and illustration of the bombing based on Purvis's conclusions.     

Air crew victims included Pilot Harold R. Tarrant of Oak Park, Illinois, Co-pilot A.T. Rudy also of Oak Park, and 26 year-old nurse and stewardess Alice Schiber of Chicago’s North Side.  The unfortunate Miss Schiber had the distinction of being the first stewardess ever to die on a commercial flight.

Other than the fact that they could afford the hefty price of a plane ticket during the Depression nothing seemed unusual about the four passengers.  They were 28 year old Chicagoan Fred Schendorf, the manager of the apartment division of R. Cooper, Jr., Inc., a manufacturer of refrigerators; 25 year old Dorothy M. Dwyer of Arlington, Massachusetts; Emil Smith, age not noted, of Argyle Avenue in the Roger’s Park neighborhood; and H. R. Burris of Columbus, Ohio, a United Airlines radio technician dead heading to a work assignment.

The bodies of Smith and Burris, believed to have been seated next to each other nearest the explosion, were thrown from the plane and found the next morning a half mile from the wreckage.

Pilots Tarrant and Rudy had both been married within the year and members of Tarrant’s family rushed to the grim scene of the still smoldering wreckage.  Stewardess Schiber had left her Stevens Point, Wisconsin home just two month earlier to take up the exciting career of an airline hostess.

The crash was the first with loss of life for the seven year old airline.

It could have been much worse.  Only 4 passengers occupied the ten available seats.  The plane was operating therefore at a loss.