LIFE PHOTOS

[Monsters For Sale]

Ernest Thesiger, in the G.B. Shaw play "Too True to Be Good" 1932

http://ernestthesiger.org/Ernest_Thesiger/Too_True_To_Be_Good.html

I never would have guessed that!

It looks like something from the "Outer Limits".

[Ludi]

And here he is as the First Witch (center) in the 1949 BBC TV production of "The Tragedy of Macbeth"  (witches are borderline "monsters" for me - generally not actually monsters, but spooky)



see also my avatar for another Ernest-as-First-Witch performance (1942)
http://ernestthesiger.org/Ernest_Thesiger/Macbeth.html

[ChristineBCW]

Thesiger in a see-thru outfit?!!  I had no idea we'd see plastoidal costuming like that in 1932.

And the "witches/monster" controversy arrives.  I don't generally think of them as monsters, but since they conjure up monsters (or, sometimes, by strapping carrots onto the noses of people), witches IN monster movies - or monsters in Witch movies - seems common enough.

[Ludi]

Thesiger in a see-thru outfit?!!  I had no idea we'd see plastoidal costuming like that in 1932.

Yes, it looks so "modern."  Ernest only wanted to play that character so he could wear the outfit. He loved dressing up, and was quite the party animal well into his maturity - something which surprised me greatly when I found it out, since he is described so often as "prissy."  And his own clothing was quite eclectic - he was wearing clothes in the 1930s which look like they might have been from the 1970s, and he liked to wear bright colors.

Here he is in 1934 wearing one of his modern outfits, with normal guy in the background:



Page about this partying goofball:  http://ernestthesiger.org/Ernest_Thesiger/Pageantry.html
More about wacky outfits:  http://ernestthesiger.org/Ernest_Thesiger/Mens_Dress_Reform_Party.html

[ChristineBCW]

Where's the Elvis cape?!!

Can you study a large pix of this neckline's closure-device?  That's not a zipper, it is?

I am thinking of the emergence of "zoot suits" which are largely an urban late'40s into early '50s emergence, then growing popularity into the later '50s.  But the styling on this shirt might have been a precursor to sharper and larger collars, pinched waistlines.  The "riding style" trousers were nothing new - the only thing missing are epulets on the shoulders!

[Ludi]

It is, indeed, a zipper.

You asked for a cape:



Ernest on a day off from filming THE VAGABOND QUEEN (1929), photographing Betty Balfour and another gal.

[Ludi]

Again, not a LIFE photo, but one I'd like to share.  Here's a closeup of a photo from Theatre World January 1948 of a production of Shaw's "You Never Can Tell" starring Ernest Thesiger and James Donald.  Donald of course beloved to many of us as Dr Roney from QUATARMASS AND THE PIT. (sorry about sad pic quality, but those postwar magazines are not great and it's a teeny tiny photo)

[Ludi]

What the heck, I'll spam this thread with Ernest.  Here he is in heavy makeup as Charles II in Shaw's "In Good King Charles's Golden Days" 1939, picture from the University of Bristol Theatre Collection:



More pics at http://www.arenapal.com/imageflows2/?s=ernest+thesiger

More about the production: http://ernestthesiger.org/Ernest_Thesiger/In_Good_King_Charless_Golden_Days.html

[Ludi]

Ernest looking very Mad Hattter-esque with Gladys Cooper at the Theatrical Garden Party, 1922





I realized I'm totally spamming this thread with Ernest, and probably should have started a separate thread!  Let me know if it's bugging you and I'll move all this nonsense to it's own thread.