Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Controversial Fur

I just watched a movie from 1938 with Lucille Ball and Jack Oakie. She was a movie star and wore several furs. One was a jacket, short in the front with four (4) fox heads hanging from their skins and in the front. When she folded her arms, they were no longer visible. The tails, of course, were in the back.
In another scene she had a garment that had only two creatures. These were much larger and looked like foxes. Their tales were again in the back and the front showed their mouths fastened together.
Can we believe that people wore those things?

Well, yes. The first picture is me in a white fur coat, (rabbit?) complete with muff and white boots. I think the hat was angora. It was fluffy yarn.

The last shot is my mom holding me with a stylish coat with a belt. I am not sure what material it was made from but later while I was still a child, she had what she called a seal skin coat. It was black and very shiny with black short fur. I wonder if it was really seal skin. 

This was in the Depression. We weren't rich but my dad had a job at the electric company, Kansas Power and Light, so we were never without necessities. Before I came around, Mom was a nurse doing private duty. Maybe she saved a lot of money. But as I think about it now, how in the world could a person on working man's wages afford things like that!

Later.  Second Lucille Ball movie, Annabel Takes a Tour. So far she has worn a coat with a humongous fur collar and a muff the size of sofa pillow, and a full length full fur coat. They must have been all the rage in 1938.

Even later. Now she is in a negligee with fur around the collar, down the front to the floor and on the sleeves! They must have had supplier that gave the studio a good deal.


A fact from www.imdb.com which tells a lot about the starts and movies:  "Before her movie career she was a model at Hattie Carnegie's in New York. She mainly modeled heavy fur coats, because she was startlingly thin as a young lady."

7 comments:

  1. I can't even imagine anyone today wearing coats like that, but I do remember them from my childhood. My mom could never afford one, but some of her friends did. I love the pictures of your Mom and you.
    Blessings,
    Betsy

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    1. Thanks, Betsy. We didn't take a lot of pictures but I do have a few of Mom and Dad.

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  2. My Mom had a mink collar on a coat. I admired a older gals Full length mink coat in church one day she said "Sweetie when you have had as many husbands as I have had you could afford a mink
    too! " A few years later I ordered a rabbit jacket...it just made me look fat so I sent it back to JC penney:)

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    1. Now that's funny! And I mean both stories.

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  3. My mother still has my grandmother's fox fur (with a mouth that opens and closes). I remember teasing my sister with it when I was in kindergarten. Now I don't even want to open the lid of the cedar chest!

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  4. Aren't they creepy? I don't know if I ever saw a real one being worn.

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  5. What came to my mind was..
    What a wonderful life, Marlu!

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