Elizabeth Taylor – December 3, 1966

Elizabeth TaylorPhoto: Paul RonaldDecember 3, 1966

Elizabeth Taylor may have been a shrew on the December 3, 1966 cover, but she was also a stunner. She and Richard Burton were starring in The Taming of the Shrew. The Paul Ronald photo gives credence to those who argue she was the most beautiful screen actress of all. To my surprise and delight, the cover folded out to show the man attempting to tame her (Burton as Petruchio). Well, it certainly never happened in real life.

Sophia Loren – October 21, 1967

Sophia LorenPhoto: M-G-M PhotoOctober 21, 1967

Just when you stick your foot in it and assert that Liz was the greatest screen beauty ever, you run across a gorgeous cover of Sophia Loren from 1967. The battle rages on. The movie star had a rough beginning, “even for a poor Neapolitan,” wrote John Cheever in the accompanying article. “She was seven years old when the three-year of bombardment of Naples began during World War II, and she and her mother suffered the hazards of poverty and war.” Forty-three years later, she’s still gorgeous.

Ann-Margret – May 4, 1963

Ann-MargretPhoto: Lawence J. SchillerMay 4, 1963

Looking sassy, sexy and joyful all at once is Ann-Margret, an “explosive new star.” Her rise to Hollywood fame was considered lightning fast. “At 22, having emerged from nowhere by way of Sweden and Illinois, Ann-Margret has worked the film town’s official chroniclers into a froth of admiration,” wrote Dean Jennings. As ingenuous as the young star was, she planned “to be the girl who sustains, year after year.” We’re delighted she succeeded.

Faye Dunaway – September 7, 1968

Faye DunawayPhoto: Jerry SchatzbergSeptember 7, 1968

I have been known to rue the day photography replaced art and illustration on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post, but a photo like this reminds even a curmudgeon like myself that photography is an art form, too. The beautiful star was nominated for Best Actress for Bonnie and Clyde from the year before.

Julie Andrews – January 29, 1966

Julie AndrewsPhoto: Philippe HelsmanJanuary 29, 1966

I love the fresh-faced Julie Andrews of this 1966 cover. She was a long way from the Mary Poppins of only a couple of years before, starring in a cold-war themed Hitchcock movie. With her in “Torn Curtain” was Paul Newman (who’ll be one of our “leading men” next week). She was the first to make fun of her squeaky clean image. When Hitchcock complained during a scene, “That light is making a hell of a line over her head,” she responded with hands primly on hips, “That’s my halo.” Okay, no halo, but she certainly had a radiance.

Brigitte Bardot – May 8, 1965

Bridget BardotPhoto: Dan Ornitz and OrlandoMay 8, 1965

“For people like me,” Bardot was quoted as saying, “there is no place left to hide.” The sex kitten was still a hot property at the ripe old age of thirty. According to the article, “police almost lost control of the mob when she got off the plane in Mexico City to assume her part in Viva Maria! Being hounded by the paparazzi isn’t a new thing—the alluring actress was brutally pursued by photographers. She retired less than ten years later and became an outspoken advocate for animal rights.

Classic Covers: Leading Ladies of the ’60s The Saturday Evening Post

The feverish excitement isn’t just the product of a sudden, national fascination with Constitutional law. New judges are news because they become a profound, lifelong influence on America’s legal landscape. They’re news because they are political — whether or not that is their intention.

This was not the original idea. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had both hoped that every branch of the government would operate without the maneuvering and deal-making of political factions. It was clear by the 1800s that this was unrealistic in Congress and the White House.

The Supreme Court avoided politics a little longer — probably because it was so insignificant. It had no budget, no building, and no significant work until Chief Justice John Marshall wrote his Marbury v Madison decision. The Court, Marshall said, was the foremost interpreter of the Constitution. If it thought a law was unconstitutional, it could overturn it, despite the vote of the House and Senate and the President’s signature.

This was unexpected political power, and Presidents quickly realized how they could use it to their advantage. By appointing a judge with similar opinions, the President could ensure his policies were pursued in the high court for the lifetime of the judge.

The nomination process has basically expanded the playing field for Washington’s endless political wrestling match. In many cases, appointing a Supreme Court justice is the continuation of politics by other means.

Like all political wisdom, though, this is at least 20% wrong. Throughout history, Presidents have chosen fair-minded, independent judges who offered wisdom, insight, and a keen insight into the Constitution. But they have also nominated judges who were political ciphers and ideological sock puppets.

Sometimes, though, Supreme Court justices can move off in an unexpected direction. Justice Felix Frankfurter, appointed by liberal President Roosevelt, became the court’s most prominent conservative voice. President Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren as Chief Justice in 1953, confident that Warren would exert a steady, conservative influence on the Court. Instead, Warren moved to the left, siding mostly with liberal opinion, and causing Eisenhower to refer to Warren’s nomination as “the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made.”

Sometimes judges act like politicians, and sometimes they act like fair-minded, objective jurists. The uncertainty makes politically focused Americans extremely anxious.

For example Merlo J. Pusey, in a 1963 Post article, saw signs of domestic turmoil gathering like thunderheads over the court. The reasons — for him, at least — were clear.

“During its last session the court handed down two of the most bitterly controversial opinions in its long history — one against a prayer in the public schools and the other for reapportionment of gerrymandered legislatures. Both these cases are new landmarks in the law. Yet, like others before them, they represent no more than battles in the long war within the court itself—the war between the ‘activists’ and the ‘traditionalists.’

“This struggle has already deeply affected the political climate of the United Slates and the rights that all men and women cherish.”

Interestingly, the author thought the reapportionment decision would have a greater impact on the country. The “school prayer” decision, though, would remain a politically hot issue for decades.

“The case was brought by Steven I. Engel and other parents of children [who] objected to a nondenominational prayer recommended for use in the schools by the State Board of Regents, the highest educational authority in New York, and officially adopted by the local board. The prayer consisted of only 22 words drawn largely from state constitutions:

“‘Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.’

“The prayer was repeated at the beginning of each school day, along with the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Those who did not wish to participate could remain silent or be excused from the room or come late in order to miss the prayer. All the judges agreed that there was no compulsion on any pupil to join in the prayer, but that did not save it in the eyes of the court.”

The court had shown its power in the 1950s, particularly in Brown v Board of Education, which struck down the practice of operating racially divided schools that were “separate but equal.” Now, it seemed, the Court was expelling God from school.

But real trouble was ahead, according to Pusey. Justice Frankfurter had retired and the court was now dominated by “activists” and “free-speech absolutists.” Pusey dreaded the prospect of the First Amendment running rampant through the streets.

“If the absolutist doctrine in its more extreme forms should be established as the law of the land, the consequences would be almost revolutionary.”

The statement is far less scary once you see all the qualifiers: if there is a concept of absolutist doctrine, if it might exist in “its most extreme forms,” and if it is made the law of the land, the results would be revolutionary, almost.

“It would mean, for example, that the Government could no longer enforce the Smith Act, under which numerous Communists have been convicted of teaching and advocating the overthrow of government by force and violence.

“It would also sharply curtail the investigative powers of Congress. If the doctrine were literally applied in its extreme forms, the general maintenance of public order would be severely handicapped because irresponsible people would presumably be free to indulge in perjury, obscenity, misrepresentation, false advertising and even solicitation of crime and subversion.”

It’s reporting like this that make the nominating process such a spectacle. Any and every fear can be entertained.

Overall, the article is suprisingly thoughtful and balanced. Pusey gives a thoughtful assessment of Hugo Black, but he keeps returning to his theoretical revolution, which was as fearful as it was imaginative.

If the court of 2010 is in the same awful straits as Pusey saw in 1963, we would all spend our worrying resources on another, more realistic problem.

The Inevitable Politics of the High Court The Saturday Evening Post

Once, the sidewalks of our cities were bobbing oceans of headgear: bowlers, boaters, bonnets, bretons, panamas, pork pies, and pill boxes. Then, mysteriously, hats were left in the back of coat closets, eventually making their way to attic trunks, then… oblivion.

But in the young century, hats were everywhere. Consider the below photograph from 1900. It shows New York’s Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday morning, and not a single bare head.

Of course, this was the Easter Parade: the one day of the year set aside to display your best hat.

The parade had grown out of the custom of wealthy New Yorkers to stroll the sidewalks after church, there to mingle with their peers and display their family, clothing, and carriages. By 1883, the event had become an annual event where men and women would display their Easter best, particularly their crowning glory: tall, lustrous opera hats for men and elaborate, be-ribboned bonnets for women.

Naturally the event attracted crowds of citizens who weren’t among New York’s social elite. At first, they enjoyed simply watching the parade of fashion, but they soon were mingling with the fashionable set both in church and on Fifth Avenue. You can imagine the reaction of New York’s elite, as noted by a Post author in 1955:

“As early as the mid-1890s, the New York Time complained dismally about ‘visitors from the East Side, shop girls, clerks, and all sorts of “metropolitan outsiders” who had thrust themselves into the parade’ where they had no business. By 1897 so many ‘outsiders’ were invading the Avenue on Easter that churches began issuing admission tickets to their memberships. At St. Patrick’s, a group of eager females tried to beat some ticket holders out of their seats. They had got in via a ladder that some workmen had left near a window… After a brief but spirited fisticuffs, police came to the rescue of the ticket holders.”

Ah, those were the days — when New Yorkers fought crowds to get into church.

Inevitably, the parade of genteel fashion took on a more democratic character, and a carnival atmosphere with no definite purpose except celebrating Spring. As the Post article observes:

“Americans… are perplexed by the Fifth Avenue event because it has no apparent beginning, ending, organization or purpose. Swarms of people just show up from no place in particular, march — perhaps ‘trample’ is a better word — for two or three hours, then go home. The main promenade route is the eighteen short blocks on Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and Central Park, centering at 50th Street, near St. Patrick’s.”

The 128th Official Easter Parade will be held this year on April 4th. It will look nothing like the photograph above. Fashion — hats, particularly, will be an important feature of the event. Many will be intended to amuse, looking something like parade floats for the head. But there will also be samples of New York’s millinery industry, which still clings to life.

In 1963, Muriel Fischer reported on the millinery market, which at the time was a strong, durable industry.

“Some 40 firms have been in the business for better than 25 years. (Yet few newcomers have entered the field in the past five years.) At least seven establishments loudly proclaim. ‘We’re the largest and the oldest!’”

It was one of the last, great years for hats, and the competition was intense.

“Millinery seasons are short and violent. The peak periods are the 10 weeks prior to Easter and the 10 weeks prior to Fall. Yet there’s never a lull. For if the industry isn’t making hats it’s planning hats, and it’s always busy talking hats.”

“Roughly 60 million units of millinery are sold per year. In the overall accounting, 80 percent are in the below-$10 category, only 3 percent in the over-$35 salon group.”

The article lists several of 1963′s most important hat designers:

“Sally Victor and Mr. John are generally acclaimed the crowned heads of couture’s royal family. Also include are Lilly Dachè, Adolfo, Emme, Chanda, the house of Hattie Carnegie, and a dynamic young newcomer called Mr. Halston.”

Just 30 years-old at the time, Halston was to become famous for his skills in draping the feminine form in solids of classical elegance.

“It was Halston who created the ‘Kennedy pillbox.’ He smiles at the recollection. ‘I made it for her long before the inauguration,’ he relates. ‘Funny thing is when she put it on she dented the top of it—pushed it in, I guess, holding it against the wind. lt was photographed that way, and soon I noticed all the women wearing pillboxes were pushing them in. Halston also made the large rolled brims Jackie wore to India. He estimates that ‘fifty percent of the downtown business was based on that hat that season.’”

In the highly competitive market of that time, hat-makers could only produce a few styles each year. They hoped that one of their styles would take off, but to ensure their profitability they stole designs from each other.

“In his race to prepare a line for the selling season, the 39th Street manufacturer often finds it expedient to steal. ‘How many designers do I have?’ chuckles Harry Samet. ‘Two who work in my place—and one hundred and eighty working for others. So they call us pirates. But we compliment them, don’t we?’

“Lilly Dachè agrees. ‘When they stop copying me, ah, then I am finished.’

“Piracy is encouraged by the Millinery Institute of America, an organization sponsored by the downtown manufacturers, the uptown creators and the Millinery Workers’ Union. ‘Let’s face it,’ expounds Charles Rothenberg, who heads the Millinery Institute of America. ‘It is the ability to copy down, mass-produce and render fashion at the lowest price level that makes the American woman the best-dressed female in the world.’

The institute seeks to encourage women to buy six hats per year. (Current estimates pinpoint the odd fraction of 2.8 hats per woman.)”

So what happened to America’s hats? One reason for their decline is their loss of usefulness. We no longer need to cover our heads in our brief walk between vehicles and buildings.

Some historians claim the hat died when hairstyles became more luxuriant. Others state that President Kennedy set a trend for hatless attire (although he definitely wore a hat on state occasions.)

Not a hatless soul to be found in 1880's 5th Avenue. (Library of Congress)

In fact, both of these factors were part of a larger influence. In the 1960s, American society broke with the tradition of serious attire. The trend-setters among young Americans didn’t want to dress for respectability as their parents had, but for comfort. They also wanted something that reflected their own generation. They wanted to advertise the studied casualness of youth in jeans, shorts, t-shirts, and athletic wear. The suit, the tie, and the hat became historical artifacts.

The hat has made a meager comeback in the form of baseball caps. But caps are nearly indistinguishable, and anonymous. The crown may proclaim a baseball team or a seed company, but they say almost nothing about the wearer.

In contrast, a hat is a prominent display of its wearer’s character and taste — and Americans generally aren’t comfortable making  such a bold statement.

The Fall of the American Hat The Saturday Evening Post